Bond's Deadly Toys

Enlarge Photo Bond's Deadly Toys

Fri, May 30 05:30 AM

Brian Caulfield, Forbes.com

Pity the Nazis. To the east, they faced tens of millions of Russians angry enough to use everything short of spoons and circus bears against the invader. On the other side of the globe, Americans toiled away on nuclear bombs in case the Germans got by all those angry Russians. And in England, Adolf Hitler's minions faced Charles Frazier-Smith, a shop floor savant who crafted weapons of mass distraction such as the itching powder French saboteurs dumped into the clothes of German submarine crews.

Frazier-Smith hid compasses inside of golf balls and saws inside of shoelaces. He disguised cameras as cigarette lighters. He even built a special case, filled with dry ice, so the body of a man who died of pneumonia could be dumped into the Mediterranean with fake plans for an invasion of Sardinia.

For a nation of eccentrics and inveterate fiddlers, it was truly their finest hour. So it makes sense that Frazier-Smith would be immortalized as Q, the gadget master, in the novels of Ian Fleming, a former covert operations commander who used the U.K.'s Second World War campaign of spying, sabotage and commando raids as the template for James Bond's fictional Cold War-era adventures.

All of which explains why Bond is portrayed as a man more interested in spreading mayhem than gathering intelligence. Real Cold War spies stuck to, well, spying, says Thomas Bogart, a historian with the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. "The James Bond we know is a very can-do person, he blows thing up," Bogart says.

"That's not very close to spies in the real world." During the Second World War, however, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill aimed to set the European continent aflame. Starting, apparently, with the underwear of German submariners. And while Bond's adventures stemmed as much from Fleming's Walter Mitty-esque fantasies as his own wartime experience, Bond's first book-bound adventure was more about money and sex than gizmos.

The best scene in the first Bond novel, Casino Royale, published in 1953, is a baccarat match between Bond and Monsieur Le Chiffre, a mysterious assassin desperate to recoup the Soviet money he lost running a chain of brothels. But while the books introduced Bond to the world, the movies thrust Q and his gadgets to stardom.

While early films such as 1962's Dr. No pretty much limit the gear to a Geiger counter and an exploding bag, the mini-subs and rocket-equipped cars of later films took Agent 007 further and further from reality. "Why would you put rockets on an Aston Martin?" Bogart says.

"It just doesn't make sense; it is probably much easier to use a gun." The worst of it came in 1979, when Bond blasted into space to battle the private army of Sir Hugo Drax. By that time, however, the spies were cribbing from television and movies, as much as serving as a source of material, Bogart says.

Tony Mendez, a CIA technical operations officer and author of the book Master of Disguises, would regularly find himself asked to recreate a gadget one of his CIA bosses saw on Mission: Impossible.

So Mendez decided to start tuning in himself. "Often you can't transform these things from Hollywood to the real world, but it may spark an idea," Bogart says. The Nazis are lucky they lost the war before the debut of Jackass: The Movie.

In Pictures: Great Bond Gadgets

In Pictures: Pop Culture Bond

In Pictures: Bombshell Bond Girls

In Pictures: Diversify Your Bonds

Inventing Delights

RECOMMEND THIS STORY