We discovered a cool Ian Flemming story today and I thought I would share it with all of you. The story originated from The Times and was made available to us thanks to cinematical:
My favorite news story of the week comes courtesy of The Times, which reports on an Ian Fleming/James Bond-themed exhibition at the British Imperial War Museum. Apparently, when Fleming was an intelligence officer in the Royal Navy — in 1940, 13 years before Bond began — he concocted a harebrained scheme to seize the decryption code used by the German navy to send messages.
He proposed to take a captured German plane, fill it with German-speaking Brits, crash it into the English Channel, wait for a German rescue boat to come by, board it, sabotage it, and run off with the loot. (Or, in Fleming’s brilliantly terse formulation: “Crash plane in the Channel after making S.O.S. to rescue service. Once aboard rescue boat, shoot German crew, dump overboard, bring rescue boat back to English port.”) Even better, he was able to put together a team and await the opportunity to put his plan into action — but one never came up, and higher-ups started to worry about the crew being killed in the crash or drowning.
By the sounds of it, Ian Flemming was as bad ass as James Bond himself. It’s interesting to hear of these tales, the mind starts to spin and you wonder how many personal stories Flemming drew from when writing his James Bond books. The only one that knows the truth is dead; but guessing is half the fun.
James Bond is a fantastic character and has managed to be a movie going staple for almost 50 years. The agent with particular tastes remains a cultural icon to this day and we are forever in the dent of Ian Flemming for creating this god man. Action stars will come and go, but James Bond will be with us as long as films are made.
