Charles Fraser-Smith

Charles Fraser-Smith (* 1904 , † November 9, 1992 ) was a British engineer and served the author Ian Fleming as a real model for the character of Q in the novels about the secret agent James Bond .

Career

Charles Fraser-Smith began his career completely unmilitary as a missionary in Morocco , where he learned to improvise very quickly and was able to procure all kinds of rare everyday necessities. When he was reporting on his experience in England in the early 1930s, he was "discovered" by the Director of the Department of Utilities.

Fraser-Smith was immediately involved in a secret mission: even before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), British agents were to infiltrate the army there. The aim of the secret service activities was to disrupt the threatened cooperation between the Spaniards and the Germans. Charles Fraser-Smith joined the Department of Clothing and Textiles (Department CT6).

The agents needed a hundred Spanish uniforms to do their job. When asked for the required fabric from one of the leading manufacturers, he expressly emphasized that it should be “thick, rough, cheap and ugly”. It took another three rounds of negotiations for the textile manufacturer to deliver the right goods. Because the entrepreneur - to whom the real purpose of use was of course unknown - had delivered much better quality, with the comment that he would be happy to accept the price difference, after all, it was about England's concerns ...

But from then on Charles Fraser-Smith had - and intensified after the outbreak of war in 1939 - not only to procure textiles, but also other things of the agent's needs : small cameras , tiny pistols to suitcases and other pieces of luggage from continental Europe. Some things he could dawdle or even pick up from the lost property office , if necessary and possible the original owners were compensated with brand new replacements.

Other items had to be specially made. The pencils with which the Allied aircrews were equipped so that they could orientate themselves over the Reich territory after being shot down may serve as an example . The inconspicuous writing implements contained maps and a mini compass , which would later find its way into buttons and even into tooth fillings of the aviators.

The parts were put together in the oldest pencil factory in England, the Cumberland Pencil Company in Keswick (in the Lake District , about 40 kilometers southwest of Carlisle ). Not only did the company's chief technology officer take part, but the entire management team. After all, only a few people were allowed to know about these mysterious products, so the workers were not. The managers sneaked into the workrooms at night and on weekends, hollowed out finished pencils about twelve centimeters deep, sank a map printed on the thinnest tissue paper and rolled onto a wire, put the small compass on top and stuck one over it to camouflage it Eraser . There were a total of four different maps, the pen with the production number 101 contained one of Germany on a large scale, the following numbers were equipped with detailed maps. The pens can be seen in the company museum in Keswick.

Part of the job consisted of hiding espionage material in unsuspicious everyday objects, another of producing these little helpers first. Fraser-Smith experimented with edible cards that were printed on rice paper; other orientation aids should only become recognizable - for example on handkerchiefs - when they were wetted with liquid that everyone really carries with them: urine. And if there is a risk of discovery, notes should be able to be destroyed immediately without a trace: paper impregnated with magnesium burned in a flash without leaving any ashes.

When Charles Fraser-Smith was supposed to "recreate" German flight jackets, he immediately developed a valuable addition to the Royal Air Force jackets. These contained inflatable life jackets, but in many emergencies the crew members were too weak to fill them with air. CFS equipped the chambers with compressed air capsules that were easy to use.

Other developments by the self-made espionage engineer included:

• special flashlights that worked completely normally with only one battery, the other served as a secret container,
• Lighters containing miniature cameras
• Shaving brushes and hairbrushes to screw on, with left-hand thread, so that they cannot be accidentally opened,
• magnetic razor blades that could be used as a compass,
• Shoelaces in which a saw wire was embedded,
• Telescopes in cigarette holders, they have been provided with signs of use such as nicotine and tar stains,
• Emergency rations with concentrated food, for example in toothpaste tubes.

Works

• Secret warriors: hidden heroes of MI6, OSS, MI9, SOE, and SAS . Paternoster Press, Exeter 1984, ISBN 0-85364-393-8 .
• The secret war of Charles Fraser-Smith: The 'Q' gadget wizard of World War Two . Paternoster Press, Exeter 1987, ISBN 0-85364-409-8 .