From shoelace saws to escape boots: gadgets from real Q
Bond films gave MI6 a reputation for gadgetry but Fleming’s inspiration came from the unsung MI9
THINK of James Bond and immediately the wacky tricks and gadgets of Ian Fleming’s fictionalised MI6 come to mind: a bagpipe flamethrower, tickertape watches, x-ray glasses and a helicopter in a suitcase.
The real MI6, correctly titled the Secret Intelligence Service or SIS, prefers to think of itself as a much more sober outfit. This was reflected in the 2012 instalment, Skyfall, when 007 grumbles about the paltry gun and radio he’s just been handed, saying “not exactly Christmas”. Q, Bond’s quartermaster, the cyber boffin in charge of all the technology for the operatives of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, replies: “What were you expecting, an exploding pen? We don’t really go in for that sort of thing any more.”
But getting caught hiding a listening device in a fake rock in a Moscow park in 2006 gave some hint that the fact is just as strange as the fiction.
What is less well known however, is that the gadgets actually came not from MI6, but from the espionage agency’s less glamorous cousin, MI9.
The accepted role of MI9 was to help recover service personnel trapped behind enemy lines, or assist those attempting to escape from German custody. MI9 designed special equipment to hide escape aids.
Hidden compartments in pipes, buttons and shaving brushes contained compasses, money was concealed in toothpaste tubes and notes were passed inside playing cards.
Prisoners in German camps were allowed to receive letters and parcels from home. They were even permitted to have board games sent out to relieve boredom. Waddingtons, the games manufacturer, produced a special Monopoly set with escape and evasion devices hidden in the pieces.
Knights used on chess boards were modified to hide a watertight compartment in which special ink would be hidden, for making forged documents.
MI9 also arranged for grey woollen blankets to be sent to prisoners. Some had the complete pattern of an item of clothing printed on them in invisible ink. The design was only revealed once the blanket had been dipped in a bucket of water containing certain chemicals smuggled in separately in jam pots or dried milk tins. Flexible wire saws, known as Gigli saws and capable of cutting through inch-thick steel bars, were hidden in shoe laces.
Boots for RAF airmen had small knives concealed to enable the legging to be cut away, leaving only black shoes which could pass as civilian footwear. The heel of the boot contained silk maps, a compass and a small file. The “escape boots” as they were known had to be abandoned by MI9 as they were not warm enough during winter flights and became waterlogged in heavy rain.
The idea of ingenious gadgets and spyware has passed into folklore as belonging to MI6. However, Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond novels, would have developed the ideas for his inventions from MI9, for which he recruited men and women from Naval Intelligence during the war.
The wartime escape and evasion gadgets were called “Q”.
It is likely Fleming took the idea of the gadgets and the term “Q” and built his character in the Bond novels around Christopher Clayton Hutton (affectionately known as “Clutty”) and Charles Fraser-Smith, the two men responsible for designing the Q items.
‘Flexible wire saws, known as Gigli saws and capable of cutting through steel bars, were hidden in shoe laces’