Charles Fraser-Smith was the son of a solicitor who owned a wholesale grocery business; he was orphaned at age seven. He was then brought up by a Christian missionary family in Hertfordshire. He went to school at Brighton College, where he was described as "scholastically useless except for woodwork and science and making things." Officially, Fraser-Smith was a temporary civil servant for the Ministry of Supply's Clothing and Textile Department (Dept. CT6). In reality, he developed and supplied gadgets and other equipment for section XV of Britain's World War II intelligence organization, the Special Operations Executive. Travelling by train from his home in Hertfordshire to a small office in the clothing department of the Ministry of Supply, near St. James's Park in London, Fraser-Smith was actually working at the direction of MI6 in the nearby Minimax House. Performing a job so secret that neither his secretary nor his boss knew what he was doing, Fraser-Smith invented numerous ingenious gadgets intended to help prisoners of war to escape and to aid SOE agents gathering information on Nazi activities in occupied Europe. Because of the wartime secrecy there was no written production process to work from. At the end of the war, any complete pencils still at the factory were sent off to the British Government, along with all written instructions and remaining components. Most, if not all of these, may have been destroyed. It was while working with the latter on Operation Mincemeat that Fleming met Charles Fraser Smith. The man whose work would form the basis of Q Branch’s relationship with James Bond in the author’s novels. CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: I knew that if I were to deliver satisfactorily and on time, I would have to bend the rules to their limit. One of my first calls was to Scotland Yard to see if they could be persuaded to renew the government offer to buy privately held handguns - this time offering a higher price. But they said they’d need the approval of the Home Office. I knew well enough that waiting for that to happen would take weeks. So I asked if they would mind if I advertised myself, putting notices in the press offering generous prices for handguns. No-go there too I’m afraid. No one fully understood the new wartime regulations, but no one wanted to risk running afoul of them.

One of his tasks was sourcing continental styled second-hand clothing, usually from shops and traders selling used attire. Such clothes meant that Briitish agents working abroad could blend in and be less conspicuous whilst involved in espionage work. CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: If I made any contribution to the war effort it was in assisting the unimaginably brave, largely unsung heroes like that: Resistance fighters, SOE agents, ordinary soldiers behind enemy lines. Mine was a secret war, but not without honor.

Ian Fleming’s characters were often given names of people he had known and like many authors he was known to base them on amalgams of his own associates, colleagues and family.

Fraser-Smith was not the only gadget-master working for British intelligence during World War II. The SOE had various secret research and development laboratories including Station IX at the Natural History Museum and Station XII at the Frythe Hotel. Christopher Clayton Hutton of MI9, a clandestine unit within A-Force which specialised in escape and evasion, was also an inventor and deception-theorist. Major Jasper Maskelyne, a stage magician, also developed secret sabotage and subterfuge devices for MI-9.

Which Way?

CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: I’m ashamed to say that I became unaccountably busy over the next few days, almost impossible for Scotland Yard to reach on the phone, and almost never in the office. Interestingly, during these times with the threat of an invasion by the German army and the on-going bombing of towns and cities, people were cautioned not to discuss aspects of their daily lives. Only one chapter here is devoted to Charles’ “Q” activities, since Fraser-Smith's previous book ( The Secret War of Charles Fraser-Smith) had already been published.

For maps hidden inside gadgets - we had to think of something else. A pure silk fabric and a non-rustling rag tissue of the finest paper imaginable were obviously suitable materials. The latter, especially made for the job, was magnificent. Nylon came along in the latter stages of the war, with the entry of the Americans. Then all we needed to do was to secrete these flimsy, beautifully printed little miniature works of art inside the minute space where the graphite lead should be". Official secret: The remarkable story of escape aids, their invention, production, and the sequel, by Clayton Hutton (Crown Publishers, 1961, ASIN: B0007DU032). NARRATOR: Diamonds are Forever. Bond goes undercover with a shadowy, all-powerful American organized crime group called the... well it doesn’t really matter. The point is that the group uses hollow golf balls to smuggle diamonds. CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: And then, quite without warning, I received a message that I was being reassigned to London and that I would be required to sign the Official Secrets Act. During the First World War, British war ships were disguised to look like freighters and unarmed fishing trawlers. These were known as 'Q' ships and Charles Fraser- Smith called his gadgets 'Q' gadgets in which Ian Fleming copied into his novels.In most cases I was forced to go well outside the normal channels to get anything done. Knowing when something of mine went well - a gadget really worked and out-foxed the enemy, perhaps helping to save a valuable life - was all that I needed by way of inspiration. NARRATOR: In Bond films, the hero is always shown an array of gadgets and secret weapons by an avuncular and slightly irate intelligence office known as ‘Q’. Pay attention 007. Charles Fraser-Smith was the son of a solicitor who owned a wholesale grocery business; he was orphaned at age seven. He was then brought up by a Christian missionary family in Croxley Green in Hertfordshire. [3] He went to school at Brighton College, where he was described as "scholastically useless except for woodwork and science and making things." [4] He had kept examples of most of his gadgets, and an exhibit of his wartime works was presented at the Exmoor Steam Railway, a tourist attraction in Bratton Fleming. Once a year, Fraser-Smith would spend a week explaining their workings to visitors. CHARLES FRASER-SMITH: He said he was impressed by my initiative and inventiveness, and he was looking for someone with those qualities to work in his department.