The Name's Fleming. Ian Fleming.
The experiences Ian Fleming, Senior Naval Commander of the 30AU Unit and creator of the James Bond novels, had in planning covert missions and observing his unit as they worked on stealth raids, must have been his inspiration for the Bond character and his perfect mixture of playboy, charmer and man of mystery.
There are many candidates that may have been Fleming’s real life inspiration for the James Bond character, the strongest of which was Royal Navy Lieutenant Commander Patrick Dalzel-Job who could ski backwards, navigate a submarine and undertake the riskiest parachute jumps.
He was also known to have a compass hidden in one of his buttons!
His second world war exploits are the epitome of derring-do behind enemy lines, and like Bond he sometimes defied authority. He was sent to Norway but ordered not to get involved with civilians, yet Dalzel-Job saved the people of Narvik from a Nazi reprisal bombing raid by evacuating them in fishing boats, and he only avoided a court marshal by the King of Norway awarding him a Knights Cross of St Olaf First Class.
He also commanded one of the teams led by Fleming who was co-ordinating the movements of the 30AU for the latter part of WWII. In 1944/1945 he served with the 30AU collecting army intelligence, often ahead of the allied advance. In 1945 he accepted the surrender of the city of Bremen.
A fellow Officer from Fleming’s Unit, Peter Jemmett, told a newspaper that colleagues recognised Dalzel-Job as the Bond proto-type immediately from the first spy novels appeared in the 1950s. He added: “In contrast to a number of people who have claimed that they were the James Bond, Patrick has never made any fuss about it.Even though this claim for the inspiration of the Bond character was never substantiated by Dalzel-Job or
Fleming himself before their deaths, Dalzel-Job did say in one interview that after the book’s success, Fleming had told him that he was the role model for Bond, before mysteriously adding: “I like the quiet life now.”
Another prime candidate for the Bond moniker was a Dushko Popov, a Russian double agent that worked for the British throughout the war, who had a reputation as a young, wealthy Yugoslav businessman, who managed to continue a playboy existence while carrying out perilous wartime missions.
Signed up as a spy by the Nazis early in the war, Popov, who hated them, immediately offered his services to the United Kingdom. He was accepted as a double agent (codenamed Tricycle) and came to live in London. His international business activities provided cover for visits to neutral Portugal, which was linked to the United Kingdom by a weekly civil air service for most of the war.
There Popov fed enough MI5-approved information to the Germans to keep them happy, and was well paid for his services. The assignments they gave him were of great value to the British in assessing enemy plans.
Popov was known for staying at the best hotels, eating at top restaurants, visiting smart casinos, and he was also a compulsive womaniser. Popov died in 1981 aged 69, leaving behind a widow and three sons, and had never spoken publicly about the rumours surrounding his association with the Bond brand.
Sir William Samuel Stephenson was a Canadian soldier, airman, businessperson, inventor, spymaster, and the senior representative of British intelligence for the entire western hemisphere during World War II. He is best-known by his wartime intelligence codename of Intrepid. A lot of people consider him to be one of the real-life inspirations for James Bond.
"James Bond is a highly romanticised version of a true spy. The real thing is...William Stephenson." --Ian Fleming, The Times, October 21, 1962.
Lieutenant Sidney George Reilly, famously known as the ‘Ace of Spies’, was a Jewish Russian adventurer and secret agent employed by Scotland Yard, the British Secret Service Bureau and later the Secret Intelligence Service. He is alleged to have spied for at least four nations.
After Reilly’s death, the London Evening Standard published in May, 1931, a ‘Master Spy’ serial glorifying his exploits. Today, many historians consider Reilly to be the first 20th century super-spy. Much of what is known about him could be false, as Reilly was a master of deception, and most of his life is shrouded in legend, but could he be Fleming’s inspiration for Bond?
Some say that Fleming based Bond on all 7 of his commanding officers in tribute, others say that the Bond books were born out of a jealousy of his commandos, who experienced the missions Fleming planned but never got to embark upon. The desire to re-live the daring acts of bravado and romantic heroism then borne out through his fictional character.
You may agree that James Bond is a romanticised version of Ian Fleming, himself a jet-setting womaniser. Both Fleming and Bond attended the same schools, preferred the same foods (scrambled eggs, and coffee), maintained the same habits; drinking, smoking, wearing short-sleeve shirts, shared the same notions of the perfect woman in looks and style, and had similar naval career paths (both rising to the rank of naval Commander). They also shared similar height, hairstyle, and eye colour.
What do you believe?
