Charles Fraser-Smith

Charles Fraser-Smith (26 January 1904 – 9 November 1992) was an author and one-time missionary who is widely credited as being the inspiration for Ian Fleming's James Bond quartermaster Q. During World War II, Fraser-Smith worked for the Ministry of Supply, fabricating equipment nicknamed "Q-devices" (after Q-ships) for SOE agents operating in occupied Europe. His office also collaborated in many projects alongside the American Stan Lovell and the OSS R&D Branch in devices to be fielded by the US military. Prior to the war, Fraser-Smith had worked as a missionary in North Africa. After the war he purchased a dairy farm in Burrington, Devon, where he died in 1992.

Early life

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. He went to school at Brighton College, where he was described as "scholastically useless except for woodwork and science and making things."

On leaving school he veered from one occupation after another, working as a prep school teacher in Portsmouth, a motorcycle messenger rider, and an aircraft factory worker. Eventually, inspired by his foster family, he went to Morocco as a Christian missionary. Returning to England in 1939, he gave a Sunday sermon at the Open Brethren Evangelical Church in Leeds. In the sermon, Fraser-Smith described his practice of bricolage, and the necessity of procuring supplies from just about any source. In the congregation were two officials of Britain's Ministry of Supply, who were impressed by his adventures. As a result, the Director of the Ministry of Supply offered him what he later described as "a funny job in London".

Directed to make copies of a new type of Luftwaffe life jacket, he made discoveries that were subsequently incorporated as standard in RAF "Mae Wests", including the use of a compressed air cylinder for inflating the jacket and a pouch filled with a powerful fluorescent dye for spotting of a downed airman at sea.

In an example of lateral thinking, Fraser-Smith used a special left-hand thread for the disguised screw-off top of a hidden-document container; he suggested this would prevent discovery by the "unswerving logic of the German mind", as no German would ever think of trying to unscrew something the wrong way. which was designed to drop a body, carrying false papers to mislead the Nazis, off the Spanish coast. He was tasked with designing a trunk, 6' 2" long and 3' wide, to carry a "deadweight" of 200 lb that would be preserved in dry ice. When the dry ice evaporated, it filled the canister with carbon dioxide and drove out any oxygen, thus preserving the body without refrigeration. The plot was the basis of the book (and later film) The Man Who Never Was and the 2021 film Operation Mincemeat.

Later life

After the war, Fraser-Smith bought a rundown dairy farm in Bratton Fleming, in southwest England. It became a profitable business. In the late 1970s, his family persuaded him to seek permission to write a book about his wartime exploits. With clearance under the Official Secrets Act he wrote several, donating the royalties to charity.

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 died at his home of undisclosed causes in 1992, survived by his wife, Selina, and two children, Brian and Christine, by a previous marriage to Blanche Ellis. Live and Let's Spy: An exhibition of spy, escape and survival gadgetry, an exhibition of his work, created at Dover Castle by English Heritage, ran for two years in the late 1990s.