Wednesday, March 6, 2013

History Geek O Rama Post-Ian Fleming Nazi Hunter Edition

Great story from the BBC!

Justin Rowlatt:

30AU posing with a captured German flag

"...my grandfather, Lieutenant Theo "Rusty" Ionides, had been handpicked by none other than Ian Fleming to be part of the Bond creator's top secret crack team of commandos. He'd been trained in all the tricks of intelligence gathering, ready to be sent into battle ahead of the advancing troops at D-Day"

"The story of 30 Assault Unit, as the commandos were known, is a tale of audacious derring-do. 30AU was Commander Ian Fleming's greatest single contribution to the war effort and became the real-life inspiration for his most famous creation, James Bond."

The history: 

"Then, Room 39 was packed with men, all smoking like chimneys. These were the cream of naval intelligence, tasked with using their guile and imagination to come up with novel ways of confounding the Germans."

"And back at the start of the war, the main preoccupation of his team was how to address a key British weakness - the fact that the Germans led the Allies in all sorts of technologies - encryption, rockets, submarines, torpedoes, mines and much more."

"In 1942, Fleming proposed a simple solution - steal it."