Licensed Troubleshooter: The Guns of James Bond is live on Kickstarter now – check it out for lots of super cool exclusive options!
Today Caleb Daniels – author of Licensed Troubleshooter – is back with me, to discuss the wide variety of shoulder holsters that James Bond uses throughout the myriad of Bond books and films. We will touch on the really good ones – like the Galco Executive as used by Brosnan – to the really terrible soft gun sock “holster” that Fleming originally wrote into the character.
One of the major problems with 007 carrying a sidearm much bigger than a PPK in a Bianchi X-15 is pointed out inadvertently in From Russia With Love (1957).
In it, the GRU file on Bond states his height as 178 cm. In English, that’s 70 inches or 5′ 10″. Simply put, he was about three inches too short to carry a larger gun in the vertical shoulder holster without somebody noticing it.
FTR, I’m 6′ exactly and I had to be careful about that “back in the day”. A 6″ Colt Police Positive Special .38 was about my limit without something “showing”.
As for the other holsters, they all had the same “real world” fault; their straps simply were not stiff enough to prevent the holster from “coming along” with the gun on the draw. This would have been less of a problem with the downward-draw holsters like the Berns-Martin or the Galco Executive, but the upward-draw holsters, any of them, badly needed better strapping.
The Mayfair “Q Manual” states that an MI6 agent with a PPK should “have two bullets in an opponent” armed with a Colt Python .357 before the Python clears the holster.
If the MI6 fellow has one of these holsters and the Python is in even a Lawrence (one if the slowest holsters there is), don’t bet on it.
clear ether
eon
Once had a conversation with a “real secret agent”, long retired. His contention was that you never, ever carried a gun, and that if you ever had to use one, you’d failed in your mission.
What he also told me was that if he’d been in the habit of carrying one, he’d have been dead on multiple occasions, because the only thing that saved his ass when taken by people on the other side of things was that his being unarmed meant that his story of innocence was more likely true than not. Other guys who were doing the same thing he was wound up dead or disappeared, which he put down to them having “gone in” with a gun…
Take that for what it’s worth. The usual “secret agent mission” is a lot more “second story man” and a lot less “licensed to kill”. My informant said that he got rather more out of his locksmithing tools than he ever would have out of a handgun.
My ex-CIA prof said that he only carried in (1) a combat zone, where he wanted a hidden backup to his rifle, and (2) places where he had to worry about being mugged, like West Berlin or…Washington DC.
In West Germany, he had a diplomatic cover. In DC, since he might be transporting classified materials, he had a special license.
His chosen sidearm, BTW, was the then-new Colt Commander .45. He avoided .38 S&W or Colt snub revolvers because “everybody” knew that U.S. intelligence personnel were issued same.
Other than those sort of areas, he was normally unarmed. Unless you counted the Boy Scout knife in his left front pocket.
cheers
eon
The sad truth of things is generally the diametric opposite of that which is most photogenic and attractive…
If you’re in intel, and have to have a gun, you’ve screwed the pooch. Best not to have one, and remain skulking unobtrusive in the shadows…
If you’re on an ancient battlefield, the most effective weapon was almost always the polearm, in whatever form. Rarely the sword… Those were for the leadership and ones with more money than sense.
Same with everything, really: It’s never the acclaimed, the “one everyone wants”, it’s always the thing lurking in the background in all the fancy pictures. Today, everyone focuses on the fancy fully-kitted carbine, yet the support weapon in the LMG and MMG roles do most of the killing, along with the radios. Tomorrow’s lurking killer that gets no attention is probably going to be the guy with the UAV controller, while everyone remains infatuated with the rifle, pistol, or whatever seems the “coolest”.
In intel work, the real “thing” was never the gun; if you had to resort to it, you’d already failed. The thing of true importance, the “big deal” was probably your communications system. Yesterday, it was a highly portable radio; today, it’s probably some simple, prosaic smartphone with a bunch of super-secret apps loaded up on it so you can send encrypted messages safely and securely over the enemy phone network…
The only “spy” who generally needed a gun or other such weapon was what MI6 called a “lion tamer”. I.e., an agent whose job was hunting down and “neutralizing” enemy agents, turncoats, or etc.
Those were the ones all the exciting spy novels and movies were about, and they were a rare breed.
I was told that Fleming wanted to be one, but wasn’t considered emotionally stable enough.
Oddly enough, a cousin of his was, during WW2. You’ve probably heard of him, as he was later noted for portraying a certain Wallachian Count in Hammer Films productions. Ironically, he also played the bad guy in one 007 movie- The Man With The Golden Gun (1974).
Yes, Count Dooku and Saruman himself, Sir Christopher Lee.
Incidentally, while making the last of the three Lord of the Rings movies, when they were working up Saruman’s big death scene, director Peter Jackson told Lee to imagine what a man being stabbed in the back sounded like.
Lee politely replied, “Peter, I don’t have to imagine it.”
cheers
eon
Lee greatly embellished his military service, even though his actual service in the RAF is well-documented. He was not involved in special operations during The War.
As far as ancient warfare goes, the most all-around useful gadget was probably the poleax in one of its forms (halberd, glaive, bill, whatever).
It had the reach to take a man off a horse, and unlike the “straight-bladed” spear, it could be used for hits other than just thrusting. Or grounding the butt and hoping your opponent runs himself or his horse onto the point. The Greek hoplites first came up with that trick with the sarissa about the 4th Century BC, but the Renaissance-era Swiss pike squares get all the credit.
Generally, a sword was a weapon for sweat-and-bad-breath range after you’d exhausted all the other options. The earliest “fighting” swords, made of bronze, weren’t much more than longer-than-average daggers mostly because a long bronze blade tends to be weak, not to mention heavy as s#!t to swing. They were more badges of office for senior officers, as your noted.
The guys who really needed a “short sword” were archers, crossbowmen, and the crews of “siege engines” like catapults, ballistae (really big crossbows, some of which threw stone balls instead of “bolts”), and wagoners. Men whose main job didn’t normally consist of getting up-close-and-personal with the Other Guy, but needed something better than a kitchen knife if Ogg the Warrior and his Merry Men suddenly popped up in their position.
Sound familiar? Yes, it’s the PDW argument in its original form.
Unless you’ve been intensively trained in its use, a sword makes about as much sense as an “offensive” weapon compared to a longbow or a polearm as a pistol does compared to a rifle (or better yet an LMG). And even then, it plays second fiddle to what was probably the best all around pre-gunpowder PDW of them all.
The lowly, peasant-arming maul.
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/mordhau_gamepedia_en/images/e/e0/Gear_Maul.png/revision/latest?cb=20210115035019
Nothing fancy, but one good whack would take the fight out of just about anybody. And pretty much every farmer had one, and any decent blacksmith could make one.
Pretty much like the early “handgonne”, actually.
cheers
eon