Bond's PPK in "Doctor No", the novel.

[DMK]

Bond should have been equipped with something appropriately British, like a .455 Webley cut down to a snubbie by "Q".

If 32ACP was a "stopper", I wonder what Boothroyd would have said about that!

 

[Geronimo45]

"This, 007, is a .455 six-shot Webley revolver with a full sized grip for faster draw from your Berns-Martin Triple-Draw holster and a two-inch barrel for ease in concealment. Power is comparable to a meteor through the Crystal Palace. Handle with care."

 

[default]

Snubbie Webley - great idea for Bond. Stevie-Ray - are you perchance referring to The Silencers with the backwards-firing pistol? That would be a pretty clever piece of engineering. So, the hammer is in the muzzle...and the cartridges come from...where? And there's a concealed large-caliber hole in the rear of the slide...? I like the bit where the girl pretends to shoot herself out of despair, managing to kill the gullible henchman. Thanks for all the great responses!

 

[Trebor]

Guys, Bond was a *Secret* agent. One of the requirements is that he *not* be issued a handgun easily traceable to his own country. "Deniablity" and all that. The PPK nicely fits that purpose. A Webley or Inglis Browning High Power would have screamed "British."

 

[Geronimo45]

Trebor - you might be right. In case the gun can't be British, he should've gotten a Mauser HSc in .32. That's a nice looking gun.

 

[cdsdss]

Well, you have to hand it to Fleming--the PPK may not have been an iconic gun before James Bond, but it sure was afterward. I can't see any other gun establishing Bond's character the way the Walther did.

 

[default]

Good points, although on the other hand, M didn't require that 007 drive a German or Italian car, even when on the Continent. I'm surprised Major Boothroyd didn't have the Mauser in his list along with the Walther and Sauer pistols. Or how about a Beretta Model 1934 or 1935 - a compromise between Bond's preference for Beretta handguns but in a more powerful caliber?

I wonder what degree of notoriety the PPK would have had based on it's having been Hitler's suicide weapon, whether or not it became the sidearm of the world's most famous fictional spy? I suppose a lot of people who aren't particularly interested in the subject assume Hitler shot himself with a Luger, an arguably even more famous German pistol.

 

[Stevie-Ray]

Stevie-Ray - are you perchance referring to The Silencers with the backwards-firing pistol?

Well, that was one. In another Matt Helm flick there was a gun that fired 5 seconds after the trigger was pulled.

 

[cdsdss]

I didn't know Hitler committed suicide with a PPK. Never gave it much thought.

I'm still mildly surprised that Lugers didn't show up more in the 007 novels. They were the Glocks of the post-war years. Phillip Marlowe even carried one. The bad guys in "Colonel Sun" carried them, but I don't recall them showing up in any other Bond novels.

 

[MrAcheson]

I didn't know Hitler committed suicide with a PPK.

Yup, Hitler owned at least two of them. His niece (and some say lover) Angela "Geli" Raubal also died after a gunshot wound from one of Hitler's PPKs in 1931. Historians debate whether she killed herself, Hitler shot her, or she was murdered.

 

[PzGren]

To show how much "they" cared about guns, the poster of "From Russia with Love" shows Sean Connery with an LP53 on the commercial.

 

[Jkwas]

I believe he took a cyanide pill then shot himself in the head.
My dad was in Germany at the end of the war. He was guarding a train thru the Russian sector. The russians were taking everything, including what was nailed down, back to Russia, so everthing had to be secured. When he was in Berlin, some Russian soldiers took him down into the bunker to see the couch he shot himself on. He took his knife and cut off a chunk for a souvenir.

 

[Trebor]

Trebor - you might be right. In case the gun can't be British, he should've gotten a Mauser HSc in .32. That's a nice looking gun.

The Mauser HSc would have been an equally valid choice at that time. Personally, I think if Bond would have used a HSc, and then would have carried it in the movies, it would still be in production now and the PPK would be the "forgotten gun."

 

[cdsdss]

HSc

Perhaps the 007 series would have catapulted the HSc to fame, but I doubt it. I think the longevity of the PPK also stems from Walther's health as a handgun company. After WW2 it was still providing P38s and PPKs to police forces around Europe. Mauser really didn't do much handgun business beyond the HSc.

At least that's my understanding. I could be wrong.

 

[Stevie-Ray]

I believe he took a cyanide pill then shot himself in the head.

From The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler by William Shirer: ..........he had shot himself in the mouth. Two revolvers had tumbled onto the floor, but the bride had not used hers. She had swallowed poison.

 

[Dr.Rob]

Sounds like a time for a new thread where YOU pick your secret agent weapons (which we've done before).

 

[grendelbane]

+1 on the Matt Helm novel recommendation!

Donald Hamilton knew his guns. His firearms philosophy roughly mirrored that of my next door neighbor growing up. They could have been ballistic twins.

This is understandable as both he and Hamilton were about the same age, and had probably undergone much the same experiences.

A lot of ballistics philosophy is based on one's age. People of that generation, and several before it just had more confidence in the .32 ACP than I do.

 

[Joe Gunns]

Read Matt Helm, best of the covert cold warriors.

A character with the bark on:
"We Americans have an agent ... who makes Jimmy Bond look like the London fop he really is... Matt Helm, as tough an operative as ever crushed a Russian spy's kidney with a crowbar."

"...harsh, sometimes shocking... told with restraint, power and conviction."

Favored a .38 chiefs special, sometimes a .45 ACP, but was competent with whatever was handy.

Movies were spoofs, not like the books at all.

Hamilton also wrote an enjoyable book about his experiences in US and Europe as a novice hunter who took up the sport in middle age. ON GUNS AND HUNTING, published in 1970. It was published in paperback only and is relatively scarce. Check out http://www.abebooks.com for availabilty.
James

 

[44AMP]

007

I read the Bond books a few years ago, and yes, Ian Fleming didn't know guns, or holsters. At the time he had Bond use the PPK, Berns-Martin didn't make holsters for autos. Only revolvers.

I got kind of put off by the books, having grown up with the movies. Bond got the snot kicked out of him (on a pretty regular basis), and fell in love as well. Not the image we have grown used to.

The movies created a character with Bond's name, and some of his attributes, but gave him a lot of others that were not quite what Ian Fleming wrote as well.

"Based on" or "adapted from" is Hollywood for "we used the name".

 

[jad0110]

Geronimo45 said:

Isn't the Nambu the pistol that would go off if you pushed the frame in the right spot? Then 007 could be giving up his gun carefully, then mash the sear and send a bullet into somebody.

default said:

I believe the Type 94 was the one with the exposed sear.

It was the Type 94 Nambu with the exposed sear. The following quote comes from Wikipedia:

The Type 94 used the same 8 mm (.315 caliber) ammunition as the Type 14 and was easier to load, having a much stronger firing mechanism to reduce misfires. The gun became notorious for a design flaw that allowed it to be fired with a round in the chamber by pressing a projecting sear on the left-hand side of the receiver. Some officers told stories of slipping and falling in the mud, inadvertently triggering the pistol and injuring themselves. How often this resulted in accidental discharge is a matter of debate, but the gun was a commercial failure, and is frequently described as the "worst service pistol ever issued" by knowledgeable authors such as Ian V. Hogg.

However, this design flaw may have been intentional—it conformed to an army regulation during its period of service. According to this regulation, during a non-combat situation or when a handgun was holstered, all rounds were to be removed, including the round in the chamber, and the hammer was to be uncocked. Only when a need to use the gun arose should the officer carrying it have loaded the weapon and held it in his hand. Thus no officer would injure himself accidentally unless he had been ignoring the regulation. It should be noted that while American troops who picked up this weapon called it "suicide Nanbu", they would have carried the weapon fully loaded, unknowingly violating this regulation and endangering themselves.

BTW, Hitler's pair of PPKs still exist. Last I heard they sold at auction about 10 years ago for nearly $3 million.

 

[Piedmont Plinker]

Bond carried a Beretta 418, but in Cass\ino Royale and Moonraker he used a long barreled Colt Army Special .45. There are numerous references to the Luger in the books, particulary in Moonraker and For You Eyes Only. Fleming was also a fan of tommy-guns, which are used numerous times. In Dr. No, two S&W's were used, an Airweight Centennial .38 and and M&P, in addition to an M1 Carbine (designated as the US Army Carbine, .300)Colt Police Positives were put to widespread use, although in one novel, The Spy Who Loved Me, Bond describes it as a S&W. There are references in Dr. No and You Only Live Twice to a Japanese M14 service pistol, really the Type 14 Nambu, one of the worst pistols of all time.

 

[Piedmont Plinker]

I almost forgot Scaramanga's gold-plated SAA .45 in The Man With The Golden Gun.

 

[Lone Star]

Maybe I can clear this up a little. The guns that Fleming cited in, "Dr. No" were the sample pistols in an, "American Rifleman" article that Geoffrey Boothroyd, a Scots TV and gun writer, had sent to Fleming. The Army had selected a sampling of foreign service pistols and compared them to the US .45 auto. Some were basically pocket pistols, others were full size service guns. This was an unfair comparison, but our WW II enemies DID issue those guns! Boothroyd personally suggested a S&W Centennial Airweight for on-person carry and a S&W M-27 .357 for under the dash of the Bentley, for longer range, when he had it available.

Fleming confused them, and liked the compactness of the PPK. He had personally carried a .25 auto in intelligence work ( Baby Browning, as I recall) , and knew the value of a small gun. Getting caught with it would have been a serious error.

Geoff Boothroyd once wrote to me that some people had suggested to Fleming that Bond carry cap-and-ball .44 Remingtons! Baffling...

The PPK was in fact, very widely used by European law enforcement and military forces, including pilots in some countries. Having one wouldn't mark a man as a British spy, unless it had UK proof marks or ownership marks. The CIA is said to have issued some, partly because it was "deniable" and compact. The .32 auto ammo was widely available in most countries, too.

The movies are mostly action and gadget- oriented pap. The books, other than Fleming's, never interested me, although I tried to read some. The successors forgot that the basic Bond formula was sex and violence, laid over exotic locales and beautiful women. Get PC, and the books just weren't what they'd been.

None of the Bond authors really knrew guns well, but Fleming did own a number of guns and used them. He had an intelligence background, too.

By the way, the "long-barrelled .45 Colt" in the Bentley was probably a New Service with a 5.5-inch barrel. Fleming owned one and posed with it in, "Life" in a feature on him and his books. I suspect the gun came over as US aid after Dunkirk. Many such guns were used by special operations troops, as the odd (for Britain) caliber wasn't a big issue there.

The poster above who said that the .45 was an Army Special doesn't know Colts very well. The Army Special was not made in .45. I know that Fleming's gun was a New Service, and it was the logical candidate; he wouldn't likely have used a single-action!

Later, after S&W introduced the stainless Chief Special (Model 60), Boothroyd wrote in, "The Handgun" that this was the ideal James Bond gun. He made a good call! Boothroyd DID know guns, very well, indeed. He was one of the best gun writers of all time, although most of his material wasn't seen in the USA.

Re the Matt Helm novels, I enjoyed them greatly, although his Matt Helm was too brash to survive for long as a real agent, I fear. Helm was of SWEDISH, not Norwegian, descent. One poster here confused that. Donald Hamilton himself was of Swedish birth, and the last I heard of him, he was in Sweden with a son, rebuilding classic old boats for a living. I suspect that he is now deceased. He knew his guns better than any other writer that I've encountered, and was a hunter. He even contributed to, "Gun Digest".

Lone Star

 

[Piedmont Plinker]

"He felt under the dasboard and from a concealed holster took out a long-barreled Colt Army Special .45 and laid iton the seat beside him. With this, if he was lucky with the surface of the road, he could hope to get their tyres or their petrol tank at anything up to a hundred yards."
"The poster above who said that the .45 was an Army Special doesn't know Colts very well. The Army Special was not made in .45. I know that Fleming's gun was a New Service, and it was the logical candidate; he wouldn't likely have used a single-action!"
That's a direct quote from Casino Royale. And although I don't know much about Colts, I own all 14 James Bond novels. Fleming didn't really know his guns well.
Some people hear have said that Bond couldn't carry his PPK in a Berns-Martin Triple-Draw holster. Listen hear: Q (quatermaster) branch of the Secret Service probably could have modified the holster so it could take an autoloader. They can put a radar tracking device in an Aston Martin DB Mk III.

 

[Sniper X]

I think one reason why Ian Flemming chose the Walther PPK and the Beretta as the two guns for bond was looks. Being a " secret agent" he needed something that was very conceilable and of course auto and looked "secret agentish" which both the PPK, and the Beretta do nicely. Same reason he wore a Rolex instead of a Breitling, Breitling is a UK fine tiepeice, Rolex of course Swiss....but that movie also sold a butt load of Rolex Sub Mariners.