Alternative History
James Bond. Women want him. Men want to be him. 007 is a paragon of manhood and the epitome of cool.
Ian Fleming penned 16 James Bond pieces during his career. A fun fact is he also wrote the children’s story Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. One of the biggest reasons Fleming’s prose was both so popular and so compelling is he wrote from life. During World War II Ian Fleming was a spy.
As commander of 30 Assault Unit and later T-Force, Ian Fleming guided covert operations throughout the European Theater of Operations. His experiences with special ops during the war substantially influenced how he crafted the character of James Bond.
Bond was originally equipped with a .25-caliber Beretta 418. However, an avid reader and firearms enthusiast named Geoffrey Boothroyd wrote Fleming suggesting the 418 was really more of a lady’s gun. The two men established a friendship and together chose the Walther PPK as Bond’s new sidearm. In Dr. No Bond’s 418 catches on the waistband of his trousers and nearly gets him killed. From this point forward in the series, the PPK rides in Bond’s holster.