EVER wondered who was the real inspiration behind the bizarre gadgets of fictional superspy James Bond?
I'm not talking about the extraordinary gadgets in the actual Bond movies, based on novels by Ian Fleming. Those wild film inventions ranged from a sports car that turned into a submarine, another that carried machine guns and a passenger ejector seat (remember Goldfinger?) to a set of bagpipes that converted into a flame-thrower.
I'm referring to wartime objects created more than 80 years ago that were far smaller and more ingenious.
The weird and wonderful objects from 'Q' (meaning a quartermaster) came from the fertile brain of an unlikely balding, bespectacled World War 2 eccentric inventor Christopher Clayton Hutton, nicknamed "Clutty".
Clutty was the legendary wartime maverick of MI9, one of the smallest and most secretive departments of Britain's military intelligence, tasked with helping airmen and others escape from captivity in Germany and return home.
The oddball British boffin went on to invent crucial mini-maps for Allied prisoners of war (POWs), plus gadgets such as steel-cutting shoelaces (to cut through prison camp barbed wire fences), mini spy cameras and exploding coal to sabotage the Nazi war effort.
Bestselling historian Ben Macintyre discovered that of the 35,000 Allied troops who made their way to safety from wartime captivity, or after being shot down, about half were carrying one of Hutton's maps. One was written in invisible ink on plain linen handkerchiefs which, when soaked in urine, exposed a map.
Many of the most incorrigible escapees among the British POWs were inexplicably imprisoned together in an impregnable German fortress called Colditz, in Saxony. And yet, even Colditz Castle wasn't "escape proof" as the Nazis claimed. Author Helen Fry's 2020 book MI9: A History Of The Secret Service For Escape And Evasion, reveals that Clutty is credited with helping 316 escape attempts from the castle with his special kits. About 32 men eventually made it home.
In his 2022 book Colditz, Macintyre says Clutty's eureka moment was meeting his hero, American illusionist Harry Houdini, in 1913.
No all of Clutty's inventions were approved. Despite creating escape kits smuggled into POW camps for downed airmen, his proposed blowpipe for French Resistance fighters to shoot poisoned gramophone needles into the faces of SS officers was rejected as being highly unsporting.
My interest today in these weird and wonderful gadgets comes from a current exhibition showcasing the role Port Stephens and Newcastle played defending the region in World War 2. The display, at the Visitor Information Centre at Nelson Bay this month, by the Tomaree Museum Association (TMA), includes a diorama of amphibious landing training in wartime with the US Army as well as banners and a uniform. TMA spokesman Doug Cross said next week's Anzac Day commemorations was the impetus for the display.
I was most intrigued by a glass cabinet holding real-life objects used in WW2. The rare items include maps once sewn into clothing, plus compasses, belt buckles and buttons used by Allied personnel to evade capture behind enemy lines.
Some of this fascinating Anzac memorabilia was supplied by the family of Flight Lieutenant Donald Howard, a Catalina flying boat captain and Port Stephens resident who survived a crash in New Guinea during the war. He died aged 101. Also recognised is Lieutenant Fred Mathieson who served in the Middle East and the Pacific during World War 2.
Other items include a mini compass that was concealed inside brass fly buttons of uniforms. The button has small, luminous radium painted dots to indicate north and south.
Downed RAF airmen, particularly, when captured and hoping to escape would have been grateful also for their uniform belt buckle containing a second compass. Then there were durable, but hidden, silk maps and "ad hoc compasses". MI9 magnetised a variety of metal items to act as a compass by pointing north. Some shoelaces were magnetised, as were razor blades, pencil clips, needles, pen nibs and hacksaws.
But now back to the forbidding gothic hilltop castle called Colditz and Ben Macintyre's superb book.
It reveals that Welsh actor Desmond Llewelyn was once a POW in this German "bad boys" camp and "doubtless handled some of the extraordinary escape gizmos". Llewelyn went on to play the irascible inventor 'Q' in 17 James Bond films from 1963 to 1999 with five screen Bonds, starting with Sean Connery in From Russia With Love.
Llewelyn was a fictionalised equipment man, or quartermaster, of real-life M19 inventor "Clutty". Ironically, Llewelyn often had to have his gadgets explained to him as he was a total technophobe.
It's amazing who else was an Allied POW in the infamous Colditz. Besides, at one stage, having 14 Australian POWs among its 267 inmates, there was David Stirling, the founder of the SAS. The most difficult POW for their German captors though was legless RAF Wing Commander Douglas "Tin Legs" Bader, also known as "Dogsbody" (from his initials).
Other POWs handling escape items like Clutty's reversible uniforms (to allow airmen to be disguised as civilians or Luftwaffe officers) provide a later roll call of British screen icons. There was Denholm Elliott (Indiana Jones movies), Clive Dunn (of Dad's Army) and Donald Pleasence (Bond villain Blofeld).
As WW2 dragged on, Clutty continued to churn out items for escape kits. As author Macintyre relates, Clutty's methods of concealment grew more ingenious. They included badminton racquets with hollow handles containing sawblades, maps and money. One new POW to Colditz carried a chess set. Hidden inside it was "1000 Reichmarks, three compasses and seven maps".
Much of the contraband smuggled into Colditz came from parcels regularly sent to POWs by bogus charity organisations. Other items included compasses hidden inside food (once inside a prune), tins and soap.
After the 1939-45 war, Hutton attempted to publish a memoir describing his escape tools, but was threatened with prosecution under the British Official Secrets Act. His autobiography was finally published in 1960.
Clutty spent his retirement inventing things in his shed and died in 1965.
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