This Guy Is Literally James Bond IRL

On September 29th, 1939, a British intelligence agent walked through the door of the Royal Navy headquarters in London with an envelope tucked under his arm. This was the office of Great Britain's Director of Naval Intelligence, and World War II had just broken out just a few weeks ago, so everything was nuts. Now, Agent 17F was not actually an intelligence agent. He was the director's personal assistant, so he had no spy training, but he was very creative and had a way of coming up with schemes that were so crazy they just might work. So, agent 17F strolled across the floor and he reached the director's door and 17F walked inside. So, inside the envelope was a list of ideas that 17F had come up with for spreading misinformation to the Germans about what the British were up to. Now, this is a very normal thing that virtually every military does during a time of war. But these specific strategies that Agent 17F had come up with on this list were really out there. The director stopped and clearly was fixated on one particular idea on this list and he looked up at 17F and he said, "Actually, this one seems workable. " So, the idea that the director liked was actually based on something that happened in a crime novel that Agent 17F had read. Agent 17F was suggesting that they borrow a corpse from the naval hospital, dress it in a British pilot's uniform, and put fake dispatches in its pockets with details of a supposed military operation. They then put a faulty parachute on the corpse's back and fly over the German coast and drop the corpse out onto the beach. And when the Germans found the corpse, the idea was that they would obviously assume that this was an actual pilot who had died when his parachute failed. Four years later, at a pivotal moment in World War II, the British put a version of 17F's plan into action. They called it Operation Minsmeat. And amazingly, it worked. British spies did plant a corpse out on the beach with the faulty parachute with documents in its pockets, saying that the Allied powers of America and Britain were going to invade Greece and Sardinia, which prompted the Germans to move a ton of their troops away from the Allies real target, which was the island of Sicily. This then paved the way for an invasion of mainland Italy, which was a major turning point in the war. And again, it was all because of this one idea inspired by Agent 17F. After the war, for years, Agent 17F kept on coming up with fantastical spy ideas. But this time, instead of giving these ideas to the government, he wrote them all down with the intention of someday making a book around these ideas. And finally, in 1953, he published the first book under his real name, Ian Fleming. And his book was wildly successful. And he went on to write more books all about this same character who was a spy.