When Ian Fleming introduces us to SPECTRE in Thunderball, we get our most detailed listing of the organization and how it is structured.

Fleming says there are 20 full members under Blofeld, with six three-man sections plus experts Kotze and Maslov.

There is one item of confusion for me, Fleming says there were 20 men (not counting Blofeld) in attendance for the briefing behind the facade of F.I.R.C.O., but we learn that No. 1, Largo, is already on location in the Bahamas.

The twenty men who looked up the long table at this man and waited patiently for him to speak were a curious mixture of national types. But they had certain characteristics in common. They were all in the thirty-to-forty age-group, they all looked extremely fit, and nearly all of them—there were two who were different—had quick, hard, predatory eyes, the eyes of the wolves and the hawks that prey upon the herd. The two who were different were both scientists with scientists’ other-worldly eyes—Kotze, the East German physicist who had come over to the West five years before and had exchanged his secrets for a modest pension and retirement in Switzerland, and Maslov, formerly Kandinsky, the Polish electronics expert who, in 1956, had resigned as head of the radio research department of Philips AG of Eindhoven and had then disappeared into obscurity. The other eighteen men consisted of cells of three (Blofeld accepted the Communist triangle system for security reasons) from six national groups and, within these groups, from six of the world’s great criminal and subversive organizations. There were three Sicilians from the top echelon of the Unione Siciliano, the Mafia; three Corsican Frenchmen from the Union Corse, the secret society contemporary with and similar to the Mafia that runs nearly all organized crime in France; three former members of SMERSH, the Soviet organization for the execution of traitors and enemies of the State that had been disbanded on the orders of Khrushchev in 1958 and replaced by the Special Executive Department of the M.W.D.; three of the top surviving members of the former Sonderdienst of the Gestapo; three tough Yugoslav operatives who had resigned from Marshal Tito’s Secret Police, and three highland Turks (the Turks of the plains are no good) formerly members of Blofeld’s RAHIR and subsequently responsible for KRYSTAL, the important Middle Eastern pipeline whose outlet is Beirut.

Here is the breakdown of men, as best as I can determine:

Corsican Section
#7 Marius Domingue
#12 Pierre Borraud (executed)
?

Sicilian Section
#1 Emilio Largo
#4 Fonda
#? Fidelio Sciacca

Russian (SMERSH) Section
#10 Strelik (executed on Disco)
#11
?

German (Gestapo) Section
#? Bruno Bayer
#6 (Kills Lippe)
#14

 Yugoslav (Tito’s) Section

#17? (exposes Domino)
?
?

Highland Turks
?
?
?

RAHIR
?
?
?

#5 Kotze (East German Physicist)
#18 Maslov/Kandinsky (Polish Electronics Expert)

Others:

Sub-Operator G (Count Lippe)
Sub-Operator 52
Sub-Operator 201

Crew of Disco Volante are all Sub-Operators

One thought on “SPECTRE Organizational Chart

  1. Like the post. When I read Thunderball for the first time I found the description of Spectre very interesting; although I admit I didn’t pick up on the missing man.

    Just wanted to share my impression about Spectre. The sense I got from Flemings description and the background to a Spectre was just how business like it was run. It was a ‘for profit organisation’ and indeed Fleming makes it clear how lucrative each job has been. This, to me is very different from how I would assume an evil terrorist group was put together.

    The ruthlessness to which it Blofeld runs it, coming from a motivation of profit rather than ideology.

    It wasn’t till I read the book that I fully got it.

    Not sure if anyone would disagree with me, but it is subtle.

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