Tag: Moonraker

While James Bond is trying to figure out the mystery surrounding the murder of Major Tallon and the safety of the Moonraker launch, his suspicions alight on Sir Hugo Drax’s trusted A.D.C. Krebs. He wonders, however, how Krebs could get away with anything, seeing as how he is constantly as his master’s side.

But how could Krebs possibly be involved, with Drax’s eye constantly on him? The confidential assistant. But what about Cicero, the trusted valet of the British Ambassador in Ankara during the war? The hand in the pocket of the striped trousers hanging over the back of the chair. The Ambassador’s keys. The safe. The secrets. This picture looked very much the same.

The reference here is to a wartime scandal in Ankara (capital of Turkey) in which the British Ambassador had documents stolen out of his safe and sold to the Germans by his own valet, Elyesa Bazna. He was given the codename “Cicero.”

The 1952 movie 5 Fingers starring James Mason is loosely based on the scandal, and there was also a 1956 teleplay entitled Operation Cicero in which Ricardo Montalban played the role of Bazna.

It’s another real-world reference by Fleming which was something that would’ve been familiar to his readers at the time, and which also lent some believability to the story he was writing.

Mentioned a few times in Moonraker, this lighthouse-on-a-boat is semi-prominent in the background of the story.  The ship is close enough to Drax’s base that when Bond first arrives, the light from the ship briefly illuminates the dome of the rocket silo.

Then when Bond is looking through the late Major Tallon’s room, he comes across a chart with some mysterious faint markings on it with a bearing directly towards the South Goodwin Lightship.

The next morning, Bond awakens and leaves the base early in the morning. He takes a look out at the channel:

Out at sea, in the early mist that promised a hot day, the South Goodwin Lightship could just be seen, a dim red barque married for ever to the same compass point and condemned, like a property ship on the stage of Drury Lane, to watch the diorama of the waves and clouds sail busily into the wings while, without papers or passengers or cargo, it lay anchored for ever to the departure point which was also its destination.

At thirty seconds’ interval it blared its sad complaint into the mist, a long double trumpet note on a falling cadence. A siren song, Bond reflected, to repel instead of to seduce. He wondered how the seven men of its crew were now supporting the noise as they munched their pork and beans. Did they flinch as it punctuated the Housewife’s Choice coming at full strength from the radio in the narrow mess? But a secure life,* Bond decided, although anchored to the gates of a graveyard.

(* Bond was wrong: Friday, November 26th 1954. R.I.P. )

When Bond and Gala start out on their afternoon together, they can see the ship clearly.

The white lettering on the South Goodwins Lightship was easy to read and even the name of her sister ship to the north showed white against the red of her hull.

At the end of the novel, as M is recapping to Bond the aftermath of the Moonraker launch, he notes that the Goodwin lightships broke their moorings.

The South Goodwin Lightship was, as Fleming noted in the footnote, the site of a tragedy on November 26th, 1954, as 80 mph winds capsized the ship, killing all seven crew members. There was one survivor, a Ministry of Agriculture officer who had been visiting the ship.

Here is some footage of the capsized ship, along with other damage from the storm.

STORM HAVOC

 

I like that you can see the cliffs in the distance in the picture above.

 

While James Bond and Gala Brand are having their afternoon together and getting to know one another a little bit in Moonraker, Gala picks a bee orchis.

“You wouldn’t do that if you knew that flowers scream when they are picked,” said Bond.

Gala looked at him. “What do you mean?” she asked, suspecting a joke.

“Didn’t you know?” He smiled at her reaction. “There’s an Indian called Professor Bhose, who’s written a treatise on the nervous system of flowers. He measured their reaction to pain. He even recorded the scream of a rose being picked. It must be one of the most heartrending sounds in the world. I heard something like it as you picked that flower.”

Our Mr Bond certainly is a wealth of information! The reference here is to Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, (1858-1937) the founder of Bose Institute, who in addition to being a pioneer in the field of radio, and an early writer of science fiction, was also a botanist who indeed did embark on a study of plants and their reaction to pain.

While plant perception is still something of a disputed subject, we can still marvel at Bond’s knowledge of this study, and his clever way of introducing the topic.

After James Bond reads about the Inspectoscope in Moonraker, he turns his attention to the next file, which is entitled “Philopon. A Japanese murder-drug.”

‘Philopon is the chief factor in the increase in crime in Japan. According to the Welfare Ministry there are now 1,500,000 addicts in the country, of whom one million are under the age of 20, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police attribute 70 per cent of juvenile crime to the influences of the drug.

Fleming then goes into the addictive properties of the drug, and how with abuse, the drug creates a persecution complex within the abuser, who feels that others are trying to kills him, and thus murder becomes self-defense. The report says that in the hands of a criminal “master-mind” the drug could become a dangerous weapon causing addicts to kill without conscience. The last thing Bond reads before putting the report down is “As usual Korean nationals are being blamed…“

What is this killer drug, Philopon?

Crystal meth.  Or methamphetamine.

Yes, Japan had something of a methamphetamine epidemic after World War II. The Japanese army had actually supplied it to soldiers and even factory workers to enable them to work longer hours (without eating). It was given to kamikaze pilots so they could endure long flights and not mind crashing into things and ending their own lives. 

After the war, many of these people were still addicted. That number grew to the 1.5 million number that Fleming mentions above. (more on this below) This was exacerbated by the government releasing the stores of meth that it had built up during the war.

In 1951, the Japanese Ministry of Health prohibited meth in Japan, but this only caused even more production of the drug.

I came across a research paper on the topic – Methamphetamine Use in Japan after the Second World War: Transformation of Narratives. It has a few point of interest, which also back up Fleming’s quotes.

As for the brand Philopon,

One of the most famous and popular medicines was Philopon,which was extracted by Dr. Miura and the Dainippon Pharmaceutical Company and made available in 1941. Philopon is a coined word,combining the Greek   philo (love) and  ponos (labor),and was a synonym for stimulants until the 1970s.

The paper quotes from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police report on their 1954-55 campaign against meth and echos more of what Fleming wrote, both in the numbers and on blaming the Koreans.

Seventy percent of these smugglers,unlawful producers,and bootleggers consist of Korean people and they gnaw at the bodies and spirits of approximately 1,500,000 of our fellow countrymen. At its most extreme, we seem to be living with a large crowd of people going insane and becoming brutal offenders. . . . Our fellow countrymen, especially young people,are the victims of Korean people seeking their own interests, and the result will be the destruction of our future generations, who will become sick and decline in health and finally turn into addicts who will destroy our entire social order. . . . Korean people who are well informed of the dangers of stimulants rarely use it themselves nor do they allow their children to use it.

Fleming also mentions the Bar Mecca murder case which was in the headlines at the time as well, it was a 1953 murder case in which the motivation was money for Philopon.

Once again, Ian Fleming was mixing current events and news reports into his novels, which likely made them seem even more authentic to the reader. Now, 60 years later, much of these events and references are lost to time.

After administering the beatdown of Sir Hugo Drax at the bridge table in Moonraker, Bond explains in private to M and Basildon what had just happened.

He fanned the red pack out on the table and showed M. and Basildon that it would have produced the same freak grand slam that had defeated Drax.

“It’s a famous Culbertson hand,” he explained. “He used it to spoof his own quick-trick conventions. I had to doctor a red and a blue pack. Couldn’t know which colour I would be dealing with.”

Culbertson was Ely Culbertson, a pioneer in the game of contract bridge, who reached his peak of fame and dominance during the 1930’s.

If you have a few moments, I recommend this 1954 article from Sports Illustrated about a famous match Culbertson played in 1931 in London, which to me, makes me at least wonder if Fleming got some of the ideas for the Moonraker battle from this game. It was played in high society, with a lot of bluster and gamesmanship being tossed around, with tempers flaring.

Culbertson was a fascinating man, known for his outlandish spending habits, once spending $5,000 on shirts on Fifth Avenue, and known for smoking his own brand of cigarettes (sound familiar?)  at $7 a day.

Here’s another informative look at Culbertson and his bridge playing and slam methods – Bridge; RECOLLECTIONS OF CULBERTSON’S SLAM-BIDDING.