The Guns Of 007

A License To Thrill
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James Bond. 007 — License to kill. Women want him. Men want to be him. Ian Fleming’s fictional super spy has captured the imagination of generations around the globe. Something about the guy just strikes a primal chord.

I freely admit to having drunk that Kool-Aid myself. Monty Norman’s inimitable guitar riffing Bond theme is the ringtone on my smartphone. Sometimes when I’m just driving to work and feeling extra awesome, it plays uninvited in my mind. If I could pick one movie character to be in real life — and Superman was already taken — it would be James Bond.

And what’s not to like? The guy drives the coolest cars, wears the sharpest clothes and hangs out with the hottest babes on Planet Earth. He is ever-traveling the globe on critical missions, personally saving the world every few years.

Lamentably, real life is nothing like that. If 007 was a real guy, he most likely would have been tortured to death by his 23rd birthday. Even if he somehow survived the operational demands of his job, he would have no doubt succumbed to cirrhosis of the liver and venereal disease long before reaching mandatory MI6 retirement age.

Regardless, I like my fantasy world. Despite being happily married for 37 years and already having what is arguably the coolest job in the universe, I still enjoy visualizing myself as a suave British secret agent. And, a big part of that James Bond mystique is the hardware.

Bond’s ordnance is an integral component of his mythos. For the serious student of firearms, it is fascinating to dissect Bond’s firepower across 39 officially licensed novels and 25 full-length movies. Fleming penned 14 of those books himself.

Ian Fleming was no ordinary word monkey. He actually was a spy during World War II. With the exception of his children’s book Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang, Ian Fleming drew from a deep well of operational experience.

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James Bond, Code-named 007 of the British Secret Service
and licensed to kill, has been issued a wide variety of handguns
over many decades of fictional service.

The Beginning

Men have snuffed each other with handguns for centuries. However, the practice only became high art in the past couple of generations. Militaries went to war in the first half of the 20th century armed with some laughably anemic pistols. Fleming’s first choice to arm James Bond was the positively Lilliputian Beretta 418 in .25ACP.

First produced somewhere around 1920, the Beretta 418 was a true pocket pistol. Featuring microscopic fixed iron sights, a 7-round magazine, and the classic Beretta open-slide design, the 418 was relatively uninspired. A blowback-operated last ditch deep cover weapon, the gun’s anemic chambering would have made it ineffective beyond bad breath ranges.

Fleming had Bond carrying his 418 “skeletonized” with the grips removed, presumably to make it even easier to conceal. It seems to me the only thing that might do is fill your heater with pocket lint, but I’m not the one who sold 100 million books.

Once Bond’s books saw widespread circulation, fans began offering feedback. One of those alert readers was a British firearms enthusiast named Geoffrey Boothroyd. Boothroyd wrote to Fleming and explained the diminutive little Beretta was actually more of a lady’s gun. The two exchanged letters, and a friendship blossomed. It was Boothroyd who suggested Bond carry the Walther PPK.

Fleming agreed and wrote the sexy German pistol into his next novel. In appreciation, he also patterned Bond’s long-suffering Quartermaster “Q” after his gun fanatic friend. In the books, Q’s actual name is Major Boothroyd.

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Bond was originally equipped with a diminutive Beretta 418 .25ACP.

The Definitive Pistol

In the novel Dr. No, Bond is nearly killed when his silenced Beretta 418 snags on the waistband of his pants. As a result, his boss “M” directs Q to issue 007 with a new weapon. Here’s his pitch, “Walther PPK, 7.65mm with a delivery like a brick through a plate-glass window. Takes a Brausch silencer, with little reduction in muzzle velocity. The American CIA swear by them.”

Hmmm … none of that seems real. However, it is some simply splendid wordsmithing. Thus began Bond’s love affair with the Walther PPK extending all the way to the present day.

Nowadays, the Internet brings losers like me together to dissect the most arcane minutiae about guns in movies. Movie makers are held to a lofty standard regarding production value and technical continuity. However, such was not always the case.

Where to begin? In the first Sean Connery Bond, Dr. No, 007 is supposed to be trading in his Beretta 418 for a PPK. However, the gun he hands over is actually a Beretta M1934 in 9mm Corto, and the weapon he receives is a long-barreled Walther PP. Before the film is complete, he has wielded the PP, a Browning M1910 and an M1911 .45, sometimes switching back and forth in the same scene. Apparently, the prop guys just threw a random gun at him and called it good. Subsequent films got the ordnance much better.

They used two Walther PP pistols in Dr. No, one of which sold at auction in 2020 for $256,000. By the second film, From Russia With Love, somebody had actually sourced a pair of PPKs. However, where the guns in the book were chambered in .32ACP, those in this film were .380s.

Legend holds when Connery was posing for the still imagery that was to become the iconic movie poster, nobody thought to bring along one of the PPKs as a prop. As a result, photographer David Hurn just substituted a Walther .177-caliber Luftpistole 53 he kept in his basement studio for killing rats. This is the reason the archetypal Bond movie poster had Fleming’s steely eyed covert operator wielding a spring-powered pellet gun. The airgun used on the poster, serial number 054159, sold at auction in 2010 for $437,000.

Bond went on to use dozens of weapons to include the ArmaLite AR-7, Walther P-38, Colt Police Positive, Savage 99F, Sterling submachine gun, Gyrojet rifle, AKS-74U, HK MP5K, AR-180 and an S&W Model 29 .44 magnum. He wielded fake laser weapons in Moonraker as well as a

speargun in Thunderball. Up until the 1997 Pierce Brosnan effort Tomorrow Never Dies, the trim little Walther PPK kept him company throughout. However, that film marked a sea change in Bond’s firepower. Tomorrow Never Dies dragged 007 into the modern age.

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Will says other film gun nerds call him a heretic because
he was smitten with Bond’s Walther P99.

The Heir Apparent

Walther still apparently held a monopoly on the MI6 arms room so Bond’s new heater was the superlative P99. I have always been a fan and feel it to be an underappreciated combat pistol. A friend who spent more than a decade as a Delta Force shooter carried one operationally and swears by it. Truth between us, don’t burn me at effigy or anything, but I prefer it to the PPK.

The P99 came in several flavors. Featuring a polymer frame, 15-round magazine, and unconventional single action/double action trigger, the P99 represented the state of the art in 1997. Bond subsequently used the P99 through Daniel Craig’s epic debut Casino Royale.

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Bond has used quite a few long guns over the course of his many film fora.

Returning to Cannon

In Quantum of Solace, Bond inexplicably regains his trusty PPK. I personally mourned the passing of the P99, but Craig’s Bond was so awesome he could have been armed with a French Chauchaut and I might still have swooned. Quantum of Solace was, in my opinion, the weakest of the Craig Bonds. However, he made up for it in Skyfall. Skyfall saw 007 packing a PPK/S with an extended grip and some fake “smart gun” technology.

There were still many others, really too many even to list. The HK UMP submachine gun in 9mm spanned Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace. Bond used a liberated HK 416 during the frenetic final gunfight in Skyfall. Additionally, the extended opening scene in Spectre involving a GLOCK 17 KPOS carbine during the Day of the Dead celebration in Mexico City was arguably the best introductory sequence in the history of film. No kidding, I’ve likely watched it 20 times.

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The difference is obvious from the back, the original PPK (left gun)
is significantly larger than the PPK/S. The original PPK (right)
was somewhat shorter than the later PPK/S.

Ruminations

Many of Bond’s long guns are essentially unobtainium on this side of the pond. However, any concealed carry holder serious about his craft should pack a PPK in a shoulder holster at least once. Walther will naturally oblige.

Thanks in large part to Ian Fleming and Geoffrey Boothroyd, the PPK has remained incessantly popular from its introduction in 1931 to the present. Walther currently offers the PPK/S, the extended version of the gun mandated by the 1968 Gun Control Act, in .380ACP in both stainless and black finishes. They have also recently introduced both the standard PPK and the PPK/S in the original .32ACP chambering as well. These new guns are made in America in both black and stainless.

So slip into your favorite tux and don a minimalist Galco shoulder rig prior to your next serious social outing. The steel-framed PPK is heavier than more modern fare but that really doesn’t matter. You don’t pack a classic Walther for any practical purposes. You carry such a piece so you can, at least for a little while, imagine you’re actually a British spy.

WaltherArms.com

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