Ian Fleming: The Fact Behind the Fiction of James Bond

"Fleming was also involved in one of the most successful deception operations of the war. Working out of the Room 39 headquarters, Fleming and British intelligence devised a plan to fool the Germans into believing the 1943 invasion of Europe would take place in the Balkans instead of Sicily. To that effect, Fleming had three of his most trusted agents—Vladimir Wilson, the one-time naval attaché in Istanbul; Robert Harling of NID; and Alexander Glen—make a fake observation of the landing beaches along the coasts of Albania, Greece, and parts of Yugoslavia, under the watchful eyes of the Germans. It was all part of the larger deception plan that became known as “The Man Who Never Was” project. The most notorious part was the placing of the body of a drowned British naval officer into the sea along the Spanish coast—as if he were the victim of a plane crash—carrying fake documents purporting an Allied invasion of the eastern Mediterranean. The Germans fell for this ruse completely."