OPERATION GRAND SLAM

Contributed by: The James Bond Movie Encyclopedia by Steven Jay Rubin

The code name for the plan by Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe) to detonate a Red Chinese atomic bomb in Fort Knox, a scheme he has spent fifteen years of his life developing. With America’s entire gold reserve radioactive for fifty-eight years, economic chaos in the West will result, and Goldfinger’s own gold will increase in value tenfold. Grand Slam has two tactical elements: the Grand Slam Task Force, which will break into Fort Knox and detonate the bomb, and Champagne Section, a flight of private planes that will spray the deadly Delta-9 nerve gas over the Fort Knox military reservation, eliminating the forty-one thousand American troops stationed there. The air support mission is code-named Operation Rockabye Baby.

Thanks to screenwriters Richard Maibaum and Paul Dehn, this plot was a major improvement over the story in Ian Fleming’s original novel, in which Goldfinger and his team of organized-crime bosses simply attempt to steal the gold.

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