Real life 'James Bond' who unmasked Britain's deadliest Soviet spies dies

Former RAF war hero, Ferguson Smith, who was instrumental in snaring the most notorious traitors and Russian spies of the 50s and 60s, has died. He was 98.

The former Bomber Command flight lieutenant was a war hero, former personal bodyguard to ex-King the Duke of Windsor and, a supreme spycatcher, the Mirror reported.

During a 36-year career in Special Branch, he caught the infamous Portland spy ring, who were selling nuclear submarine secrets to Moscow, and arrested the most dangerous of all Red spies, George Blake.

Smith also helped jail naval attache-turned traitor John Vassall as well as Klaus Fuchs, the German physicist who sold details of Britain and America's atomic bomb programme to the Soviets.

According to spy expert Neil Root, there was a real fear of Communist spies in the 50s and 60s.

Root, who is author of Twentieth Century Spies, said that the things you see in James Bond now, was the kind of things happening then.