Branch Q, The Armorer Division of HMSS, has long been a position of pride for its head, who goes by the codename of Q. It is within this division that the cutting edge of British defense technology is developed and refined for the purposes of espionage, and the craftsmen and women of the department take pride in their work, especially the head of the division.Major Geoffrey Boothroyd was the most famous leader of Q Branch, combining unparalleled ingenuity with a pride in his craftsmanship that often bordered on contempt for HMSS agents making use of his gadgetry in the field. Like many members of the Service's Foreign Intelligence wing, he was a Royal Navy veteran who had seen action in the Second World War and had an especially close working relationship with Sir Miles Meservy, the head of HMSS for most of the 35 years that immediately followed the global conflagration.Boothroyd's relationship with HMSS' most famous agent was more complex. Boothroyd long felt that James Bond owned a peculiar glee with which he made use and abuse of Q Branch's equipment, with the result often being the destruction or severe damage of especially ingenious devices such as Q Branch's 1964 Aston Martin DB5 automobile, a car fitted with numerous devices to allow the user to escape pursuit. The original Q-mobile was wrecked during the lengthy investigation of criminal gold smuggler Auric Goldfinger, but later models survived well into the 1990s. In later years Q Branch improved on the original Aston Martin by fitting a sleek 1970s Lotus with powerful underwater ability, which stood Bond in good stead in his latter 1970s confrontation with shipping magnate and submarine hijacker Karl Stromberg.Major Boothroyd periodically named his vehicles Nellie, after a niece of his. His 1970s Lotus was known as Wet Nellie, while during the You Only Live Twice mission he created a minicopter gunship known as Little Nellie, with which James found a volcanic base used by the criminal consortium SPECTRE.Boothroyd trained a promising young scientist during the 1990s, and when Boothroyd passed away following the World Is Not Enough mission, this new Q picked up where his predecessor left off, completing the design and construction of the ultimate Q-mobile, an Aston Martin Vanquish renamed The Vanish. The new Q not only picked up where Boothroyd's engineering left off, he also picked up Boothroyd's distaste for James Bond's treatment of Q Branch's equipment with apparant contempt.Nonetheless, the new leader of Q Branch has continued his department's cutting edge development, a fitting tribute to the branch's most famous leader. Show less «