Frederick Escreet Smith (born 1922) is a British author, who is best known for his 1956 novel 633 Squadron about a Second World War RAF Mosquito squadron undertaking a seemingly impossible mission to bomb a well protected German factory at the head of a Norwegian fjord. The novel was made into a successful film in 1964. He also wrote the original 1951 story that the film Devil Doll (1964) is based on.
The author later published a number of further spin-off 633 squadron novels between 1975 and 1996, and one more in 2007. Those books are: Operation Rhine Maiden (1975); Operation Crucible (1977); Operation Valkyrie (1978); Operation Cobra (1993); Operation Titan (1994); Operation Crisis (1995); Operation Thor (1995); Operation Defiant (1996); and Operation Safeguard (2007).
Other books include: Of Masks and Minds (1954), Laws be Their Enemy (1955), Lydia Trendennis (1957), The Sin and the Sinners (1958), The Grotto of Tiberius (1961), The Devil Behind Me (1962), The Dark Cliffs (1962), The Storm Knight (1966), A Killing for the Hawks (1966), The Wider Sea of Love (1969), Waterloo (a 1970 novelisation, based on the 1970 film), The Persuaders! (3 volumes of novelisations in 1972, based on the television series), See How We Run (1972), The Tormented (1974), Saffron's War (1975), Saffron's Army (1977), Saffron's Trials (1996), The War God (1980), The Obsession (1984), Rage of the Innocents (1986), A Meeting of Stars (1987), In Presence of my Foes (1988), Years of the Fury (1989), and a guide to how to Write a Successful Novel (1991).
As David Farrell he also wrote The Other Cousin (1962), Temptation Isle (1962), Two Loves (1963), Strange Enemy (1967), Valley of Conflict (1967), Mullion Rock (1968).