(A long read, but good for World War II buffs) This was an important site in World War II as it was used to divert Axis attention away from the actual landing zone in Normandy for the D-Day invasion on June 6th, 1944. Operation Fortitude was the code name for a World War II military deception employed by the Allied nations as part of an overall deception strategy (code named Bodyguard) during the build-up to the 1944 Normandy landings. Fortitude was divided into two sub-plans, North and South, with the aim of misleading the German high command as to the location of the imminent invasion. Both Fortitude plans involved the creation of fake field armies (based in Edinburgh and the south of England) which threatened Norway (Fortitude North) and Pas de Calais (Fortitude South). From the southeast corner of England, the area around Calais was obviously the easiest to get to in terms of distance. However, the Germans also knew this. One of the most brilliant campaigns of deception was played out to fool the Germans and their allies into thinking that the Allied landings would take place here (and that the real landings in Normandy were just diversions). This was accomplished through several methods such as physical deception (misleading the enemy with nonexistent units through fake infrastructure and equipment, such as dummy landing craft, dummy airfields, and decoy lighting), controlled leaks of information through diplomatic channels, which might be passed on via neutral countries to the Germans, wireless traffic (to mislead the enemy, wireless traffic was created to simulate actual units), use of German agents controlled by the Allies through the Double Cross System to send false information to the German intelligence services and the public presence of notable staff associated with phantom groups, such as FUSAG (First U.S. Army Group), most notably the well-known US general George S. Patton. Needless to say, Patton was not pleased with being used as part of the dummy units to distract the Germans, but he still went along with it at this time (he both had his glory before that and would have more after D-Day). A great program on this operation can be seen at youtube/watch?v=kEj1JoGI35U (no copyright infringement is intended-the owner has all the rights).
Posted on: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 15:11:53 +0000
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