AT THE CASABLANCA CONFERENCE OF January 1943, Churchill and Roosevelt committed themselves to mounting a cross-Channel invasion of France in the spring of 1944. While the main effort in 1943 was concentrated on the Mediterranean theatre, British Major General Sir Frederick Morgan was appointed on 12 April 1943 as Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander (COSSAC). At the head of an Anglo-American team, Morgan was responsible for drawing up plans for a full-scale invasion in the spring of 1944, codenamed Overlord. In addition to planning Overlord, COSSAC was ordered to draw up a series of deceptive plans that would keep alive the possibility of a cross-Channel attack during the summer of 1943.
Previously, in the build up to Torch in 1942, the fledgling London Controlling Section had sought to keep German forces from being redeployed from north and western Europe to the Mediterranean by indicating operations against France (Operation Overthrow) and Norway (Operation Solo I). These threats were maintained and adapted to fulfil Morgan’s objectives, and became known under the umbrella name Plan Cockade. This was a series of schemes to deter the Germans from detaching troops either to the Mediterranean or to the Russian Front, by threats to northern France and Norway. Expanding on what had already been attempted, Cockade was supposed to culminate in an ambitious mock invasion of the Pas de Calais, the narrowest crossing point from England to France. In addition to tying down German troops, it was hoped this feint would draw the Luftwaffe out of its bases and into a pitched battle over the English Channel.
With the assistance of the LCS, these cover plans were drawn up by Colonel John Jervis-Read, who had been put in charge of a section under COSSAC called Ops. B. Unfortunately Jervis-Read was given nothing like the access, priority or resources available to Dudley Clarke’s A Force, the body which Ops. B was theoretically meant to emulate. It appears that Morgan viewed A Force with some suspicion as a ‘private army’ and had no intention of allowing anything similar to develop in his own neck of the woods. Jervis-Read was more or less a one-man show, forced to beg what help he could from other service departments. It was not an arrangement with which Colonel Bevan was satisfied.1
The most important element of Cockade was Plan Starkey, an Anglo-Canadian attack on the port of Boulogne scheduled for between 8 and 14 September 1943. According to the deception plan, after the bridgehead was established by Starkey, a second attack would follow, codenamed Wadham. This time an American force would attack the port of Brest in Brittany, supported by the arrival of troops sailing directly from the United States. In the grand deception plan, the Allies would cancel Starkey and Wadham at the last minute and instead put all their resources into an invasion of Norway by five divisions, codenamed Tindall.
In the original version of Starkey, the infantry contingent was to be complemented by a strong naval force that included two older battleships, over 90 other naval vessels, whatever merchant ships could be found, and a large fleet of landing craft. When this shopping list was presented to the First Lord of the Admiralty Admiral, Sir Dudley Pound, he refused to allow his battleships to join in. The French coast along the Pas de Calais was bristling with heavy-calibre German coastal batteries. It was very unlikely the battleships would be able to knock any of them out, but they would almost certainly take fire and sustain damage themselves. No matter how much the Navy approved of deception, losing two battleships for no reward would be a hard thing to explain to the British public. There was also a problem with the number of landing craft available. With an urgent need for landing craft in the Mediterranean, only 360 could be mustered on the south coast. To these were added 100 dummy assault landing craft, called ‘Wetbobs’, and 75 dummy tank landing craft, known as ‘Bigbobs’. The name ‘Wetbob’ came from Eton College and signified someone in one of the water sports teams, as opposed to those in land-based sports teams, who were called ‘Drybobs’. ‘Bigbobs’ were so called because they were bigger. According to Sir Freddy Morgan, the prototypes of these decoys were first constructed on the London Metropolitan Water Board reservoir near Shepperton.2 These dummy craft were very convincing, even from close range, and were embellished with small details like smoke coming from non-existent engines and laundry hung on washing lines by their equally bogus crews. Even if there were not enough landing craft to suggest a full-scale invasion, when the decoys were mixed in with the real thing, the undertaking appeared larger than the Dieppe raid.
With the prospect of delivering the Luftwaffe a bloody nose, Fighter Command appeared very enthusiastic about the mission. Between the British and American commands, 60 fighter squadrons were earmarked for the planned battle with the Luftwaffe. Unfortunately, without the battleships acting as a lure, Fighter Command did not believe the mission had much chance of success. Further scorn came from Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris. When asked for several thousand heavy bomber sorties in support of Starkey, he protested very strongly and in the end permitted only inexperienced crews and medium bombers not capable of hitting targets in Germany to take part. Harris did not like anyone interfering with his master plan for bringing about a German surrender through area bombing, especially when Fighter Command appeared to stand most chance of gaining credit from the mission.
There was also the problem of the French Resistance. It would be catastrophic if the Resistance believed that the invasion attempt was genuine and came out en masse, only to be left in the lurch. So, while on the one hand the Allies promoted the idea of an invasion, they were very careful to tell the Resistance not to come out unless they received the official green light from London. It was a similar story for the British press. Reporters would no doubt get wind that something big was being planned, and it would be terrible for public morale if Starkey was reported as a real invasion attempt that had failed. Everything about the operation was a tightrope act performed in a blustery gale of inter-service politics.
Despite the disappointments and internal politics, Starkey pushed on. To complement the preparations, Colonel Turner’s department was called in to provide camouflage and decoys for the mission. Lighting was used to simulate traffic and divert bombs away from the major Channel ports, including Southampton, Portsmouth, Newhaven and Dover. At the same time military camps were simulated with lighting effects and dummy installations. The airfields were also packed with somewhere in the region of 400 dummy gliders and large numbers of decoy Spitfires and Hurricanes. Radio deception was also used to simulate the chatter of the formations earmarked for Starkey, many of which were entirely fictional additions to the order of battle.
Although German reconnaissance flights did spot some of the preparations, the best way of drawing the Germans’ attention to Starkey was again through special means, in particular the Twenty Committee’s double agents. Of those most involved, Tricycle is already well enough known. Having re-established his credentials after the fiasco of his mission to America, in July 1943 he again returned to Lisbon and took a mass of information on the supposed Allied plans, all of which increased his standing with the Germans. His reports were augmented by those of Gelatine, his sub-agent who reported on invasion gossip picked up at society gatherings.
These reports were echoed by those of another socialite codenamed Bronx. The daughter of the Peruvian chargé d’affaire in Vichy France, Elvira Chaudoir had lived in England since the beginning of the war. She lived life on the wild side, attending weekend parties where she rubbed shoulders with members of the government and aristocracy. Bronx kept a flat in Mayfair, ran up considerable gambling debts and fully explored her voracious sexual appetites with men and women alike. Recruited by Claude Dansey, the deputy head of MI6, Bronx was sent to visit her parents in Vichy France, where she allowed herself to be recruited by a German agent who offered her £100 a month to supply economic and political intelligence. This payment was disguised as an alimony payment from the husband she was divorcing. When she returned to the United Kingdom she revealed her recruitment by and love affair with the German agent. After some deliberation, she was enrolled as a double agent.
Other new faces in the XX set up included a trio of businessmen: Hamlet, Mullet and Puppet. The instigator of this network was Hamlet, a half-Jewish Austrian who had property in Germany until it was confiscated in 1936. After a brief period of imprisonment, Hamlet went to Italy and sent his children to a school in England. He then moved to Belgium where he had a business. It was in Belgium that he agreed to work for the Abwehr, albeit under pain of being handed over to the Gestapo. He was sent to Lisbon and became friends there with an Englishman who had formerly worked in Belgium for an insurance firm. Hamlet asked this new friend, whom the British codenamed Mullet, to take some valuables to England on his behalf, and to act as his business representative there. He also asked him if he could identify anyone who might be sympathetic to an approach by Germans in the event of the Nazis losing power, presumably after a coup.
Pointing out his Jewish heritage, Mullet questioned Hamlet about why he was working for the Germans. Hamlet had quite a plausible excuse, claiming to be building up an intelligence network that would show German generals that they had lost the war and should ask for peace. He claimed that he had direct access to Canaris and that through a friend he could contact General von Falkenhausen, the military governor of Belgium. The case now came to the attention of the British secret service and when Mullet went back to Lisbon in December 1942 he took an SIS officer with him. Hamlet was interviewed and it soon became apparent that most of his claims were false. However, the link to von Falkenhausen turned out to be genuine and this go-between received the codename Puppet. With Hamlet’s children a guarantor of his loyalty, the Twenty Committee decided to risk taking on the network and added them to the stable. With Mullet acting as the contact man in Britain, Hamlet was able to report on matters relating to the City and government throughout 1943.
The surest means of reporting was still Garbo. With order restored to his case following his wife’s depression, Garbo soon became bombarded with questions about Allied intentions in north-west Europe. After reporting that troop concentrations and exercises were being carried out in Wales, Garbo supposedly travelled to Scotland in August in order to investigate rumours about an attack on Norway. While apparently in Scotland, Garbo’s notional sub-agents began reporting large troop build ups around Southampton and that assault craft were being collected in the Channel ports. Believing this significant, Garbo raced south and reported that he had personally discovered seven divisions in the Brighton area. Hedging his bets, Garbo cautioned that this build up might be nothing more than a dummy run for a future operation. On the other hand he would not put the idea to bed completely, as the unexpectedly swift collapse of the Italians in Sicily might have led to a last-minute change in Allied planning. On 5 September Garbo received information from his agents that troops were concentrating for an assault three days later.
To back up Garbo’s messages, troops were moved to the south coast along with Colonel Turner’s dummy fighters and gliders. There was also a number of Commando raids, which were supposed to capture prisoners in the landing areas. Of the 14 raids planned, only eight actually took place and all of them were unsuccessful. In fact, the only captive brought back across the Channel was a sample of barbed wire that one of the teams had come across.
In the two weeks up to 8 September the Allied air forces began stepping up attacks on Calais. Unfortunately bad weather intervened and many of the missions were cancelled. The weather continued to play a part and, when 8 September came, the feint was postponed for 24 hours. On 8 September Garbo reported that the troops were being confined to barracks and were being issued four-day ration packs, indicating that the assault was imminent. Next day the troops were marched along the hards to their landing craft. Once there, they turned about, and with disappointed looks on their faces, trudged back to camp, with the exception of the anti-aircraft gunners, who remained to protect the boats from the expected droves of German aircraft. A force of around 30 ships then assembled off Dungeness and headed towards France preceded by a screen of mine-sweepers. Overhead a force of 72 fighters flew over the convoy, accompanying medium bombers, which attacked the German coastal batteries, without much success.
When the force was just ten miles outside Boulogne the ships stopped and waited for the German response. Nothing happened. The coastal artillery did not open up and the Luftwaffe stayed on the ground. According to Morgan’s account of the day, the only response obtained was a slightly confused German subaltern who was overheard radioing his commander asking what all the fuss in the Channel was about.3
Any notions of a great aerial battle came to nothing. At 9am the convoy made smoke and turned for home. Later that day Garbo reported that the operation had been suspended and the troops were returning to barracks. Without the aerial battle the Allies were left in a sticky situation. Something had to be told to the press before the Germans came out and said they had ‘scared off’ a British invasion attempt. In the end the press were told that a full-scale rehearsal had taken place and valuable lessons had been learned for future operations.
The main remaining hope of deceiving von Rundstedt in France was Plan Wadham, the attack on Brittany set for 22 September. Unfortunately this was another flop. The Germans showed absolutely no sign of taking the bait and Morgan asked for it to be cancelled.
With Starkey and Wadham cancelled, all efforts were put into implementing Plan Tindall. When the attacks on northern France failed to materialize, the excuse given by the double agents was that resources for it had been diverted to invade northern Norway and to capture the airfield at Stavanger. Four divisions were to go in by sea, while an airborne division was earmarked for the attack. Detailed plans were drawn up, all of which were dutifully leaked by the double agents, who suggested a landing would take place between 6 and 12 September. This time the Germans did take some of the bait, and no troops were removed from Norway to reinforce the Mediterranean. In that sense, four training divisions in Scotland successfully held down three times their number of trained German troops.
On balance, it took great optimism not to be disheartened by the implementation of Cockade. The deceptions against France had clearly failed. The Nazi High Command had made up its mind that the Allied attacks in 1943 would be confined to the Mediterranean theatre. As a mark of how little attention was paid to Starkey, von Rundstedt was stripped of ten divisions to stabilize the situation in Italy. There was, however, a small plus to this exercise. Although the German High Command was unimpressed with the British plans, the preparations being carried out in Britain filled von Rundstedt with a sense of foreboding. He concluded that the whole operation had been a ‘large-scale preliminary rehearsal for a genuine attack against our west coast’.4 The embarkation practice and the real deployment of minesweepers and aircraft could only be a portent of something much larger to come. True enough, General Morgan went away happy that his troops had practised for an embarkation and that they had appeared quite up for a scrap. The planning of Wadham had proved similarly useful. Only a few Americans involved with the planning knew that this attack with five divisions was a bluff. As the troops began to muster in south-west England, there was chaos as planners were faced with very real logistical problems and struggled to make their final preparations for an assault they believed was going ahead. The lessons learned by US planners during this operation became invaluable when it came to organizing the real show the following summer.
Perhaps at best, like many deception operations carried out by the Allies, it could be said that Cockade had done no harm. There had been the usual grumblings from service chiefs over the use of resources for ‘pointless’ operations, but at least no double agents had been blown and the Germans appeared to accept the inflated Allied order of battle. In that sense it proved a useful learning experience for the following year.
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While Cockade spluttered along, planning for Overlord continued. By the middle of July 1943 an outline had been written with Normandy selected as the target area. It was felt that, of all the options, Normandy offered the Allies the greatest hope of success. The shape of the coast north of Caen was such that the beaches were sheltered from prevailing winds, plus there were numerous exits allowing troops to penetrate inland quickly. It was also considered that it would be easier to gain the deep water ports of northwestern France, such as Cherbourg, Brest, Lorient and Saint Nazaire, than it would be to take Antwerp after a landing around Calais. Once these northwestern ports were in Allied hands, it would be easier to bring supplies directly from the United States without having to land them first in Britain.5
With Normandy selected, COSSAC was instructed to come up with a suitable cover plan for Overlord. This was no easy matter. The cover plans for Torch and Cockade had both indicated that a cross-Channel invasion was imminent. The Allies now wished to convince the Germans this was not the case and that the invasion of France was not scheduled for 1944.
The prevailing mood in COSSAC was that the deception could not be made to work. Morgan was extremely sceptical that anything more than limited tactical surprise could be achieved and told LCS officer Ronald Wingate he did not believe a cover plan for Neptune (the cross-Channel attack phase of Overlord) would succeed. Wingate was acquainted with Morgan from long before the war, having known him in Baluchistan. This familiarity allowed Wingate to argue the point with some force, urging Morgan, ‘You must let your staff try.’6 In the event, because of the limited resources then available to COSSAC Ops. B, most of the planning was carried out by the LCS. In August Bevan’s section presented their first draft for approval. Plan Jael claimed that the Allies had given up on the idea of making a cross-Channel attack and would continue to concentrate on the Mediterranean theatre through the course of 1944, attempting to open a new front in the Balkans. Meanwhile priority would be given to the air bombardment of Germany (codenamed Pointblank), which would hopefully bring the Nazis to their knees.
On paper it was a neat idea, playing on the various deceptions already suggesting an attack in the eastern Mediterranean, and the air war was in full swing with round-the-clock bombing of Germany. However, there was one insurmountable weakness in the plan and this meant it failed to get serious backing. Plan Jael would not explain the enormous build up of troops in Britain, which the Germans were sure to detect and which, by early spring 1944, would indicate that the Allies were planning an invasion of France between Cherbourg and Dunkirk. For that reason Jael was scrapped and Bevan went back to the drawing board.
It was replaced on 16 September 1943 by a plan initially known as Torrent but then more simply as ‘Appendix Y’ of the Overlord plan.7 This assumed the Germans would know an invasion was going to occur in 1944, and that they would be able to predict many of the details of Overlord in advance. They knew for example that for the invasion to succeed the landing site would need to be within fighter range of UK bases. Knowing the limits of fighter range, they could make a reasonable estimate of which beaches were most suitable for landings. From a study of the tides and phases of the moon, the Germans would also have a fair idea when it was likely to take place.
The Germans would also know that the Allies needed to capture a deep water port fairly quickly to ensure their bridgehead was sufficiently supplied and reinforced. Therefore they had stationed strong garrisons at Cherbourg and the ports in Brittany, while putting their main strength at the Pas de Calais, the shortest Channel crossing, and the point in France closest for a drive into Germany. The weakest defences in Hitler’s Atlantic Wall were along the Normandy coast near Caen because no deep water port existed there. What the Germans had not foreseen, and what became a key element in developing the deception plan, was that the Allies planned to prefabricate port facilities in Britain and float them across the Channel. Known by the codename Mulberry, these artificial harbours were perfectly suited to the Normandy beaches where the assault was actually aimed.
With these factors in mind, Appendix Y introduced three key themes that would form the backbone of all subsequent deception plans for Overlord. The first was to make the German High Command believe that the Pas de Calais was the target rather than Normandy. Secondly, the Germans were to be left doubting the actual date of the assault, with all available channels indicating that D-Day would be later than was the case. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, once the assault went in, the deception planners were to try to pin down as many land and air forces as possible to the east of the Pas de Calais for at least a fortnight, by indicating the Normandy landings were a diversionary feint.
Appendix Y remained in draft form until the final details for Overlord were agreed at the Eureka Conference held from 28 November to 1 December in Tehran. At this conference Churchill and Roosevelt undertook to open a second front in Europe by launching a cross-Channel invasion of France in May 1944, with a simultaneous landing taking place in the south of France. In order that the Germans would not be able to reinforce France, the Russians pledged to match this commitment with an offensive of their own, also scheduled for May. Given the full details of the invasion, the LCS was asked to prepare a final draft of the cover plan. This was completed and submitted to the Chiefs of Staff, who approved it on Christmas Day 1943.
At Tehran, Churchill had told Stalin: ‘In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies’. With this in mind, the overall deception policy for the war against Germany in 1944 was codenamed Bodyguard. It encompassed every theatre of the war, and provided a framework in which a number of subsidiary plans could be developed by the relevant theatre commanders. Bodyguard offered a set of general themes and scenarios that would persuade the Germans to distribute their forces in a manner to cause the least interference with Neptune. In addition, Bodyguard also had to take into account the landing in the south of France, codenamed Anvil, and the Russian offensive. Bodyguard therefore formed the basis of leaks, double agent reports and physical deception policy, all of which were carefully designed to keep the Germans away from France and the Russian Front, making them focus instead on Italy, southern Germany, the Balkans, Greece and Scandinavia.
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The first scenario given by Bodyguard harked back to Plan Jael. It said that Britain and America were convinced that the war could be won by Pointblank alone. As sign of how serious they were about this, they were putting full logistical support behind the transportation of personnel and equipment from the United States to Britain, to the detriment of the build up of ground forces. In the meantime, while the Western Allies built up their strength in Britain, a plan known as Rankin was drawn up to exploit any weakening of German forces or withdrawal from any part of occupied Europe.
Continuing on from operations Tindall and Solo, Bodyguard also played on German fears about Norway. This time the threat would include a Russian attack on northern Norway in May 1944 with the objective of securing the northern supply route between the Allies. After the invasion of Norway, the Allies would put political pressure on Sweden to provide airfields for Allied bombers. They would then pressurize the Swedes into allowing them to station fighters in the south of the country, in order to support an invasion of Denmark later in the summer of 1944.
To pin down German troops in the Mediterranean, Bodyguard set out the following guidelines. Britain and America intended to launch an amphibious assault against the Dalmatian coast, supported by a British attack against Greece. A third assault would be made by the Russians against the coast of Bulgaria. To outflank the Germans in Italy, more amphibious landings would be made in the north of the Italian peninsula on the Adriatic and Mediterranean coasts. While this was being enacted, overtures would be made to bring Turkey into the war on the side of the Allies in order to gain airfields for the proposed operations. Olive branches would also be offered to German satellite states in order to entice them away from supporting the Nazis. Given these commitments, no cross-Channel invasion could be attempted before mid-July 1944, when the Allies would have assembled at least 50 divisions and have enough shipping available to land 12 divisions in France simultaneously. Given the strength of German coastal positions around Calais, this force was considered the minimum required for Neptune to succeed.
With these guidelines set, all the various theatre commanders were called upon to develop subordinate deception plans locally. By far the most important of these was codenamed Fortitude, which was the tactical cover plan for the Normandy landings. To understand this plan and its development up to and beyond D-Day it is first necessary to set out the various organizations that had a stake in its design and implementation.
With America the main contributor to Overlord in terms of men and material, General Eisenhower was selected as Supreme Commander in December 1943. Planning for the invasion now passed from COSSAC to Eisenhower’s staff, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, or SHAEF. With prompting by Bevan when this change occurred, Ops. B was expanded and a new broom was brought in from A Force to take control of the section. The post was initially offered to Dudley Clarke, who turned it down and suggested instead his deputy. Noël Wild therefore arrived in England from Cairo on 24 December, having been misled into believing he was about to go on a long-awaited period of home leave. Needless to say he had a bit of a shock when he was lumbered with Ops. B, so much so that at the end of the war Bevan wrote to Wild and apologized for having landed him the job.8
Finding little in place to work with, Wild organized his section after the A Force model with two branches: Operations and Intelligence. The former head of Ops. B, Jervis-Read, was retained and became Wild’s deputy as well as being put in charge of the Operations branch, covering the physical aspects of deception, including decoys and false radio transmissions. Meanwhile, the Intelligence, or ‘Special Means’, sub-section was given to the intelligence officer, Lieutenant Colonel Roger Fleetwood-Hesketh, another former student of J. C. Masterman.
With the expansion of Ops. B the LCS began to take a back seat in the development of the strategic cover plan for Neptune. Having provided the framework for deception in 1944, the LCS reverted to its role as a coordinating body between Noël Wild, Dudley Clarke and Peter Fleming in the Far East.9 In fact, for much of the early part of 1944 Bevan was in the Soviet Union trying to enlist Stalin’s approval for Bodyguard and was in no real position to take a hands-on role in the planning at all.
Noël Wild began working on the Neptune cover plan, Fortitude. His goal was to deceive the Germans over the ‘strength, objective and timing’ of the operation once it became obvious that a landing was going to be attempted in 1944. Fortitude was itself split into two various scenarios termed ‘South’ and ‘North’. The key to the plan was the southern part. Fortitude South suggested an invasion date forty-five days later than was actually the case (D+45) and gave the location as the Pas de Calais. According to the plan, the assault would be carried out by 50 divisions, with enough craft available for shipping 12 divisions simultaneously. The plan was that two divisions would land east of Cap Gris Nez and four to the south of that point, and that these would be reinforced by a further six divisions immediately. Their build up would continue with three divisions a day until all 50 were across. The first phase of the operation would be to secure a bridgehead and to capture the Belgium port of Antwerp. The Allies would then thrust towards the Ruhr, deep into the industrial heartland of Germany.
To keep as many German forces as possible in Scandinavia at the time of Neptune, and to reinforce the D+45 timing of Fortitude South, Ops. B drew up Fortitude North. This plan to liberate Norway relied on a complicated timetable, all of which should have spelled out to an astute German intelligence officer that Neptune was scheduled for mid-July. The plan supposed that the liberation of Norway would take at least three months. Given that the climate in Norway prevented an invasion before April in the south and May in the north, if the Allies were intending to finish the conquest of Norway before Neptune was launched, then D-Day could not occur until some time in July at the very earliest.
This date was further reinforced by the timing of the Russian summer offensive. The Western Allies let it be known that they would not launch Neptune until six weeks after the Russians attacked and drew off German reserves to the east. Again the climate put certain restrictions on operations: the Soviets could not attack in the south until the beginning of May, and the fighting would not develop in the northern sector until the end of that month. Again, an astute German might have calculated that Neptune was being scheduled for mid-July.
These calculations formed the core of Fortitude North. According to the Allied timetable, the invasion of Norway would be launched at Neptune D–30 (30 days before D-Day) with an operation against Stavanger. At D–17 a second operation would be launched in the north of Norway in conjunction with Russian forces, with the aim of opening communication with Sweden.
Responsibility for implementing Fortitude North was given by SHAEF to Commander-in-Chief Scottish Command, General Sir Andrew Thorne. A former military attaché in Berlin, Thorne was known to the Germans as an experienced general who might be expected to receive an important command. In charge of a partly notional British Fourth Army, Thorne in turn appointed Colonel Rory MacLeod to implement the deception plan. Due to the distance between Norway and Scotland and the lack of German reconnaissance, it was not felt necessary to carry out a major visual deception plan, but instead to rely on bogus signals traffic to suggest the presence of the British Fourth Army. This army was to be portrayed as being in training for an amphibious assault. In reality it was largely fictional and in great part a product of the forces depicted during the Tindall operation in 1943. With its headquarters based at Edinburgh, the Fourth Army had elements across Scotland and far away as Northern Ireland and Iceland. To simulate this, a radio deception plan codenamed Skye was drawn up. On 22 March Fourth Army HQ went live, followed by the rest of the army two days later.
The messages simulated training programmes, troop movements, the requesting of supplies and equipment, in fact all the noise associated with a busy army preparing for combat. At its peak Fourth Army consisted of only several hundred men, frantically driving round different parts of Scotland with their signals equipment. The men were told that they were engaged in vital deception work and that a single slip might spell disaster. To explain their erratic movements to a suspicious public, they were ambiguously designated No. 12 Reserve Unit. MacLeod complained that at most they had enough to simulate a single corps, but with typical ingenuity manpower problems were solved. One of the means used was to record the signals produced by a real corps on manoeuvres in the south. These signals were then broadcast by being played back on gramophone players.
To complement Fortitude North the LCS devised Plan Graffham. This was a series of diplomatic deceptions designed to fulfil the part of Bodyguard by suggesting that the Allies were trying to bring Sweden into the war. The British minister in Stockholm, Sir Victor Mallet, was briefed about Graffham on a trip to London in March. When he returned to Sweden he began trying to get concessions for the use of Swedish airfields for Allied reconnaissance aircraft. He also requested that the Swedish Army should be in a position to seize the Norwegian port of Trondheim if the Allies attacked. According to Dennis Wheatley, Mallet arranged a meeting between the former British air attaché to Sweden, Wing Commander Thornton, and Lieutenant General Bengt Nordenskiöld from the pro-Allied Swedish Air Force.10 Using the utmost secrecy to make the mission seem important, Thornton explained that if the Allies invaded Norway there would be reprisals on the civilian population. The Allies could not hope to occupy the whole of Norway before the dissidents were murdered, and therefore wondered if the Swedes would enter the country in a peacekeeping role. As Thornton and Nordenskiöld discussed the idea, their conversation was being secretly recorded by the pro-German chief of police. He forwarded a transcript of the conversation to Berlin, where Hitler went into a rage and ordered more troops to Norway.
A measure of the success of Fortitude North and Graffham is that before they began there were 17 divisions in Scandinavia. These forces were put on full alert at the beginning of May and reinforced by another combat division. In all something like a quarter of a million men were of no use to the Germans at a critical moment of the war.11
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While Fortitude North was being implemented, the southern part of Fortitude was also delivered. General Montgomery had been placed in command of the land forces committed to Neptune and was therefore responsible for implementing Fortitude South.12 Remembering the success he had enjoyed at El Alamein, Montgomery chose to bring another A Force veteran over from the Mediterranean to run his deception section, which became known as G(D). Colonel David Strangeways had been in Italy since Salerno performing tactical deceptions for General Alexander with Tactical HQ A Force. With direct access to Montgomery and his Chief of Staff General de Guingand, Strangeways developed a reputation for ruffling feathers. Although a relative latecomer to the D-Day deception plan, more than any other person, Strangeways was the real brain behind the cover plan as it was implemented.
Considering Wild’s Fortitude plan to be in many ways defective, on 25 January 1944 Strangeways began interfering with the planning at an official level. De Guingand wrote a letter to SHAEF with an important amendment to the plan being discussed. Although many, including Dudley Clarke, believed it was pointless making contingencies for deception after Neptune, G(D) disagreed. For them the key was to slow down the arrival of enemy reinforcements to the bridgehead after the invasion took place, in particular the German Fifteenth Army, stationed north of the Seine guarding the Pas de Calais. Wingate emphasized this point, writing in his memoirs: ‘At all costs, therefore, the German Fifteenth Army must be kept to the Pas de Calais.’
To achieve this, de Guingand proposed that the Pas de Calais should be represented as the real target after the landings had begun in Normandy. This was a subtle shift in policy, but it was hoped German troops could be pinned down north of the Seine if they believed another attack was coming after Normandy. This amendment was accepted and the plan for Fortitude was finally agreed on 23 February 1944.
In this plan Fortitude South was presented in two phases. Story A was for the pre-assault phase. This played directly into what the Germans believed might happen. A directive issued by Hitler on 3 November 1943 predicted a cross-Channel assault at the latest by the spring of 1944. Although diversionary attacks were expected, including a large-scale attack against Denmark, Hitler maintained that the main assault would come against the Pas de Calais. This reasoning was based partly on the fact that this would be the shortest crossing point and would allow the best fighter cover, but also on the knowledge that Germany was preparing to bombard Britain with secret V-weapons, the launch sites of which were located at the nearest point to London – in the Pas de Calais. Once the V-weapon attacks began the Allies’ first objective would be to overrun the launch sites. Knowing this, Fortitude said that an assault would be carried out on the Pas de Calais with 50 divisions at Neptune D+45, as discussed earlier.
In the post-assault phase, Story B would follow de Guingand’s amendment. The Germans would be told that the Normandy invasion was only a feint designed to draw German reserves away from the Pas de Calais where the main attack was still aimed. When the Germans committed their reserves to Normandy, the main Allied attack would fall somewhere between Ostend and the Somme.
Quite how this deception would actually be pulled off was quite another thing. In much the same way that Bodyguard was an overall strategic plan, the Fortitude plan of 23 February was only an outline to guide the theatre commander’s deception staff. Three days after it was agreed, SHAEF issued what became known as ‘the Fortitude Directive’, which called on the Joint Commanders to implement the deception plan.
Fabrication of decoy Crusader tank, showing (1) spray-painting tracks with stencil; (2) painting the turret; (3) the production line; (4) the finished article. (MH20752, 20754, 20755, 20739, Imperial War Museum)
‘Trackmaker’ device for simulating tank tracks in the desert. (MH20772, Imperial War Museum)
From the A Force war diary: dummy Mosquito light bombers at El Adem in Libya, 1945. (National Archives)
An assembly of dummy landing craft. These decoys were used to disguise real embarkation points and to confuse the Axis over Allied intentions. (National Archives)
A series of decoys prepared for D-Day. Large parks of these vehicles were used to suggest that the Allies’ mainforce was actually in the south east of England, poised to strike against the Pas de Calais. (H42529, 42530, 42531, Imperial War Museum)
When Strangeways got his hands on Fortitude South he made a number of amendments to how Ops. B envisaged the plan unfolding. His biggest concern was the suggestion that there were 50 divisions in the south-east of England ready to land at the Pas de Calais. These troops simply did not exist, and although some work had been done towards building up a phantom army as A Force had done in the Middle East, for Strangeways there was nothing to suggest it was convincing enough to fool the Germans.
Without the time to build up an elaborate false order of battle, his solution was ingeniously simple. SHAEF would now comprise two separate and distinct armies. The first of these was Montgomery’s Twenty-First Army Group. A second army was to be formed around the bones of the First United States Army Group (FUSAG), created in London in October 1943, and given the Pas de Calais assault. Already based in the south-east, the First Canadian Army was notionally taken away from Twenty-First Army Group and assigned to FUSAG. It was joined by the Third United States Army, which was then stationed in Cheshire, but was supposedly sent to East Anglia. This move was simulated by having the real formation maintain strict radio silence, while its transmissions were replicated in East Anglia.
Under Strangeways’ management, all plans relating to the Pas de Calais came under the codename Quicksilver. In total there were six parts to Strangeways’ plan, which were titled Quicksilver I – Quicksilver VI. In summary these plans were:
Quicksilver I: Before D-Day it would be said that the Supreme Commander had two army groups at his disposal, Twenty-First Army Group and FUSAG, which comprised of First Canadian Army and Third United States Army. Then, after D-Day, FUSAG was to be described as ready to strike the Pas de Calais once Twenty-First Army Group had drawn German reserves across the Seine towards Normandy.
Quicksilver II: This wireless deception plan was the key ingredient of the deception. After becoming active on 24 April there were 22 decoy units simulating FUSAG’s radio traffic in East Anglia and the south east.
Quicksilver III: Dummy landing craft would be erected in case German aerial reconnaissance was sent to substantiate FUSAG forces as reported by special means and by simulated wireless traffic. As a precaution against enemy spies not under MI5’s control and neutral foreign observers, road signs would be put in place indicating the various embarkation points.
Quicksilver IV: This was the air plan for Fortitude, which called for the air forces to compensate for missions against the Neptune area with a similar number of attacks in the decoy area; in fact a ratio of 2: 1 in favour of Pas de Calais was achieved, since the various air commands were happy to play their part as it continued to fulfil their strategic objectives of disrupting the rail networks and bridges across the Seine. Training flights were to be undertaken over the Pas de Calais to simulate familiarization flying. Air-sea rescue was to be practised, as was the large-scale movement of aircraft to Kent on D–3. Lastly the airfields in Kent were to be made to appear unready, indicating that the invasion was still some time off. After Neptune, air attacks on the Pas de Calais should intensify between D-Day and D+14.
Quicksilver V: An increase of activity at Dover was called for and work was to be carried out to suggest tunnelling and the erection of wireless stations.
Quicksilver VI: Colonel Turner’s department was asked to install decoy night lighting from mid-May onwards to simulate decoy hards and to protect the real invasion ports. In all 65 sites were set up and a strict ‘lights-out’ policy enforced in the real camps.
To implement this plan Strangeways initiated R Force, a UK version of A Force. He chose the letter ‘R’ so that if anyone was really interested, they might deduce it stood for Reconnaissance. It consisted of three light scout car companies and their support company. Their vehicles were equipped with sonic deception devices by which they could simulate the movement of tanks and sounds of battle though huge speakers. Strangeways also took control of the various Royal Engineer Camouflage Special Field Companies still being trained at the camp at Farnham that had turned out such men as Barkas and others of North African fame. The camoufleurs were supplemented by Colonel Turner’s department, still in the business of making decoys as it had been since the start of the war. Perhaps the most important servicemen in R Force were the radio operators. To implement Quicksilver II, the War Office formed 5 Wireless Group in January 1944. Equipped with recording devices, this group could simulate the radio traffic of an entire corps. Strangeways would provide officers who would write scripts for the normal day-to-day business associated with military formations and these would be recorded. The radio men would then drive about the Kent countryside transmitting the recordings for the Germans’ benefit.
Not everything went to plan, however. There was terrible trouble with the dummy landing craft. If the wind became gusty, even the 160ft Bigbobs would break their mooring lines and go flying through the air. If the Germans had happened to notice this, it could have blown the whole operation. Colonel Turner’s men also experienced difficulties clambering around the coastal regions, where they had to contend with landmines and inquisitive cows barging the equipment around and chewing on it.
There was also the issue of putting someone in command of FUSAG. The first choice was General Omar Bradley, but he was earmarked to take part in D-Day. As soon as his presence in Normandy was reported, the game would be up. The second choice for this appointment actually became one of the most convincing aspects of Quicksilver. It was leaked that General Patton was in command of FUSAG. Patton was the commander of Third Army, which made up part of FUSAG, and this formation was not scheduled to cross into Normandy until at least a month after D-Day.
At the time Patton was in a state of semi-disgrace after an incident in Sicily where he had slapped two soldiers in hospital and called them cowards, and also for the so-called Knutsford incident, where some off-the-record remarks involving Russia were reported by the press. From the German point of view, Patton was the Allies’ best commander and certainly the one most likely to be chosen to lead an assault into Germany. They viewed the slapping incident with suspicion and believed it was all a hoax to cover up an important assignment, all of which reinforced Fortitude South. In some respects, it made perfect sense to have the more cautious Montgomery lead the Normandy assault and then adopt a defensive posture, drawing the German reserves towards him, with the flamboyant Patton poised like a coiled spring at the narrowest crossing point and on the shortest road into the heart of Germany.
Although these measures did flesh out the bones of FUSAG, the real key to its success was in security. In April a ten-mile exclusion zone was set up along the coast. Travel was permitted only for certain compassionate reasons, and then only by train. On 17 April security was further tightened by the unprecedented step of imposing censorship on foreign diplomats in London. These measures were distinctly un-British and were called into question by everyone, Churchill included. What could not be explained at the time was the need to protect the secret of Fortitude. The decoys, camouflage and faked radio transmissions would hopefully take care of the Luftwaffe and Y Service. But what if an observer got to the south coast? They would quickly realize that the real weight of preparations was in the south west and south, not the south east and east. Such an observer might be one of the neutral observers in London, including the Spanish, the Portuguese and Swedes, all of whom could be reporting the Allied build up to their native press. More likely, although MI5 was quite confident it had all operational German agents under its control, it could not rule out the Abwehr mounting a new espionage offensive against English shores before the invasion. If this occurred, could MI5 guarantee all the spies would be caught in time? It would only take one agent getting lucky and using something as primitive as a carrier pigeon to send news that FUSAG was a sham and Normandy was the real target.