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Operation Bodyguard

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Operation Bodyguard
Part of World War II
Stalin, Roosvelt and Churchill at the 1943 Tehran conference, where Operation Bodyguard was proposed
Operational scopeStrategic
Planned1943–44
Planned byLondon Controlling Section
ObjectiveStrategic surprise of the Allied landings in Normandy
Executed bySHAEF Ops (B) & Others
OutcomeSuccess

Operation Bodyguard was the code name for a high level World War II deception plan employed by the Allied nations during the build up to the 1944 invasion of north-western Europe. The plan set out a general strategy to mislead German high command as to the exact date and location of the invasion. It was implemented as a number of independent operations, eventually culminating in tactical surprise during the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944 (also known as D-Day) and a delayed German re-enforcement of the region for some time afterward.

Planning for Bodyguard was begun in 1943 under the auspices of an organisation called the London Controlling Section (LCS). A draft strategy, referred to as Plan Jael was presented to Allied high command at the Tehran Conference in late November and approved on December 6.

The major objective of this plan was to lead the Germans to believe that the invasion of northwestern Europe would come later than was actually planned, and to threaten attacks at other locations than the true objective, including the Pas de Calais, the Balkans, southern France, Norway, and Soviet attacks in Bulgaria and northern Norway.

Background

During World War II the Allies made extensive use of deception - developing many new techniques and theories. The main protagonists were 'A' Force, set up in 1940 Dudley Clarke and the London Controlling Section, chartered in 1942 under the control of John Bevan.[1][2]

At this stage of the war, Allied and German intelligence operations were heavily mismatched. Through the signals work at Bletchley Park much of the German lines of communication were compromised - intercepts, code named Ultra, gave the Allies insights into how effectively their deceptions were operating. By comparison, most of the spies sent into Britain had been caught (or handed themselves in) and turned into double agents under the XX System. Some of the compromised agents were so trusted that, by 1944, German intelligence had stopped sending new infiltrators.[3][4]

Operation Cockade

In 1943, after it had been decided to defer the invasion, Operation Overlord, until the following year, the Allies conducted a series of deceptions intended to threaten invasion in Norway and France. Operation Cockade was intended to confuse the German high command as to Allied intentions, and to draw them into air battles across the Channel. In this respect Cockade was not a success, with German forces barely responding even as a fake invasion force crossed the channel (turning back some distance from their "target").[5]

Plan Jael

Planning for Bodyguard began even before Operation Cockade was fully under way, following the decision that Normandy would be the site of the coming invasion. The departments responsible for deception, 'A' Force and the London Controlling Section, began to address the problem of achieving tactical surprise for Overlord. It was realised that it was impractical to try to hide the invasion build up indefinitely. Early ideas that later became Operation Bodyguard revolved around efforts to convince the Germans to reduce their force in Northern France and that the overall Allied plan was to establish an initial bridgehead at Pas de Calais.[6]

Between November 28 and December 1 1943 the Allied leaders met in Tehran to agree on strategy for the following year. Colonel John Henry Bevan, head of the London Controlling Section, attended the conference to present a draft Plan Jael (a reference to the Old Testament heroine who killed an enemy commander by deception).[7][8]

Bevan's outline was approved on December 6 and he returned to London to begin working on Operation Bodyguard. The new name was chosen based on a comment by Winston Churchill to Joseph Stalin at the Tehran conference; "In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies."[7][9]

Objectives

Memorandum on Bodyguard prepared for SHAEF in February 1944

The main part of Operation Bodyguard was the plan to deceive the enemy as to the timing, weight and direction of the Normandy invasion. Roger Hesketh, who helped plan and carry out the operation while working at 'Ops B', the deception sector of SHAEF, recalled in his book the three main goals of this part of Bodyguard. These were laid down in Appendix Y of COSSAC, a previous deception plan, and were:

  1. To induce the German command to believe that the main assault and follow up will be in or east of the Pas de Calais, thereby encouraging the enemy to maintain or increase the strength of his air and ground forces and his fortifications there at the expense of other areas, particularly of the Caen area.
  2. To keep the enemy in doubt as to the date and the time of the actual assault.
  3. During and after the main assault to contain the largest possible German land and air forces in or east of the Pas de Calais for at least fourteen days.[10]
Inflatable tanks were used during Operation Fortitude, one of the three major operations making up Bodyguard

The London Controlling Section divided Bodyguard into three major sub-operations (Operation Fortitude North and South, and Operation Zeppelin). A number of smaller operations were also designed to support the objectives of the three.

Fortitude

Main article: Operation Fortitude

Operation Fortitude, one of the largest components of Bodyguard, was intended to convince the Germans of a greater Allied military strength than existed, and that this would be deployed to invade both Norway and Pas de Calais. Fortitude employed similar techniques to a 1943 operation, Cockade; fictional field armies, faked operations to prepare the ground for invasion and leaked information about the Allied order of battle and war plans.

Fortitude North centred around the fictional British Fourth Army, based in Edinburgh. The Fourth Army had first been activated the previous year, as part of Cockade, to threaten Norway and tie down the German divisions stationed there. The Allies faked the existence of the army via fake radio traffic (Operation Skye) and leaks through double agents.[11][12]

Zeppelin

The aim of Operation Zeppelin was to indicate landings on Crete or in Romania.

Special means

A large part of the various Bodyguard operations involved the use of double agents. The British "Double Cross" anti-espionage operation had proven very successful from the outset of the war.[13] The LCS was able to use double agents to send back misleading information about Allied invasion plans.[14]

By contrast, Allied intelligence was very good. Ultra, signals intelligence from decrypted German radio transmission, confirmed to planners that the German high command believed in the Bodyguard deceptions and gave them the enemy's order of battle.[15][16]

Normandy Landings

Joan Garcia, "Garbo"

Elements of the Bodyguard plan were in operation on June 6, 1944 in support of Operation Neptune (the amphibious assault of Normandy). Elaborate masquerades were undertaken in the English Channel by small ships and aircraft (Operation Glimmer and Operation Taxable) to simulate invasion fleets lying off Pas de Calais. At the same time Operation Titanic involved the RAF dropping fake paratroopers to the east and west of the Normandy landings.

Joan Pujol Garcia, a British double agent (code named Garbo) in high standing with the Germans, transmitted information about the Allied invasion plan with a further warning that the Normandy invasion was a diversion.

Aftermath

In his 2004 book, The Deceivers, Thaddeus Holt attributes the success of Fortitude to the trial run of Cockade in 1943; "FORTITUDE in 1944 could not have run as smoothly as it did if the London Controlling Section and its fellows had not gone through the exercise of COCKADE in the year before."[17]

List of operations

Whilst Bodyguard was the overall deception strategy for the Allied invasion, under Operation Overlord, the implementation took the form of many sub-operations.

References

  1. ^ Latimer (2004), pg. 148-149
  2. ^ Cruickshank (2004)
  3. ^ Latimer (2001), pg. 207-208
  4. ^ Holt (2004)
  5. ^ Holt 2004, pg. 478 – 480
  6. ^ Holt 2004, pg. 494 – 496
  7. ^ a b Holt 2004, pg. 504 – 505
  8. ^ Jablonsky 1991
  9. ^ Cave Brown 1975, pg. 1–10
  10. ^ Hesketh 2000, pg. 12
  11. ^ Holt 2004, pg. 486
  12. ^ Cave Brown 1975, pg. 464 - 466
  13. ^ Masterman 1972
  14. ^ Ambrose 1981, pg. 269
  15. ^ Cave Brown 1975
  16. ^ Lewin 2001, p. 292
  17. ^ Holt 2004, pg. 493

Bibliography

  • Jablonsky, David (1991). Churchill, the great game and total war. Frank Cass.
  • Cave Brown, Anthony (1975). Bodyguard of Lies: The Extraordinary True Story Behind D-Day.
  • Hesketh, Roger (2000). Fortitude: The D-Day Deception Campaign. Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press. ISBN 1585670758.
  • Latimer, John (2001). Deception in War. New York: Overlook Press. ISBN 978-1585673810.
  • Masterman, John C (1972). The Double-Cross System in the War of 1939 to 1945. Australian National University Press. ISBN 978-0708104590. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |originaldate= ignored (help)
  • Ambrose, Stephen E. (1981). "Eisenhower, the Intelligence Community, and the D-Day Invasion". The Wisconsin Magazine of History. 64 (4). Wisconsin Historical Society: pp. 261–277. ISSN 0043-6534. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  • Lewin, Ronald (2001) [1978], Ultra goes to War (Penguin Classic Military History ed.), London: Penguin Group, ISBN 978-0141390420 Focuses on the battle-field exploitation of Ultra material.
  • Mallmann-Showell, J.P. (2003). German Naval Code Breakers. Hersham, Surrey: Ian Allan Publishing. ISBN 0-7110-2888-5. OCLC 181448256.
  • Sexton, Donal J. (1983). "Phantoms of the North: British Deceptions in Scandinavia, 1941–1944". Military Affairs. 47 (3). Society for Military Histor: pp. 109–114. ISSN 0026-3931. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  • Holt, Thaddeus (2004). The Deceivers: Allied Military Deception in the Second World War. Scribner. ISBN 0743250427.
  • Cruickshank, Charles (2004). "Clarke, Dudley Wrangel (1899–1974). [[Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]]". Oxford University Press. Retrieved 6 Dec 2011. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help); URL–wikilink conflict (help)
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