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KIT SALES In one of our recent articles, we wrote about Operation Bodyguard,
the series of deceptions that kept the Germans confused about
LEADING EDGE FILES
the time and place of the Allied invasion. Today, we'll take a look at
SHEFFLER
the aerial, ground and naval tricks under Operation Bodyguard and
SLWC Info other subsequent operations that were employed to keep them on
The Digital Philatelist 3 the back foot even as the invasion fleet set sail for Normandy.
Among others, this included the use of Radio Countermeasures
Compose (RCM), dummy paratroopers and commandos playing pre-
recorded battlefield sounds to the German defenders.

The map of deception operations on D-Day (Photo:

www.ww2today.com)

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One element of Bodyguard the Germans swallowed hook, line and

sinker was General Patton's fake First US Army Group (FUSAG)
gathering for an attack on Calais on the other side of the Strait of
Dover. In order to further the deception, Operation Glimmer was
put into effect. A flight of six Short Stirling bombers with two
reserve craft took off towards Calais on the night before June 6.
Carried onboard were radio jamming systems and canisters of
small aluminum strips codenamed “Window,” known today as
chaff. When dropped from the air, German radar systems would
detect the clouds as radar blips and misinterpret them as the
approaching FUSAG fleet. This idea was jointly developed by the
British Telecommunications Establishment and the American-
British Laboratory Division 15.

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A British bomber dropping “windows” (chaffs) (Photo: Wikipedia)

The bombers had to fly in a complex circular pattern and release

the chaff at just the right time to make sure the radar cloud moved
at a believable pace for ships and didn't have any suspicious gaps
between the signals. A dozen British Harbor Defense Motor
Launches (HDMLs) accompanied the squadron, carrying jamming
systems, radios broadcasting fake chatter and special radar-
reflecting balloons to make the ghost fleet even more realistic.
Under Operation Taxable a similar but larger group, comprising
Lancaster bombers from the No. 617 “Dam Busters” squadron,
performed similar maneuvers towards La Poterie-Cap-d’Antifer
near the major port town of Le Havre. A third group with only
boats, under Operation Big Drum, accompanied the actual
invasion fleet on its western flank.
A Harbor Defense Motor Launch (HDML) (Photo: Wikipedia)

Between Glimmer and Taxable, a squadron of 29 specially

equipped Lancasters flew the “A.B.C. Patrol”, short for ‘Airborne
Cigar’, the name of a jamming device used to confuse German
night fighters. A.B.C. comprised three radio transmitters attached
to a microphone in the bomber's engine compartment, handled by
a German-speaking operator. Whenever German radio stations
broadcasted orders to night fighters in the air, an oscilloscope blip
immediately notified the operator of the broadcast's frequency. In
seconds he ascertained whether the transmission was really
meant for night fighters, then turned on one his own three
transmitters to the same frequency, drowning the frequency in
engine noise for anyone within 50 miles.

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The German Freja radar system provided target designation for
night fighters (Photo: Pinterest)

Between them, the patrol’s planes could simultaneously jam up to

82 different frequencies. This caused much confusion among the
Germans and led them to believe that the patrol was in fact the
top cover for the “real” invasion by FUSAG. While these ghost
fleets were making as much noise as they could, Royal Air Force
bombers in Operation Mandrel were flying around above the sea,
using powerful transmitters to jam German coastal radar stations
to hide the signals of the real fleet.
 
The planes carrying paratroopers the night before D-Day also had
their deceptive guardian angels, thanks to Operation Titanic, which
revolved around “Rupert” (or called “Oscar” by the Americans), a
dummy on a parachute one-third the size of a human. The
objective was to create spoof airborne attacks in Normandy. The
use of dummies for deception purposes was not new, since the
Germans used them also in their airborne operations in the early
stages of the war, for instance in the Netherlands. While the 1962
war movie, The Longest Day depicted Rupert as an elaborate
rubber figure, the real deal was a rough construction of sackcloth
filled with hay and sand. Officially named Device, Camouflage, No.
15, it was nicknamed Rupert, possibly after the derogative term
Scottish soldiers used for English officers. Rupert was equipped
with noisemakers, called “Pintail”, that simulated rifle shots and a
small timed explosive. The explosive would ignite the dummy and
parachute after a while, so German troops arriving at the scene
would find not a dummy (which would expose the duplicity) but
only the remains of the parachute which its user assumedly
burned before hiding nearby.
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A British officer introducing “Rupert” to the soldiers in the movie,

The Longest Day (Photo: 20th Century Fox)

In four segments, some 500 Ruperts were dropped in various

spots around the general Normandy area, always in spots away
from actual parachute and glider landing locations. Near Saint-Lô,
two small British Special Air Service (SAS) units also dropped as
part of Titanic. Their mission was to attack small groups of
Germans and allow some to escape, so the survivors could report
incorrect news of a major airborne attack in the area. The paras
also played 30 minutes of sound footage with shouts and gunfire
to make the threat sound more credible to nearby defenders. The
SAS paid a high price for the operation: of the twelve men who
jumped, after a month of operations behind enemy lines, only a
few made it back home; the others were either killed in action or
captured and executed.
The real, not-so-elaborate “Rupert” dummy paratrooper (Photo:
www.paradata.org.uk)

While the efficacy of some elements of the deception is under

debate, the operations are considered a general success. The
ghost fleets reinforced the German misperception that the real
threat will be Patton's army near Calais, and Hitler still held on to
this idea even after the actual landings in Normandy began. The
fake threat of the dummies and SAS paratroopers caused the 12th
SS Hitlerjugend Panzer Division and part of the 352nd Infantry
Division to spend the night combing the forest for the apparent
airborne threat, preventing them from fighting at Omaha and Gold
beaches or around the drop zones of the 101st Airborne Division.
 
The German commander in Le Havre believed that Operation
Taxable was a real fleet and that he was cut off from Normandy.
The massive efforts at misdirection, both in Operation Bodyguard
and the tactical operation on the night before D-Day, paid off when
they made it easier for the landing forces to take the beaches of
Normandy. Even some of the Ruperts survived the battle. For
instance, one of the original dummies, found in a house of a
former British soldier, was sold for £2,500 (USD 3,500) at an
auction in Stansted in 2017.

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