Operation Mincemeat Read more from: Damn Interesting » Mincemeat and the Imaginary Man Early in the morning on the 1st of May 1943, a fisherman on a beach in Spain discovered a waterlogged corpse which had washed ashore during the night. The dead man was clothed in British military attire and a life preserver, and he had a briefcase chained to his lifeless body. Apparently a casualty of an airplane accident at sea, the body was transported to the local port, where its discovery was reported to the Nazi officials stationed in the city of Huelva. From his personal effects, the man was identified as Major William Martin, a temporary captain and acting major in the British Royal Marines. Rather than allowing possible military intelligence to go unintercepted, the local agents for the Abwehr– the German intelligence organization– coaxed the briefcase open to examine its contents. Inside, along with the man's personal effects, the Nazis discovered a personal correspondence between Lt. Gen. Sir Archibald Nye, vice chief of the Imperial General Staff, and General Sir Harold Alexander, the British commander in North Africa. This letter described key details of the Allies' plans to invade Nazi-held territory. It seemed that luck was favoring Germany; but the discovery ultimately resulted in disaster for the Nazis.
Operation Market & Operation Garden - Allied Operation Market & Operation Garden - Allied Read the details here: Operation Market Garden - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Operation Market Garden (September 17–September 25, 1944) was an Allied military operation in World War II. Its tactical objectives were to secure a series of bridges over the main rivers of the German-occupied Netherlands by large-scale use of airborne forces together with a rapid advance by armored units along the connecting roads, for the strategic purpose of allowing an Allied crossing of the Rhine river, the last major natural barrier to an advance into Germany. The planned rapid advance from the Dutch-Belgian border into northern Germany, across the Maas (Meuse) and two arms of the Rhine (the Waal and the Lower Rhine), would have outflanked the Siegfried Line and made possible an encirclement of the Ruhr Area, Germany's industrial heartland. The operation was initially successful with the capture of the Waal bridge at Nijmegen on September 20. But it was a failure overall since the planned Allied advance across the Rhine at Arnhem had to be abandoned. The 1st Airborne Division did not secure the bridge at Arnhem, and although they managed to hold out near the bridge far longer than planned, the British XXX Corps failed to relieve them. The Rhine remained a barrier to the Allied advance until the offensives at Remagen, Oppenheim, Rees and Wesel in March 1945. Due to the Allied defeat at Arnhem, the north of the Netherlands could not be liberated before winter and the Hongerwinter ('Hungerwinter') took thousands of lives, particularly in the cities of the Randstad area.
OPERATION 'MINCEMEAT' (April 1943) One of the war's great deception schemes, launched to convince the German High Command that the Allied landings would take place on Sardinia and not on Sicily, the obvious choice. The body of an unknown man who had died recently was dressed in the uniform of a major of the Royal Marines and given the name of Major William Martin. A briefcase was attached to the body containing highly confidential documents that foretold future Allied war plans in the Mediterranean. Major Martin's body was transported from Loch Ewe in Scotland by the submarine HMS Serap to a point just off the coast of Spain and there committed to the sea. It eventually washed ashore and into the hands of German intelligence agents. Within days the contents of the briefcase was being analysed in Berlin. Winston Churchill, then in the United States, received the coded message 'Mincemeat swallowed whole'. The body of 'Major Martin' lies buried in the Roman Catholic Cemetery Of Solitude at Huelua, Spain. Official files on 'Operation Mincemeat' are not searchable until 2043 but in November 1995, some of the top secret files were released to reveal for the first time in 52 years, the true identity of 'Major Martin'. He was a Glyndwr Michael, born February 4, 1909, in Aberbargoed, a small mining village in Wales. A vagrant alcoholic, he had committed suicide by taking rat poison containing phosphorus when sleeping rough in a disused London warehouse and died from chemically induced pneumonia. The real Major Martin, whose name and identity was used for the deception, moved to the USA after the war and settled in Virginia. He died there on December 10, 1988, his ashes scattered over the Gulf Stream so that eventually they would arrive at his country of birth, Scotland.
Mince meat was IMO amongst the cleverest plans of the war, and their were many plans, Crikey I still have so much to read on this site and much to learn, I have only recently realized that I have push so much of what i knew on WW2 to the depths of my mind as i have spent he past 10 years concentrating on Korea and to a lesser extent Viet Nam. Before that I had read the entire official histories of Aussies in combat in WW1 and WW along with so much other stuff from other nations and of course more Aussie stuff.
Operation Matador was a plan of the British Malaya Command to move forces into position to counter a Japanese amphibious attack on Malaya in 1941. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Matador_(1941)
Operation Matador was an amphibious thrust, during the Burma Campaign in January 1945, to capture the strategic port of Kyaukpyu—located at the northern tip of Ramree Island, south of Akyab across Hunter's Bay-*and the key airfield near the port.
Operation Mafia The laying of mines in the Ruytingen Channel in support of Operation Fuller (actions against the breakout of the Brest Group sailing up the English Channel)
Mincemeat Hi Annie, Recent information that has come to light identifies the body used was that of a seaman, who had died by drowning in an action the day before the clandestine operation, necessitating the previously unexplained submarine journey round Scotland to pick up the body. It was realised that the autopsy in Spain would be very thorough so a body that had recently drowned was ideal. Certainly an achoholic that had taken rat poison, would have, if you excuse the pun, made the examining doctor smell a rat. John "Jack" Melville In October 2004, a memorial service held in Cyprus is believed to have marked the first official recognition of the true identity of the body which played the central role in this operation. The service was dedicated to John "Jack" Melville, one of the casualties of the disaster which claimed the lives of 379 crew members when HMS Dasher was destroyed by a massive on-board explosion in March 1943. There have been many misleading stories. Cheers Keith
