Stardate 20020228.1201

(On Screen): One of the most important operations in World War II was "Operation Fortitude". It was a plan for a landing in Calais, which would be the real attack on France in 1944. The landing in Normandy was a feint; it was intended to pull German forces away from Calais, after which the main landing would take place and knife into Germany.

Operation Fortitude would be executed by the First US Army Group (FUSAG) commanded by General Patton.

Oh, you mean you never heard of this when you studied history? That's because it was a lie. It was the single most elaborate deception in the history of war, and the purpose of "Operation Fortitude" was to convince the Germans to keep a substantial part of their military capability in France stuck in the Calais area instead of moving them to Normandy to attack the real landing which did take place there. It was also possibly the most successful and important military deception in modern times: the Germans didn't figure it out until after the Cobra breakout when it was too late.

The effort and detail that went into the Fortitude plan almost beggars belief. Entire fake divisions were set up in England; camps were laid out with hardly any men in them; entire parks full of tanks and trucks were created in eastern England. The tanks and trucks were made of inflated rubber, but from the air they looked totally convincing. The fake divisions had real headquarters units who used their radios to send what looked like routine transmissions back and forth as would be expected from real formations of that kind. Some of the units assigned to FUSAG were real: the British Guards Armored Division, which would have been expected to be part of the most important invasion. Most of the divisions didn't exist, however.

Sometimes the radio operators would "slip up" and send messages to each other in clear "by mistake" with folksy questions like "Hey, anyone know where there are any good brothels in Calais?"

There was an issue of National Geographic published during the war; it had a color section showing pictures of all the divisional insignia used on American uniforms. After it was published and had been out for a few days, it was hurriedly withdrawn and a different version was published with some of them gone. It looked to German spies in the US as if there had been a security breach; in actuality, it was quite deliberate. Many of the divisions listed in the first version did not actually exist; they were part of the Fortitude deception. (The original version of that issue is a much sought-after collector's item, by the way.)

Most German attempts at air recon over the UK were intercepted and shot down. But some missions over FUSAG were permitted to succeed, so that the Germans could see the rubber tanks and trucks parked there.

In the bombing preparation leading up to the Normandy attack, a great deal of ordnance was dropped in the countryside behind the Normandy beaches. But for every bomb which was dropped there, two were dropped in the Calais area on the same kinds of targets as if preparing for an attack there.

After Patton was transferred to the Normandy area to command Third Army, General Leslie McNair was brought in from Washington to "assume command" of FUSAG. McNair was chief of all US Army ground forces; it was natural that FUSAG should have a commander of such stature.

McNair was visiting the front in Normandy to observe the saturation bombing which began Operation Cobra (the "breakout") and was killed by friendly fire there. After that, Fortitude was no longer needed and was allowed to quietly die.

The point is that a lie is a very valuable weapon. If your enemy knows what you are doing, it is much easier for him to counter it. Secrecy is important; but sometimes lies work even better. If you can convince him that you are doing something you are not, he may try to counter the false threat and as a result not be ready or able to deal with what you really mean to do to him.

Lies in war operate at every level, from the squad all the way up to the full strategic. Rubber tanks got used a lot in Europe, in actuality; the Americans set them up all over the place and used them to fool the Germans about where the real tanks were, and also about how many there were. Because of them, the Germans consistently overestimated the number of tanks that the Americans had, and thus were forced to keep much of their own armor back in reserve to deal with a nonexistent threat.

In fact, rubber tanks are still in use today. American infantry have a gizmo about the size of a large backpack which contains an inflatable tank. When they're retreating, they can set up a couple of these in an area where real tanks might actually be found, and leave them behind. An enemy which sees them will hold up and make a conventional attack; this takes time and gives the retreating troops more time to escape.

In the Gulf War, the US had a contingent of Marines off the shore of Kuwait and threatened a landing. It was not actually intended that they do so, but they were fully capable of doing so and as a result the Iraqis kept three divisions dug in along the shoreline of Kuwait to try to repulse a landing by one brigade of Marines. Those Iraqi divisions were thus not on the southern front to fight where the Marines actually did make their attack.

Those kinds of maneuvers and feints are extremely common. If you've seen the movie "Memphis Belle" (the original docume