Deathly Deception: The Real Story of Operation Mincemeat
Denis Smyth
Language: English
Pages: 367
ISBN: 0199233985
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In the pre-dawn darkness of April 30, 1943, the body of a Royal Marine Major washed ashore on the south-western coast of Spain, part of an incredible plot to mislead the German High Command about the Allies' impending Mediterranean invasion. What made this ruse unique--and macabre--was that the "Major" was actually a deceased Welsh laborer, who drifted lifelessly ashore carrying false documents indicating that the Allies were set to launch an attack on Greece, rather than Sicily.
Codenamed "Mincemeat" and immortalized in the film The Man Who Never Was, this audacious, high-stakes scheme is renowned as the most spectacular episode in the annals of deception. In this accurate and in-depth retelling of the story behind the operation, Denis Smyth draws on a vast collection of previously unavailable documentary sources to expertly bring all phases of "Mincemeat" to life. He reveals how the architects of the plan navigated a maze of medical, technical, and logistical issues to deceive the enemy at the highest strategic levels. Before planting the corpse in the Spanish coastal waters via a stealthy submarine operation, the planners not only gave their dead messenger a new military identity, but also a private one--as the fiancé of an attractive young woman named "Pam." The discovery of her photo and love letters in the pockets of the deceased's uniform, along with a government briefcase containing the deceptive documents, was enough for the Nazi intelligence apparatus to "swallow Mincemeat whole." The Germans deployed their forces to meet the fictional Allied threat in Greece, falling for a ruse which ultimately saved thousands of American lives.
Filled with eye-opening revelations, Operation Mincemeat will delight aficionados of military history, wartime intrigue, and covert operations.
(described in Chapter 6), to counter the newish appearance of Major Martin’s ID card, might undermine the attempt of Spanish pathologists to reconcile a dissimilarity between the courier’s real face and his official photographic image. Nevertheless, the ‘confirmation bias’ influencing the Spanish pathologists’ examination of the corpse-courier induced them to propose an explanation for Major Martin’s excessive baldness around the temples, which was actually contradicted by his own official ID.
deception planners to tune their siren songs precisely into Hitler’s mental frequency. Yet, however obvious it might seem that Ultra’s secrets should have guided Allied deception strategy from the very beginning, this point had eluded the British Chiefs of Staff when they established the London Controlling Section (LCS) in June 1942. Although the brief of this body, which reported directly to the COS, was ‘to prepare deception plans on a world-wide basis with the object of causing the enemy to
Michael’s corpse). Finally, perhaps in an effort to reflect the gauntness of Glyndwr Michael’s visage—which was exacerbated, doubtless, by his moribund condition and long-frozen state—the British photo fakers have also given a much more definite line to Major Martin’s left cheekbone in the ID picture than is discernible in Reed’s own picture. So, Montagu and his colleagues seem to have taken considerable pains to improve even on the photogenic ‘twin brother’ they had managed to locate for Glyndwr
for the khaki shirt and cuffs which Charles Cholmondeley had bought, on the occasion of his visit to that firm of tailors, to have the battledress adjusted for the corpse-courier. Montagu and his helpers had thought that it would make their creation look like a very recent inhabitant of the lands of the living, if he were to be found with such a quotidian item as a scrunched-up Gieves’ receipt on his person. However, they had neglected to notice how their RAF colleague had settled this particular
the diplomatic hearse and crew—dead and alive—being sent back to the jurisdiction of the now all-too-interested Francoist border guards, where a major international incident might well have erupted.72 Yet, even if this counter-espionage action had nearly backfired, it did provide further confirmation for the deception planners back in London that Britain’s senior mariner in Madrid had the nerve and the nous to play his planned part in Operation Mincemeat. Indeed, not the least advantage of