The Phantom Army and Normandy invasion

http://www.strategypage.com/articles...tm&reader=long

The British and Americans created what amounted to an entire "phantom army" in order to fool the Germans. So successful were they in this effort that the Germans were convinced that the U.S. Army had some 20 percent more divisions than was actually the case, and the British Army nearly 70 percent!

The U.S., for example, created one army group (the "First United States Army Group," or "FUSAG ), one army (the "Fourteenth Army"), three corps, one armored division, five airborne divisions, and fourteen infantry divisions during the war for the specific purpose of deceiving the enemy. In addition, a further airborne division and nine infantry divisions which had been officially activated but not actually raised were more or less incorporated into this notional army, so that there were a total of 30 non?existent divisions officially part of the U.S. Army, a paper augmentation of about a third above actual divisional strength.

The creation of a "phantom" unit was surprisingly difficult. Initially it was almost impossible due to a peculiarity of U.S. Army regulations, which required the activation of new divisions on American soil. These restrictions had to be lifted before the creation of notional units for the purposes of deception could be undertaken.

Deception divisions were sometimes assigned numbers which fitted quite logically into the existing order of battle.However, some ghost units were given designations similar to those of existing formations, so that there was a notional "6th Airborne Division" as well as a real 6th Infantry Division, and a "17th Infantry Division" as well as a 17th Airborne Division. The idea was to be as confusing as possible. And some of the notional units had impassively high numbers, such as the "157th Infantry Division," to suggest that there were a lot more U.S. divisions out there than was really the case (89, plus six of Marines).

Double agents proved very useful for passing false order of battle information to the Germans, and even real enemy agents could be tricked into serving the Allied cause in this way. Other techniques included false radio traffic, "lost" documents, "accidental" slips of the lips in bars, and things like marriage notices in newspapers, wherein the groom's assignment was carefully noted.

One particularly clever trick involved National Geographic Magazine. The magazine was given official assistance in preparing a lavish full?color spread of U.S. military insignia, including army shoulder patches. The army cleverly arranged to have inserted among the legitimate insignia properly designed patches for most of the notional formations. Then, after only a few copies of the issue had been printed, the Army had the presses stopped. Within a few days a revised version of the insignia issue (June, 1943) was issued, with several interesting deletions.

Since the Army's heraldic design people were themselves unaware that the formations for which they had been requested to design insignia were fraudulent, they not only designed quite attractive and symbolic patches, they also issued proper manufacturing specifications for them.
Troops heading overseas were sometimes issued these false patches at their ports-of-embarkation.



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