Military History Paper - Operation Fortitude South

Operation Fortitude South

        This special operations mission dealt with the massive deception conducted by Allied Forces from December 1st, 1943 to March 31st, 1944 with the aim of leading the Germans to believe that the Allies would be landing in Pas-de-Calais and not Normandy where the D-Day invasion would eventually take place. The goal of this operation was to make the Normandy landings appear as a diversion to the “real landing” in Pas-de-Calais. Because of this, the Allies hoped that Germany would concentrate its troops there, allowing the U.S. forces time to collect themselves following the initial invasion. In order for this to happen, several military and special operation tactics were used. Some of these included intentionally allowing the Axis powers to get ahold of falsified secret information through contacts with neutral countries and spies behind enemy lines, as well as creating a two complete faux armies complete with ground units, tanks, airplanes, troop movements, and even radio communications. As a result, this encouraged the Germans maintain their garrisons in multiple regions of France where they believed the Allied invasion would take place, spanning out their armies effectively making them not as strong or centralized in a single location.

        In developing the Allied forces two “phantom armies,” one would be placed in Scotland in order to threaten a Norway invasion and one was placed in southeast England to threaten the the Germans expected location of the invasion, Pas-de-Calais. The army in the latter location, was designated the First U.S. Army Group and was placed under the command of no other than General George S. Patton. Patton was responsible for overseeing the several aspects of Operation Fortitude that lead to its success. In order to deceive the Germans successfully, massive tent cities were created to look like military bases. These cities were complete with living quarters, hospitals, ammo and fuel depots, and even sewage treatment facilities.

         In order to take it a step forward, the army went as far as creating fake vehicles that moved around in the darkness of night to make them more convincing and appear as though they were real. These vehicles included tanks, trucks, jeeps, and ambulances and were built with either fabric and wood or rubber inflatables. In order to make their movements more believable, soldiers were equipped with special tools to make what would appear to be tread marks in the dirt as if the tanks had actually travelled the distance. Along with ground vehicles, movie industry experts also worked with the military to help create prop ships and landing craft in the ports of eastern England. To German reconnaissance conducting flyovers and taking photographs, these decoys would seem real and were successful in deceiving their intelligence that we had many more ships and ground troops than we did in reality.