Operation Mincemeat
“Deception is a sort of seduction. In love and war, adultery and espionage, deceit can only succeed if the deceived party is willing, in some way, to be deceived.”
Wartime is a fertile time for creative thinking.
The pressure of winning and the fear of losing push a country’s greatest minds to come up with the best ideas.
One of the most audacious plans of World War II was ‘Operation Mincemeat’.
Conjured up by the British Naval Intelligence officer Ewen Montagu and Charles Cholmondeley, an MI5 officer with a flair for madcap ideas, it was designed to mislead the enemy about plans for the 1943 invasion of Scilly.
The large island just off the ‘toe’ of Italy was the most obvious target, so they needed to convince the Germans they were going somewhere else.
This way, they would mislead the enemy’s high command into diverting forces away from their intended target.
They based their idea on a memo written by Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, while he was working in Naval Intelligence.
The plan was to dress a corpse as a senior British officer and plant false invasion plans on the body.
A professional driver would ferry the dead man up to a Scottish naval base, place him on a submarine heading for the Spanish coast.
At the time, Spain was neutral. However, the British were aware of a German spy network operating in the area.
By disposing of the body at sea, they reasoned that the current would carry the body onto the beach. There, they hoped the right people would discover it, and if the British guessed right, they would pass the news up the Nazi chain of command.
The first challenge was to find a suitable body.
Eventually, the one chosen was that of Glyndwr Michael, a homeless Welshman who had died from eating rat poison.
The reason? Nobody would miss him.
They dressed his corpse in a Royal Marine officer’s uniform and gave him the new identity of Major William Martin.
Inside his coat pocket, they placed a wallet containing photos, receipts, theatre tickets, love letters and even a stern letter from his father.
Attached to Major William Martin’s wrist was a briefcase containing false correspondence between two British generals relating to a planned invasion of Greece and Sardinia.
St John “Jock” Horsfall, a former racing driver, was specifically chosen for the mission and drove the 1937 Fordson van at high speed through the night from London to Greenock, Scotland.
The body was secreted inside a capsule filled with dry ice.
On April 30, 1943, HMS Seraph surfaced off the coast of Huelva, Spain, and covertly released the body.
As planned, news of the English officer washing up on the beach reached German intelligence.
Despite some senior Nazi officials voicing suspicion about Major William Martin and his cause of death, the news was nevertheless passed to the top.
Two psychological factors were at play.
Firstly, the Germans already suspected Greece might be a target, so the discovery of the plans confirmed their suspicions.
Secondly, the historian Ian Kershaw described the Nazi chain of command as ‘working towards the Führer’, where officers would anticipate Hitler’s wishes and act to align with them even if the consequences were dire.
The result of all this effort?
Hitler diverted troops away from Sicily, helping the Allied landings in July 1943.
It stands as one of the most perfect examples of creative misdirection in history.
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