The best military deceptions of WWII?

My vote goes to the multiple deceptions that were deplooyed leading up to D-Day. I am sure there are less famous but no less significant military deceptions in WWII. What about the raid on Pearl Harbor, or the Panzer's attacks thru the Ardennes in 1940. Would you consider the breaking of the Japanese and German secret codes deceptions as well?

 

The best deceptions has to be Hitler hoodwinking all of Europe into thinking that he was no longer looking to expand Germany's borders. He had them eating out of the plam of his hand when he attacked Poland.

 

Definitely the D-Day deception, complete with rubber tanks, worthless radio chatter, recon flights, and assigning Patton to command the phantom army. Hitler bought it hook, line, and sinker.

Does anyone know if this was actually a British idea or American? I know both participated, but I'm not aware of the original author. My guess would be British, they've always excelled at spook operations (compliment, not insult).

 

Well, we pioneered it in the desert before Alamein (the offensive).

Supply Railway lines made of old fuel cans, huge dummy camps, radio chatter, tanks dressed as lorries (& vice versa).

I believe we also did a similar stunt in the desert in WW1...

 

deceptive weapons

This photo, not copied very well is from "Tanks in Camera"1940-1943
by David Fletcher.Got this from just down the road at the Tank Museum.

 

The Ardennes Offensive, back when it was still called Operation Herbstnebel, no doubt about it. There is no match in the entire war for making a dozen nations and their secret services, who can read your codes and dominate the air above you, believe that you are not assembling forty divisions at a front of about 60 kilometers for an offensive the size of which the West hasn't seen for four years.

Up to the morning of december 16th 1944, and the hour of 05:30, not one man in the entire Allied Expeditionary Force was prepared for this offensive. That's a bit different from things like the D-Day invasion, which had been expected for three years, isn't it?

 

Yes, but many people (thru captured Germans and air recon) found good evidence that the Germans were going to launch an offensive, but most of the generals totally discounted the possibility. During D-Day the Allies made an active and very effective effort to deceive Hitler. During Ardennes the Allied generals deceived themselves.

 

It happens a lot in WWII: warnings signs were detected by ignored by leaders which led to catostrophic results.
The British warned Stalin about operation Barbarrosa, even the Russian intelligence picked up on the increased in activities along the border. Of course, Stalin thought was a British plot to get him into the war.
General Billy Mitchell predicted the Japanese bombing of pearl Harbor, in the 1920's. US intelligence and code breakers also sent warning messages to the navy regarding impending Japanese aggression, except the messages were cast aside until later. The radar stations even picked up the flight of japanese planes, except they thought it was B-17 bombers.

 

Maybe not the 'best' deception, but quite a nice one!

I recently met mt girlfriend's grandad, who had been in minesweepers during WW2. He told me about HMS Centurion, an old battleship (built in 1910, I have discovered) that had been converted into a radio-controlled target-ship between the wars, then converted into the HQ/Depot ship for the minesweeper flotilla in Portsmouth.

It was then taken into dry dock and fitted with dummy wooden guns/superstructure/etc to resemble a King George V Battleship, and moored in the Channel.
Churchill himself apparently came down to witness its launch, at night.

The conversion to KG5 was done while the cruiser HMS Kent was also in drydock in Plymouth (Davenport, according to what I can find out, but hey), which was between September 1940 & September 1941

 

A great deception was the body of a false British officer that conveniently washed ashore in Spain.The documents contained in a briefcase forced the Germans to redeploy their forces away from where Allied invasions of Italy were going to take place.

 

Another good deception.A small British surface force chased the German pocket-battleship Graf Spee to South America after slugging it out with her.While there,the Captain was given information that an overwhelming force was waiting for him to depart.When the Graf Spee moved into open water,she was scuttled by her crew to avoid capture.I also believe the captain of the Graf Spee didn't want to see his crew perish.The ship only had a skeleton crew after leaving their wounded in South America.As it turned out,there was no overwhelming force waiting for him.

 

I remember this. The Brits sent out messages that convinced Captain Langsdorff that the battlecruiser REPULSE (I think it was her, anyway) and the carrier ARK ROYAL were waiting for his ship to come out so they could pounce on her. As Sturm Tiger said, these ships were still several days away.

 

Because of this the Third Reich lost what appeared to be a promising Captain when Langsdorf shot himself.

 

From what I read, langstodf was a gentlemen, he always treated the captured allies prisoners well. If only the Wehrmacht in WWII can take lessons from the Kriegsmarine.

 

Langsdorff was indeed a gentleman; the prisoners he kept aboard his ship all spoke highly of him. However, he wasn't a very good fighter, IMHO. ADMIRAL GRAF SPEE could have, and should have, sunk or driven off all three of Commodore Harwood's cruisers. As it was, she didn't even finish off EXETER, which was very badly damaged. And historians to this day can't figure out whjy he sought shelter in Montevideo (sp?) instead of Buenos Aires, where he was likely to have gotten a much friendlier reception.

 

I have to say that D-Day was no secret to German intelligence. The German General Staff knew where and approximately where. The fact that Hitler chose not to believe the reports is a different matter.

The Ardennes offensive? Perhaps one of the best, but even in its early stages, Patton figured it out, stopped his attack, and was moving to the threatened sector within 24 hours. Still, a good ruse by the Germans.

The best one? I'll have to ponder on that one. I guess it depends on scope. The German 150th Brigade in the Ardennes offensive was an excellent ruse. Rommel's use of vehicles to raise dudt in North Africa to make the Brits think there was a large formation going here & there was another.

The Soviet spy RADO was, I believe, the best kept secret of the war!

:smok:

 

There is a misunderstanding here. Patton arrived at the threatened spot in the front line 24 hours after having been given permission to act against the German offensive. This order was given on December 18th if I'm not mistaken, that is two days after the offensive was unleashed. There was no 'figuring it out and moving to it in 24hrs.' He like all others didn't know what hit the Allies.

This ploy hardly ever worked. For example, it was American standard policy that no more than three men were to ride a jeep at any one time; the German Greif teams counted four men in a Jeep. This made them stand out to the MPs. This is just one example of this excellent idea failing in practice. Also, you can't honestly say that those Panthers with plates look like M10s!

I'm for these two, good ones Greg.

Roel

 

I beleive they called that '"just a little elbow room"'.

 

I think the Japanese sailing behind the stormfront was a pretty good one too. Even though the Russians knew the Imperial Japanese Navy was going to attack the Brits and Americans in the Pacific.

 

I like the work the Commonwealth used to ruse the imaginary forces in Britain, after Dunkirk, for the Germans to think they were going to face serious opposition on the beaches. It did work.

Oh to have been a fly on a wall in some of the war operations rooms of every nation.