Today is the sixtieth anniversary of D-Day. I was going to get my chain-smoking monkey research squad to do a full report, but they surprisingly pointed me towards Blackfive’s thorough posting on the subject, so I will just recommend you read that:
…you will find links to extraordinary bloggers telling the stories of D-Day from their unique perspectives. Instead of term paper descriptions, you’ll see the beaches and cliffs of the Normandy coast, you’ll read letters of the survivors and hear about the great sacrifices made by our neighbors to the north…and you’ll never forget the Greatest Generation.
There is some great stuff there. I found this piece on Allied deceptions particularly interesting. I have written about the brilliance of Operation Fortitude (along with a few of it’s subsidiary Operations) before, but the author of this article goes on to explain other deception plans as well, including some lesser known and smaller operations:
Operation Taxable was designed to divert attention from Normandy by fooling the Germans into believing that a large convoy of slow-moving ships was crossing the Channel towards Pas-de-Calais. It was completely dependent on absolute precision in flight and navigation for its execution. In tandem with a few Royal Navy motor gunboats (Operation Moonshine) that were actually crossing the Channel, the flyers released ?window? ? metallic strips that would show up on radar and make it look like a large convoy was en route.
Fascinating stuff, and there’s lots more where that came from…