Operation Mincemeat
Encyclopedia
Operation Mincemeat was a successful British deception
plan during World War II
. As part of the widespread deception plan Operation Barclay
to cover the intended invasion of Italy from North Africa
, Mincemeat helped to convince the German
high command
that the Allies
planned to invade Greece
and Sardinia
in 1943 instead of Sicily
, the actual objective. This was accomplished by persuading the Germans that they had, by accident, intercepted "top secret" documents giving details of Allied war plans. The documents were attached to a corpse deliberately left to wash up on a beach in Punta Umbría
in Spain. The story was used as the plot in Duff Cooper
's 1950 novel Operation Heartbreak, but revealed as a true story in the 1953 book The Man Who Never Was
.
to invade French North Africa was imminent, and victory in the North African Campaign
was expected. Allied planners considered the next step in the war and decided to continue attacks in the Mediterranean.
From North Africa, attacks could be made either into Italy or through the Balkans trapping the German forces there between the Western Allies and the Soviets. Control of Sicily would open the Mediterranean
to Allied shipping and allow invasion of continental Europe, making Sicily an obvious strategic objective. German planners saw this as well; Winston Churchill
commented "Everyone but a bloody fool would know that it's Sicily."
The massive Allied buildup of resources for the invasion (code-named Operation Husky) would be detected. The Germans would know that some large attack was coming. However, if the Allies could deceive the Germans about where that attack was going, the Germans might disperse or divert some significant part of their forces, which would help the invasion succeed. This had already been practiced by the British in the fighting in North Africa and the British had established a competent system for deception of the enemy, able to give the appearance of fake formations and to feed misinformation through double agents and diplomatic rumour.
Several months before, Flight Lt.
Charles Cholmondeley RAF of Section B1(a) of MI5
, suggested dropping a dead man attached to a badly-opened parachute
in France
with a radio set for the Germans to find. The idea was for the Germans to think that the Allies did not know the set was captured, and pretend to be Allied agents operating it, thus allowing the Allies to feed them misinformation. This was dismissed as unworkable; however the idea was taken up later by the Twenty Committee, the small inter-service, inter-departmental intelligence team in charge of double agents. Cholmondeley was on the Twenty Committee, as was Lt. Cmdr.
Ewen Montagu
, a Royal Navy
intelligence officer.
According to historian Ben Macintyre, Cholmondeley got the idea from a 1939 memo written by Ian Fleming
, later author of the James Bond
novels. Fleming himself reportedly got the idea from a 1930s detective novel by Basil Thomson
.
Montagu and Cholmondeley developed Cholmondeley's idea into a workable plan, using documents instead of a radio. The Committee thought of planting the documents on a body with a defective parachute
. However, the Germans knew that it was Allied policy never to send sensitive documents over enemy territory, so they decided to make the man a victim of a plane crash at sea. That would explain how the man would be several days dead and how he could be carrying secret documents. The body would be floated ashore in Spain, where the nominally neutral government
was known to cooperate with the Abwehr
(German intelligence). The British were sure the Spanish authorities would search the body and allow German agents to examine anything found. Montagu gave the operation the code name of Mincemeat, just restored to the list of available names after its use for another successful mission.
The deliberate planting of fake documents on the enemy was not new. Known as the "Haversack Ruse", it had been practiced by the British in the First World War. Also, in August 1942 in North Africa, before the Battle of Alam Halfa
a corpse was placed in a blown-up scout car, in a minefield facing the German 90th Light Division just south of Qaret el Abd. With the corpse was a map showing the locations of non-existent British minefields. The Germans fell for the ruse, and Rommel's
panzers were routed to areas of soft sand where they bogged down.
In September 1942, a PBY Catalina
crashed off Cadiz
carrying Paymaster-Lt. James Hadden Turner, a courier. He was carrying a letter from General Mark Clark to the Governor of Gibraltar
, which named French agents in North Africa and gave the date of the Torch landings as November 4 (although the actual date was November 8). Turner's body washed up on the beach near Tarifa
and was recovered by the Spanish authorities. When the body was returned to the British, the letter was still on it, and technicians determined that the letter was never opened. The Germans had the means to read the letter without opening the envelope, but if they did, they apparently decided the letter was "planted" and the information was bogus, and so ignored it.
, Montagu and his team determined what kind of body they needed: a man who appeared to have died at sea by hypothermia
and drowning, and then floated ashore after several days. However, finding a usable body seemed almost impossible, as indiscreet inquiries would cause talk, and it was impossible to tell a dead man's next of kin what the body was wanted for. Under quiet pressure, Bentley Purchase, coroner
of St. Pancras
District in London
, obtained the body of a 34-year old Welsh man named Glyndwr Michael
, on the condition that the man's real identity would never be revealed. The man had died after ingesting rat poison which contained phosphorus
. After being ingested, the phosphide reacts with hydrochloric acid
in the human stomach, generating phosphine
, a highly toxic gas. Coroner Purchase explained, “This dose was not sufficient to kill him outright, and its only effect was so to impair the functioning of the liver that he died a little time afterwards”, leaving few clues to the cause of death. Montagu later claimed the man died from pneumonia, and that the family had been contacted and permission obtained, but none of this was true. The dead man's parents had died and no known relatives were found.
The next step was creating a "legend": a synthetic identity for the dead man. He became "Captain
(Acting Major) William "Bill" Martin, Royal Marines
", born 1907, in Cardiff
, Wales
, and assigned to Headquarters, Combined Operations. As a Royal Marine, Major Martin came under Admiralty
authority, and it would be easy to ensure that all official inquiries and messages about his death would be routed to the Naval Intelligence Division
. The Army's arrangements were different and much harder to control. Also, he could wear battledress
rather than a naval uniform (uniforms were tailor-made by Gieves
of Savile Row
, and they couldn't have Gieves's tailor measure a corpse.) The rank of acting Major made him senior enough to be entrusted with sensitive documents, but not so prominent that anyone would expect to know him. The name "Martin" was chosen because there were several Martins of about that rank in the Royal Marines.
To build up the legend, they provided a fiancée named "Pam". Major Martin carried a snapshot of "Pam" (actually a clerk named Jean Leslie from MI5), two love letters, and a jeweller's bill, dated 19th April 1943, from the exclusive S J Phillips Ltd of 113 New Bond Street, for a diamond engagement ring costing £53, 10s 6d, a ring that would cost £13,000 in 2010. The ring was described on the invoice as being a single diamond ring, small diamond shoulders with an engraving to Pam from WM 14.4.43. The author of the love letters has been reported as Hester Leggett, the head of Leslie’s department at MI5, and not
Victoire Evelyn Patricia 'Paddy' Bennett
, later Lady Evelyn Ridsdale, the only woman working in Room 39 under the command of Admiral John Henry Godfrey
. Ian Fleming
also worked in Room 39; he later modeled the characters of Miss Moneypenny
and M
on Bennett and Admiral Godfrey, respectively.
In keeping with his rank, he was given some good quality underwear, at the time extremely difficult to obtain due to rationing. Items of woollen underwear owned by the late Herbert Fisher
, the Master of New College Oxford, having been run over and killed by a lorry, were secured and used to underpin the verisimilitude of the body.
He also had a pompous letter from his father, a letter from the family solicitor
, and a letter from Ernest Whitley Jones, joint general manager of Lloyds Bank
, demanding payment of an overdraft of £79 19s 2d (£79.96). There were a book of stamps, a silver cross and St Christopher’s medallion, a pencil stub, keys, a used twopenny bus ticket, ticket stubs from a London theatre, a bill for four nights' lodging at the Naval and Military Club, and a receipt from Gieves & Hawkes
for a new shirt (this last was an error: it was for cash, and officers never paid cash at Gieves; but the Germans did not catch it). All these documents were on authentic stationery or billheads. The dates of the ticket stubs and lodging bill indicated that Major Martin had left London on April 24. If his body washed ashore on 30 April, presumably after several days at sea, then he must have flown from Britain and crashed at sea.
To make the Major even more believable, Montagu and his team decided to suggest that he was a bit careless. His ID card was marked as a replacement for one that had been lost, and his pass to Combined Operations HQ had expired a few weeks before his departure and not been renewed. This last touch carried an element of risk, as the Abwehr might be suspicious of a careless man having been entrusted with sensitive documents.
, Vice Chief of the Imperial General Staff) to "My dear Alex" (General Sir Harold Alexander, commander of 18th Army Group in Algeria
and Tunisia
). The letter covered several "sensitive" subjects, such as the (unwanted) award of Purple Heart
medals by U.S. forces to British servicemen serving with them, and the appointment of a new commander of the Guards Brigade
. This explained its being hand-carried rather than sent through regular channels. On the specific topic of Allied plans in the Mediterranean, the letter referred to Operation Husky as the invasion of Greece by troops from Egypt
and Libya
under General Henry Maitland Wilson
(Commander-in-Chief, Middle East). Two assault beaches and some of the assigned troops were named. (Husky was actually the invasion of Sicily.) The letter also mentioned a second planned attack, Operation Brimstone, for which the cover target was Sicily. This implied that Alexander's forces in Tunisia would invade Sardinia, that being the only other plausible target. Nye added that "we stand a very good chance of making [the Germans] think we are going for Sicily." The letter was composed by Sir Archibald himself and addressed by Patricia Trehearne (later Davies) in Room 13 of the Admiralty.
There was also a letter of introduction for Major Martin from his putative commanding officer
, Admiral Louis Mountbatten
, Chief of Combined Operations, to Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham
, Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean Fleet
and Allied naval commander in the Mediterranean. This letter included a clumsy joke about "sardines", which Montagu inserted in hopes the Germans would see it as a reference to a planned invasion of Sardinia.
The Germans (and their Spanish friends) had apparently missed the letter in Paymaster-Lt. Turner's pocket, so Montagu's team decided to put the documents in a briefcase which could not be overlooked. To justify carrying documents in a briefcase, "Major Martin" was given two copies of the official pamphlet on Combined Operations
by Hilary Saunders
, and a letter from Mountbatten to General Eisenhower
, asking him to write a brief foreword for the pamphlet's U.S. edition.
It was also necessary to ensure that the body and the briefcase with the documents would be recovered together. The team first thought of having the handle clutched in the corpse's hand, held in place by rigor mortis
. But the rigor would probably wear off and the briefcase would drift away. The team therefore equipped Major Martin with a leather-covered chain, such as was used by bank and jewellery couriers to secure their cases against snatching. The chain unobtrusively runs down a sleeve to the case. British officer couriers didn't use such chains, but the Germans might not know that, nor be certain that a real "Major Martin" wouldn't use one for this special job. It seemed unlikely that the Major would keep the bag at his wrist during the long flight from Britain, so the chain was looped around the belt of his trench coat
.
's bedroom in the annex where he found Churchill in bed smoking a cigar. Churchill showed considerable interest in the plan, and Bevan felt it necessary to point out that the operation could go very badly. The Prime Minister responded in a characteristically pithy manner: “In that case, we shall have to get the body back and give it another swim.”
. The canister was filled with dry ice
and sealed up. When the dry ice sublimated, it filled the canister with carbon dioxide
and drove out any oxygen, thus preserving the body without refrigeration. Cholmondeley and Montagu delivered it to Holy Loch
, Scotland
where it was taken on board the British submarine
HMS Seraph
. Seraphs commander (Lt. Bill Jewell
) and crew had previous special operations experience. Jewell told his men that the canister contained a top secret meteorological
device to be deployed near Spain.
On 19 April, Seraph set sail. On 30 April, Seraph arrived at a point about a mile off the coast of Spain, near the town of Huelva
. The British knew that there was an Abwehr
agent in Huelva who was friendly with the Spanish officials there.
At 0430 on 30 April, Seraph surfaced. Lt. Jewell had the canister brought up on deck, then sent all his crew below except the officers. He briefed them on the details of the secret operation. They opened the canister, fitted Major Martin with a life jacket, and attached his briefcase with the papers. Jewell read the 39th Psalm, although the burial service was not specified in the orders, and the body was gently pushed into the sea where the tide would bring it ashore. Jewell afterwards sent a message to the Committee: "MINCEMEAT completed". The canister was shot through so that it would sink, it stubbornly refused to sink and was eventually rigged with a small plastic explosive charge to destroy it.
The body was found at around 9:30 a.m. by a local fisherman, José Antonio Rey Maria.
agent in Huelva, Adolf Clauss. He was the son of the German consul, and operated under the cover of an agriculture technician. Three days later, the British Naval Attaché
in Spain reported the body's discovery, and the Committee was notified. The body was handed over to the British Vice-Consul F. K. Hazeldene, and Major Martin was buried in Huelva with full military honours on 4 May.
The Vice Consul arranged for a pathologist, Eduardo Del Torno, to perform a post-mortem examination. Del Torno reported that the man had fallen into the sea while still alive and had no bruises, death was due to drowning, and the body had been in the sea between 3 and 5 days. A more comprehensive examination was not made because the pathologist took him for a Roman Catholic
. Martin wore a silver crucifix
and had a St. Christopher plaque in his wallet and his identity tags were marked RC.
Montagu had Major Martin included in the published list of British casualties which appeared in The Times
on 4 June, in case the Germans checked up there. By coincidence, the names of two other officers who had died when their plane was lost at sea were also published that day, giving credence to the Major Martin story. The issue of the Times
that recorded Major William Martin's "demise" was also the same that announced that of film star Leslie Howard
, shot down by Luftwaffe
aircraft on the Bay of Biscay
. To further the ruse, the Admiralty sent several messages to the Naval Attaché about the papers which Major Martin had been carrying. The Attaché was urgently directed to locate the papers, and if they were in Spanish hands to recover them at all costs, but also to avoid alerting the Spanish to their importance. The briefcase and papers had been taken up by the Spanish Navy
, who had turned over the documents to the Alto Estado Mayor, the Supreme General Staff. From there, they apparently disappeared, and even the German Gestapo
could not locate them.
Major Karl-Erich Kuhlenthal, the German's most senior Abwehr
agent in Spain, took a keen interest in finding the papers. He stirred up so much attention among the Spanish that Colonel José López Barrón Cerruti, Spain’s most senior secret policeman and a keen fascist, took up finding the briefcase. Word of the find reached Abwehr headquarters in Germany. Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, was asked by Kuhlenthal to personally intervene and persuade the Spanish to surrender the documents. Lieutenant-Colonel Ramón Pardo Suárez located the documents and arranged to make them available to the Germans. The Spanish removed the still-damp paper by tightly winding it around a probe into a cylindrical shape, and then pulling it out between the envelope flap, still closed by a wax seal, and the envelope body. Pardo took the dried contents to the German Embassy and gave Wilhelm Leissner, the Abwehr chief in Madrid, one hour to make copies. The embassy immediately radioed the text to Berlin, with the paper copies of the photos following a few days later.
The documents were re-inserted into their original envelopes, reversing the process by which they were removed, and returned to the British Attaché by the Chief of Staff of the Navy on 13 May, with the assurance that "everything was there". When the papers were examined after their return, the British analyzed the documents and confirmed they had been opened. Further confirmation from Ultra prompted a message to Churchill, then in the United States
: "Mincemeat Swallowed Whole."
The effort Montagu and his team made to build up Martin's identity paid off. The Germans noted and accepted all the personal details. They noted the date on the ticket stubs, and deduced that Martin must have been flying from Britain to Gibraltar. Ironically, their report gave a wrong date (27 April instead of 22 April), and they concluded that the crash had occurred on 28 April, even though the medical evidence "showed" that Martin had been dead in the water for several days by 30 April. But the Germans missed the contradiction, canceling their own error. As a result Adolf Hitler
was so convinced of the veracity of the bogus documents that he disagreed with Benito Mussolini
that Sicily would be the most likely invasion point, insisting that any incursion against the island should be regarded as a feint.
German defensive efforts were substantially redirected: reinforcements were sent to Greece, Sardinia
and Corsica
instead of Sicily. British commando activities had also been carried out in Greece. The renowned general Erwin Rommel
was sent to Greece to assume overall command. A group of "R boat
s" was transferred from Sicily, and three additional minefields were laid off the Greek coast. Three panzer
divisions were moved to Greece – one from France, and two from the Eastern Front
. The latter was perhaps the most critical move – reducing German combat strength against the Russians
in the Kursk salient
. (Influencing events on the Eastern Front was apparently neither intended nor foreseen by the British originators of the plan, who were preoccupied with their own part of the war.)
On 9 July, the Allies invaded Sicily in Operation Husky. The Germans remained convinced for two more weeks that the main attacks would be in Sardinia and Greece, and kept forces out of action there till it was too late. Only on 12 July did the Germans have the 3rd Regiment of 1st Fallschirmsjäger Division parachute onto the island ahead of the advancing British 8th Army.
Ewen Montagu received the OBE
for his part in Operation Mincemeat. Charles Cholmondeley received the MBE for masterminding the plan.
was a diplomat who had held several top level posts during the war. In 1950, he published a spy novel, Operation Heartbreak. The key plot device was floating a corpse into Spain with false documents to deceive the Germans. Cooper had come up with the idea on his own, but naturally many of those concerned with Mincemeat (including Germans and Spaniards) became concerned and started talking. The 'flap' attracted the attention of the British press, and wild rumours began to circulate. At this point the British security services decided that the best response was to publish the story. Ewen Montagu took a week-end off from his busy legal practice, and wrote the book The Man Who Never Was
.
It was an immediate best-seller and was made into a movie of the same name two years later. The movie added some fictitious elements for drama, such as a German agent in London verifying "Major Martin"'s background, with Montagu and his colleagues one step ahead of him. The submarine used in the film wore pennant number P219, that of HMS Seraph, and she was indeed still in commission in 1954/55.
In 1977, Montagu published a second book, Beyond Top Secret ULTRA, in which he recounted his secret war work. It could not be revealed earlier, as it involved both Ultra and the Double Cross System
. In Chapter 13 he gives a short version of the Mincemeat story, including some details not in The Man Who Never Was.
, a Welsh
alcoholic vagrant, allegedly from Aberbargoed
, whose name is mentioned on the War Memorial of that village and who died of ingesting rat poison, although how this happened is unknown.Morgan found Michael's name in the Public Record Office
in Kew
, west London
. Ben McIntyre confirmed in his book, titled Operation Mincemeat, that the dead man was Glyndwr Michael. He was found on 26 January 1943 in an abandoned warehouse near King's Cross Station in London and was taken to St Pancras hospital suffering from "acute chemical poisoning." It is thought that rat poison, known as 'Battle's Vermin Killer' was used. This was a paste that was laced with highly toxic white phosphorus. The assumption was made that Michael had intended to take his own life. His own father had committed suicide when Michael was 15 years old. His mother died in 1940 and Michael was alone in the world slowly falling into a deeply depressive state. He drifted, as many did, towards London, and was utterly destitute and homeless, his life gradually falling apart. It is also possible that the poisoning was accidental due to a starving Michael having been so hungry that he ate scraps of bread coated with poison to kill rats. Phosphoric poisoning is a horrific way to die, usually taking three days, as the phosphorus reacts with the stomach's own hydrochloric acid to create phosphine gas. Death is due to the breakdown of the central nervous system, jaundice, coma, kidney, liver and heart failure, before death. It took Michael two days to die. He was able to inform his nurses who he was and what he had eaten. He died on 28 January 1943, and when his body reached the hospital's morgue, district coroner Bentley Purchase informed Ewen Montagu that he had found the ideal candidate for his project. McIntyre reported that the corpse was kept refrigerated in the morgue until the mission was ready. Once aboard the Seraph, the body was preserved by placing it in a sealed canister containing dry ice
, which prevented oxygen from causing decomposition. In 1996 The Daily Telegraph published a story based on information released by the Public Record Office
and identified the corpse as Glyndwr Michael. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission in January 1998 added an inscription to the gravestone of "Major Martin" in the Catholic cemetery of Huelva that reads, "Glyndwr Michael served as Major William Martin." The historian Christopher Andrew reaches the same conclusion as to the identity of "Major Martin" in the authorised history of the Security Service
, The Defence of the Realm
.
(a US
-built escort carrier), which was then in the Firth of Clyde
, which they ascribe to an accidental torpedoing by a British submarine. Dasher sank, and 379 men were killed. The British authorities tried to keep the story quiet, rather than have the public get upset over alleged defective American shipbuilding. The dead were originally buried in an unmarked mass grave. The Steeles claim that the Mincemeat body was John "Jack" Melville, 37, one of the dead sailors. They assert that Michael's corpse was acquired in January 1943, and would have suffered excessive decomposition by April 30, even if refrigerated. They claim that freezing was not an option as it would have produced observable changes to the body, which contradicts Montagu's account. (Montagu mentions having to thaw the body's feet so that boots could be put on it.)
According to the Steeles, HMS Seraph was berthed at Blyth, Northumberland
, but she was moved all the way around Scotland
to Holy Loch
, a major submarine base, on the west coast, and much further from London, just before Montagu delivered the canister. The Steeles argue that this makes no sense unless the body originally designated to be "Major Martin" had decomposed and become unusable, and that a "fresh" body from the Dasher disaster was to be substituted. They say Montagu brought the canister from London, but it was empty.
On 8 October 2004, a memorial service was held in Melville's honour aboard the current HMS Dasher
, a patrol boat
, in which Melville's role as "Major Martin" was officially recognised by the Royal Navy. At the service, Lt. Cmdr. Mark Hill, CO of the naval squadron in Cyprus, said:
The Dasher theory, however, has been denied by the Naval Historical Branch who responded to a Freedom of Information request (D/NHB/25/56 of 22 Jan 2010) as follows:
"As far as both the Royal Navy and the Ministry of Defence are concerned, the body used in Operation Mincemeat was that of Glyndwr Michael as described in the files now in The National Archive at Kew.
With regard to the memorial service held on board the current HMS DASHER in October 2004, it should be stressed that, despite media emphasis on a possible 'Man Who Never Was' connection, this was a perfectly proper memorial for those lost in the previous ship of that name. It had been cleared through both HQ British Force Cyprus and the Permanent Joint Head Quarters at Northwood. The statements... as accurately reported in The Scotsman, arose through information that they had been given locally, and which they believed in good faith. Unfortunately, the statements had not been referred to this office for an opinion."
Operation Mincemeat inspired a similar plan in Cryptonomicon
by Neal Stephenson
, in Red Rabbit
by Tom Clancy
, in Body of Lies
by David Ignatius
, in the film version of You Only Live Twice
, and in the science fiction series Space: Above and Beyond
. A play of the same name, written by Adrian Jackson and Farhana Sheikh, was first staged by Cardboard Citizens in 2001 in the old Hartley's Jam factory in Southwark. It was staged once again as a site-specific, promenade performance in Cordy House, Shoreditch, in June–July 2009. Cardboard Citizens deals with issues surrounding homelessness, and the play examined identity, together with Major Martin's quest to find out who he was. In 2008 Simon Corble
launched his play, also called Operation: Mincemeat with a script-in-hand run performed by the Found Theatre Company. This play saw its world premiere in the 2010 Adelaide Fringe Festival
, performed by the Adelaide University Fringe Club to critical acclaim.
In his book "The Double Agents" W.E.B Griffin depicts operation Mincemeat. Fictional characters are blended with Ian Fleming, the actors David Niven and Peter Ustinov, and other historical figures as members of Montagu's "committee" to plan and execute Operation Mincemeat.
Disinformation
Disinformation is intentionally false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. For this reason, it is synonymous with and sometimes called black propaganda. It is an act of deception and false statements to convince someone of untruth...
plan during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. As part of the widespread deception plan Operation Barclay
Operation Barclay
Operation Barclay was an Allied deception plan in support of the invasion of Sicily, in 1943, during World War II.This operation was intended to deceive the Axis military commands as to the location of the expected Allied assault across the Mediterranean and divert attention and resources from Sicily...
to cover the intended invasion of Italy from North Africa
North Africa
North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...
, Mincemeat helped to convince the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
high command
Command (military formation)
A command in military terminology is an organisational unit that the individual in Military command has responsibility for. A Commander will normally be specifically appointed into the role in order to provide a legal framework for the authority bestowed...
that the Allies
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
planned to invade Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
and Sardinia
Sardinia
Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...
in 1943 instead of Sicily
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
, the actual objective. This was accomplished by persuading the Germans that they had, by accident, intercepted "top secret" documents giving details of Allied war plans. The documents were attached to a corpse deliberately left to wash up on a beach in Punta Umbría
Punta Umbría
Punta Umbría is a town and municipality in the province of Huelva, part of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia.The Punta in its name comes from the long point going out to the sea from the beach....
in Spain. The story was used as the plot in Duff Cooper
Duff Cooper
Alfred Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich GCMG, DSO, PC , known as Duff Cooper, was a British Conservative Party politician, diplomat and author. He wrote six books, including an autobiography, Old Men Forget, and a biography of Talleyrand...
's 1950 novel Operation Heartbreak, but revealed as a true story in the 1953 book The Man Who Never Was
The Man Who Never Was
The Man Who Never Was is a nonfiction 1953 book by Ewen Montagu and a 1956 Second World War war film, based on the book and dramatising actual events...
.
Background
In late 1942, Operation TorchOperation Torch
Operation Torch was the British-American invasion of French North Africa in World War II during the North African Campaign, started on 8 November 1942....
to invade French North Africa was imminent, and victory in the North African Campaign
North African campaign
During the Second World War, the North African Campaign took place in North Africa from 10 June 1940 to 13 May 1943. It included campaigns fought in the Libyan and Egyptian deserts and in Morocco and Algeria and Tunisia .The campaign was fought between the Allies and Axis powers, many of whom had...
was expected. Allied planners considered the next step in the war and decided to continue attacks in the Mediterranean.
From North Africa, attacks could be made either into Italy or through the Balkans trapping the German forces there between the Western Allies and the Soviets. Control of Sicily would open the Mediterranean
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...
to Allied shipping and allow invasion of continental Europe, making Sicily an obvious strategic objective. German planners saw this as well; Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
commented "Everyone but a bloody fool would know that it's Sicily."
The massive Allied buildup of resources for the invasion (code-named Operation Husky) would be detected. The Germans would know that some large attack was coming. However, if the Allies could deceive the Germans about where that attack was going, the Germans might disperse or divert some significant part of their forces, which would help the invasion succeed. This had already been practiced by the British in the fighting in North Africa and the British had established a competent system for deception of the enemy, able to give the appearance of fake formations and to feed misinformation through double agents and diplomatic rumour.
Several months before, Flight Lt.
Flight Lieutenant
Flight lieutenant is a junior commissioned rank in the Royal Air Force and the air forces of many Commonwealth countries. It ranks above flying officer and immediately below squadron leader. The name of the rank is the complete phrase; it is never shortened to "lieutenant"...
Charles Cholmondeley RAF of Section B1(a) of MI5
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...
, suggested dropping a dead man attached to a badly-opened parachute
Parachute
A parachute is a device used to slow the motion of an object through an atmosphere by creating drag, or in the case of ram-air parachutes, aerodynamic lift. Parachutes are usually made out of light, strong cloth, originally silk, now most commonly nylon...
in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
with a radio set for the Germans to find. The idea was for the Germans to think that the Allies did not know the set was captured, and pretend to be Allied agents operating it, thus allowing the Allies to feed them misinformation. This was dismissed as unworkable; however the idea was taken up later by the Twenty Committee, the small inter-service, inter-departmental intelligence team in charge of double agents. Cholmondeley was on the Twenty Committee, as was Lt. Cmdr.
Lieutenant Commander
Lieutenant Commander is a commissioned officer rank in many navies. The rank is superior to a lieutenant and subordinate to a commander...
Ewen Montagu
Ewen Montagu
Captain The Hon. Ewen Edward Samuel Montagu, CBE, QC, DL, RNR was a British judge, writer and Naval intelligence officer....
, a Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
intelligence officer.
According to historian Ben Macintyre, Cholmondeley got the idea from a 1939 memo written by Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...
, later author of the James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
novels. Fleming himself reportedly got the idea from a 1930s detective novel by Basil Thomson
Basil Thomson
Sir Basil Home Thomson, KCB was a British intelligence officer, police officer, prison governor, colonial administrator, and writer.-Early life:...
.
Montagu and Cholmondeley developed Cholmondeley's idea into a workable plan, using documents instead of a radio. The Committee thought of planting the documents on a body with a defective parachute
Parachute
A parachute is a device used to slow the motion of an object through an atmosphere by creating drag, or in the case of ram-air parachutes, aerodynamic lift. Parachutes are usually made out of light, strong cloth, originally silk, now most commonly nylon...
. However, the Germans knew that it was Allied policy never to send sensitive documents over enemy territory, so they decided to make the man a victim of a plane crash at sea. That would explain how the man would be several days dead and how he could be carrying secret documents. The body would be floated ashore in Spain, where the nominally neutral government
Spain in World War II
The Spanish State under General Franco was officially non-belligerent during World War II. This status, although not recognised by international law, was intended to express the regime's sympathy and material support for the Axis Powers, to which Spain offered considerable material, economic, and...
was known to cooperate with the Abwehr
Abwehr
The Abwehr was a German military intelligence organisation from 1921 to 1944. The term Abwehr was used as a concession to Allied demands that Germany's post-World War I intelligence activities be for "defensive" purposes only...
(German intelligence). The British were sure the Spanish authorities would search the body and allow German agents to examine anything found. Montagu gave the operation the code name of Mincemeat, just restored to the list of available names after its use for another successful mission.
The deliberate planting of fake documents on the enemy was not new. Known as the "Haversack Ruse", it had been practiced by the British in the First World War. Also, in August 1942 in North Africa, before the Battle of Alam Halfa
Battle of Alam Halfa
The Battle of Alam el Halfa took place between 30 August and 5 September 1942 south of El Alamein during the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War. Panzerarmee Afrika—a German-Italian force commanded by Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel—attempted an envelopment of the British 8th Army,...
a corpse was placed in a blown-up scout car, in a minefield facing the German 90th Light Division just south of Qaret el Abd. With the corpse was a map showing the locations of non-existent British minefields. The Germans fell for the ruse, and Rommel's
Erwin Rommel
Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel , popularly known as the Desert Fox , was a German Field Marshal of World War II. He won the respect of both his own troops and the enemies he fought....
panzers were routed to areas of soft sand where they bogged down.
In September 1942, a PBY Catalina
PBY Catalina
The Consolidated PBY Catalina was an American flying boat of the 1930s and 1940s produced by Consolidated Aircraft. It was one of the most widely used multi-role aircraft of World War II. PBYs served with every branch of the United States Armed Forces and in the air forces and navies of many other...
crashed off Cadiz
Cádiz
Cadiz is a city and port in southwestern Spain. It is the capital of the homonymous province, one of eight which make up the autonomous community of Andalusia....
carrying Paymaster-Lt. James Hadden Turner, a courier. He was carrying a letter from General Mark Clark to the Governor of Gibraltar
Gibraltar
Gibraltar is a British overseas territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance of the Mediterranean. A peninsula with an area of , it has a northern border with Andalusia, Spain. The Rock of Gibraltar is the major landmark of the region...
, which named French agents in North Africa and gave the date of the Torch landings as November 4 (although the actual date was November 8). Turner's body washed up on the beach near Tarifa
Tarifa
Tarifa is a small town in the province of Cádiz, Andalusia, on the southernmost coast of Spain. The town is located on the Costa de la Luz and across the Straits of Gibraltar facing Morocco. The municipality includes Punta de Tarifa, the southernmost point in continental Europe. There are five...
and was recovered by the Spanish authorities. When the body was returned to the British, the letter was still on it, and technicians determined that the letter was never opened. The Germans had the means to read the letter without opening the envelope, but if they did, they apparently decided the letter was "planted" and the information was bogus, and so ignored it.
Major William Martin, Royal Marines
With the help of the renowned pathologist Sir Bernard SpilsburyBernard Spilsbury
Sir Bernard Henry Spilsbury was an English pathologist. His cases include Hawley Harvey Crippen, the Seddon case and Major Armstrong poisonings, the "brides in the bath" murders by George Joseph Smith, Louis Voisin, Jean-Pierre Vaquier, the Crumbles murders, Norman Thorne, Donald Merrett, the...
, Montagu and his team determined what kind of body they needed: a man who appeared to have died at sea by hypothermia
Hypothermia
Hypothermia is a condition in which core temperature drops below the required temperature for normal metabolism and body functions which is defined as . Body temperature is usually maintained near a constant level of through biologic homeostasis or thermoregulation...
and drowning, and then floated ashore after several days. However, finding a usable body seemed almost impossible, as indiscreet inquiries would cause talk, and it was impossible to tell a dead man's next of kin what the body was wanted for. Under quiet pressure, Bentley Purchase, coroner
Coroner
A coroner is a government official who* Investigates human deaths* Determines cause of death* Issues death certificates* Maintains death records* Responds to deaths in mass disasters* Identifies unknown dead* Other functions depending on local laws...
of St. Pancras
St Pancras, London
St Pancras is an area of London. For many centuries the name has been used for various officially-designated areas, but now is used informally and rarely having been largely superseded by several other names for overlapping districts.-Ancient parish:...
District in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, obtained the body of a 34-year old Welsh man named Glyndwr Michael
Glyndwr Michael
Glyndwr Michael was an illiterate homeless man whose body was used in Operation Mincemeat, the successful World War II deception plan that lured German forces to Greece prior to the Allied invasion of Sicily...
, on the condition that the man's real identity would never be revealed. The man had died after ingesting rat poison which contained phosphorus
Phosphorus
Phosphorus is the chemical element that has the symbol P and atomic number 15. A multivalent nonmetal of the nitrogen group, phosphorus as a mineral is almost always present in its maximally oxidized state, as inorganic phosphate rocks...
. After being ingested, the phosphide reacts with hydrochloric acid
Hydrochloric acid
Hydrochloric acid is a solution of hydrogen chloride in water, that is a highly corrosive, strong mineral acid with many industrial uses. It is found naturally in gastric acid....
in the human stomach, generating phosphine
Phosphine
Phosphine is the compound with the chemical formula PH3. It is a colorless, flammable, toxic gas. Pure phosphine is odourless, but technical grade samples have a highly unpleasant odor like garlic or rotting fish, due to the presence of substituted phosphine and diphosphine...
, a highly toxic gas. Coroner Purchase explained, “This dose was not sufficient to kill him outright, and its only effect was so to impair the functioning of the liver that he died a little time afterwards”, leaving few clues to the cause of death. Montagu later claimed the man died from pneumonia, and that the family had been contacted and permission obtained, but none of this was true. The dead man's parents had died and no known relatives were found.
The next step was creating a "legend": a synthetic identity for the dead man. He became "Captain
Captain (British Army and Royal Marines)
Captain is a junior officer rank of the British Army and Royal Marines. It ranks above Lieutenant and below Major and has a NATO ranking code of OF-2. The rank is equivalent to a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy and to a Flight Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force...
(Acting Major) William "Bill" Martin, Royal Marines
Royal Marines
The Corps of Her Majesty's Royal Marines, commonly just referred to as the Royal Marines , are the marine corps and amphibious infantry of the United Kingdom and, along with the Royal Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary, form the Naval Service...
", born 1907, in Cardiff
Cardiff
Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...
, Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
, and assigned to Headquarters, Combined Operations. As a Royal Marine, Major Martin came under Admiralty
Admiralty
The Admiralty was formerly the authority in the Kingdom of England, and later in the United Kingdom, responsible for the command of the Royal Navy...
authority, and it would be easy to ensure that all official inquiries and messages about his death would be routed to the Naval Intelligence Division
Naval Intelligence Division
The Naval Intelligence Division was the intelligence arm of the British Admiralty before the establishment of a unified Defence Staff in 1965. It dealt with matters concerning British naval plans, with the collection of naval intelligence...
. The Army's arrangements were different and much harder to control. Also, he could wear battledress
Battledress
Battledress, or fatigues in the general sense, is the type of uniform used as combat uniforms, as opposed to 'display' dress or formal uniform worn at parades and functions. It may be either monochrome or in a camouflage pattern...
rather than a naval uniform (uniforms were tailor-made by Gieves
Gieves & Hawkes
Gieves & Hawkes are a bespoke gentleman's tailor located at №1 Savile Row, London.Founded in 1771 and owned by Hong Kong conglomerate USI Holdings Limited, they are one of the oldest continual bespoke tailoring companies in the world....
of Savile Row
Savile Row
Savile Row is a shopping street in Mayfair, central London, famous for its traditional men's bespoke tailoring. The term "bespoke" is understood to have originated in Savile Row when cloth for a suit was said to "be spoken for" by individual customers...
, and they couldn't have Gieves's tailor measure a corpse.) The rank of acting Major made him senior enough to be entrusted with sensitive documents, but not so prominent that anyone would expect to know him. The name "Martin" was chosen because there were several Martins of about that rank in the Royal Marines.
To build up the legend, they provided a fiancée named "Pam". Major Martin carried a snapshot of "Pam" (actually a clerk named Jean Leslie from MI5), two love letters, and a jeweller's bill, dated 19th April 1943, from the exclusive S J Phillips Ltd of 113 New Bond Street, for a diamond engagement ring costing £53, 10s 6d, a ring that would cost £13,000 in 2010. The ring was described on the invoice as being a single diamond ring, small diamond shoulders with an engraving to Pam from WM 14.4.43. The author of the love letters has been reported as Hester Leggett, the head of Leslie’s department at MI5, and not
Victoire Evelyn Patricia 'Paddy' Bennett
Paddy Ridsdale
Dame Victoire Evelyn Patricia "Paddy" Bennett, Lady Ridsdale DBE was a British secretary and intelligence operative. She was author Ian Fleming's secretary during World War II and was the model for his character Miss Moneypenny, James Bond's loyal, long-suffering secretary...
, later Lady Evelyn Ridsdale, the only woman working in Room 39 under the command of Admiral John Henry Godfrey
John Henry Godfrey
Admiral John Henry Godfrey CB was an officer of the Royal Navy and Royal Indian Navy, specializing in navigation....
. Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...
also worked in Room 39; he later modeled the characters of Miss Moneypenny
Miss Moneypenny
Jane Moneypenny, better known as Miss Moneypenny, is a fictional character in the James Bond novels and films. She is secretary to M, who is Bond's boss and head of the British Secret Service...
and M
M (James Bond)
M is a fictional character in Ian Fleming's James Bond series, as well as the films in the Bond franchise. The head of MI6 and Bond's superior, M has been portrayed by three actors in the official Bond film series: Bernard Lee, Robert Brown and since 1995 by Judi Dench. Background =Ian Fleming...
on Bennett and Admiral Godfrey, respectively.
In keeping with his rank, he was given some good quality underwear, at the time extremely difficult to obtain due to rationing. Items of woollen underwear owned by the late Herbert Fisher
Herbert Fisher
Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher OM, FRS, PC was an English historian, educator, and Liberal politician. He served as President of the Board of Education in David Lloyd George's 1916 to 1922 coalition government....
, the Master of New College Oxford, having been run over and killed by a lorry, were secured and used to underpin the verisimilitude of the body.
He also had a pompous letter from his father, a letter from the family solicitor
Solicitor
Solicitors are lawyers who traditionally deal with any legal matter including conducting proceedings in courts. In the United Kingdom, a few Australian states and the Republic of Ireland, the legal profession is split between solicitors and barristers , and a lawyer will usually only hold one title...
, and a letter from Ernest Whitley Jones, joint general manager of Lloyds Bank
Lloyds Bank
Lloyds Bank Plc was a British retail bank which operated in England and Wales from 1765 until its merger into Lloyds TSB in 1995; it remains a registered company but is currently dormant. It expanded during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and took over a number of smaller banking companies...
, demanding payment of an overdraft of £79 19s 2d (£79.96). There were a book of stamps, a silver cross and St Christopher’s medallion, a pencil stub, keys, a used twopenny bus ticket, ticket stubs from a London theatre, a bill for four nights' lodging at the Naval and Military Club, and a receipt from Gieves & Hawkes
Gieves & Hawkes
Gieves & Hawkes are a bespoke gentleman's tailor located at №1 Savile Row, London.Founded in 1771 and owned by Hong Kong conglomerate USI Holdings Limited, they are one of the oldest continual bespoke tailoring companies in the world....
for a new shirt (this last was an error: it was for cash, and officers never paid cash at Gieves; but the Germans did not catch it). All these documents were on authentic stationery or billheads. The dates of the ticket stubs and lodging bill indicated that Major Martin had left London on April 24. If his body washed ashore on 30 April, presumably after several days at sea, then he must have flown from Britain and crashed at sea.
To make the Major even more believable, Montagu and his team decided to suggest that he was a bit careless. His ID card was marked as a replacement for one that had been lost, and his pass to Combined Operations HQ had expired a few weeks before his departure and not been renewed. This last touch carried an element of risk, as the Abwehr might be suspicious of a careless man having been entrusted with sensitive documents.
The deceptive documents
While the cover identity was created by Montagu and his team, the false documents were also being created. Montagu and his team insisted that these must be at the very highest level, so that there would be no question of the supposed senders being misinformed. The main document was a personal letter from "Archie Nye" (Lt. Gen. Sir Archibald NyeArchibald Nye
Lieutenant-General Sir Archibald Edward Nye, GCSI, GCMG, GCIE, KCB, KBE, MC was a British Army officer who served in both World War I and World War II...
, Vice Chief of the Imperial General Staff) to "My dear Alex" (General Sir Harold Alexander, commander of 18th Army Group in Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
and Tunisia
Tunisia
Tunisia , officially the Tunisian RepublicThe long name of Tunisia in other languages used in the country is: , is the northernmost country in Africa. It is a Maghreb country and is bordered by Algeria to the west, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its area...
). The letter covered several "sensitive" subjects, such as the (unwanted) award of Purple Heart
Purple Heart
The Purple Heart is a United States military decoration awarded in the name of the President to those who have been wounded or killed while serving on or after April 5, 1917 with the U.S. military. The National Purple Heart Hall of Honor is located in New Windsor, New York...
medals by U.S. forces to British servicemen serving with them, and the appointment of a new commander of the Guards Brigade
Brigade of Guards
The Brigade of Guards is a historical elite unit of the British Army, which has existed sporadically since the 17th century....
. This explained its being hand-carried rather than sent through regular channels. On the specific topic of Allied plans in the Mediterranean, the letter referred to Operation Husky as the invasion of Greece by troops from Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
and Libya
Libya
Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....
under General Henry Maitland Wilson
Henry Maitland Wilson, 1st Baron Wilson
Field Marshal Henry Maitland Wilson, 1st Baron Wilson, GCB, GBE, DSO , also known as "Jumbo" Wilson, saw active service in the Second Boer War and First World War, and became a senior British general in the Middle East and Mediterranean during the Second World War...
(Commander-in-Chief, Middle East). Two assault beaches and some of the assigned troops were named. (Husky was actually the invasion of Sicily.) The letter also mentioned a second planned attack, Operation Brimstone, for which the cover target was Sicily. This implied that Alexander's forces in Tunisia would invade Sardinia, that being the only other plausible target. Nye added that "we stand a very good chance of making [the Germans] think we are going for Sicily." The letter was composed by Sir Archibald himself and addressed by Patricia Trehearne (later Davies) in Room 13 of the Admiralty.
There was also a letter of introduction for Major Martin from his putative commanding officer
Commanding officer
The commanding officer is the officer in command of a military unit. Typically, the commanding officer has ultimate authority over the unit, and is usually given wide latitude to run the unit as he sees fit, within the bounds of military law...
, Admiral Louis Mountbatten
Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma
Admiral of the Fleet Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas George Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, KG, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, DSO, PC, FRS , was a British statesman and naval officer, and an uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh...
, Chief of Combined Operations, to Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham
Andrew Cunningham, 1st Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope
Admiral of the Fleet Andrew Browne Cunningham, 1st Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope KT, GCB, OM, DSO and two Bars , was a British admiral of the Second World War. Cunningham was widely known by his nickname, "ABC"....
, Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean Fleet
Mediterranean Fleet
Several countries have or have had a Mediterranean Fleet in their navy. See:* Mediterranean Fleet * French Mediterranean Fleet* Mediterranean Squadron * United States Sixth Fleet...
and Allied naval commander in the Mediterranean. This letter included a clumsy joke about "sardines", which Montagu inserted in hopes the Germans would see it as a reference to a planned invasion of Sardinia.
The Germans (and their Spanish friends) had apparently missed the letter in Paymaster-Lt. Turner's pocket, so Montagu's team decided to put the documents in a briefcase which could not be overlooked. To justify carrying documents in a briefcase, "Major Martin" was given two copies of the official pamphlet on Combined Operations
Combined Operations
Combined Operations Headquarters was a department of the British War Office set up during World War II to harass the Germans on the European continent by means of raids carried out by use of combined naval and army forces...
by Hilary Saunders
Hilary Saint George Saunders
Hilary Aidan Saint George Saunders was a British author. Saunders was born in Clifton, near Bristol. During World War I he served with the Welsh Guards....
, and a letter from Mountbatten to General Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
, asking him to write a brief foreword for the pamphlet's U.S. edition.
It was also necessary to ensure that the body and the briefcase with the documents would be recovered together. The team first thought of having the handle clutched in the corpse's hand, held in place by rigor mortis
Rigor mortis
Rigor mortis is one of the recognizable signs of death that is caused by a chemical change in the muscles after death, causing the limbs of the corpse to become stiff and difficult to move or manipulate...
. But the rigor would probably wear off and the briefcase would drift away. The team therefore equipped Major Martin with a leather-covered chain, such as was used by bank and jewellery couriers to secure their cases against snatching. The chain unobtrusively runs down a sleeve to the case. British officer couriers didn't use such chains, but the Germans might not know that, nor be certain that a real "Major Martin" wouldn't use one for this special job. It seemed unlikely that the Major would keep the bag at his wrist during the long flight from Britain, so the chain was looped around the belt of his trench coat
Trench coat
A trench coat or trenchcoat is a raincoat made of waterproof heavy-duty cotton drill or poplin, wool gabardine, or leather. It generally has a removable insulated lining; and it is usually knee-length.-History:...
.
Churchill briefed
Colonel Johnnie Bevan, in overall command of wartime deception, was charged with explaining the operation to the Prime Minister. On April 15, 1943, he was ushered into Winston ChurchillWinston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
's bedroom in the annex where he found Churchill in bed smoking a cigar. Churchill showed considerable interest in the plan, and Bevan felt it necessary to point out that the operation could go very badly. The Prime Minister responded in a characteristically pithy manner: “In that case, we shall have to get the body back and give it another swim.”
Execution
Major Martin, in his Royal Marines battledress and coat, was placed in a steel canister designed by Charles Fraser-SmithCharles Fraser-Smith
Charles Fraser-Smith was an author and one-time missionary who is widely credited as being the inspiration for Ian Fleming's James Bond quartermaster Q. During World War II, Fraser-Smith worked for the Ministry of Supply, fabricating equipment for SOE agents operating in occupied Europe...
. The canister was filled with dry ice
Dry ice
Dry ice, sometimes referred to as "Cardice" or as "card ice" , is the solid form of carbon dioxide. It is used primarily as a cooling agent. Its advantages include lower temperature than that of water ice and not leaving any residue...
and sealed up. When the dry ice sublimated, it filled the canister with carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom...
and drove out any oxygen, thus preserving the body without refrigeration. Cholmondeley and Montagu delivered it to Holy Loch
Holy Loch
The Holy Loch is a sea loch in Argyll and Bute, Scotland.Robertson's Yard at Sandbank, a village on the loch, was a major wooden boat building company in the late 19th and early 20th centuries....
, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
where it was taken on board the British submarine
Submarine
A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability...
HMS Seraph
HMS Seraph (P219)
HMS Seraph was an S-class submarine of the British Royal Navy. She carried out a number of intelligence and special operations activities during World War II, the most famous of which was Operation Mincemeat....
. Seraphs commander (Lt. Bill Jewell
Norman Jewell
Captain Norman Limbury Auchinleck Jewell RN was an officer in the Royal Navy.As commander of the submarine HMS Seraph, Jewell was involved in one of the most vital acts of deception of the Second World War...
) and crew had previous special operations experience. Jewell told his men that the canister contained a top secret meteorological
Meteorology
Meteorology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere. Studies in the field stretch back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not occur until the 18th century. The 19th century saw breakthroughs occur after observing networks developed across several countries...
device to be deployed near Spain.
On 19 April, Seraph set sail. On 30 April, Seraph arrived at a point about a mile off the coast of Spain, near the town of Huelva
Huelva
Huelva is a city in southwestern Spain, the capital of the province of Huelva in the autonomous region of Andalusia. It is located along the Gulf of Cadiz coast, at the confluence of the Odiel and Tinto rivers. According to the 2010 census, the city has a population of 149,410 inhabitants. The...
. The British knew that there was an Abwehr
Abwehr
The Abwehr was a German military intelligence organisation from 1921 to 1944. The term Abwehr was used as a concession to Allied demands that Germany's post-World War I intelligence activities be for "defensive" purposes only...
agent in Huelva who was friendly with the Spanish officials there.
At 0430 on 30 April, Seraph surfaced. Lt. Jewell had the canister brought up on deck, then sent all his crew below except the officers. He briefed them on the details of the secret operation. They opened the canister, fitted Major Martin with a life jacket, and attached his briefcase with the papers. Jewell read the 39th Psalm, although the burial service was not specified in the orders, and the body was gently pushed into the sea where the tide would bring it ashore. Jewell afterwards sent a message to the Committee: "MINCEMEAT completed". The canister was shot through so that it would sink, it stubbornly refused to sink and was eventually rigged with a small plastic explosive charge to destroy it.
The body was found at around 9:30 a.m. by a local fisherman, José Antonio Rey Maria.
"Mincemeat swallowed whole"
When the body was found, it was reported to the AbwehrAbwehr
The Abwehr was a German military intelligence organisation from 1921 to 1944. The term Abwehr was used as a concession to Allied demands that Germany's post-World War I intelligence activities be for "defensive" purposes only...
agent in Huelva, Adolf Clauss. He was the son of the German consul, and operated under the cover of an agriculture technician. Three days later, the British Naval Attaché
Military attaché
A military attaché is a military expert who is attached to a diplomatic mission . This post is normally filled by a high-ranking military officer who retains the commission while serving in an embassy...
in Spain reported the body's discovery, and the Committee was notified. The body was handed over to the British Vice-Consul F. K. Hazeldene, and Major Martin was buried in Huelva with full military honours on 4 May.
The Vice Consul arranged for a pathologist, Eduardo Del Torno, to perform a post-mortem examination. Del Torno reported that the man had fallen into the sea while still alive and had no bruises, death was due to drowning, and the body had been in the sea between 3 and 5 days. A more comprehensive examination was not made because the pathologist took him for a Roman Catholic
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
. Martin wore a silver crucifix
Crucifix
A crucifix is an independent image of Jesus on the cross with a representation of Jesus' body, referred to in English as the corpus , as distinct from a cross with no body....
and had a St. Christopher plaque in his wallet and his identity tags were marked RC.
Montagu had Major Martin included in the published list of British casualties which appeared in The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
on 4 June, in case the Germans checked up there. By coincidence, the names of two other officers who had died when their plane was lost at sea were also published that day, giving credence to the Major Martin story. The issue of the Times
Times
The Times is a UK daily newspaper, the original English language newspaper titled "Times". Times may also refer to:In newspapers:*The Times , went defunct in 2005*The Times *The Times of Northwest Indiana...
that recorded Major William Martin's "demise" was also the same that announced that of film star Leslie Howard
Leslie Howard (actor)
Leslie Howard was an English stage and film actor, director, and producer. Among his best-known roles was Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind and roles in Berkeley Square , Of Human Bondage , The Scarlet Pimpernel , The Petrified Forest , Pygmalion , Intermezzo , Pimpernel Smith...
, shot down by Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....
aircraft on the Bay of Biscay
Bay of Biscay
The Bay of Biscay is a gulf of the northeast Atlantic Ocean located south of the Celtic Sea. It lies along the western coast of France from Brest south to the Spanish border, and the northern coast of Spain west to Cape Ortegal, and is named in English after the province of Biscay, in the Spanish...
. To further the ruse, the Admiralty sent several messages to the Naval Attaché about the papers which Major Martin had been carrying. The Attaché was urgently directed to locate the papers, and if they were in Spanish hands to recover them at all costs, but also to avoid alerting the Spanish to their importance. The briefcase and papers had been taken up by the Spanish Navy
Spanish Navy
The Spanish Navy is the maritime branch of the Spanish Armed Forces, one of the oldest active naval forces in the world. The Armada is responsible for notable achievements in world history such as the discovery of Americas, the first world circumnavigation, and the discovery of a maritime path...
, who had turned over the documents to the Alto Estado Mayor, the Supreme General Staff. From there, they apparently disappeared, and even the German Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
could not locate them.
Major Karl-Erich Kuhlenthal, the German's most senior Abwehr
Abwehr
The Abwehr was a German military intelligence organisation from 1921 to 1944. The term Abwehr was used as a concession to Allied demands that Germany's post-World War I intelligence activities be for "defensive" purposes only...
agent in Spain, took a keen interest in finding the papers. He stirred up so much attention among the Spanish that Colonel José López Barrón Cerruti, Spain’s most senior secret policeman and a keen fascist, took up finding the briefcase. Word of the find reached Abwehr headquarters in Germany. Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, was asked by Kuhlenthal to personally intervene and persuade the Spanish to surrender the documents. Lieutenant-Colonel Ramón Pardo Suárez located the documents and arranged to make them available to the Germans. The Spanish removed the still-damp paper by tightly winding it around a probe into a cylindrical shape, and then pulling it out between the envelope flap, still closed by a wax seal, and the envelope body. Pardo took the dried contents to the German Embassy and gave Wilhelm Leissner, the Abwehr chief in Madrid, one hour to make copies. The embassy immediately radioed the text to Berlin, with the paper copies of the photos following a few days later.
The documents were re-inserted into their original envelopes, reversing the process by which they were removed, and returned to the British Attaché by the Chief of Staff of the Navy on 13 May, with the assurance that "everything was there". When the papers were examined after their return, the British analyzed the documents and confirmed they had been opened. Further confirmation from Ultra prompted a message to Churchill, then in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
: "Mincemeat Swallowed Whole."
The effort Montagu and his team made to build up Martin's identity paid off. The Germans noted and accepted all the personal details. They noted the date on the ticket stubs, and deduced that Martin must have been flying from Britain to Gibraltar. Ironically, their report gave a wrong date (27 April instead of 22 April), and they concluded that the crash had occurred on 28 April, even though the medical evidence "showed" that Martin had been dead in the water for several days by 30 April. But the Germans missed the contradiction, canceling their own error. As a result Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
was so convinced of the veracity of the bogus documents that he disagreed with Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
that Sicily would be the most likely invasion point, insisting that any incursion against the island should be regarded as a feint.
German defensive efforts were substantially redirected: reinforcements were sent to Greece, Sardinia
Sardinia
Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...
and Corsica
Corsica
Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia....
instead of Sicily. British commando activities had also been carried out in Greece. The renowned general Erwin Rommel
Erwin Rommel
Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel , popularly known as the Desert Fox , was a German Field Marshal of World War II. He won the respect of both his own troops and the enemies he fought....
was sent to Greece to assume overall command. A group of "R boat
R boat
The R boats were a group of small minesweepers but used for several purposes during the Second World War.A total of 424 boats were built for the Kriegsmarine before and during World War II. The German Navy used them in every theatre including the Baltic, Mediterranean and the Black Sea...
s" was transferred from Sicily, and three additional minefields were laid off the Greek coast. Three panzer
Panzer
A Panzer is a German language word that, when used as a noun, means "tank". When it is used as an adjective, it means either tank or "armoured" .- Etymology :...
divisions were moved to Greece – one from France, and two from the Eastern Front
Eastern Front (World War II)
The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of World War II between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland, and some other Allies which encompassed Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945...
. The latter was perhaps the most critical move – reducing German combat strength against the Russians
Russians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
in the Kursk salient
Battle of Kursk
The Battle of Kursk took place when German and Soviet forces confronted each other on the Eastern Front during World War II in the vicinity of the city of Kursk, in the Soviet Union in July and August 1943. It remains both the largest series of armored clashes, including the Battle of Prokhorovka,...
. (Influencing events on the Eastern Front was apparently neither intended nor foreseen by the British originators of the plan, who were preoccupied with their own part of the war.)
On 9 July, the Allies invaded Sicily in Operation Husky. The Germans remained convinced for two more weeks that the main attacks would be in Sardinia and Greece, and kept forces out of action there till it was too late. Only on 12 July did the Germans have the 3rd Regiment of 1st Fallschirmsjäger Division parachute onto the island ahead of the advancing British 8th Army.
Ewen Montagu received the OBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
for his part in Operation Mincemeat. Charles Cholmondeley received the MBE for masterminding the plan.
Impact on later operations
The success of Operation Mincemeat caused the Germans to disregard later genuine document finds. Examples include:- Two days after the D-DayD-DayD-Day is a term often used in military parlance to denote the day on which a combat attack or operation is to be initiated. "D-Day" often represents a variable, designating the day upon which some significant event will occur or has occurred; see Military designation of days and hours for similar...
landings, the Germans discovered an abandoned landing craft washed up on the Vire estuaryVire RiverThe Vire is a river in Normandy, France whose 128 km course crosses the départements of Calvados and Manche, flowing through the towns of Vire, Saint-Lô and Isigny-sur-Mer, finally flowing out into the English Channel....
in NormandyNormandyNormandy is a geographical region corresponding to the former Duchy of Normandy. It is in France.The continental territory covers 30,627 km² and forms the preponderant part of Normandy and roughly 5% of the territory of France. It is divided for administrative purposes into two régions:...
, containing top secret documents detailing future military targets in the region. Hitler, believing this was a deception similar to Operation Mincemeat, ignored the documents, having already been convinced by numerous deceptions that the main invasion was still to come through the Pas de Calais.
- During Operation Market-GardenOperation Market GardenOperation Market Garden was an unsuccessful Allied military operation, fought in the Netherlands and Germany in the Second World War. It was the largest airborne operation up to that time....
, the drive into the Netherlands in September 1944, a complete operations order with maps and graphics for the airborne phase of the invasion, which was not supposed to be brought with the invading troops, was inadvertently left behind on a transport glider. The operations order fell into German hands, but the Germans, convinced that this was another attempt at Mincemeat-style deception, actually deployed their forces contrary to the information before them.
The Man Who Never Was
Duff CooperDuff Cooper
Alfred Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich GCMG, DSO, PC , known as Duff Cooper, was a British Conservative Party politician, diplomat and author. He wrote six books, including an autobiography, Old Men Forget, and a biography of Talleyrand...
was a diplomat who had held several top level posts during the war. In 1950, he published a spy novel, Operation Heartbreak. The key plot device was floating a corpse into Spain with false documents to deceive the Germans. Cooper had come up with the idea on his own, but naturally many of those concerned with Mincemeat (including Germans and Spaniards) became concerned and started talking. The 'flap' attracted the attention of the British press, and wild rumours began to circulate. At this point the British security services decided that the best response was to publish the story. Ewen Montagu took a week-end off from his busy legal practice, and wrote the book The Man Who Never Was
The Man Who Never Was
The Man Who Never Was is a nonfiction 1953 book by Ewen Montagu and a 1956 Second World War war film, based on the book and dramatising actual events...
.
It was an immediate best-seller and was made into a movie of the same name two years later. The movie added some fictitious elements for drama, such as a German agent in London verifying "Major Martin"'s background, with Montagu and his colleagues one step ahead of him. The submarine used in the film wore pennant number P219, that of HMS Seraph, and she was indeed still in commission in 1954/55.
In 1977, Montagu published a second book, Beyond Top Secret ULTRA, in which he recounted his secret war work. It could not be revealed earlier, as it involved both Ultra and the Double Cross System
Double Cross System
The Double Cross System, or XX System, was a World War II anti-espionage and deception operation of the British military intelligence arm, MI5. Nazi agents in Britain - real and false - were captured, turned themselves in or simply announced themselves and were then used by the British to broadcast...
. In Chapter 13 he gives a short version of the Mincemeat story, including some details not in The Man Who Never Was.
Major Martin
The man known as Major Martin was buried in the Cemetery of Solitude in Huelva. As Mincemeat became legend the question persisted about the identity of Major William Martin.The first corpse
In 1996 Roger Morgan, an amateur historian, uncovered evidence that "Martin" was in reality Glyndwr MichaelGlyndwr Michael
Glyndwr Michael was an illiterate homeless man whose body was used in Operation Mincemeat, the successful World War II deception plan that lured German forces to Greece prior to the Allied invasion of Sicily...
, a Welsh
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
alcoholic vagrant, allegedly from Aberbargoed
Aberbargoed
Aberbargoed is a small town in the Welsh county borough of Caerphilly, within the historic boundaries of Monmouthshire, south Wales. Aberbargoed once contained the largest ever colliery waste tip in Europe, although this has now been reclaimed and turned into a country park.- Mining :Coal mining...
, whose name is mentioned on the War Memorial of that village and who died of ingesting rat poison, although how this happened is unknown.Morgan found Michael's name in the Public Record Office
Public Record Office
The Public Record Office of the United Kingdom is one of the three organisations that make up the National Archives...
in Kew
Kew
Kew is a place in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames in South West London. Kew is best known for being the location of the Royal Botanic Gardens, now a World Heritage Site, which includes Kew Palace...
, west London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. Ben McIntyre confirmed in his book, titled Operation Mincemeat, that the dead man was Glyndwr Michael. He was found on 26 January 1943 in an abandoned warehouse near King's Cross Station in London and was taken to St Pancras hospital suffering from "acute chemical poisoning." It is thought that rat poison, known as 'Battle's Vermin Killer' was used. This was a paste that was laced with highly toxic white phosphorus. The assumption was made that Michael had intended to take his own life. His own father had committed suicide when Michael was 15 years old. His mother died in 1940 and Michael was alone in the world slowly falling into a deeply depressive state. He drifted, as many did, towards London, and was utterly destitute and homeless, his life gradually falling apart. It is also possible that the poisoning was accidental due to a starving Michael having been so hungry that he ate scraps of bread coated with poison to kill rats. Phosphoric poisoning is a horrific way to die, usually taking three days, as the phosphorus reacts with the stomach's own hydrochloric acid to create phosphine gas. Death is due to the breakdown of the central nervous system, jaundice, coma, kidney, liver and heart failure, before death. It took Michael two days to die. He was able to inform his nurses who he was and what he had eaten. He died on 28 January 1943, and when his body reached the hospital's morgue, district coroner Bentley Purchase informed Ewen Montagu that he had found the ideal candidate for his project. McIntyre reported that the corpse was kept refrigerated in the morgue until the mission was ready. Once aboard the Seraph, the body was preserved by placing it in a sealed canister containing dry ice
Dry ice
Dry ice, sometimes referred to as "Cardice" or as "card ice" , is the solid form of carbon dioxide. It is used primarily as a cooling agent. Its advantages include lower temperature than that of water ice and not leaving any residue...
, which prevented oxygen from causing decomposition. In 1996 The Daily Telegraph published a story based on information released by the Public Record Office
Public Record Office
The Public Record Office of the United Kingdom is one of the three organisations that make up the National Archives...
and identified the corpse as Glyndwr Michael. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission in January 1998 added an inscription to the gravestone of "Major Martin" in the Catholic cemetery of Huelva that reads, "Glyndwr Michael served as Major William Martin." The historian Christopher Andrew reaches the same conclusion as to the identity of "Major Martin" in the authorised history of the Security Service
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...
, The Defence of the Realm
The Defence of the Realm
The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5, published in the United States as Defend the Realm, is an authorised history of the British Security Service , written by historian Christopher Andrew...
.
HMS Dasher connection
In The Secrets of HMS Dasher, authors John and Noreen Steele suggest a different identity for the body. On 27 March 1943 there was an explosion on HMS DasherHMS Dasher (D37)
HMS Dasher was a British Royal Navy aircraft carrier, of the Avenger class – converted merchant vessels – and one of the shortest lived escort carriers.-Design and description:...
(a US
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
-built escort carrier), which was then in the Firth of Clyde
Firth of Clyde
The Firth of Clyde forms a large area of coastal water, sheltered from the Atlantic Ocean by the Kintyre peninsula which encloses the outer firth in Argyll and Ayrshire, Scotland. The Kilbrannan Sound is a large arm of the Firth of Clyde, separating the Kintyre Peninsula from the Isle of Arran.At...
, which they ascribe to an accidental torpedoing by a British submarine. Dasher sank, and 379 men were killed. The British authorities tried to keep the story quiet, rather than have the public get upset over alleged defective American shipbuilding. The dead were originally buried in an unmarked mass grave. The Steeles claim that the Mincemeat body was John "Jack" Melville, 37, one of the dead sailors. They assert that Michael's corpse was acquired in January 1943, and would have suffered excessive decomposition by April 30, even if refrigerated. They claim that freezing was not an option as it would have produced observable changes to the body, which contradicts Montagu's account. (Montagu mentions having to thaw the body's feet so that boots could be put on it.)
According to the Steeles, HMS Seraph was berthed at Blyth, Northumberland
Blyth, Northumberland
Blyth is a town and civil parish in southeast Northumberland, England. It lies on the coast, to the south of the River Blyth and is approximately 21 kilometres northeast of Newcastle upon Tyne...
, but she was moved all the way around Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
to Holy Loch
Holy Loch
The Holy Loch is a sea loch in Argyll and Bute, Scotland.Robertson's Yard at Sandbank, a village on the loch, was a major wooden boat building company in the late 19th and early 20th centuries....
, a major submarine base, on the west coast, and much further from London, just before Montagu delivered the canister. The Steeles argue that this makes no sense unless the body originally designated to be "Major Martin" had decomposed and become unusable, and that a "fresh" body from the Dasher disaster was to be substituted. They say Montagu brought the canister from London, but it was empty.
On 8 October 2004, a memorial service was held in Melville's honour aboard the current HMS Dasher
HMS Dasher (P280)
HMS Dasher is an Archer-class P2000-type patrol and training vessel of the British Royal Navy, currently part of the Faslane Patrol Boat Squadron at HMNB Clyde....
, a patrol boat
Patrol boat
A patrol boat is a relatively small naval vessel generally designed for coastal defense duties.There have been many designs for patrol boats. They may be operated by a nation's navy, coast guard, or police force, and may be intended for marine and/or estuarine or river environments...
, in which Melville's role as "Major Martin" was officially recognised by the Royal Navy. At the service, Lt. Cmdr. Mark Hill, CO of the naval squadron in Cyprus, said:
The Dasher theory, however, has been denied by the Naval Historical Branch who responded to a Freedom of Information request (D/NHB/25/56 of 22 Jan 2010) as follows:
"As far as both the Royal Navy and the Ministry of Defence are concerned, the body used in Operation Mincemeat was that of Glyndwr Michael as described in the files now in The National Archive at Kew.
With regard to the memorial service held on board the current HMS DASHER in October 2004, it should be stressed that, despite media emphasis on a possible 'Man Who Never Was' connection, this was a perfectly proper memorial for those lost in the previous ship of that name. It had been cleared through both HQ British Force Cyprus and the Permanent Joint Head Quarters at Northwood. The statements... as accurately reported in The Scotsman, arose through information that they had been given locally, and which they believed in good faith. Unfortunately, the statements had not been referred to this office for an opinion."
In popular culture
An episode of the Goon Show was entitled The Man who Never Was and was set during the Second World War, referred to a microfilm in the uniform of someone dressed up as a naval officer (though this was about a secret weapon.)Operation Mincemeat inspired a similar plan in Cryptonomicon
Cryptonomicon
Cryptonomicon is a 1999 novel by American author Neal Stephenson. The novel follows the exploits of two groups of people in two different time periods, presented in alternating chapters...
by Neal Stephenson
Neal Stephenson
Neal Town Stephenson is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction.Difficult to categorize, his novels have been variously referred to as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, and postcyberpunk...
, in Red Rabbit
Red Rabbit
Red Rabbit is a New York Times bestselling novel by Tom Clancy. It incorporates the 1981 plot to assassinate Pope John Paul II.-Plot summary:...
by Tom Clancy
Tom Clancy
Thomas Leo "Tom" Clancy, Jr. is an American author, best known for his technically detailed espionage, military science, and techno thriller storylines set during and in the aftermath of the Cold War, along with video games on which he did not work, but which bear his name for licensing and...
, in Body of Lies
Body of Lies (novel)
Body of Lies is an American spy thriller novel by David Ignatius, a columnist for The Washington Post. It was published by W. W. Norton in 2007. It was originally titled Penetration but was renamed after Warner Bros...
by David Ignatius
David Ignatius
David R. Ignatius , is an American journalist and novelist. He is an associate editor and columnist for The Washington Post. He also co-hosts PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues at Washingtonpost.com, with Newsweek 's Fareed Zakaria...
, in the film version of You Only Live Twice
You Only Live Twice (film)
You Only Live Twice is the fifth spy film in the James Bond series, and the fifth to star Sean Connery as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. The film's screenplay was written by Roald Dahl, and loosely based on Ian Fleming's 1964 novel of the same name...
, and in the science fiction series Space: Above and Beyond
Space: Above and Beyond
Space: Above and Beyond was a short-lived mid-90s American science fiction television show on the FOX Network, created and written by Glen Morgan and James Wong. Originally planned for five seasons, it ran only for the single 1995–1996 season. It was nominated for two Emmy Awards and one Saturn...
. A play of the same name, written by Adrian Jackson and Farhana Sheikh, was first staged by Cardboard Citizens in 2001 in the old Hartley's Jam factory in Southwark. It was staged once again as a site-specific, promenade performance in Cordy House, Shoreditch, in June–July 2009. Cardboard Citizens deals with issues surrounding homelessness, and the play examined identity, together with Major Martin's quest to find out who he was. In 2008 Simon Corble
Simon Corble
Simon Corble is an English playwright, director and performer. At the age of sixteen he played Hamlet at Lymm Grammar School, Cheshire and "never looked back". After training as an actor at Manchester Polytechnic he went on to create his own dramatic works...
launched his play, also called Operation: Mincemeat with a script-in-hand run performed by the Found Theatre Company. This play saw its world premiere in the 2010 Adelaide Fringe Festival
Adelaide Fringe Festival
The Adelaide Fringe Festival is an arts festival held annually in the South Australian capital of Adelaide. The event is the Southern Hemisphere's largest arts event and the second-largest fringe festival in the world, second in size only to the Edinburgh Fringe...
, performed by the Adelaide University Fringe Club to critical acclaim.
In his book "The Double Agents" W.E.B Griffin depicts operation Mincemeat. Fictional characters are blended with Ian Fleming, the actors David Niven and Peter Ustinov, and other historical figures as members of Montagu's "committee" to plan and execute Operation Mincemeat.
External links
- Excerpts from the official Top Secret Ultra report on Operation Mincement PsyWar.Org, 3 January 2010.
- The dead tramp who won World War II Daily Mail 15 January 2010.
- "Major Martin's" Grave in Spain
- The Age article – The Man Who Never Was
- Captain Bill Jewell obituary
- Mincemeat and the Imaginary Man – Damn Interesting article
- Spanish language article
- "The Man Who Never Was" movie at the Internet Movie Database*
- BBC article on Operation Mincemeat
- "Operation Mincemeat" 2010 Walker George Films Documentary for the BBC*