Doug - thanks for posting that. Still blows my mind that the Germans never caught on to that sham. You'd think at least one German undercover agent would have noticed something and "spilled the beans". Thank heaven it worked - an incredibly complex deception at all levels.
"One morning an English farmer could see that sometime overnight a column of Sherman tanks had parked on his field. One of his bulls also noticed the American tanks and was eyeing one of them warily. Suddenly, the bull lunged. The farmer braced himself for the sight of one of his prized bovines cracking its skull against armor plating.
The bull struck the tank at top speed, and with a lazy hiss of air, the Sherman deflated into a pile of olive-drab rubber sheeting. The bull and the farmer had stumbled onto one of the most elaborate deceptions in the history of warfare: the creation of a phantom army to divert attention from the
real Allied army poised to invade France in the spring of 1944."
The army General George Patton fielded for the 1944 Normandy D-Day Invasion was unlike any other. It was a complete and unabashed fake.
www.americainwwii.com
Was Gen. Patton put in charge of the "fake army" project, as punishment by Eisenhower after Patton's behavior with some PTSD troops?
Tom M.