The
British were desperate to fool the Germans in the build up to D-Day. On the
night of the 5th June and into the early hours of the 6th June
1944, a massive
deception was devised. It was designed to reinforce the belief by the Germans
that an attack would take place well East of
Normandy
.
Operation
BODYGUARD had as parts of the plan, Operation "GLIMMER" and
"TAXABLE", played on the German belief, amplified by Allied deception
efforts over the preceding months, that the main invasion force would land in
the
Calais
region. The intension was to simulate that a large
invasion fleet was heading
for Cap d'Antifer by TAXABLE and Pas-de-Calais by GLIMMER.
Hitler's
West Wall had radar stations located about every 10 miles from
Ostend
to
Cherbourg
, and on average three radar stations at each point,
it was a priority that as
many of these had to be put out of action. These were made up of Freya, Mammut
and Wasserman early warning radars
together with Seetakt ship search and fire
control radars, small and giant Wuerzberg radars for fighter and flak control.
To
maintain confusion, for every radar station attacked in
Normandy
, at least two others not in
Normandy
were attacked.
The
Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) at Malvern developed a series of
special ground direction finders called "Ping-Pong". These
were spread
out over western
England
and when triangulation a signal from a radar station were able to plot it to
with 0.25 of a degree.
These
radar stations were heavily defended and destruction fell to specialised
ant-radar Spitfire and Typhoon squadrons of the 2nd Tactical Air
Force.
Their
missions began on 16th March 1944 when targets at
Ostend
were attacked.
Dr
(Later Sir Richard) Cockburn began to plan a massive electronic spoof two
enormous fleet of ghost ships. Instead of using a fleet of
really large
ships they were told that every large vessel was needed and
that they could only have a few small ships from which to launch their spoof.
The TRE
worked out that they could produce a huge radar echo, that would look like a
huge fleet at sea but using no really large vessels. What he
needed to convince
the Germans of was that a zone of radar reflectivity some 16 miles by 16 miles
would convince them that a huge armada was
sailing to them, while the real D-Day
armada was sailing to
Normandy
.
This was achieved by
using a number of aircraft dropping aluminium foil or window along carefully
worked out tracks over the channel. TRE used 8
aircraft in two waves of four
flying abreast two miles apart with the second wave of four some 8 miles behind
them. The aircraft flew in an oblong 8
miles by 2, at 180 mph (3
miles
per minute) and drop window at the rate of 12 bundles per minute meaning there
was one bundle of window
airborne every 440 yards.
Incredibly
this produced a rate of passage on a radar screen of around 8 knots which was
more in line with the passage of a fleet of large ships.
This
part of the plan was code-named Operation "TAXABLE" and was to use
eight
Lancaster
bombers from 617 Squadron and they were to fly
along a course toward the East
of Le Havre.
In
addition to this there was Operation "GLIMMER", flown by six Stirlings
from 218 Squadron heading on a course for
Boulogne
who were to carry
out the same basic exercise as the
Lancasters
.
In May
1944 Cockburn trialled a dummy run using captured German Freya, Seetakt and
Wuerzberg radars that had been installed on a part of the
Scottish coast
overlooking the Firth of Forth. In this dummy run British radar operators knew
they were seeing a spoof but were impressed that it
looked so real. Next the
spoof was trialled using British radar operators at Farnborough Head in
Yorkshire
who had not been told it was a spoof.
They were totally convinced that a huge
fleet was at sea! If it worked that well on trail it should work well on D-Day.
The one
flaw was that it might be that the Germans would send out a reconnaissance plane
to observe the size of the fleet. The
view was that if
dozens of German radar operators were seeing a huge fleet on
their screens and since all this took place during darkness, the German pilots
would
probably think they were looking in the wrong part of the channel, since
something that big would be seen if the Germans were observing in the
right part
of the channel.
It was hoped it would act as a double bluff, with the German radar
convinced and the German pilots thinking they
were flying over the wrong part of
the channel.
Cockburn
had been of the opinion that the false radar plots would be so convincing that
any doubt expressed by a single reconnaissance plane
would have been dismissed
by the higher German command since there was an indisputable fact on the radar
screen.
To add
even more reality to the spoof radar plots, Special Task Force A was set up this
comprised four high speed Harbour Defence Launches and
fourteen smaller R.A.F.
Pinnaces that were not needed for D-Day.
Each of
the smaller launches towed a float and each one flew a specially equipped MkVI
radar reflector balloons, code-named as a "Filbert" across
the
channel.
In
addition, the air-sea rescue launches carried specially radar repeaters, called
"Moonshine" repeaters. These were tuned to a specific radar
frequency
which was found on German maritime patrol aircraft. These repeaters
retransmitted the German radar pulse and made the Germans
believe they were
seeing much more than was there.
The
earlier MkVI reflector balloons had a radar reflector that was in a
collapsible steel frame 5 feet in diameter. The frame had polar stays at
the
polar joints and the equatorial stays were fitted round the centres of the
frame of five wires , two of the wires had screws for adjusting.
The
frame
weighed some 18 lbs and was placed inside the balloon using the access slot and
then sealed in.
Each time the frame
had to be serviced or the balloon deflated operators had to enter via the a
ccess slot and remove the frame. The framed type
had a suspension rigging of 3 legs, one 27 inches long and one 32 inches
long. The two short joints were attached to the equatorial joints and the
long
one attached to the Polar joint. In addition, a 9-inch strop of No.3 line was
fitted with a heart shaped thimble and clipped to the strop by a
Buggins Clip.
The anchorage rigging was made by making a 5-inch wire spreader from polar joint
to polar joint. The lines are two of 27 inches and
one of 32 inches long. The
Bakelite ring was removed and replaced by the hearts shaped thimble with a
4-inch grommet strop. On the 4-inch strop
were two Buggins clips that hooked on
to the bungee cord in patches. The screen when installed was aligned at 57
degrees to the horizontal and
secured with special locking pins.
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