"Pocket litter" helped build a convincing personality for the fictitious Major Martin. Macintyre is the author of the new book, Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory. Two members of British intelligence obtained the body of Glyndwr Michael, a tramp who died from eating rat poison, dressed him as an officer of the Royal Marines and placed personal items on him identifying him as the fictitious Captain (Acting Major) William Martin. “But actually finding the right sort of dead body was proving particularly difficult, because the body had to look as if it had died in an air crash. “That’s why I love this story," Macintyre says. “Major Martin” was picked up by a fisherman on April 30th, 1943, off the coast of Huelva, Spain. And Fleming admitted freely that he’d lifted the idea of a dead body carrying false papers from a detective novel he’d once read. [37], On 17 September 1943, nine days after the Armistice of Cassibile, Allied troops landed in Cagliari. In April of 1943, the body of a British Royal Marine washed ashore in Spain, carrying top secret letters about Allied plans to invade Greece and Sardinia. “The idea, very simply, was to get a dead body, equip the dead body with false papers, and then drop it somewhere the Germans would find it,” historian Ben Macintyre tells NPR’s Guy Raz. The raids, aimed at destroying the port facilities and airfields of Cagliari, also resulted in the destruction of most of the city. The invasion of couse came, but the Allies invaded Sicily. According to data of the Prefecture of Cagliari, the two raids on 26 and 28 January caused 600 deaths: 411 or 416 civilians and 189 servicemen. The target was hit, sinking two steamers at their moorings, but many bombs also fell on the city, killing sixty civilians and wounding 52. Moreover, its port represented the main point of entry for supplies sent from mainland Italy to Sardinia. Before he devoted his life to Agent 007, Fleming worked as an assistant to the head of British Naval Intelligence. Correspondence between two British generals which suggested that the Alliesplanned to invade Greece … The Corsica/Sardinia operation remained on the backburner & emerged again in July August as a pair of nine different operations proposed for post Husky attacks against Italy. Spanish authorities buried "William Martin" where he washed up, in the town of Huelva. In terms of the general choreography of the war, this was an absolutely critical dance.”, How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory. Only a few homes in the suburbs are still standing (…) All public services are interrupted. Operation Mincemeat was a successful British deception operation of the Second World War to disguise the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily. In order to interdict Axis air operations against Allied-controlled ports in French North Africa, the Sardinian airfields became a prime target for the Allied air forces; at the same time, the escalation of air raids on Sardinia was part of the Allied effort to mislead the Axis high commands into thinking that this island, rather than Sicily, would be the next target for Allied invasion. [34] One thousand civilians had been killed by the air raids (in addition to at least 300 military personnel) and over 40,000 had been left homeless. The Invasion of Sicily 1943 Posted on March 9, 2016 by Christian Jennings The Invasion of Sicily. [5][6][7][8][9][10], On 26 February, nineteen B-17 bombers dropped fifty tons of bombs over the port and the Elmas air base; many of the bombs also fell on the city, causing severe damage and casualties in the Bonaria, Castello, Stampace and Marina districts. 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