Operation Fortitude

Operation Fortitude
Part of Operation Bodyguard
Fortitude North and South constituted the main portion of the overall Bodyguard deception
Operational scope	Military deception
Location	United Kingdom
Planned	December 1943 – March 1944
Planned by	London Controlling Section, Ops (B), R Force
Target	Axis powers
Date	March – June 1944

Operation Fortitude was a military deception operation by the Allied nations as part of Operation Bodyguard, an overall deception strategy during the buildup to the 1944 Normandy landings. Fortitude was divided into two subplans, North and South, and had the aim of misleading the German High Command as to the location of the invasion.

Fortitude had evolved from plans submitted by Noel Wild, the head of Ops (B), and John Bevan, from the London Controlling Section in late 1943. Early revisions in January 1944 suggested a fictional buildup of troops in southern England with the hope of drawing German attention to the Calais region. Colonel David Strangeways, head of Montgomery's R Force deception staff, was unimpressed with the approach. He was widely critical of the original plan and eventually rewrote the Fortitude deception with a focus on creating a more realistic threat.

Both Fortitude plans involved the creation of phantom field armies (based in Edinburgh and southern England), which threatened Norway (Fortitude North) and Pas de Calais (Fortitude South). The operation was intended to divert Axis attention away from Normandy and, after the invasion on 6 June 1944, to delay reinforcement by convincing the Germans that the landings had been purely a diversionary attack.