How many operations can you name (without looking them up)
 

I'll start with the easy ones:

Overlord - Normandy Invasion
Fortitude - Deception operations for Overlord
Jericho - The low level attack on Amiens prison
Chastise - The Dambusters raid
Paravane - The several attacks on the Tirpitz in Alta Fjord
Market Garden - An operation n the Netherlands aimed at reaching and crossing the Rhine
Mincemeat - Another deception to disguise the location of the Normandy Landings (I see they just made a Netflix film)
Dragoon - The invasion of southern France
Torch - The invasion of North Africa



Incidentally: What must it have been like to be a rear gunner on Operation Paravane and watch the Tallboy fall away from your aircraft and follow it all the way down to see a direct hit on the Tirpitz?

One correction to your list......Mincemeat was done to convince the Germans the movement from Africa would be to Greece instead of Sicily.

And the Netflix film is worth a watch to see how close it came to not working.

Mincemeat was to convince the Germans that the invasion was going to be to Sardinia not Sicily.
Not Greece.

I'd have expected you to reference the 1956 'The Man Who Never Was' . More your time, eh?

The invasion of Sicily, for which Mincemeat was an introductory operation, was Operation Husky. Dad was on Beaufighters out of North Africa then.

Attached clip has a kitchen rudder pinnace: hands up those who have a ticket for one of them :ok:

A good list from Sue and a couple there I didnt know. I can add Operation Biting (Grunaval Radar raid), Operation Jubilee (failed Dieppe raid) and of course Operation Sea Lion (also a failure!)

Oh and Operation Chariot (St Nazaire raid) . But I had to google his one as was on the tip of my tongue too long.

Sir! Sir! Me sir! We called Kitchener Gear, which was wrong as I was invented by a Mr Kitchen
I managed to get one on to the Haslar Ferry pontoon as well. I got quite good at coming alongside at a 45 degree angle and at the critical moment closing the buckets and calling for full power to send a well directed angled thrust that kicked the stern in and took the way off all in one deft move. On the day in question, as the power came on the buckets came off and the boat climbed on to the pontoon, much to the chagrin of the divers I was picking up, who went from walking their gear down to sprinting back up chased by the boat. Apparently, the boat had just come out of refit and the buckets had not been fitted correctly so I got away with it.

Don't think so - it was Sicily but they made it look like Greece to get Hitler to move assets from Sicily.

In Ewen Montagu's book there is a fake letter from Mountbatten to Admiral Cunningham.

"He might bring some sardines back with him..."

There was mention of Corsica too, but it could probably be best summed up as anywhere but Sicily.

Bagration.

Op Corporate

Nephrectomy - removal of the kidney.

Does operation Manna (dropping of supplies to the Germans, Dutch) count.

I seem to recall an operation servitude? But I'm not sure.

Operation Sea Lion. You didn't mention which side.

Some obscure ones (no peeking!):

Leapfrog
Tay Bridge
Slubber.

Several. But never knew what they were called until later,,,,,,,,,,,,

Black buck

Warden/Northern Watch
Agricola
Engadine
Palliser
Banner
and everyone’s favourite - Fresco.

anyone else been on Solstice?

Operation Freshman
Operation Beggar
Operation Husky
All early airborne operations.

The most enlightening from a planning perspective are the ones that never got the go ahead . Some ops morphed into other ops . Many of the ops could be mistaken for a bookies line , Same horsey peeps naming the nags as named the ops I would wager .

The Aviation related operation that definitely made a huge contribution to the war effort was Operation Hydra , one of many .

Crossbow
Compass
Dynamo

Firedog Malaya

A much better film than the recent Netflix attempt.

Paraquat

A page full of RAF codewords used for operations in the Far East here: Ops - Far East_P (rafweb.org)

When did this practice of “operation + random name” start?

OP. DENY CHRISTMAS Well-known to the RAF AAR force when yet another OOA operation in support of Trust-me-Tone's 'Bring a Bottle' mini-wars was called at short notice.....and off we went to some dusty dump yet again!!

Operation Pedestal, the convoy from Gibraltar to Malta in August 1942, the largest fleet of WWII assembled to bring supplies to the rapidly starving garrison of Malta, huge losses including HMS Eagle, but enough ships got through, including the Ohio, to keep Malta in the war. Recently published account by Max Hastings is gripping and recommended.

Margin- Augsburg raid April 42.
Millennium- 1st Thousand Bomber raid.
Robinson- Le Creusot raid Oct 42
Gomorrah- Hamburg July 43.
Hydra- Peenemunde August 43

Wasn't there an operation nicknamed Operation Certain Death?

Read this only last night...


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