"Marketgarden", "Overlord", where do they come up with this stuff?

[Vanir Ausf B]

By chance, Slate posted an answer to this very question today.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>The Defense Department announced that the code name for the domestic mission to protect this country in response to Tuesday's terrorist attack is Operation Noble Eagle. How does the military choose its code words?

In general, the first step is that a computer database of appropriately military sounding words spits out possible combinations, with each geographic command given rights to certain letters of the alphabet. The command overseeing the operation chooses candidates--after checking through a registry of previously used names--and sends it to the Joint Staff for review and approval. (The director of operations of the Joint Staff, Lt. General Gregory S. Newbold, has a name worthy of a military operation.) It wasn't a brilliant algorithm that came up with the code word Desert Storm for the invasion of Iraq--that was deliberately chosen.

Winston Churchill, who personally vetted many of the British military code words, ordered that they should be neither overly boastful, nor frivolous. No mother, he wrote, should have to say "that her son was killed in an operation called 'Bunnybug.' "<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[tar]

At one time (including the 1950s and 1960s, but I'm not sure of the entire time frame) the US adopted the convention that operation "codenames" would be a single word for secret operations and two words for public ones.

That would accord with the way things seem to have been handled with most of the operations that have been described here. "The Desert XYZ" series would have been the public operation names. Things like "Overlord" would have been secret. "Market Garden" was two operations, each secret.

[Determinant]

The UK tradition has been to use two word titles for training exercises and one word titles for operations.

Some will say that this is the reason that 'Market Garden' was jinxed - it broke the rule. Perhaps therefore explaining a certain lack of <umm> co-ordination between the airborne and groundborne elements. Of course the Germans were also a factor here.

UK operational names are still supposed to be randomly selected. This means that sometimes they are cool as 'Op Corporate' to retake the Falklands; sometimes not so good as 'Op Granby' for the Gulf war; and sometimes just odd as 'Op Agricola' for Kosovo.

Luck of the draw.

[killmore]

Winston Churchill, who personally vetted many of the British military code

words, ordered that they should be neither overly boastful, nor frivolous.

No mother, he wrote, should have to say "that her son was killed in an

operation called 'Bunnybug.' "

The Defense Department announced that the code name for the domestic mission

to protect this country in response to Tuesday's terrorist attack is

Operation Noble Eagle. How does the military choose its code words?

In general, the first step is that a computer database of appropriately

military sounding words spits out possible combinations, with each

geographic command given rights to certain letters of the alphabet. The

command overseeing the operation chooses candidates--after checking through

a registry of previously used names--and sends it to the Joint Staff for

review and approval. (The director of operations of the Joint Staff, Lt.

General Gregory S. Newbold, has a name worthy of a military operation.) It

wasn't a brilliant algorithm that came up with the code word Desert Storm

for the invasion of Iraq--that was deliberately chosen.

[von shrad]

I do know that the term 'Watch on the Rhine' is an old one. It was used by the Allies after WW1 as a kind of victory slogan. It seems that Hitler could have used that codename in his usual way of perverting history. i.e. Like the way the capitulation of France was taken in the same train car where the first W.W. treaty was signed by the German leaders.

I have an old book (1918) that shows a picture of an unnaturally large doughboy super-imposed looking west and standing guard over the Rhine. It has the saying 'Watch on the Rhine' near the top. Pretty cool pic. The book is also very neat with hundreds of pictures and their description, many of them quite graphic in nature.

One particular photo shows a parachutist that bailed after his balloon was shot down. I didn't even realize there were chutes at that time.

von shrad

[ 09-18-2001: Message edited by: von shrad ]

[Fairbairn-Sykes]

So I see the name that's been made public (for the impending action) is "Operation Infinite Justice". I expect there are some names civilians don't get to hear for this one as well.

Not that one is able to discuss it here anyway...

[Affentitten]

As somebody mentioned, 3 of the 5 code names for the D-Day beaches (I think Juno, Utah and Omaha) popped up as answers to clues in the Times crossword on consecutive days about a month before the invasion.

There was of course a massive investigation into this, with the fuddy duddy old school teacher who complied the crosswords subject to the best anal probings that British Intelligence could come up with.

Various theories have been ventured about why he chose those words, but in at least one case, the crossword had been compiled before the codename was even chosen.

It does seem though that it was just one of the most massive coincidences in history, and in any event, it would have been a pretty convoluted way of passing information to the Germans!

[von Lucke]

Remember Operation "Urgent Fury" (the Grenada invasion)? Always liked the name Gary Trudeau spoofed on it in Doonsbury: "Operation Frequent Manhood".

Of the Ops I've participated in, I'd have to say "Cobra Gold" has always been high on my list of faves.

Oh, and just to slip this in before Commissar shows up: Weren't all the big Soviet ops code-named after the planets (Mars, Uranus, Saturn, etc.)?

D'oh! Just remembered Operation Bagration, so to answer my own question: I guess not.

[ 09-20-2001: Message edited by: von Lucke ]

[CombinedArms]

I would suggest that there were basically three different kinds of code names in WWII:

the primarily random, the overtly symbolic, and the deliberately deceptive. Let's look at some examples:

1) The primarily random (though there's often still some loose or subtle reference to the purpose of the operation): e.g. Overlord (loosely, Allies are trying supplant Hitler as Overlords of Europe); Neptune (Allies rule the sea); Cobra (Allies are curled to strike, will now lash out of their enclose positions.)Husky for the invasion of Sicily seems purely random to me. Juno, Gold & Sword are pretty random but sound sort of British. Omaha and Utah are landlocked US locales to randomly designate an American amphibious attack. It not always true, but I believe that random names often reflect a degree of uncertainty about the outcome. The more symbolic they get,the more confident is the attacker.

2. The overtly symbolic. Torch and Barbarossa are obvious cases. Both Anvil (the first name for the Allied attack on Southern France--this would be the Anvil to Overlord's hammer) and Dragoon (the ultimate name--Churcill was "dragooned into it" and so proposed the name. I'd suggest that overtly symbolic names often suggest a high degree of confidence in the operation. Hitler's Sealion for the amphibious invasion of Britain might seem an exception, since that invasion was cancelled, but since Britain was the true lion of the sea, perhaps that name indicated they never REALLY intended to carry through on the attack.

3. Deliberately deceptive names. "Watch on Rhine" for the Ardennes offensive is an example. This name suggests a defensive stance. It was a highly uncertain operation and the name suggests that uncertainty--only by deceiving the Allies as to their intentions could the attack have a hope of succeeding.

Just some observations based on what appear to be meaningful patterns. BTW, did the code names of offensive operations generally become public during the war--e.g did people start calling the Normandy invasion Overlord in June '44--or were they revealed only afterwards?

[Michael Dorosh]

The Dieppe Raid was originally called RUTTER. The name was changed to JUBILEE when the operation was remounted a month after RUTTER was cancelled - a TV movie suggests that General McNaughton objected to the sexual overtones of the original codeword, but I haven't been able to confirm that story with hard evidence.

Laurence Olivier tells us with great solemnity in the World at War series that a British attack through concentrated German minefields in North Africa was dubbed LIGHTFOOT. "Sick joke if ever there was one..."

[tss]

Germanboy wrote:

Sits in his cave under the Kyffhäuser (a mountain in the Harz range in central Germany) until such a time as the German people need him.

I'd guess that he sometimes gets out to spend a night out with the other heroes biding their time to return to save their countries. Together with King Arthur, Väinämöinen, and the one Dane whose name I always forget but whose beard is growing through the table, they can have a nice evening of Bridge and beer.

- Tommi

[Andreas]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by tss:

Germanboy wrote:

Sits in his cave under the Kyffhäuser (a mountain in the Harz range in central Germany) until such a time as the German people need him.

I'd guess that he sometimes gets out to spend a night out with the other heroes biding their time to return to save their countries. Together with King Arthur, Väinämöinen, and the one Dane whose name I always forget but whose beard is growing through the table, they can have a nice evening of Bridge and beer.

- Tommi<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Probably chitchat about the suckers who relied on them, too.

Artus 'Can you believe it, this Harold-guy?'

Frederick Barbarossa 'Ludendorff cracked me up, the look on his face when he realised he got shafted...'

[HolgerDK]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>and the one Dane whose name I always forget but whose beard is growing through the table, <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I think that would be Holger the Dane.

[ARCHANGEL]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Fairbairn-Sykes Trench Knife:

So I see the name that's been made public (for the impending action) is "Operation Infinite Justice". I expect there are some names civilians don't get to hear for this one as well.

Not that one is able to discuss it here anyway...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I assume by now you are aware that INFINATE JUSTICE has been changed because the Mullahs

objected. They felt that such a concept belonged to Allah alone. The irony is delicious. Now it is "INFINATE something else"

Archangel

Infinate Justice