Ronald Wingate - Second World War

Second World War

With the outbreak of the Second World War, Wingate was assigned to the Ministry of Economic Warfare, working in Southeast Asia and Africa and granted the rank of second lieutenant in the Army. In September 1942, he was assigned to the London Controlling Section (LCS), an organization devoted to military deception, and part of the joint planning staff of the War Cabinet. Wingate initially served as the Army representative of the operations subsection, and from March 1943 onward he served as Deputy Controller of the LCS under Colonel John Henry Bevan, Wingate was well-qualified for the position due to his extensive social connections, including friendships with several European monarchs, as well as his reputation for cunning. While at LCS, Wingate also worked closely with Hastings Ismay about whom he later wrote a biography. The two were already friendly with each other, having spent time together in India. While serving with the LCS, Wingate held the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Early in 1943, Wingate and Bevan devised Plan Jael, an effort to disguise the true nature and location of the D-Day landings. Wingate first presented Plan Jael to a meeting of American and British officers in the summer of 1943, who found the plan "so ambitious as to be the subject of some question as to its general plausibility." In the end, the plan evolved into Operation Bodyguard, which Wingate helped to coordinate.

Wingate participated in the planning for many other deception schemes, including Operation Mincemeat, for which he approved the letters planted on a fake corpse. Wingate was also involved in the cover plans for Operation Neptune, the cross channel phase of Operation Overlord. Sir Frederick Morgan, the original planner of Operation Overlord, initially believed that no deception plan could successfully disguise Neptune, but Wingate convinced him to at least allow LCS to make an effort.

Wingate also devised another deception plan for Overlord codenamed Royal Flush, which recommended that the Allies approach three neutral countries: Spain, Sweden and Turkey, and ask for their assistance with landings in Southern France. The Allies hoped that the Spanish in particular would pass this information along to the Germans, who would then expect landings in southern France, rather than in Normandy. The plan proved greatly successful; the Spanish passed the information to the Germans and even agreed to provide humanitarian aid for soldiers wounded in the landings. After the Normandy landings, the British used the Spanish for further deception by replying that they no longer needed Spanish assistance as the Normandy landings had been so successful that the plans for the south of France had been canceled. The Spanish reported this information to the Germans, helping to deceive them about the actual landings in the South of France in August 1944.

At the end of the war, Wingate was chosen by the Combined Chiefs of Staff to write an official history of Allied deception during the war. The report, which has been described as "urbane, literate and readable" dealt more with the British than the Americans, but provided an excellent reference and was approved by a conference in London in June 1947. Like other reports of the Allied deception strategies, the report was kept secret for many years as Wingate explained: "We wanted no articles in the Reader's Digest about how the Allies had outwitted the German General Staff. It was felt we might have to take the Russian General Staff on."