Operation Titanic was the codename for an operation carried out on 5-6 June 1944 by the Royal Air Force and the Special Air Service in support of the Normandy landings during the Second World War. The objective of the operation was to drop 500 dummy parachutists, in areas away from the landing beaches, to persuade the Germans that the invasion was spread over a greater area and thus entice troops away from the actual invasion zone. The episode was depicted in the 1962 film The Longest Day.
Titanic was one of four Royal Air Force deception operations carried out at the time, the others being Operation Glimmer by No. 218 Squadron, Operation Taxable by No. 617 Squadron and Operation Airborne Cigar by No. 101 and No. 214 squadrons.
Read more about Operation Titanic: Background, Mission, Aftermath
Famous quotes containing the words operation and/or titanic:
“Waiting for the race to become official, he began to feel as if he had as much effect on the final outcome of the operation as a single piece of a jumbo jigsaw puzzle has to its predetermined final design. Only the addition of the missing fragments of the puzzle would reveal if the picture was as he guessed it would be.”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)
“We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)