Batman Gambit/Real Life: Difference between revisions

* Also during WWII, when the allies were planning to invade southern Europe from Africa, the British launched a homeless man (who died of accidentally ingesting scraps of bread laced with rat poison) from a submarine, in an area where the Spanish would recover his body. Chained to his belt was a briefcase that explained that the invasion site would NOT be Sicily, and hinted instead it would be Greece. The Spanish under Franco, being on friendly terms with the Germans, found the body and gave the evidence to the German embassy, who bought the story, leaving the invasion site nearly undefended. It may also help that the Abwehr, which asserted the authenticity of the documents, was riddled with British agents, including its head, Admiral Canaris.

** The success of this plan, [[wikipedia:Operation Mincemeat|Operation Mincemeat]], was actually what led the Germans to disregard other information they'd actually gotten. Once the invasion was complete, they realised they'd been fooled and disregarded several other actual intelligence leaks as simple repeats of Mincemeat. Due to the effectiveness of the other [[wikipedia:Operation Fortitude|major deceptive operation]] this failure included the actual landings at D-Day being ruled as a repeat of Mincemeat.

** That said, before he was stationed in Southeast Asia, Colonel Olds was stationed in England as a wing commander at RAF Bentwaters, where he received terrible news: He had made the list for promotion to Brigadier General. Which meant he wouldn't be given a combat assignment. So he got his three best pilots together to put on a very unauthorized air show for an open house over the base. [[Magnificent Bastard|He got exactly what he had hoped for]]: He got in ''just'' enough trouble to get taken off the promotion list and sent to [[Briar Patching|command a combat unit in Thailand]] as punishment.

* The Athenian politician Themistocles, seeing the Persian threat, convinced the Athenians to spend the proceeds from a lode of silver to build a large navy, naming a threat from Greek rivals (Persia seemed too distant to the people). He then formed a battle plan to defend the pass at Thermopylae while the Allied (largely Athenian navy) held the Strait of Artemisium so the Persians couldn't sail around. When the Spartans were reluctant to deploy their armies far away from their home, Themistocles goaded them into it by successfully pledging the entire able-bodied population of Athens to man the allied Greek fleet. When the Spartan naval commander wanted to run from the approaching Persians, who outnumbered the Greeks six to one, Themistocles secured a large bribe to have the fleet stay there and defend the people. He subsequently took the initiative in the sea battle by attacking the Persians in the late afternoon when they off guard, so that that it would be dark by the time the Persians got their act together (the Greeks could withdraw more easily.) After holding the strait until the Spartans were defeated, Themistocles sailed back to Athens to evacuate everyone, leaving messages at all the towns along the way for the Ionians, Greek allies of Persia, in the Persian fleet to make Xerxes distrust them. Then, playing on Xerxes' desire to conquer the Greeks totally, he tricked the Persian fleet into an ambush in the Strait of Salamis, destroying most of their troop ships and crippling Persia's invasion force.