9th Airborne Division (Phantom)

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I ran across this authorization drawing for the 9th Airborne Division (Ghost, Phantom or what ever it's called now days) several years ago. I found it in the files of the Institute of Heraldry while working on another project for the Quartermaster Museum.

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And here is a 3 Aug 1944 letter from the Office of the Quartermaster General to the Director of Joint Security Control reference this patch.

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Here is the most interesting of the group, a drawing of the patch from 1948, 3 years after WWII ended!

[tredhed2]

This is ALL really cool stuff. Definitive and informative. Thanks!

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I also ran across this memo indicating that 1,000 patches and tabs were made in Aug 45 for the 18th Airborne Division -

[Stinger Gunner USMC]

This is indeed interesting, this made me start wondering, does any one have a collection of these phantom division patches?

Myself, I only have the 9th airborne. I would be interested in seeing others as I know there were over a dozen phantom divisions durring WWII

[craig_pickrall]

There are Ghost DIV's included in the reference section.

 

http://www.usmilitariaforum.com/forums/ind...hp?showforum=26

[jgawne]

The one letter of having them made up is the important one. Of course they went through the motionsw of approving the insignia, but the question is did they actually make examples, and if so what happened to them?

 

Way back I was told the collector's myth (myth because ther eis not proof to back it it), that thousands were made in case the Germans had a spy in the insignia biz. But if that were the case, we should have been flooded with oodles of them in original boxes.

 

As I said, in many years of looking for evidence they were actually used at all other than just an approved design, and when I found any possibilties it came to nothing (for example I was told the 3133rd Signal wore them- I tracked down vets of that units who said no) . Except for the one post war transscript that appears to indicate some were placed on a trable during a briefing

 

But not all of these units were the same. Some were actually proposed units that were slated for possible actiuvation, others were phoney units slipped into the Army T/O as once an enemt identifies a unit, they will search high and wide for where it is. I'd have to go back and look at the status of the units to recall which is which.

 

But it seems that IF they were used in theater at all, there should have been some slip ups and the patch shown in a photo- they managed to include textual slips, such as "an officer of the Xth division was married in the local chruch last sunday"

 

I am still not 100% convinced any bullion would have been made. Bullion is hand done, slo to make, uses expensive material, and with so many other units to do, especially ones that people were actually ASKING FOR AND BUYING the probablility of them being made on spec for a board is pretty low. Especially as they would more likely have been made after the war's end. A few vets I have talked to said they would go into tailor shops and ask for a specific insignia to be made, then come back later to pick it up. Unless it was a very common one for the place to do (such a unit a lot of guys came in for, or rank, or something like that) they didn't do them up in advance. Bullion patches are not as easy to make as just plain thread emboidered one.

 

I tend to think of mad eup patch boards as being a more post WW2 thing. What I would love ot see if a period photo of one showing insignia

 

Granted , one or two may have been made as samples, then never sold until finally bought up later on by a collector, but again, that would be such a limited number. Bullion was expesinve to make, which is why you don't see all that many uniforms or patches of it (well, you didn't 20 years ago, now oddly enough you do).

 

But I am thrilled to see that one actual manufacture memo. I suspect the actual wartime production of non-exsisting unit patches was just limited.

 

I'll have to go look at the breakdown of which divisions were which kind.

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What is interesting is the 9th Airborne Division was designed for deception as it's design was requested by the Joint Security Control. The request for 1,000 patches also came from the JSC. According to Thaddeus Holt's book, "The Deceivers: Allied Military Deception in the Second World War", the Joint Security Control had:

 

"...explicit responsibility for coordinating the implementation of "general overall deception plans approved by the Combined Chiefs of Staff." It also had explicit responsibility to "provide for the implementation of such features of approved deception measures as require implementation outside the theater of origin" and for coordinating such implementation; and theater deception plans prepared in the theaters were required to indicat the part of the plan that fell within this category"

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Another mention of Joint Security Control in WWII:

 

"One of the motives behind the proposal for creating a joint intelligence agency was to strip OSS of most of its intelligence functions. Moreover, when plans began to be made for Operation TORCH, the invasion of North Africa, the Joint Intelligence Committee was carefully cut out of the picture. Instead, intelligence support to the operation was provided by a Joint Security Control group with its membership restricted to representatives from Army and Navy Intelligence. Later the Joint Chiefs of Staff used this body to coordinate deception operations."

 

Chapter 5, MILITARY INTELLIGENCE, John Patrick Finnegan, Center of Military History, 1998

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And yet another mention of JSC:

 

"From Churchill's famous phrase came the code—name Plan Bodyguard, which protected the most important secret of WW2, the time and place for the Operation Overlord D—Day landings. It was a global strategic deception plan. All other deception operations in all theaters at the time, down to the tactical level, were conceived in concert with that master plan. Overseeing all Bodyguard activities from his bunker beneath Great George Street was Colonel John H. Bevan's London Control Section, which communicated and coordinated with American counterparts in the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joint Security Control. And the Joint Security Control communicated and coordinated with the Office of War Information, among other government agencies."

 

When a bodyguard of lies was possible

By John B. Dwyer, 6 Dec 04, American Thinker

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One more:

 

"By this time deception had been successfully tested as a weapon of strategic warfare, but under Bevan the (London Control Section's) LCS's stature would increase in the military heirarchy to a point where it came to control many of the activities of other British secret agencies .... Bevan had the authority to direct any government department in London and, through the Joint Security Control, in Washington, to perform according to the LCS's score. He had powers without precedent and on occasions even Roosevelt and Churchill made their personal movements and statements conform to the dictates of deception. In consequence, Bevan came to be regarded at Storey's Gate as the British regarded their public executioner: with curiosity, even admiration, but at all times with caution and respect.

 

From this nucleus of men radiated connections to all the main military, intelligence and policy centers in the joint Anglo-American high commands. At COSSAC, the newly established planning headquarters for the invasion [of Fortress Europe], deception was the responsibility of the Committee of Special Means [CSM], or Ops. B, a subsection of the operations department. The chief British agencies which executed LCS strategems were MI-6, MI-5 and the XX Committee, PWE [Political Warfare Executive] and the intelligence departments of the three main services. In the United States and in the American sphere of influence, the main agency used by the LCS and the CSM was the Joint Security Control, which in turn controlled the OSS, the FBI, the various American information agencies and the State Department. Thus, the structure of the LCS was such that a stone cast at Storey's Gate rippled in ever-widening circles -- political, financial, civilian, diplomatic, scientific, military -- until it became, according to Helmuth Greiner, OKW's historian, "waves of confusing deceptions." The LCS also had the means, when necessary, to place a deceptive message directly on Hitler's desk within one half hour of its origination at Churchill's headquarters ..."

 

Anthony Cave Brown

Bodyguard of Lies, Vol. 1, 1975

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And finally the reason why I think the 1,000 18th Airborne Division patches were made...

 

About 20 August, six gliders and their pilots were to be sent to Okinawa airfields by (Far East Air Forces) FEAF to train conspicuously. Thereafter, FEAF was to construct 12 dummy gliders on Okinawa each week until a total of 100 was reached, all to be displayed at or near military airfields. Besides that, a fictional airborne corps headquarters and a division headquarters were to be created on Okinawa around 1 September, and the 11th Airborne, which actually existed in the Philippines, was to be designated as the second division forming the fictional corps. As an added touch of authenticity, 1,000 shoulder patches for the fictional division were to be made and shipped by Joint Security Control (JSC), an agency subordinate to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) that handled intertheater deception matters.

Pastel: Deception in the Invasion of Japan

by Dr Thomas M. Huber

U.S. Army Command and General Staff College

http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/cs...ber2/huber2.asp

[tredhed2]

Just outstanding documentation.....