How can we be sure that the enemy will receive the good news and take it into account? It is highly likely that the Germans will learn the number of ships in the convoy, the number of men on board, the nature of the cargo and the date of arrival in the area. How was this information passed on? By whom? Where? When? Was it a simple ‘leak’, or did a number of corroborating clues reach the Germans’ ears? Did the brains behind Torch simply talk on the radio, convinced that their conversations would be heard by the enemy? Or did they call on informers on the ground? Or did the dispersed spies pass on this secret and detailed information in bits and pieces to their German counterparts? Who, if anyone, was involved in this diversion? Where were they and how did they go about it? There is no shortage of hypotheses. Some Allied spies from this period have long been known. As the archives have been de-classified, other names have come to light, on the British and American sides, of these shadowy agents who sometimes worked throughout the war without the enemy suspecting them.

One of the best-known spies is William Alfred Eddy, whom some have called the American ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. The son of Presbyterian missionaries, Eddy was born in Lebanon in 1896. This agent with an unstoppable cover was also officially a missionary, but in fact he was in turn a soldier, spy and diplomat. A native Arabic speaker and connoisseur of the Muslim world, he became naval attaché in Cairo in 1941 before being sent to Tangiers, Morocco, to try to secure the regions of North Africa threatened by the Germans. Depending on the source, Eddy is said to have instigated « car bombs, sabotage, series of assassinations and intimidation » or to have been recruited to « use his knowledge of the Koran, his years of Arabic language practice and his partnerships with Muslim leaders to prepare the ground for Operation Torch ».

In his biography of Eddy, American journalist and Middle East specialist Thomas Lippman even explains that Eddy’s intelligence work was one of the keys to the success of Operation Torch! But Lippman told us that, as far as he knew, William Eddy was in no way involved in any diversionary operation by SL 125… To find out more, we will be interviewing Thomas Lippman as well as Andrew Buchanan, another great historian specialising in the period and author of the book « American Grand Strategy in the Mediterranean during World War II ».

L’article 23- High-level spies est apparu en premier sur SL125.

L’article 22 – The omissions of a bestseller est apparu en premier sur SL125.

The day after D-Day, De Gaulle put on a brave face by delivering a speech in praise of the Allies, not without taking some credit for this adventure: “Our American allies are at the head of this enterprise. The timing is very good. Indeed, after a crushing victory, our British allies, assisted by French troops, have just driven the Germans and Italians out of Egypt and penetrated Cyrenaica (…) Everywhere, the enemy is faltering and weakening. Frenchmen of North Africa, if, through you, we get back in line from one end of the Mediterranean to the other, the war will be won thanks to France!”.

In truth, according to his private secretary Mr. Crémieux-Brilhac, whom we interviewed in 2014, General De Gaulle became very angry in the early morning of November 8, 1942 when he learned that Allied troops had landed on the coasts of Algeria and Morocco. He was upset that he had not been informed and that General Giraud had been preferred to him. Was De Gaulle subsequently informed of all the details of the operation and in particular of the sacrifice of convoy SL 125? That is another story. If he did know, what did he think of the sacrifice of the 260 French sailors who sank with the Doumer? To this day, no one is able to say if the General knew about the thesis of the sacrificed convoy…

L’article 21 – Charles de Gaulle, the deceived Ally est apparu en premier sur SL125.

From his HQ in Gibraltar, Eisenhower had entirely piloted Operation Torch and one can imagine that he had left nothing to chance. In the article, we learn however that “the American General Eisenhower, in charge of planning the landings, had been impressed by the speed of the German response during the one in North Africa in November 1942”.

If he was surprised by the German reaction after the landing, what did he think of the smooth crossing of the Atlantic, wasn’t it even more surprising? Was it normal to only be surprised by the German reaction after November 8, although the threat was much greater in the preceding weeks? It makes sense… to someone who knows with certainty that convoy SL 125 was sending the U-Boats on a false trail! The memoirs of the various actors of Operation Torch (1) show that the Nazis only learned of the arrival of the Torch ships when they crossed the Strait of Gibraltar (officially neutral during the conflict, the Spanish officials did not fail to inform their German friends). At that moment, the leaders of the Third Reich still did not believe in a landing in North Africa. The Gestapo and German military intelligence were convinced that the destination of this convoy was Malta. Their judgement was based on the number of articles published in the British press about “poor, suffering and brave Malta” and the need to resupply the island. These articles had simply been commissioned by the British general staff to deceive the German agents once again…

If one cares about publishing articles to guide the Nazis in their judgement of the final destination of the Torch armada, should one not have calculated everything and guided the enemy in the same way for the crossing of the Atlantic?

The SL 125 convoy is not mentioned in the memoirs of Eisenhower or his collaborators, nor is it mentioned in this National Geographic article, but it could well have been one of the many traps devised by the Allied command, one of the jewels in the famous “necklace of precious stones” dear to Churchill (see Article “22 – The omissions of a bestseller“). A trap that worked very well, but which caused many victims. Is this not the only reason why the Allied authorities never acknowledged that the ships and passengers of this convoy had been sacrificed?

It is clear that the landing of November 1942 served as a rehearsal for that of June 1944. To secure Operation Overlord, the Allies set up Operation Bodyguard, a real masterpiece of disinformation. As stated in the article, this operation took its name from another of Churchill’s reflections, according to which truth during wartime should always be “assisted by a bodyguard of lies”.

1. cf. Memoirs of General Eisenhower, General Mark W. Clark etof Robert Murphy, Roosevelt’s personal representing in Algiers.

L’article 20 – The Art of War est apparu en premier sur SL125.

L’article 19 – Any survivors? est apparu en premier sur SL125.

From June 1941 onwards, British military intelligence called the methods used for wartime signals intelligence, obtained by breaking the high-level encryption of enemy communications picked up by the GC&CS (the forerunner of the British government’s electronic intelligence service) at Bletchley Park, Ultra. Eventually ‘Ultra’ became the standard name among Western Allied forces for any such decoding. This name was chosen because the information obtained was considered more important than the highest level of security used up to that point (‘The Most Secret’) and was thus termed ‘Ultra’ secret.

Most of the German coded messages were encrypted with an Enigma machine (in addition to Lorenz, Hagelin1 or PURPLE machines, of German, Italian or Japanese origin). Used correctly, Enigma would have been almost indecodable but negligence and mistakes made by the German cryptographers allowed the British to decrypt it and thus to have knowledge of all the messages exchanged by the Axis forces from spring 1942. To do this, the British cryptographers had also benefited from the precious help of the Poles. On 26 July 1939, only 5 weeks before the declaration of war, the Polish military secret services had indeed provided their British and French counterparts with techniques that allowed them to foil part of the Enigma codes.

Former Bletchley Park mathematician Gordon Welchman later wrote: “Ultra would never have really worked if we had not learned from the Poles just in time the details of both the German army, the Enigma machine and the procedures involved. At the time and afterwards, many experts considered Ultra to have been very valuable to the Allies. Winston Churchill said to King George VI: “It was thanks to Ultra that we won the war”. F. W. Winterbotham quoted Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Commander-in-Chief of the Western Allied Forces, as describing Ultra at the end of the war as having been ‘decisive’ in the Allied victory. Harry Hinsley, the official British intelligence historian during the Second World War, made a similar point about Ultra, saying that it had shortened the war ‘by no less than two years and probably four’. Without Ultra, it is not known how the war would have ended. 

L’article 18 – Enigma’s false lead est apparu en premier sur SL125.

This liner was intended for the Indochina and Indian Ocean lines of the Compagnie des Messageries Maritimes. It was designed to accommodate 872 passengers of all classes in the best conditions of comfort. 150 meters long, 19,5 meters wide, it could take up to 14,820 tons in full load and had a total power of 8,100 HP with two reversible 4-stroke engines.

A complete success, the first launching of the President Doumer required a very particular precision to maneuver the ship within the small picturesque harbour of La Ciotat, which offers only an extremely small water surface. In this contexte, each ceremonial launching was a spectacle for locals and tourists alike, who crowded the quays of the old port of La Ciotat, even risking getting their feet wet from the movement of the hull.

The ship made its first departure on June 6, 1933 aiming at the Far East, but was forced to stop in the Yemeni port of Aden on June 21^st due to engine damage. After temporary repairs, she returned to Marseilles on July 7^th from where she left on November 15^th. In 1938, her engines were supercharged, increasing her power to 10,200 hp and her speed to 19 knots. That same year, she was repainted white and permanently assigned to the Far East line.

On May 29, 1940, she was requisitioned by the British forces in Ismailia in Northern Egypt. Among the French crew, 6 officers, 68 crew members and 20 military sailors decided to stay on board. The others, several hundred men, opted to join the Vichy forces and were repatriated to France. Under new management of the UK-based shipping company Bibby Bros & Co, the liner joined the Free French Naval Forces under the command of Jean Mantelet.

In October 1942, she was incorporated into convoy SL 125, composed of 37 merchant ships and their escorts, which left Freetown on October 16^th. From 27 to 30 October, eight German submarines attacked the convoy between the Canaries and Madeira. President Doumer was their tenth victim. It sank under the assaults of the U-604, on 30 October in the early evening. The Norwegian cargo ship Alaska took in 48 survivors before being torpedoed in turn by U-510 during the night of 30 to 31 October. 260 of the 345 passengers were reported missing, including the commander, the chief officer and the chief mechanic.

Until recently, the ramp that was used to launch the President Doumer still existed in the old harbor of La Ciotat. The shipyards have now been reconverted into a construction and maintenance site dedicated to large pleasure yachts.

L’article 17 – The President Doumer est apparu en premier sur SL125.

This investigation will take us to different parts of the world, but the archival research will be mainly in London and Washington. In the US capital, we will snoop around the National Archives on Pennsylvania Avenue, where declassified US intelligence documents are kept. There we will look for clues, letters and coded messages relating to the events of late 1942. In New York, we will go to the Roosevelt Library, near Hyde Park. The former president’s notebooks and memos are open to the public. 79 boxes in all! Also available are the notes of General Clarck who secretly negotiated the landing of American troops with the leaders of the French resistance in North Africa. Do these documents mention convoy SL-125? If so, what can we learn? If not… why not?

We will of course go to London where some of the big secrets may lie. In various places in the British capital, we will search the archives of the SOE (Directorate of Special Operations), the War Office (former Ministry of Defence) and the Secret Intelligence Service, at Millbank on the banks of the Thames. At this last address, the documents of the famous MI6 (foreign espionage services) could well provide us with unpublished information on the tactics adopted in October 1942. We will interview the director of the War Office archives, successor to Stephen Wentworth Roskill, official historian of the Royal Navy and supporter of the ‘sacrificial convoy’ thesis.

One of the first archival files we will have to find and examine, if we are allowed to do so, will be that of the SL convoy command. Curiously, these operations were co-ordinated by a naval headquarters on board the ship « RMS Union-Edinburgh Castle ». The facilities and mooring on land were not suitable and throughout the war the SL convoys were coordinated from this old liner. So where are the RMS Union-Edinburgh Castle archives?

It is not in the British capital that we hope to make the best discoveries but rather in the centre of the country. We will try to obtain the necessary authorisations to access the mythical Bletchley Park estate made famous by the film Imitation Game (2014). A nerve centre for the deciphering of German and Japanese messages throughout the Second World War, Bletchley Park houses in its archives the millions of messages exchanged by the Axis troops during the conflict. This archive, which has remained secret until now, occupies eight complete rooms. The cards where the intercepted messages were noted are still locked in boxes. And in addition to these 2 to 3 million cards, Bletchley Park stores documents of all kinds, including those sent by Allied spies. U-boat plans, positions of Africakorps troops or data on the organisation of the German army, thousands of historical documents lie dormant at Bletchley Park…

We will also have to delve into the many secrets of the ‘London Controlling Section‘ (LCS for short), a top-secret British organisation which, during the Second World War, was responsible for devising strategic plans for deception and coordinating their execution (battles, raids, commando operations, etc.). The LCS was run jointly by the heads of MI6, MI5, the XX Committee and the PWE, the intelligence services of the three arms. It was created by Winston Churchill in April 1941 and its existence was not officially recognised until 1969. Perhaps we should go and consult the archives or interview the families of its members, including its leaders (Oliver Stanley, head of the LCS until June 1942 and Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Bevan, MC, head of the LCS from June 1942).

In his book “La Guerre des magiciens – L’intoxication alliée 1939-1944”, Jean Deuve explains that « It is Churchill, moved by his past experience, his pronounced taste for everything non-conformist and his lively imagination, who concretises the LCS and puts it on track by giving it as first leaders personal friends. He will never cease to take a close interest in the LCS. He will provide it with ideas and will himself participate in its subterfuges ».

L’article 16 – The secrets of the archives? est apparu en premier sur SL125.

L’article 15 – The underside of the maps est apparu en premier sur SL125.

The stratagem originated in the spring of 1942, at the height of German domination. The British Isles had managed to avoid the German invasion during the Battle of Britain, but Hitler was at the gates of Stalingrad and the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse. To keep a chance to win this war, the Allies did not have any other choice but to create a second war front to relieve pressure on the USSR. The Americans chose to organize a landing on the French Coast along the Channel. Churchill, on the other hand, had not forgotten British interests in Africa and felt that landing on the European continent was very risky, given the quality of German defenses and the low number of available troops. He therefore opted for a less direct offensive, in Africa.

The negotiations between both countries lasted four days and resulted in an agreement designating North Africa as the Allies’ immediate objective. General Marshall entrusted Eisenhower with this new command and the project was named “Operation Torch”. It could only succeed if it remained as secret as possible. On the Allied side, only a few hundred people were aware of this maneuver, which aimed to land more than 100,000 men on the African coast. All the soldiers requisitioned for the operation had no idea of their final destination until after their ships had left the American and English coasts. In order to deceive potential German spies, the men based in England even underwent military training in the extreme cold, designed to make them believe that they were going to intervene in Northern Europe. They were even introduced to skiing and tens of thousands of gloves, anoraks and woolen sweaters were manufactured for the occasion. As Churchill is believed to have said, Operation Torch had to be “be set like the stones on a gemstone necklace”.

The assault convoys departed from Norfolk, Virginia, while the covering forces sailed from Casco Bay in Maine. They were later joined by five aircraft carriers coming from Bermuda, altogether forming the most fantastic naval force ever launched on the oceans. An armada of 350 warships and 500 transport ships, with a linear length of 50 km and a width of 40 km, on its way to cross more than 8,000 km of an Atlantic ocean infested with German submarines. On the night of November 8^th, 107,000 men landed on the North African coast with the utmost discretion. The next morning, the Allies launched the assault and three task forces (expeditionary corps) undertook the seizing of the strategic ports and airports of Casablanca, Oran and Algiers, before advancing towards Tunisia.

With the help of archival images, videos and photos, drawings, written documents and 3D imagery, we will evoke the convoy’s journey and reconstruct on an interactive map of the Atlantic Ocean the different movements of the hundreds of ships composing Operation Torch.

L’article 14 – Operation Torch, a strategic masterpiece est apparu en premier sur SL125.