Germans tricked by D-Day diversion
‘Bluff’ fleet sent against Calais drew off enemy’s planes, British officer says
The German Air Force, absent from the Normandy invasion, went into the air to attack a “diversion” fleet that the Allies sent on D-Day into the Calais-Boulogne area, Cdr. Anthony Kimmins, British naval intelligence officer, said yesterday.
The Germans expected the Allied blow to land in that area, he said in an interview at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. He predicted that:
When the Germans’ final defense plans are found, I think we will discover that they thought we were coming in there.
Cdr. Kimmins came to the United States direct from the Normandy beaches, where he went ashore from one of the leading assault ships on D-Day. That night, he returned to England in a motor torpedo boat to report to the Admiralty and the next day he was back on the beachhead, where he stayed a week. He has been present at almost every landing of the war, including Norway, North Africa, Pantelleria, Sicily and Salerno with British troops. He was with U.S. forces in the Kwajalein landing.
The ships that went on the “bluff” invasion did not suffer much damage, he said. He added, “I think the men had a very good time. They just made a lot of noise.”
The Germans’ behavior was described by the Norman population as “very correct,” he said. Invasion, to the villagers, meant bombardment for the first time, as their agricultural land had not previously suffered from the Allied air blows and they had lived a comparatively comfortable existence during the past four years, the commander said.
The Germans were forced to use the robot planes prematurely, he said. He believed that they had all been aimed for the invasion ports, but the incessant Allied pounding of their bases had forced the Germans to shoot them at any target they could find. The planes could have been “a very serious menace” if used all at once from every site, he said.
Describing the ships in the Channel during the invasion, he said that it had been “just like walking down Broadway with traffic in all directions.” Ships “poured across” the Channel in a steady stream, in long orderly lines, massed from the British coast to the French coast, he said.