United States Army deception formations of World War II
During World War II, the United States Army created many fake formations to fool the enemy. The best known was the First United States Army Group (FUSAG), a fictitious force meant to be the main invasion army for the Normandy landings. In reality, the invasion was carried out by the British 21st Army Group. FUSAG and other imagined formations stayed only on paper but were made to seem real with fake documents, photographs, double agents, news reports, and even physical decoys. Some fake units were based on old WWI formations or created from scratch, and many were reused to make them seem more believable.
One example was a fictitious division presented to the Germans as a well-trained unit formed at Camp Clatsop, Oregon in 1942. It supposedly trained at the Desert Training Center and on the Olympic Peninsula, guarded the Alaska–Canada Highway, and was shipped to England in June 1944. Intelligence notes even claimed a connection to someone close to an American agent, though that was part of the deception. After arriving in England, the division was said to have its headquarters at Newcastle-under-Lyme and later Woodbridge, and to operate with forces hoping to follow the Pas de Calais landings. During Fortitude South II it was shown moving to Brockenhurst for air-landing training with the 21st Airborne Division. In December 1944 it was depicted as moving to Dundee in Scotland and was disbanded at the start of 1945, with some soldiers used as replacements and a small cadre returning to the United States.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 20:37 (CET).