Could someone SIMPLY describe the phantom army of Gen. Patton?

Question

In as least words as possible please.

Answer 1

Tanks were made of wood and cardboard covered by tarps. Barracks and support formations showed fake tents & buildings. A command staff, complete with a commanding general in the likes of the well respected Gen. Patton along with the associated orderlies and sub-lieutenants was established. All to fake the Germans into thinking an attack at the Pas de Calais area was in the making.

Answer 2

This was a fictional force that the Allies created for Patton to lead as a decoy. There were no troops. Some dummy equipment was set up to fool aerial reconnaissance, and a complete communications unit was set up to transmit phony radio traffic so that it would look like an entire Army Corps was in place to invade Pas De Calais.

The decoy worked perfectly. Though Patton resented being left out of the big invasion.

Answer 3

Germany thought Patton was the Allies' best tactician. For several months before D-Day for Operation Overlord, the Allies assigned many radio operators to send massive numbers of radio messages implying the Overlord force was under Patton's command and landing at Calais. Not just troop movements, but food requisitions and all the other radio traffic a large force would actually generate. The plan was for Germany to intercept these messages and base their coastal deployments on them. The plan worked, as German commanders actually thought the force landing at Normandy was a diversion.

Answer 4

Prior to the invasion of Normandy, the US Army tried to spread fake intelligence to make Germany think that the invasion was going to occur somewhere else (Pas de Calais, rather than Normandy.

This is an excerpt from Wikipedia that sums it up.

First U.S. Army Group—often abbreviated FUSAG—was activated in London in 1943 as the planning formation for the Allied invasion of France under General Omar Bradley. When Twelfth United States Army Group was acivated on 1 August 1944, Bradley and his staff transferred to the headquarters of the new army group.

Despite a lack of personnel, FUSAG continued to exist on paper as part of the deception of Operation Quicksilver. In order to make the German forces believe the Allied invasion would come at Pas de Calais, the phantom force was stationed at Dover, directly across the English Channel from the site. To further attract the Axis commanders' attention, General Eisenhower placed George Patton in command of the phantom force as well as increasing the formation's size to be larger than that of the British-led Twenty-first Army Group under Bernard Montgomery. The deception worked so well that even long after the invasion at Normandy, German forces continued waiting for what they thought would be the true invasion force

Answer 5

The phantom army of General Patton consisted of men and artillery to sway the Germans away from the Allied landing at Normandy and concentrate on Calais on the French coast as well.