Summary of Ben Macintyre's Operation Mincemeat

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Book Preview:#1 In 1943, José Antonio Rey María was a fish spotter for the fishermen of Punta Umbria, Spain. He saw a body floating in the water, and when he rowed closer, he realized it was a man. He brought the body ashore and none of the other fishermen wanted to touch it.

#2 The British Secret Service had created a man from nothing in a basement room beneath the Admiralty building in Whitehall. The man was tall and thin, with thick spectacles and an elaborate air-force mustache.

#3 The defining feature of this spy was his falsity. He was a pure figment of imagination, a weapon in a war far removed from the traditional battle of bombs and bullets.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Mar 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669358176

IRB Media

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Insights on Ben Macintyre's Operation Mincemeat

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 13

Insights from Chapter 14

Insights from Chapter 15

Insights from Chapter 16

Insights from Chapter 17

Insights from Chapter 18

Insights from Chapter 19

Insights from Chapter 20

Insights from Chapter 21

Insights from Chapter 22

Insights from Chapter 23

Insights from Chapter 24

Insights from Chapter 25

Insights from Chapter 26

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

In 1943, José Antonio Rey María was a fish spotter for the fishermen of Punta Umbria, Spain. He saw a body floating in the water, and when he rowed closer, he realized it was a man. He brought the body ashore and none of the other fishermen wanted to touch it.

#2

The British Secret Service had created a man from nothing in a basement room beneath the Admiralty building in Whitehall. The man was tall and thin, with thick spectacles and an elaborate air-force mustache.

#3

The defining feature of this spy was his falsity. He was a pure figment of imagination, a weapon in a war far removed from the traditional battle of bombs and bullets.

Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The British government thought of many ways to deceive the Germans, from dropping footballs painted with luminous paint to attracting submarines, to distributing messages in bottles from a fictitious U-boat captain cursing Hitler’s Reich.

#2

The idea of dropping a corpse dressed as an airman on the coast was suggested in a memo by Basil Thomson, former assistant premier of Tonga, tutor to the King of Siam, ex-governor of Dartmoor prison, and policeman.

#3

In late September 1942, a British Catalina seaplane flying from Plymouth to Gibraltar crashed in a violent electrical storm off Cádiz, Spain. Among the passengers was Paymaster-Lieutenant James Hadden Turner, a Royal Navy courier, who was carrying a letter to the governor of Gibraltar informing him that General Dwight Eisenhower would be arriving on the rock immediately before the offensive.

#4

The British authorities were sure that the secret was safe, but they were wrong. Another victim of the Catalina air crash was Louis Daniélou, an intelligence officer with the Free French Forces, who was on a mission for the Special Operations Executive. His notebook and a document that referred to British attacks on targets in North Africa were passed on to the Germans.

#5

Cholmondeley longed for adventure. He was commissioned a pilot officer in November 1939, but his poor eyesight meant he would never fly a plane. Instead, he spent the war working for British intelligence, rising to the rank of flight lieutenant.

#6

Cholmondeley, the secretary of the top secret XX Committee, had a subtle and ingenious mind that was forever throwing up bizarre