Operation Bodyguard - Aftermath

Aftermath

Operation Bodyguard is regarded as a tactical success, delaying the Fifteenth Army in the Pas de Calais for seven weeks thus allowing the Allies to build a beachhead and ultimately win the Battle of Normandy. In his memoirs General Omar Bradley called Bodyguard the "single biggest hoax of the war".

In his 2004 book, The Deceivers, Thaddeus Holt attributes the success of Fortitude to the trial run of Cockade in 1943; "FORTITUDE in 1944 could not have run as smoothly as it did if the London Controlling Section and its fellows had not gone through the exercise of COCKADE in the year before."