Battles where baits are overlooked by the enemy in expense of the baiter

Upvote:-1

Actually, Operation Mincemeat did more harm than good

Operation Mincemeat was designed to fool Axis (Germans and to less extent Italians) that main targets for Allied invasion of South Europe would be Balkans or Sardinia and Corsica, with Sicily serving only as secondary target. Apparently Germans did fall for the trap, but ironically it had negative consequences for Allies.

Considering Sicily only as secondary target, and already suspicious about Italian wiliness to fight, Germans held relatively modest forces on island. What is more important, they already decided to abandon Sicily and made plans to evacuate across Strait of Messina. As a consequence, German loses during the fighting were not that high, they managed to evacuate large portions of their army .

Real damage for Allies came latter. Since German forces in Italy were largely intact, Allied advance in Italy was very slow and costly, from landings in Salerno right until the end of the war. Italy in fact was not "soft underbelly of Europe" as Allies (Churchill) had hoped. Also, partisans in Yugoslavia and Greece had harder times fighting against German troops that reinforced Balkans.

Without Operation Mincemeat, fighting for Sicily would be harder, but Allies would have chance to isolate and destroy German forces on island, considering their naval and air superiority. Also, way for invasion of Southern Europe via Greece or Yugoslavia would be open. Instead, they got two years of mostly useless but bloody Italian campaign.

Upvote:0

Another more recent opposite case, similar to your Battle of Long Island example, is the stunning success of Operation Bodyguard (especially Juan Pujol GarcΓ­a's / "Garbo's" role in Fortitude) in convincing OKW that Overlord was a feint and the real Allied invasion would come at the Pas de Calais (Fortitude South II) led by General George S. Patton.

This deception convinced the German High Command to withhold a massive counterattack against the real June 6 invasion force at Normandy (even though Rommel and Speidel tried to get Jodl to commit the Panzer reserves to Normandy), thinking it was a feint - and they continued to believe this until as late as September.

Upvote:3

Russian diversion before the Battle of Tsushima

During the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese war, a Russian navy fleet was trying to get from South East Asia to Vladivostok. The Russia Admiral Rozhestvenski detached two armed merchants Terek and Kuban to hopefully distract or divide the Japanese fleet away from the Tsushima Strait whilst the main part of the Russia fleet passed through. The two ships seemed to have passed completely unnoticed to the Japanese until after the main Russia fleet suffered a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Tsushima.

Upvote:6

Midway battle.

Japan planned to invade Midway on 1942. This invasion included a diversion in the Aleutian islands. But the United States, having broken Japanese naval codes, knew that main battle would be around Midway.

The United States concentrated their forces at Midway, and ignored the Aleutians. As result, they won at Midway, the turning point of the Pacific war. The diversonary Aleutians invasion was successful for Japan, but it was only of negligible importance.

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