On 25 September 1942, an RAF Catalina of 119 Squadron flying from Pembroke harbour to Gibraltar encountered a severe electrical storm and crashed into the sea off the Spanish port of Cadiz. Everyone on board was killed. The Spanish authorities recovered the bodies from the sea and returned them to the British. On board was a courier carrying details of the upcoming Anglo-American invasion of North Africa, Operation Torch, including the date of the planned landings. It was not known if the Spanish had discovered the letters the courier was carrying and passed them on to the Abwehr, the German military-intelligence service, which had a substantial presence in Spain. But it had to be assumed that news of the landings had been compromised.
Operation Torch went ahead, however, and was a resounding success. Soon, American and British troops were advancing east through North Africa towards Tunisia. And after Montgomery’s great victory at El Alamein, the Eighth Army was advancing westwards across Libya. But it would be many months before Axis forces were expelled from North Africa. Final victory did not come until May 1943.
In the meantime, at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, Churchill, Roosevelt and their chiefs of staff resolved that after victory in North Africa, the Allied armies would invade Sicily with a view to knocking Italy out of the war. In many ways, it was an obvious next step, with Sicily located in the central Mediterranean and a convenient stepping stone for an assault upon the Italian mainland. So those in charge of deception planning in the British Army were asked to come up with a scheme to fool the enemy into thinking that the next step would not be Sicily but instead would be either Sardinia or Greece. The deception was to be called Operation Barclay.
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