Naming operations

[coccinelle]

Does anybody know how operations in wars are named? ie why operation torch was thus named, or operation sledgehammer etc Do they mean something or were their names just pulled out of a hat?

[Clanad]

This is interesting...

http://www.wisegeek.c...operations-chosen.htm

[heathfield]

The British policy was to choose a name that would give no indication whatsoever to the enemy of the type of operation that was planned. Unfortunately this was too much for the Americans, who tended to name their operations in a way that everyone could guess correctly what an operation was all about. One of the best examples was ''Desert Storm''. Saddam Hussein didn't have to be a genius to work that one out!!

[coccinelle]

Thank you for your answers. That is an interesting link but doesn't really explain how a name is chosen. I'm (still) reading Churchill's memoirs of WWII so maybe at some point he'll explain his reasoning. I do notice he had a tendancy of changing code names, often from an american one to one of his. Round-up was changed to Overlord for example. Something which made me smile: on their secret trip to Casablanca President Roosevelt was named Admiral Q so Churchill named himself Mr P for the simple reason of minding your P's and Q's ...

[mike b]

Some British WW2 Ops had appropriate names; for example, Operation Jericho, the RAF Mosquito attack to breach the walls of Amiens Prison in Feb '44, Millennium, the 1,000-bomber raid on Cologne in May '42, and somewhat grimly, Gomorrah, the fire-bombing of Hamburg in July '43.
There was also Operation Manna, the air dropping of food to the starving Dutch population in 1945.

[coccinelle]

That's interesting mike b thank you

[dundurn]

http://www.globalsecu...ort/1995/sieminsk.htm

pretty much tells you everything you ever wantd to know!