The Most Famous Unknown Person!

[Bob Hinton]

Aha! I should have googled it... cheers sleekviper old chap..

Now then....

I watched a documentary on the BBC last year (so it must be true) about a Welsh guy who died in Britain all alone in the world during WW2... He was dressed up to look like an RAF pilot on a secret mission, complete with false ID papers, realistic love letters, bus tickets etc, but most importantly a letter from a top British military man (Monty I think) which was destined for London suggesting that the Allies would invade Crete NOT Italy...and his body was then dumped off the Spanish coast where it washed ashore making it look like he'd died in a plane crash at sea.

The Gestapo had a man posted there and he quickly heard of this when the Spanish conducted a post mortem, and he used some verbal pressure to peek at the contents of the dead man's attache case which was handcuffed to his arm.

The false letter was found and it's contents eventually found their way to Berlin and were swallowed by the Nazi top brass.... chaging their defensive plans in Italy.

Fascinating and tragic story and I cannot for the life of me remember the poor man's name, and I'm not sure if there's a photograph of him anywhere.

I think he qualifies for a "famous unknown"...

I think you are referring to Operation Mincemeat. The body is supposed to be that of Glyndwr Michael a Welsh tramp, other possibilities have been proposed (John Melville) but the generally accepted identity is G Michael.

However this isn’t the sort of person I’m looking for – what I want is someone who is universally recognised, but unknown. Like that soldier in the photograph published previously.

[Bob Hinton]

Yes!

If it's the one I'm thinking of,it's from the clearance of the Warsaw Ghetto...The enlarged one shows the SD guards behind him..........

I know the one. Poor little mite. However you may be pleased to hear that the SS officer standing behind him was recently arrested for war crimes, due to that photograph.