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Arguably the most recognized of history's military code names, Overlord was the name given for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation launched on June 6, 1944 and known as D-Day that saw the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Europe during the Second World War.
Operation Rolling Thunder was the code name given to the gradual and sustained aerial bombardment campaign conducted by the United States against North Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Pictured: A-4E Skyhawks attacking Phuong Dinh bridge in 1967.
The Berlin Blockade, which saw the Soviet Union blocking the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control during the Cold War, took place from June 24, 1948 to May 12, 1949. The subsequent Berlin Airlift was given the code name Vittles.
The United States invasion of the island nation of Grenada, which commenced on October 25, 1983, was code named Operation Urgent Fury and resulted in American military occupation within days.
In response to the Iraqi Army's invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, coalition forces led by the United States first of all initiated a build up of troops in Saudi Arabia code named Operation Desert Shield. The combat phase of the response was called Operation Desert Storm and took place between January 17 and February 28, 1991.
Initiated after the 1972 Munich massacre in which 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team were killed, Operation Wrath of God was the code name given to a covert operation directed by Mossad to assassinate those responsible for the killings, believed to be members of the Palestinian armed militant group Black September and operatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The operation continued for over 20 years. Steven Spielberg's film 'Munich' (2005) depicts the events leading up to, during, and after the massacre.
The post-Second World War repatriation of over eight million American military personnel from the European, Pacific, and Asian theaters was known as Operation Magic Carpet. Pictured are returning veterans of the Pacific filling the hangar deck of the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Enterprise.
From May 26 to June 4, 1940, over 338,000 British and French troops were safety evacuated from Dunkirk in France. In what was code named Operation Dynamo, the evacuation was described by Winston Churchill as a "miracle of deliverance."
Operation Banner was the operational name for the British Armed Forces' operation in Northern Ireland from 1969 to 2007, as part of the Troubles. Pictured: British soldiers allow a woman resident to pass through the barbed wire at a military road block in Divis Street, Belfast, so she can enter the main shopping center.
On the night of August 20–21, 1968 approximately 500,000 Warsaw Pact troops from the Soviet Union, Poland, Bulgaria, East Germany, and Hungary invaded Czechoslovakia in what was officially known as Operation Danube. The attack successfully stopped Alexander Dubček's Prague Spring liberalization reforms and strengthened the grip the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia had over the country.
In a prelude to what would become the Six-Day War, an Egyptian military operation planned to strike the Israeli Air Force in May 1967. It also included the bombing of major ports, the Negev Nuclear Research Center near Dimona, numerous airfields, and cities, and was code named Operation Dawn. It was later called off. Israel then invaded on June 5, 1967.
Carried out in April-May 1945, Operation Dracula was the airborne and amphibious attack on Japanese-held Rangoon by British and Anglo-Indian forces during the Burma Campaign. The operation is thought by several military experts to be one of the finest examples of the economical and effective use of paratroopers. Why it was called Dracula, however, has been lost in time.
A decomposing corpse, a fictitious girlfriend, and a black attaché case were all elements in what was one of the most successful wartime deceptions ever achieved: Operation Mincemeat. British intelligence officers managed to convince the enemy that Allied armies were preparing to cross the Mediterranean from their positions in North Africa and attack German-held Greece and Sardinia. In fact, the Nazis were caught unaware when 160,000 Allied troops invaded Sicily on July 10, 1943.
The rather quaint sounding Operation Chattanooga Choo-Choo was a highly effective Allied air offensive against German railway targets (locomotives and rolling stock) that took place across north-west Europe from May 20–28, 1944.
In an attempt to end the Iranian hostage crisis in which 52 American diplomats were held against their will in the US Embassy in Tehran, President Jimmy Carter ordered a Delta Force assault mission code named Operation Eagle Claw into the desert on April 24, 1980. It ended in disaster when a helicopter crashed into a transport aircraft killing eight servicemen. Carter blamed his loss in the 1980 US presidential election mainly on his failure to secure the release of the hostages.
One of the most famous Allied missions of the Second World War was the successful destruction of the Möhne and Edersee dams by Royal Air Force "Dam Buster" bombers using a purpose-built "bouncing bomb" developed by Barnes Wallis. The top secret mission was code named Operation Chastise and it took place on May 16–17, 1943. This photograph shows the breached Möhne Dam.
The development and use of the V-1 flying bombs and V-2 rockets by the Nazis, launched against British and other European targets from 1944 to 1945, was causing havoc on predominantly civilian populations. The subsequent strategic operations against research and development of the weapons, their manufacture, transportation, and attacks on their launch site, plus fighter intercepts against missiles in flight, became known as Operation Crossbow. Pictured is a 1943 Royal Air Force reconnaissance photo of V-2 rockets at a test stand.
The United States invasion of Panama, which lasted over a month between mid-December 1989 and late January 1990, was ordered by President George H.W. Bush ostensibly because the country had become a center for money laundering and a transit point for trafficking to the US and Europe. It was named Operation Just Cause.
During the last days of the Vietnam War, more than 7,000 people—mostly American civilians and "at-risk" Vietnamese—were evacuated by helicopter from various points in Saigon between April 29–30, 1975. This mechanized exodus was code named Operation Frequent Wind, probably due to the powerful downdrafts caused by helicopter rotor blades.
The Development of Substitute Materials was the original code name of the Manhattan Project, a research and development undertaking during the Second World War that produced the first nuclear weapons. Pictured is the Trinity Test on July 16, 1945, the first detonation of a nuclear weapon!
The evacuation of civilians in Britain during the Second World War was code named Operation Pied Piper. Commencing on September 1, 1939, around 1.5 million people, many of them children, were relocated to the relative safety of remote towns and villages in rural areas. Pictured are child evacuees from Bristol arriving at Brent in Devon in 1940.
Operation Gaff was the parachuting of a six-man patrol of the recently formed Special Air Service unit into German-occupied France on July 25, 1944, with the aim of killing or kidnapping German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (pictured). The operation was aborted when the team realized that Rommel, injured in an earlier attack, had been evacuated.
The brainchild of Field Marshal Montgomery and strongly supported by Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, Operation Market Garden consisted of two sub-operations: Market: an airborne assault to seize key bridges; Garden: a ground attack moving over the seized bridges creating the salient. Taking place over September 17–25, the mass airborne assault failed to secure a bridgehead over the Rhine. The film 'A Bridge Too Far' (1977) depicts the events.
Hitler's disastrous invasion of the Soviet Union was code named Operation Barbarossa, a watchword that became synonymous with the Wehrmacht's retreat and collapse. The invasion began on June 22, 1941, and ended on December 5 with Germany having suffered close to 775,000 casualties. More than 800,000 Soviets had been killed, and an additional six million Soviet soldiers had been wounded or captured.
Had the July 20, 1944 bomb plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler inside the Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Liar) succeeded, the emergency continuity of government operations plan issued to the Territorial Reserve Army of Germany known as Operation Valkyrie would have been implemented. The code name—originally referring to part of the conspiracy—has since become associated with the entire event. Tom Cruise portrayed Claus von Stauffenberg, the German army officer who led the plot, in the film 'Valkyrie' (2008).
On December 13, 2003, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was captured by US military forces in the town of ad-Dawr, near Tikrit. The eight-month operation was named after the film 'Red Dawn' (1984). Pictured is Saddam Hussein speaking at his trial.
Operation Anthropoid was the code name for the assassination during the Second World War of top Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich in Prague. The attack took place on May 27, 1942. Heydrich died of his injuries on June 4.
On July 4, 1976, commandos of the Israel Defense Forces carried out a successful mission to rescue 106 mainly Israeli hostages seized on a jet airliner by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which had landed at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. Though officially code named Operation Thunderbolt, the mission is better known as Operation Entebbe.
Sources: (Sydney Morning Herald) (Smithsonian Associates) (Weapons and Warfare) (History)
See also: Military secrets the US government doesn’t want you to know
In July 1943, Benito Mussolini lost a vote of no confidence and was arrested. On hearing the news, Adolf Hitler ordered an airborne operation to rescue the Italian dictator from his captors. Eiche was the code name given to what became known as the Grand Sasso raid, which took place on September 12. Mussolini was freed by a SS unit. Pictured: Mussolini with German commandos.
The Special Air Service (SAS) initiated Operation Nimrod after the Iranian Embassy in London was stormed by gunmen on April 30, 1980. A six-day siege ensued, which ended when the SAS rescued the hostages in a dramatic assault on the building that was televised around the world.
A military operation is nearly always given a code name: a word or name used, often clandestinely, to refer to an invasion, campaign, mission, or operation. Some of these code names have become synonymous with the event they are associated with. Operation Overlord, for example, forever identifies the Battle for Normandy and the D-Day landings. But there are other, less well-known code names linked to equally significant conflicts that might surprise you.
Click through this gallery and match these code names with some of history's most infamous raids and conflicts.
History's most famous military code names
The names attributed to major conflicts, efforts, and missions
LIFESTYLE World
A military operation is nearly always given a code name: a word or name used, often clandestinely, to refer to an invasion, campaign, mission, or operation. Some of these code names have become synonymous with the event they are associated with. Operation Overlord, for example, forever identifies the Battle for Normandy and the D-Day landings. But there are other, less well-known code names linked to equally significant conflicts that might surprise you.
Click through this gallery and match these code names with some of history's most infamous raids and conflicts.