page_title: 61st Infantry Division (United Kingdom)
section_title: Return to England, training, and Operation Overlord
hierarchical_section_title: 61st Infantry Division (United Kingdom) / History / Return to England, training, and Operation Overlord
caption_attribution_description: English: Dummy landing craft used as decoys in south-eastern harbours in the period before D-Day.
context_page_description: The 61st Infantry Division was an infantry division of the British Army, raised in 1939 as part of the expansion of the Territorial Army in response to the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. The division was created as a duplicate of the 48th Infantry Division, and was assigned to home defence duties.
  While the division was never deployed overseas, its headquarters staff was deployed to Norway and briefly fought in the Norwegian Campaign. Afterwards, the division was deployed to Northern Ireland for almost three years as a result of rumours of a German intention to invade. In Northern Ireland, the division manned static defences, conducted internal security, and trained for future operations. Returning to England, the division participated in military exercises and was scheduled to join the 21st Army Group for the Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of German-occupied France. It lost this role in late 1943, and was assigned to train replacements for combat units. Throughout 1944, the division aided Overlord in various deception formats, while most of the men were posted to combat formations within 21st Army Group.
context_section_description: The 61st Division returned to England on 4 February 1943, and was based in Essex under the command of XI Corps. Between 4–12 March, the division participated in Exercise Spartan, the largest military exercise ever held in the United Kingdom. David French commented that the exercise "was designed to analyse the problems that would arise after a force had landed on a hostile shore and was advancing from a bridgehead". The exercise revealed weaknesses in elements of the senior leadership, in particular the officers in overall command of the armies deployed for the exercise, and highlighted the improvements made in general by the infantry. Spartan was followed, in April and May, by Exercise Jantzen. This was an administrative undertaking by the division and the headquarters of I Corps, aimed at improving the support techniques that would be used in the upcoming invasion of Europe. In May, the division was transferred to II Corps, and moved to Kent, after which Major-General Charles Wainwright took command, holding this position until the end of the war. The division was earmarked for a role in Operation Overlord, and Marcus Cunliffe wrote that Exercise Spartan "seemed to be every indication that" the division was to be a front-line unit. In September, the division, in conjunction with the 1st Polish Armoured Division, was placed under the control of II Canadian Corps for Exercise Link. In the months following the exercise, the division was relegated to Lower Establishment status. This meant that the division was now to be strictly used for home defence in a static role compared to Higher Establishment divisions that were intended for deployment overseas and combat. As part of this change in priorities, the division also became a training formation and one intended to find suitable replacements for fighting formations. By October, the division had also been assigned to anti-invasion duties in Kent. While based there, German cross-Channel guns periodically shelled the area, and in 1944 V-1 flying bombs became a minor issue. In December 1943, the division (reinforced, for the exercise, by the 31st Tank Brigade) played the defending force in Exercise Vulcan; a four-day training exercise aimed at improving the attacking process of the 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division.
  During 1944, the division aided Operation Overlord in various ways. On 9 April, the 183rd Infantry Brigade ceased to exist as a formation and formed HQ Residue Concentration Area to aid the invasion preparation. The 4th Battalion, Northamptonshire Regiment and the 10th Battalion, Worcestershire Regiment were attached to 21st Army Group to aid 185th Camouflage Field Company, Royal Engineers. The men of the 4th Northamptonshire Regiment created 150 fake Landing Craft Tanks (LCTs), made from steel tubing and canvas, and positioned them along the River Deben at Ipswich, as well as at Oulton Broad, Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth. The 10th Worcestershire Regiment constructed fake landing craft at Dover, Folkestone, and Harwich, in addition to fake LCTs on the River Orwell. By 6 June, the battalion had constructed 122 such dummy displays. In May, as part of Operation Fortitude, Juan Pujol García (the British double agent known as Garbo) reported to the Germans that the division was ostensibly based around Brighton and Newhaven. Here, along with the 45th Infantry Division and Royal Marines, it allegedly took part in the build-up of the notional First United States Army Group (FUSAG). The division was then made part of the fictional British VII Corps, part of the equally fake Fourth Army, and "travelled" to Scotland before returning south to FUSAG. Furthermore, signallers from the division maintained wireless traffic to give the Germans the impression that VII Corps also included the notional 80th Division.
  By mid-1944, the five Lower Establishment divisions allocated to home defence duties (the 38th (Welsh), the 45th, the 47th (London), the 55th (West Lancashire), and the 61st) had a combined total of 17,845 men. Of this number, around 13,000 were available as replacements for
caption: An example of deployed decoy Landing Craft Tanks.
exif: {"Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image Copyright": "Imperial War Museums"}