The Man Who Never Was

The Man Who Never Was is a 1956 Second World War war film, based on the book of the same name by Lt. Cmdr. Ewen Montagu and dramatising actual events. The film was directed by Ronald Neame and starred Clifton Webb, Gloria Grahame and Robert Flemyng. It is about Operation Mincemeat, a 1943 British Intelligence plan to deceive the Axis powers into thinking Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily, would take place elsewhere.

In 1943, Royal Navy Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu Clifton Webb comes up with a scheme to deceive the Nazis about the impending invasion of southern Europe. It entails releasing a body just off the coast of Spain, where strong currents will almost certainly cause it to drift ashore in an area where a skilled German secret agent is known to operate. The corpse will appear to be the victim of an airplane crash, the nonexistent Royal Marine Major William Martin, who is carrying letters that describe a forthcoming Allied invasion of Greece, rather than the obvious target of Sicily. Time is short, but the impatient Montagu is finally given approval to carry out the mission.On the advice of a medical expert, Montagu procures the body of a man who died of pneumonia so that he will seem to have drowned from the grieving father. Then, after proper preparations, he and his assistant, Lt. Acres Robert Flemyng, take the corpse concealed in a canister to a waiting submarine. The submarine evades a depthcharge attack and later surfaces at night to release the body. As hoped, it washes ashore. Montagu is at first disappointed when it appears that the documents were not tampered with, but an expert assures him one of the letters was cleverly opened and resealed. ........

Source: Wikipedia