The US 55th Infantry Division was a 'phantom division' created in October 1943 to cover the departure of the US 5th Infantry Division from

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

. An entirely notional force, its existence was reported to the Germans only through controlled agents as Iceland was too far from Europe to make use of radio deception.

World War II

Between March and July 1944 the division (Along with the fictional 7th, 9th and 10th Ranger Battalions) was presented as being part of the British VII Corps of the British Fourth Army, part of the

First United States Army Group First United States Army Group (often abbreviated FUSAG) was a fictitious (paper command) Allied Army Group in World War II prior to D-Day, part of Operation Quicksilver, created to deceive the Germans about where the Allies would land in Fr ...

. It was a mountain trained division intended to act as the reinforcing unit for the British 52nd Infantry Division in the attack on Narvik. When 'Fortitude North' was closed down, the division was presented as being part of a force designed to follow up the German evacuation of Norway. It was disposed of by announcing during late 1944 that the division was leaving Iceland, with the final units leaving by March 1945.

Composition

In addition to the usual divisional support units the 55th Infantry Division was composed of the: *78th Infantry Regiment *83rd Infantry Regiment *96th Infantry Regiment

In popular culture

In the 1993

techno-thriller A techno-thriller or technothriller is a hybrid genre drawing from science fiction, thrillers, spy fiction, action, and war novels. They include a disproportionate amount (relative to other genres) of technical details on their subject matter ( ...

"The Ten Thousand" by

Harold Coyle Harold William "H.W." Coyle (born February 16, 1952) is an American writer and author of historical and speculative fiction and of war novels including '' Team Yankee'', a ''New York Times'' bestseller. He graduated from the Virginia Military In ...

, the 55th Mechanized Infantry Division is one of the components of the US Army Tenth Corps, the main US Army formation featured in the novel. In Anton Myrer's 1968 novel " Once An Eagle", the division Sam Damon commands from New Guinea through the Philippines is the 55th, also known as the Salamanders.

References

;Footnotes ;Bibliography * * * {{Allied Military Deception in World War II Fictional units of World War II