[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by TarJak

So the pommy kiddies that read the Telegraph children's pages are Abwehr agents?

But while some members of MI5, Britain’s counter-espionage service, were whiling away their spare moments in May 1944 by doing the Telegraph Crossword, they noticed that vital code-names that had been adopted to hide the mightiest sea-borne assault of all time, appeared in the crossword.
They noticed that the answer to one clue, ‘One of the USA’, turned out to be Utah, and another answer to a clue was Omaha. These were the names, given by the Allies, to the beaches in Normandy where the American Forces were to land on D-Day.
Another answer that appeared in that month’s crossword was Mulberry. This was the name of the floating harbour that was to be towed across the Channel to accommodate the supply ships of the invasion force. Neptune another answer, referred to the code-name for the naval support for the operation.
Perhaps the most suspicious was a clue about a ‘Big-Wig’, to which the answer was Overlord. This was the code-name given for the entire operation!
Operation Overlord map
Operation Overlord and the Normandy beaches
Alarm bells rang throughout MI5 …was the crossword being used to tip-off the Germans?
Two officers were sent immediately to Leatherhead in Surrey, where a man called Leonard Dawe lived. He was the crossword compiler, a 54 year-old teacher.
Why, the officers demanded to know, had he chosen theses five words within his crossword solutions?
“Why not?” was Dawe’s indignant reply. Was there a law against choosing whatever words he liked?
MI5 eventually became convinced of Dawe’s honesty and he managed to convince them that he had no knowledge of the coming D-Day invasion.
His crossword solutions it appears were perhaps just another of life’s astonishing coincidences!

http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK...Panic-of-1944/