It appears that Glyndwr (pronounced Glin-door; silly Welsh) Michael was not actually the name of the person used in Operation Mincemeat. A British documentary based on 14 years of research by British policeman Colin Gibbon now states that the corpse actually belonged to a sailor, Tom Martin, who died when the aircraft carrier Dasher exploded off the Scottish coast.

The original story was that Glyndwr Michael was a vagrant who tried to commit suicide using rat poison before dying of pneumonia. However, the poison would have been detected by the Germans upon examination of the body, so that explanation was implausible.

The conclusion came after Gibbon discovered that one of only 12 Dasher sailors' with names on their graves was Tom Martin, who shared a surname with the false identity concocted by British intelligence for the corpse. In the book The Man Who Never Was, the author and originator of the hoax, Lieutenant-Commander Ewen Montagu, refers to "a good friend" named Tom Martin. Add to that the fact that a few of the items placed on the corpse, including a crucifix and a St. Christopher medallian, were confirmed, unprompted, by Tom Martin's sister as being items that he carried with him always.

Thus it seems as though there is a new identity for the Man who Never Was. Oooh!

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