William Colepaugh (L) and Erich Gimpel (R), following their arrest in December 1944.
Operation Elster ("Magpie" in English) was a German espionage mission intended to gather intelligence on U.S. military and technology facilities during World War II. The mission commenced in September 1944 with two Nazi agents sailing from Kiel, Germany on the U-1230 and coming ashore in Maine on November 29, 1944.[1] The agents were William Colepaugh, an American-born defector to Germany, and Erich Gimpel, an experienced German intelligence operative. They spent nearly a month living in New York City, expending large amounts of cash on entertainment, but accomplishing none of their mission goals.
Colepaugh quickly lost his commitment to espionage, and hoping to avoid the death penalty for treason, turned himself in to the FBI and betrayed his partner Gimpel, effectively ending the operation in late December 1944. In February 1945, the two agents were convicted of espionage by a military court and sentenced to death. At the time, the military tribunal which named American citizens in a conspiracy to commit treason was only the third of its kind ever held in the history of the US.[2] When the war ended, their sentence was subsequently commuted to life imprisonment by President Harry S. Truman. Gimpel was paroled in 1955, and Colepaugh in 1960.
Operation Elster was one of only two times the Germans landed agents on American shores by submarine during the war.[3] Despite a number of claims and speculations that the mission was intended to sabotage the Manhattan Project, no supportive evidence exists in the official investigative records.[4][1][5]
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American Theater (WWII)
Battle of the Atlantic
Caribbean
Canada
Angler POW escape
St. Lawrence
Bell Island
Estevan Point Lighthouse
Bowmanville
Kiebitz
Point Maisonnette
United States
Machita incident
Aleutian islands
Torpedo Alley
Ellwood
California ships
Los Angeles
Pastorius
Fort Stevens
Lordsburg killings
Lookout Air Raids
Duquesne Spies
Fort Stanton
Pelikan
Port Chicago
Fort Lawton
Fire balloon attacks
Elster
Great Papago Escape
Santa Fe riot
Point Judith
Utah prisoner of war massacre
Central and South America
River Plate
Bolívar
Pelikan
^ abCite error: The named reference KAHN2000 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Cite error: The named reference Gronlund2010 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Francis MacDonnell (2 November 1995). Insidious Foes: The Axis Fifth Column and the American Home Front. Oxford University Press. pp. 153–. ISBN 978-0-19-987991-5.
^Cite error: The named reference Miller2013 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Cite error: The named reference Adams2009 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
OperationElster ("Magpie" in English) was a German espionage mission intended to gather intelligence on U.S. military and technology facilities during...
during World War II. Together with William Colepaugh, he took part in OperationElster ("Magpie") an espionage mission to the United States in 1944, but was...
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agents to the United States by submarine. In November 1944, as part of OperationElster, the German submarine U-1230 left two SS-Reichssicherheitshauptamt...
OperationElster. The second stage of the A9/A10 rocket was tested a few times in January and February 1945. After the war, the US executed Operation...
Hancock Point in the Gulf of Maine on 29 November 1944. Their mission, OperationElster ("Magpie"), was to gather technical information on the Allied war effort...
The surrender of Major General Botho Elster and more than 19,000 German soldiers to the United States Army during World War II took place on 17 September...
Croatia; continuation of Operation Dünkirchen I Operation Einhorn 1944 - German anti-partisan operation in Greece OperationElster 1944 - German infiltration...
mission to be replaced by Erich Gimpel. This mission is assumed to be OperationElster ("Magpie"). Students at the school were given training in demolition...
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the North German Plain (the Leipzig Bay), at the confluence of the White Elster and its tributaries Pleiße and Parthe, that form an extensive inland delta...
Enterprise Development LP. October 21, 2020. Retrieved February 13, 2021. Elster, Anne C. (February 26, 2021). "The European Factor: From ARM to Atos". Computing...
lines in eastern Thuringia and into Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, called the Elster Saale Bahn, including line 22 on the Leipzig–Probstzella railway, line 13...
Operation Pelikan (German: Unternehmen Pelikan), also known as Projekt 14, was a German plan for crippling the Panama Canal during World War II. In mid-late...
sold numerous engineering companies, including Dynacast, McKechnie, FKI, Elster, Nortek, and GKN. Its acquisition techniques have allegedly included hostile...
Case of Bosnia and Herzegovina". In Williams, Melissa S.; Nagy, Rosemary; Elster, Jon (eds.). Transitional Justice. New York: New York University Press....
and quickly pushed him aside. An administrative council led by Ingolf Elster Christensen was therefore established on 15 April to administer those areas...
7000 front line troops. It was the command of Major General Botho Henning Elster. Macpherson was informed by another Jedburgh leader Captain Arthur Cox that...
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