When did military operations begin having goofy names?

[Drastic]

Or catchy, dramatically appropriate names if you insist.

Operation Noble Eagle. Operation Infinite Justice. Operation Desert Storm. Operation Overlord. And so on. I’ve always enjoyed an alternate name Dave Barry coined for, IIRC, Desert Storm, that being Operation He-Man Testosterone Overdrive, which personally seems only slightly more absurd then the official ones.*

So, the question here has a couple facets. When was the first time a military operation was named like this? And has it always been that popular, or only recently?

[sub]*: Important note for those thinking of becoming upset–I’m not commenting on the seriousness or deep importance of the operations themselves–just the names.[/sub]

[Ringo]

Alternatives are on the order of what? Not that there are not any, but what else might we suppose. Operation Nipple Twister? Hmm…nope. How about something a little more bland and obfuscating - Operation Omellette. Or Operation Take Out The Garbage Day.

I just don’t know. Operation Betsy Ross? That would take the macho out of it.

[Spavined_Gelding]

This may well end up being too pedantic by half. The operation names you mentioned are all names for big military-political exercises. Thus the War on Terrorism has been designated OPERATION INFINATE JUSTICE (trumpets off stage). These are names selected by some PR guy. Real military operations get their name by matching two randomly selected words from a code series. The practice arose in order to have a short name for a project that would not disclose what was going on and because often there were enough things going on that numbers became cumbersome.

The same books (really lists) that generate operation names generate passwords. So if the challenge for tonight is “Carbine” and the counter-challenge is “Fortress” you get the following exchange between out post and patrol:

O: Who goes there?
P: Friend
O: Advance one to be recognized. (One guy from the patrol goes forward while every body else stays back and under cover)
O: Password?
P: Carbine. Challenge?
O: Fortress. Advance in single file.

If either the password is wrong a bunch of shooting starts. A similar system is used to make sure that the guy on the other end of the radio is who you think it is.

[Sam_Stone]

Slate’s ‘Explainer’ column has some good info. You can read it here: http://slate.msn.com/code/explainer/explainer.asp?Show=9/17/2001&idMessage=8312

The explainer adds,

Winston Churchill, who personally vetted many of the British military code words, ordered that they should be neither overly boastful, nor frivolous. No mother, he wrote, should have to say "that her son was killed in an operation called ‘Bunnybug.’ "

[Syzygy]

…the War on Terrorism has been designated OPERATION INFINATE JUSTICE…

Please, please tell me that this is simply a typo. I’d hate to have this appear in scores of internal correspondence.

[Spavined_Gelding]

It’s a typo. Would you belive Infinite Justice?

[Doc_Nickel]

Perhaps Operation Fused-Glass Wasteland might be something of a giveaway.

[Drastic]

Well, dagnabbit. I repeated a current thread:

What will the military name the upcoming “Operation”, in which evilhanz answered my question before I asked it.

Grumble. Sorry about the unnecessary straw on the database, mod-types. Will pay more attention in the future.

[LorieSmurf]

OMG…I’m laughing my ass off at Fused Glass Wasteland and Nipple Twister. i gotta stop drinking while surfing Straight Dope…

[GIGObuster]

I found this interesting article:

http://www.augustachronicle.com/stories/022098/met_names.shtml

Some military activities, such as Desert Shield and Desert Storm, are named by the agreement of senior officials at the Pentagon, he said.
I think it's a lot more hit or miss there than you might suspect,'' said Joe Webb of the Center for Military History in Washington. I think it hasn’t been that coordinated and local commanders have had a lot of freedom.’’
Not so in World War II, when the military used code names to keep telling details of an operation secret. In 1942, the U.S. War Plans Division compiled the Inter-Services Code-Word Index, a list of 10,000 common nouns and adjectives that didn’t reveal any classified information, from which commanders could name their operations.

…………

According to Bob Woodward’s 1991 book The Commanders, two key military leaders debated the name for the 1989 operation to oust Manuel Noriega from power in Panama.
Do you want your grandchildren to say you were in Blue Spoon?'' one asked. Instead, they chose Operation Just Cause, and it became a punch line: Why did the United States invade Panama? Just ‘cause.’’
I was kind of amused by Just Cause,'' said Dr. van Tuyll of Augusta State. We were mad at a foreign country and we invaded it.’’

Looks like the era of giving a military operation a catchy name came mostly from WWII, during WWI the day for a big operation was just given the name D-Day (that looks familiar)
http://members.aol.com/TeacherNet/WWIFAQ.html

The earliest use of these terms by the U.S. Army that the Center of Military History has been able to find was during World War I. In Field Order Number 9, First Army, American Expeditionary Forces, dated September 7, 1918: “The First Army will attack at H hour on D day with the object of forcing the evacuation of the St. Mihiel Salient.”
D-day for the invasion of Normandy was set for June 6, 1944, and that date has been popularly referred to by the short title “D-day.”
Citation: The General Service Schools, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Combat Orders (Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: The General Service Schools Press, 1922).

[Sue_Duhnym]

What happened to Operation Noble Eagle? Why (when?) did it make the switch to Infinite Justice?

Operation Noble Eagle fit in so well with the numerology crackpots. [sub]“Operation” has 9 letters too! YIKES! [/sub]

[Sue_Duhnym]

That didn’t totally go mano a mano with the numerology schlock. How’s this:

Operation has 9 letters.
O.N.E. spells one.
9+ONE = 10…1+0 = 1

Therefore 9-ONE-1.

Ha! Call me Madame Sue!