GOLD Beach - BIGOT Maps
These original maps of GOLD beach were issued along with the Orders book at the end of May 1944 and would have been used for the planning and briefings of Operation Neptune.
The maps are classed as trace maps and they are printed onto a stiff brown paper pretty much like baking paper. The idea being that these maps could be placed on top of an actual map.
The information presented on them was a mixture of coded objectives, landing locations and the safe naval routes across the channel. The coded names could be found in the code section of the orders book. Interestingly right up to the day most troops would have known the objectives they were assigned but because of the code names they wouldn’t have been able to tell you what the location was.
BIGOT planning maps are very rare and British related planning documents are even rarer than the US documents, all planning documents were to be destroyed by fire once they had been read and understood. Luckily for us a small number of people understood the importance of what they were involved with and saved important documents like these.