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| Airborne Clicker Known as The Cricket |
As Operation Overlord began to unfold in the early minutes and hours of 6 June 1944, a small noise producing device is credited with saving the lives of many American paratroopers.
General Maxwell Taylor of the 101st Airborne Division wanted a way for paratroopers to identify each other in the dark on D-Day. So by taking the idea of a 1930's Cracker Jack toy, Taylor had each trooper outfitted with a tiny clicker made of stamped metal with a tiny sheet of steel so that when pressed together, a "click-clack" sound was made. The British ACME Firm was commissioned to produce the small clicker. Once issued, most paratroopers attached the device to their jump jackets for easy accessibility.
The paratroopers quickly named the clicker device the "cricket" because of the sound. Here is how it worked. When a paratrooper heard a noise in the dark after landing, he would make one "click" with the cricket. If a "click-clack" was heard as a response, it meant a friendly fellow paratrooper was nearby. The lack of a "click-clack" response usually resulted in the trooper firing at the source of the original noise as it most likely was an enemy soldier. For fear of the Germans gaining knowledge of the cricket, the paratroopers weren't issued the device until just before D-Day. There is some debate on whether the cricket was issued only to 101st paratroopers or to both the 101st and 82nd.
The little cricket had one really short mission which lasted from the time a paratrooper landed until daylight on 6 June 1944. After daylight, the mission of the cricket was over - completely. It was no longer useful as the Germans caught on to the cricket's use and almost certainly were in possession of them from fallen paratroopers or POW's.
Only a few crickets are known to exist today and they fetch top dollar with verified provenance. There are tons of fakes and reproductions available on the internet. I own a toy reproduction that I purchased for 9 Euros at Dead Man's Corner and besides displaying it, I've discovered it annoys my cat.
