'Bardstown' was an Allied deception undertaking, expanding 'Erasmus' and implemented through the use of double agents, to suggest to Germany and Italy that the Allies were so concerned by the threat of U-boat activities in the Indian Ocean that they were sending reinforcements for the Mediterranean theatre not by sea but overland to the upper reaches of the Nile river valley and thence down the river by boat to Cairo and Alexandria (October 1943/early 1944).

The task of this deception, which was spurred by the Japanese opening of the port of Penang off the west coast of Malaya for the use of German U-boats, was to render safer the movement of troops from East Africa to Ceylon.