Hi, Wonder if anyone can shed some light on this for me. A little while ago I heard the vaguest story but it intrigued me enough to find out some more... Apparently during either the first or the second world war either the American or British Army hired an artist/sculptor to re create small scale models of towns and cities in areas of desert so that planes would fly over and believe themselves to be at a higher altitude to what they actually were, which would cause them to descend and crash into the ground. Having no real information to go on I am having great difficulty 'Googling' this topic. Can anyone give any further insight into this? Many thanks Ben
Hi Ben Can't say I have heard of that one but one lead to follow is to look up Jasper Maskelyne - the illusionist who "created" many subterfuges against enemy bombing: Jasper Maskelyne - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia There have been subsequent cyncism about some of his claims, especially by this guy: Articles but many of the stories still persist. It maybe worth getting a hold of Magic: Top Secret by Maskelyne, which may detail the particular ruse that you mention. I know that Starfish sites were used to convince enemy bombers to bomb in the wring place, but this was at night - I have doubts about the possibility of creating such diversions during the day, when there are so many other points of rference (though this maynot be the case in the desert)
There has been a recent TV programme about Maskelyne where a fake airfield was created at night by just using a few lights and very effective it was. The idea was not to fully illuminate the area, but just have sufficient spots of light to give the impression of careless blackout precautions. The point was made in this programme that it was scaled down, but as much to keep the area that had to be maintained down, from memory it was about half size. Philsr
