Little known camouflage deceptions of World War Two

RyanShort1 · **Posted:** Tue Apr 15, 2008 9:58 pm

JDK - nice find. I guess I could be quite wrong!

Ryan

JDK · **Posted:** Wed Apr 16, 2008 1:58 am

Ryan, I think you'd normally be right; it just reminded me of that rather gruesome bit of history. Actually, Stukas pulled out at a reasonable height; from my research:

In land attacks the optimum pullout was about 2,000 ft, or not less than 450 metres (1,500 ft) but notably at sea, the pilots sometimes pressed home their attacks with the result their pull outs were below the attacked ship’s deck level.

The autopilot developed for the dives:

The dive recovery auto pilot was developed by the company Askania, and the flight trials were carried out by a woman pilot: Flugkäpitan Melitta Schiller.

JDK · **Posted:** Wed Apr 16, 2008 2:03 am

k5083 wrote:

A great deal of effort and ingenuity was put into the camouflauge deceptions that people have mentioned. What is less clear is whether any of them ever fooled enough of the enemy to be worth the effort.

The deceptions carried out in North Africa before Operation Crusader, the mythical army commanded by Patton as a deception before D Day and the use of dummy conflagrations and airfields by both the British and Germans in night bombing campaigns have enough quantified results to be called successful, IMHO.

The trouble is that people like the 'Hollywood' inflatable tanks and carefully made 'towns' more than the much more abstract and more successful other tools, like the fake pipeline for Crusader.

Herkeng · **Posted:** Wed Apr 16, 2008 7:52 am

Inspector: And who was the British illusionist who made the Suez disappear by using rotating searchlights? Jasper Maskelyne.

There are 2 books on his exploits, "Magic: Top Secret" and "The War Magician".

Herkeng

JDK · **Posted:** Wed Apr 16, 2008 8:22 am

Herkeng wrote:

Inspector: And who was the British illusionist who made the Suez disappear by using rotating searchlights? Jasper Maskelyne.

There are 2 books on his exploits, "Magic: Top Secret" and "The War Magician".

Oooo. Worms, can of. See: http://www.maskelynemagic.com/

(BTW, I misremembered the water pipeline as relating to Crusader, rather than the Battle of el Alamein.)

JOHN MILLER · **Posted:** Wed Apr 16, 2008 8:37 am

When my mom passed away, I got all of her old popular mechanics and others dating from 1939 to 1950's. In one edition, during WWII it showed a antiaircraft gun, hidden under a house, when needed, house would slide out of the way and gun would then elevate and fire.
JOHN

Robbie Roberts · **Posted:** Wed Apr 16, 2008 11:24 am

JOHN MILLER wrote:

When my mom passed away, I got all of her old popular mechanics and others dating from 1939 to 1950's. In one edition, during WWII it showed a antiaircraft gun, hidden under a house, when needed, house would slide out of the way and gun would then elevate and fire.
JOHN

They could use those in California- without the guns- when it rains, the house slides out of the way, and the mud sloshes through...

Robbie

Herkeng · **Posted:** Wed Apr 16, 2008 1:28 pm

JDK
I am familiar with Richard Stokes site. He does bring up a lot of good points about Jaspers claims. I first found out about Jasper on the History Channel a few years back. It was a histories mysteries chow with whats his name, the scud guy. Interesting stuff but as you noted full of debate. I guess the only way we will ever know is when the Her Majestys government declassifies all the documents. I think that is in 2020 or so.

Herkeng

Warbird Information Exchange

Little known camouflage deceptions of World War Two

Who is online