Battlefield Magic
Deceiving the Desert Fox
From the Deserts of N. Africa a new type of war was born...
Erwin Rommel was by any historians account a tactical genius, his actions on the battlefield had become legendary, his very name struck fear into the Allied soldiers who faced him. In order to trick him the British would turn to an eccentric cross dresser who had his office in the downstairs room of a brothel, and once Dudley Clarke arrived in Cairo, "A" Force was born.
Visual Deception
Early efforts were rather crude. Sourced from local materials early decoys were made of everything from palm trees to packing material. Details applied as time allowed.
Make it simple
Some designs such as the one below were very complex. Made out of bamboo wire together this would have been very heavy and prone to breaking.
Sun Shields and Cannibals
The object was to make trucks out of tanks and tanks out of trucks. This allowed for the simultaneous switching of forces and perhaps a chance to pull an enemy in the wrong direction.
Wood gives way to steel
As the units learned from their mistakes the designs became more standardized and were eventually built over trucks and jeeps for ease of movement.
Click on the folder to read about Operation Bertram. One of the British Ghost Armies largest deception operations.
Drawing on the limited photos of the originals I set out to build a dummy Stuart Honey light tank as best I could. I used scrap wood, canvas, and various pieces of hardware scrounged from here and there in the same spirit as the originals. Working from scaled up drawings the result was a tank that would easily fool an observer from across a field let alone in the air flying by at 300 kts.
This is our Mk1 variant it is now retired next year (as did the original tricksters) we will learn from our errors and construct another better made Honey.
Our own attempt at a dummy tank.
