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The wooden bomb. I hope it's true


diamond-t-steve

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Hi all

 

I just found this on tinternet and I so hope it's true

 

http://www.snopes.com/military/woodbomb.asp

 

If it is true, it's good to see us Brits still had a sence of humour in our darkest hour.

 

 

I have heard this before, but it was the other way around. A British fake airfield and a German Bomb. It was in a TV Programme about a Magician working for the Government in WW2 who developed ways of making things disappear. One of his successes was to make Cairo disappear by setting up a set of dummy lights a couple of miles away. Can't remember his name - anyone else help?

 

Just found the chaps name - Jasper Maskelyne, who was in the Royal Engineers.

Edited by woa2
Found the name.
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I heard the same -shortly after Dunkirk the British set up cardboard and wood tanks and trucks on SPTA only to be targeted by German bombers using cardboard bombs.

 

Jasper Maskelyne put forward a plan to make the Suez canal disappear -I think by dazzle using search lights, I think he had some connection with the Sunshade =disguising tanks as trucks.

 

Steve

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Maskalyne was responsible for building a Q site for Alexandria harbour. The Suez canal defence consisted of twenty one searchlights fitted with rotating reflectors creating a flickering, same principal as the CDL. Although Maskalyne and his team oversaw a large manufacturing area for dummies and deception products, its questionable how many of the products were original ideas or adaptions of other peoples work. What Maskalyne did do was bring a further twist into deception, employing stage magician techniques. Deception Distraction and Misdirection. Some techniques involved placing an obvious dummy in position then later when the opposition had lost intrest then replacing it with real kit, dropping large hints, to concentrate the opposition again, whilst things happened elsewhere. Unfortunatley most information seems to be from Masklyne himself, and bear in mind he was a proffesional showman, with an eye to profit.

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I bet the Germans would have been happy with that plan........ "NOT".

 

No they weren't. While the rest of NATO planned a strategic controlled withdrawal to stretch the Commies, the Bundeswehr's Immediate Action as 3 Shock Army crossed the IGB was to race to Moscow. No retreat. No fighting on German soil (including East Germany).

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I don't think the Germans were too pleased when a US general announced with regard to stopping the soviets that it was fortunate that German urban centres were only 2kilo-tons apart:D

 

More fortunate for the Germans was that their villages and farms tended to be only about 1.5km apart, so that their reservists could be trained to use disposable AT weapons, knock out the lead tank or two and withdraw to the next farmstead or village and whittle them down. This was certainly considered in the early 80s, an ATGM or RPG or similar in every farmhouse.

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