
Ghost Army: The Inflatable Tanks That Fooled Hitler (2013) - areoform
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/ghost-army-the-inflatable-tanks-that-fooled-hitler/276137/
======
wmij
My dad was part of this unit.

Back around 1994 we were talking about data and I was telling him about CD-
ROMs and how you could buy libraries with public address and phone records. He
was ecstatic at the prospect of finding his fellow veterans of the 23rd and
the 3132. He would give me lists of names that I would look up for him with
potential matching phone numbers. He ended up getting in contact with around
150 men and helped organize what became yearly reunions in the late 1990s
because of our research. It was one of the best side research projects I ever
did. This was all before Google and online phone search indexes.

My dad passed away in 2005 and I so wish he was here still to see how much
attention and recognition the Ghost Army has received. I always felt that much
of the attention and recognition the Ghost Army has finally received over the
years were in part from my dad's efforts to reach out and help organize the
reunions and reconnecting with so many of the veterans in this unit.

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Iv
It is actually still a thing:

[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-
europe-11511886](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-11511886)

The ability to make the enemy think you are massing forces somewhere is still
invaluable and military dummies (complete with devices that will trace fake
track marks on the ground) are actually costly equipment.

Some are designed to fool vision, others to fool radar.

Some are pretty realistic:

[http://www.militarydecoy.com/html/InflatableMilitaryDecoy/](http://www.militarydecoy.com/html/InflatableMilitaryDecoy/)

~~~
tomatotomato37
Those inflatable hangers look like they would also do a great job as quick
legitimate shelters for a campaign in a mild climate

~~~
chrisseaton
I’m not sure those hangars really are decoys. The military often uses
inflatable tents and hangars. It’s not to fool anyone they’re just practical.

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ron22
One of my favorite RTS games, Ruse, centered around the idea of ghost armies.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.S.E](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.S.E).

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ErrantX
A pretty thin article about an awesome topic!

The Ghost Army was [part of] the post-D-day operational aspect of a wider
deception named Operation Bodyguard. Absolutely fascinating story - the
underlying idea was to convince Axis of an entire non-existent invasion force
(which dwarfed the actual Allied forces) and sell the idea that the Normandy
invasion was a feint.

It worked tremendously - Panzer units stayed in Pas-de-calais for more than a
week following D-Day (awaiting the next invasion) before being moved. And even
then that was by necessity; Hitler continued to be obsessed about Calais.

Bodyguard included fake tanks, landing barges, radio traffic etc. But the
impact pre D-Day was low because the German spotter planes weren't great. Much
more impactful was the double-agent work which basically sold the story. After
D-Day, captured German maps matched exactly the maps the deception experts had
plotted...

Another fun fact; the Allies told the Germans about D-Day in advance. The top
Double Agent (Garbo)[2] ran a fictional network for the Germans, and was
authorised to tell them about the invasion at midnight (in a mix up on the
German side, his message wasn't received till 8am).

Bodyguard was immense - but it was ultimately based on the ideas of Dudley
Clarke[3] who was basically Rommel's nemesis (contrary to popular history
about Monty) in North Africa. He basically invented the concept of modern
deception techniques - including fake troops (fun note: he came up with the
name for the SAS, helped form the Commandos and also named the US Rangers).
His ideas were picked up by London and a whole deception department formed to
arrange bodyguard (they did a crap job planning it, so Clarke ripped up the
plan through a subordinate and made them redo it).

Fascinating and little known area of history. Sadly most of the literature on
it is a bit dry... but there are a load of Wikipedia articles which are OK
(although I wrote most of them, so subjective!) and Ben Macintyre has written
a couple of decent books on the double agent aspect.

(ps in case you hadn't guessed; this is my specialist subject :D)

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bodyguard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bodyguard)
2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Pujol_Garc%C3%ADa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Pujol_Garc%C3%ADa)
3\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudley_Clarke](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudley_Clarke)

~~~
danjc
This history including the inflatable tanks was referenced in the series World
War II in Color, watched it on Netflix a few months back. Many might find it
dry but I thought I found it riveting.

------
Someone
“All warfare is based on deception”

(Sun Tzu, “The Art of War”;
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War#English](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War#English))

~~~
starpilot
Except for nukes.

~~~
anonoholic
After the US dropped nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they had no
more bombs ready to go, and would have taken at least 12 days to prepare, ship
and deliver to its target.

Of course Japan didn't know that.

~~~
CapricornNoble
>>>Of course Japan didn't know that.

Neither did the Russians. I've repeatedly read that dropping the 2nd bomb on
Nagasaki was partly to make Stalin think we had the ability to mass-produce
these weapons and it wasn't just a one-off capability, in order to deter any
Soviet conventional military aggression. The RKKA was overwhelmingly the
largest and most capable land army in 1945.

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Havoc
Didn't they do similar stuff in North Africa?

Can't help but notice that the article is a little thin on impact. Are there
any known cases of the Germans changing decisions based on the rubber tanks?

~~~
yread
Rommel did I think.

Also Serbians used it with great success, NATO was hitting rubber tanks and
wooden MIGs and after the bombing campaign assesed that serbian army was as
strong as before

~~~
necovek
Referring to 1999 NATO campaign on then-Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro).

A decent write-up of the tactics used by the Yugoslav army:
[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/liberation-of-kosovo-
bomb...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/liberation-of-kosovo-bomb-damage-
how-fake-guns-and-painting-the-roads-fooled-nato-1101479.html)

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yantrams
Damn I remember reading up about what was probably a reference to this as a
kid in the beautifully illustrated Russian History in Tales
([https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7791688-russian-
history-...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7791688-russian-history-in-
tales) )

The article says this was declassified in the 90s but I distinctly remember a
story from the book about fake tanks to fool the German army.

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_shadi
I remember reading somewhere that Serbia used a similar tactic to fool the
NATO aircraft in Kosovo.

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milankragujevic
Indeed we did.

[https://www.iol.co.za/mercury/world/yugoslav-decoys-
fooled-n...](https://www.iol.co.za/mercury/world/yugoslav-decoys-fooled-natos-
planes-3539)

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pentaphobe
Weird that there's not a single mention of Jasper Maskelyne in this article

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasper_Maskelyne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasper_Maskelyne)

EDIT: formatting

~~~
ErrantX
Maskelyne was mostly in Africa (also his claims are somewhat disputed - much
of the research points to Victor Jones[1] as the key man)

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Jones_(British_Army_off...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Jones_\(British_Army_officer\))

~~~
pentaphobe
Oof, there goes another childhood hero!

Looks like I've got some reading to do - thanks, internet stranger!

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rjsw
Germany wasn't able to do much aerial reconnaissance by that point in the war
so they wouldn't have seen the tanks. The fake signals traffic was probably
more important.

~~~
Aloha
They were flying aerial recon missions up to the point they lost the forward
airfields in France.

~~~
caseysoftware
And like most retreating forces, they likely had leave-behinds and friendly
locals reporting in. Since locals wouldn't be able to get close, "it sounded
like a bunch of tanks!" and "it looked like some tanks!" would have worked
pretty well.

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rjsw
The tanks were in southern England, there were no "friendly locals" to report
anything to Germany.

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mrhappyunhappy
This would make a good movie

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1337shadow
Maybe you can see it here : [https://www.pbs.org/video/ghost-army-ghost-
army/](https://www.pbs.org/video/ghost-army-ghost-army/)

~~~
netsharc
He probably means a Hollywood movie, not a documentary.

The plot could be based on a real event/mission or just fictional. A WW2 "The
A-Team" with rubber tanks and fake generals, it could be good.

