Putting artists to work in World War II

May 13, 2015 11:13 AM

The crazy idea was this: The United States Army would design a “deception unit”: a unit that would appear to the enemy as a large armored division with tanks, trucks, artillery, and thousands of soldiers. But this unit would actually be equipped only with fake tanks, fake trucks, fake artillery and manned by just a handful of soldiers.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (31 comments total)

The operation was largely dependent on the steady hand and careful aim of the Waco Kid.
posted by delfin at 11:16 AM on May 13, 2015 [6 favorites]

There's also a documentary called The Ghost Army (Netflix link, but may also be on PBS.org, or sometimes on PBS.org), which has been in my queue forever and I haven't gotten around to watching.
posted by Lyn Never at 11:22 AM on May 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

Obviously, two men carrying a 40-ton tank would be a dead giveaway.

Or proof that America had finally developed that super soldier serum!

(this is a great find, thanks.)
posted by chavenet at 11:24 AM on May 13, 2015 [5 favorites]

This is exactly how I feel about the US Industrial-Military Complex today.
posted by Static Vagabond at 11:25 AM on May 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

The Ghost Army doc on Netflix is pretty damn awesome, from the recording of people shouting to emulate troop movements to pretending to get drunk in French towns and spill secrets.
posted by The Whelk at 11:28 AM on May 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

The Ghost Army carried out twenty-one deception missions between June 1944 and March 1945—nearly the entire time the U.S. Army was operating in Europe. One of these was Operation Bettembourg, in which The Ghost Army filled a 75 mile gap in the American line of troops for 7 days, until an actual armored division could come in and take their place.

Lots of forehead-slapping on the German General Staff if and when they learned about this after the war.
posted by the phlegmatic king at 11:30 AM on May 13, 2015

Some of this work is highlighted in various Hollywood movies about WWII, such as The Longest Day, where they show off "Rupert." Here is a little segment on the Ghost Army available on YouTube - it is super cool to see this stuff being blown up and used in motion picture format.
posted by Muddler at 11:34 AM on May 13, 2015

I listened to this episode recently and thought "Oh, like Jasper Maskelyne and his gang". So I go to read up a little more, because what I know of him is based on the book The War Magician, and it turns out the modern thinking is that his illusion and camouflage was mostly in the story he told about himself...

Which, of course, now makes me doubly unsure.
posted by straw at 11:39 AM on May 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

Previously.
posted by Kabanos at 11:46 AM on May 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'd say it's a good start. Now if we can just get everyone to use dummy armies for attacking as well, leaving nothing but dummy casualties and burning dummy cities then we'll have something.

Of course we'll still have to report to the disintegrators to make the numbers work out.
posted by George_Spiggott at 11:50 AM on May 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

Oh, and this is not a lost art:
Does The Russian Army Inflate Itself With Fake Tanks?
Dummy tanks for the Russian army fool enemies.
posted by Kabanos at 11:54 AM on May 13, 2015

There's a link in the comments of the article that goes to the German Tank Problem page on wikipedia, which I've always found fascinating. The Allies needed to determine how many tanks the Germans had produced, in order to make sure their forces weren't overrun. They relied both on conventional intelligence gathering methods and statistical analysis of captured/destroyed tank parts. Analysis revealed that the parts were serial numbered consecutively as they were produced.

"The principal numbers used were gearbox numbers, as these fell in two unbroken sequences. Chassis and engine numbers were also used, though their use was more complicated. Various other components were used to cross-check the analysis. Similar analyses were done on tires, which were observed to be sequentially numbered (i.e., 1, 2, 3, ..., N).

The analysis of tank wheels yielded an estimate for the number of wheel molds that were in use. A discussion with British road wheel makers then estimated the number of wheels that could be produced from this many molds, which yielded the number of tanks that were being produced each month. Analysis of wheels from two tanks (32 road wheels each, 64 road wheels total) yielded an estimate of 270 produced in February 1944, substantially more than had previously been suspected.

German records after the war showed production for the month of February 1944 was 276. The statistical approach proved to be far more accurate than conventional intelligence methods, and the phrase "German tank problem" became accepted as a descriptor for this type of statistical analysis.

Estimating production was not the only use of this serial number analysis. It was also used to understand German production more generally, including number of factories, relative importance of factories, length of supply chain (based on lag between production and use), changes in production, and use of resources such as rubber.

According to conventional Allied intelligence estimates, the Germans were producing around 1,400 tanks a month between June 1940 and September 1942. Applying the formula ... to the serial numbers of captured tanks, the number was calculated to be 246 a month. After the war, captured German production figures from the ministry of Albert Speer showed the actual number to be 245."

posted by zarq at 11:55 AM on May 13, 2015 [30 favorites]

Relatedly, a recent showing of The Imitation Game (compounded with an annoyance at how ham-handedly they treated the code-breaking and implications thereof) compelled me to do some research on how the Allies kept it a secret that they’d cracked Enigma.

In addition to the stuff suggested in the movie (mathematical cost/benefit analysis), they did a bunch of clever things to convince the Germans that they had discovered secrets by conventional means, so that they wouldn't suspect that someone had broken their codes.

A recon unit would “serendipitously” stumble upon the German U-boats, perhaps; but then they’d also have to send out search missions to areas where the Germans weren’t to make it all appear on-the-level. The true source of the information was often concealed even from Allied personnel.

(And on preview, I note the discussion of the German Tank Problem, which would have been way harder had the Nazis not numbered their tanks consecutively. I know that the winners write the history books, but much of the German warfare apparatus comes off as stunningly naive.)
posted by savetheclocktower at 11:59 AM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Thanks for the recommendation , straw. Having read Jim Steinmeyer's excellent magic history books, I checked out The Escape Factory and another MIS-X book that escapes (no pun intended) my mind at the moment with barely a mention of Maskelynes involvement in the E&E kit or deception campaigns.
posted by dr_dank at 12:01 PM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Note for world domination: be careful with part numbering.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:01 PM on May 13, 2015 [9 favorites]

There was apparently a lot of this going on in the U.S. Civil War as well (and I assume most wars, really). There were "Quaker Guns" and the fake ironclad at Vicksburg.

I remember reading a story of a Confederate cavalry officer (either Stuart or Forrest, I'm pretty sure) marching his unit up on a bluff overlooking some Union troops, and having them circle back around several times to make it look like he had 20 times as many soldiers as he actually had.
posted by saladin at 12:06 PM on May 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

(And on preview, I note the discussion of the German Tank Problem, which would have been way harder had the Nazis not numbered their tanks consecutively. I know that the winners write the history books, but much of the German warfare apparatus comes off as stunningly naive.)

Or... you know... German. :)

A love of structure, rules and order are in character, after all.
posted by zarq at 12:07 PM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Fashion designer Bill Blass and artist Ellsworth Kelly were in this unit.
posted by Ideefixe at 12:23 PM on May 13, 2015

This sounds related to Operation Mincemeat, where a corpse with fake documents and a highly thought out, fictitious background was dropped into the ocean for the Germans to find.
posted by meows at 12:32 PM on May 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

Nazi high command expected Patton to lead the amphibious landings they knew were coming. After all, Patton was the most famous and personally the wealthiest of all American commanders (he married into money). Of course he would lead the way, right?

So they went looking for the Army they expected him to have, found the inflatable fake tanks, and saw Patton being paraded around England.

The Nazis spread their defenses out, expecting Patton to be coming from multiple angles, which left Normandy relatively exposed.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 12:37 PM on May 13, 2015

Coincidentally, just yesterday I finished reading Blackout/All Clear. One of the characters is a time-traveling historian who gets stuck in England during WWII, and becomes a part of Operation Fortitude, Britain's successful scheme to trick Germany into thinking D-Day would happen in Mid-July at Pas-de-Calais, rather than Early June at Normandy. I strongly recommend for any time-travel story buffs.
posted by CrunchyFrog at 12:38 PM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

"What did you do in the war, daddy?"
"I blew up tanks."
posted by Etrigan at 12:44 PM on May 13, 2015 [9 favorites]

Obviously, two men carrying a 40-ton tank would be a dead giveaway.

A dead giveaway or a deadly double bluff? First we lull them into a false sense of security by hand-carrying our titanium-doped carbon nanotube tanks into battle, then while they're laughing we blow their heads off.
posted by George_Spiggott at 1:04 PM on May 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

The Nazis spread their defenses out, expecting Patton to be coming from multiple angles, which left Normandy relatively exposed.

Not only that, but if memory serves me correctly, for several crucial days Hitler initially refused to shift Wehrmacht forces into Normandy, so convinced was he that the landings were a feint and the "real" invasion was coming at Pas de Calais. This delay allowed the Allies to gain a vital foothold.

This sounds related to Operation Mincemeat, where a corpse with fake documents and a highly thought out, fictitious background was dropped into the ocean for the Germans to find.

On a related note, the D-Day landing almost needed to be called off after the disastrous blunder during Exercise Tiger, in which a practice landing was attacked by German torpedo boats with hundreds of Allied casualties. Several of the victims happened to have knowledge of the real invasion points, and if captured by the Germans, the potential for that information to fall into enemy hands would likely mean the plans would have to be scrapped. By a macabre coincidence, the bodies of all these officers happened to be recovered by the Allies and it seemed that the Germans never realized the significance of the convoy they attacked.
posted by Gelatin at 1:36 PM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

I remember reading a story of a Confederate cavalry officer (either Stuart or Forrest, I'm pretty sure) marching his unit up on a bluff overlooking some Union troops, and having them circle back around several times to make it look like he had 20 times as many soldiers as he actually had.

That was John Magruder during the Siege of Yorktown in the Peninsula Campaign. At the beginning of April 1862 Magruder had about 13,000 men opposing McClellan's 121,500. He used Quaker guns, lit lots of extra campfires, had buglers blow assembly for units that didn't exist, and marched some troops through a clearing and had them circle back through the woods and go through the clearing again and again. Nice writeup from 1962: "Civil War history contains no account in which so few bamboozled so many with so little."

McClellan thought he was outnumbered, demanded reinforcements, and put off attacking for a month, allowing the Confederates to increase their forces to 57,000. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton said, "If he had a million men he would swear the enemy had two millions, and then he would sit down in the mud and yell for three."

The day before he was finally ready to attack in early May, the Confederates withdrew up the peninsula. McClellan telegraphed Stanton: "The success is brilliant."

The whole reason for the Peninsula Campaign in the first place was McClellan being afraid to attack General Joseph E. Johnston's forces outside Washington, DC for months because of Johnston's supposed numerical advantage and fearsome defenses. Nope and nope. Quaker guns again.
posted by kirkaracha at 2:34 PM on May 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

Giving anyone credit for McClellan not being aggressive enough is like giving the moon credit for being in the right place for Armstrong to land on it.
posted by Etrigan at 2:50 PM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

"This sounds related to Operation Mincemeat, where a corpse with fake documents and a highly thought out, fictitious background was dropped into the ocean for the Germans to find."

The Brits developed an entire deception program. Operation Mincemeat did use a corpse with fake documents to make the Nazis believe an attack through Sicily was a ruse and the real attack would be elsewhere. The British also controlled nearly every Nazi spy in the UK. Ben Macintyre has written several books on the British deceptions; Agent Zigzag, Double Cross, and Operation Mincemeat. All excellent reading.
posted by fgdmorr at 4:59 PM on May 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

This sounds related to Operation Mincemeat, where a corpse with fake documents and a highly thought out, fictitious background was dropped into the ocean for the Germans to find.

I was just reading on wikipedia:
Impact on later operations

The success of Operation Mincemeat caused the Germans to disregard later genuine document finds. Examples include:

Two days after the D-Day landings, the Germans discovered an abandoned landing craft washed up on the Vire estuary in Normandy, containing top secret documents detailing future military targets in the region. Hitler, believing this was a deception similar to Operation Mincemeat, ignored the documents, having already been convinced by numerous deceptions that the main invasion was still to come through the Pas de Calais.[24]

During Operation Market-Garden, the drive into the Netherlands in September 1944, a complete operations order with maps and graphics for the airborne phase of the invasion, which was not supposed to be brought with the invading troops, was inadvertently left behind on a transport glider. The operations order fell into German hands, but the Germans, convinced that this was another attempt at Mincemeat-style deception, actually deployed their forces contrary to the information before them.[25]
posted by sebastienbailard at 9:16 PM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

This kind of thing is still practised, although on a smaller scale: Liberation Of Kosovo: Bomb Damage: How fake guns and painting the roads fooled Nato.
posted by Harald74 at 10:14 PM on May 13, 2015

There's an account here of the fakery that went on to persuade the Germans they'd successfully bombed the de Hevilland factory in the second world war - essentially they created a dummy factory a few miles away in a field that did get bombed, then did some set dressing to make it look like the real one had been destroyed:

"On the 29th and 30th January, using camouflage, the de Havilland aircraft factory was made to look like it had been hit by a very large bomb. The area was littered with rubble to make it look like a bomb had exploded. As well as this MI5 printed a fake report in the Daily Express, which stated that there had been an explosion at a factory."

As previously mentioned, Agent Zigzag is a great book!
posted by DanCall at 1:49 AM on May 14, 2015

The British also controlled nearly every Nazi spy in the UK.

Including an entire network that a) didn't exist and b) was controlled by a volunteer who lived in Spain. After initially being rejected as an intelligence asset by the Allies, Joan Pujol Garcia

created a false identity as a fanatically pro-Nazi Spanish government official and successfully became a German agent. He was instructed to travel to Britain and recruit additional agents; instead he moved to Lisbon and created bogus reports from a variety of public sources, including a tourist guide to England, train timetables, cinema newsreels, and magazine advertisements. Although the information would not have withstood close examination, Pujol soon established himself as a trustworthy agent. He began inventing fictional sub-agents who could be blamed for false information and mistakes.

The Allies finally accepted Pujol when the Germans spent considerable resources attempting to hunt down a fictional convoy.

Pujol also had a role in the Operation Fortitude deception, helping convince the Germans the "real" invasion of France was coming at Calais. In a twist on Operation Mincemeat, the Allies would occasionally hand Pujol genuine intelligence to pass along, but ensured it arrived with the Germans too late to be of any use, which nevertheless increased his credibility with the Germans.

The Germans never tumbled the deception and decorated "Agent Garbo", and so did the British, making him one of the few -- if not the only -- people to receive medals from both sides.
posted by Gelatin at 3:14 AM on May 14, 2015 [2 favorites]