Ten-hut fellow comrades.
What you see behind me is an artifact of one
of the biggest wars in human history – the
Second World War.
Won by the Allies with the great support of
theatrics and toy-like equipment… for example
inflatable tanks - giving the enemy an illusion
of the whole army present in a place where
there was nearly nobody.
And that illusion was a mighty weapon kept
secret by the USA until the mid 1990s, when
it was officially declassified – many decades
after its spectacular use during the Second
World War.
Today we’ll talk about the Ghost Army – 1100 American soldiers whose theatrical
creativity in the art of deception, helped
win the war by the Allies.
Are you ready to learn this secret?
Follow me!
Before we get into a juicy part of rubber
tanks and even soldiers made of hay, let’s
give you crash course on the art of deception
and props used on the battlefields throughout
the history.
The first was of course Trojan Horse – a
peace offering to the Trojans made by Greeks.
But Greek soldiers had been hidden inside
of it, and when the Trojans pulled the horse
behind the fortified gates – Greeks with
Odysseus went out and took Troy.
Later were many ancient and medieval tricks
like, for example, tying torches to the goats’
horns in order to imitate marching warriors
at night.
The first notable military deception closer
to our times, was used in 1780 during the
American War of Independence by future Americans
against the English oppressors.
American Colonel William Washington used a
wooden pine log presented as a cannon, and
threatened to “fire it” unless Loyalists
– barricaded in a barn – surrender.
Which they did.
As you see, sometimes a wooden log is as good
as a real weapon.
Those dummy cannons were called Quaker guns
– from the name of Quakers – a religious
group opposing any violence.
Those Quaker guns must have impressed the
British Empire because it was them who were
the first to use similar deception during
the First World War and the Second World War.
British troops had successfully fooled the
Axis in Africa by using dummy tanks, especially
in a battle of El Alamein in 1942, which granted
the Allies an important victory.
Another trick used by Brits in order to trick
Germans and secure Normandy before D-Day (the
day of the Normandy landings) was misinformation.
Its code name: Operation Bodyguard consisted
of Operation Fortitude.
Operation Fortitude was divided into Fortitude
North - creating rumors of Allied invasion
on Norway; and Fortitude South - where Britons
created not only hearsay of First United States
Army Group which was to attack French Calais
- but also faked the whole formation in every
detail.
Yes, there was no First United States Army
Group.
And the attack at Calais was only a deception.
All that was soused with fake radio chatter,
intercepted German spies, double agents and
even paradummies.
Yes, we dummies, puppets saved many human
lives.
Dummies like the USA’s Oscar or the UK’s
Rupert were dropped in places where the Allies
wanted to draw German attention.
We’ll get back to my fellow army dummies
later.
All that impressed Americans to that extent,
that having better resources than surrounded
and constantly bombed Britain, Americans developed
their own special division to trick the Axis
troops into believing that they fight with
much larger Allied forces than those actually
were.
This division will be known as the Ghost Army.
In the United States after the attack on Pearl
Harbor, Americans knew that their west coastline
bases, factories, airfields were not secure.
In 1942 Japan submarines having aerial intel,
attacked even a coastal oil facility in Santa
Barbara near Los Angeles.
That is why Americans employed Hollywood specialists
to create a diorama of the countryside that
literary was placed onto those factories - that
is Lockheed factory in California – to hide
key targets from the enemy reconnaissance
planes.
The same fear was in the East Coast, where
German U-bot hordes hunted Allied convoys.
It was a possibility of the attack from this
side as well.
So again disappearing act was applied and
could successfully trick high altitude German
reconnaissance planes.
It was done by one of the units of the future
Ghost Army – the 603rd Camouflage Engineer
Battalion, that would be later renamed the
603rd Camouflage Engineers.
Once the job on the American soil was done,
it was time for American troops to create
their magic in Europe.
And the job in January 20, 1944 was handed
to the newly created top secret 23rd Headquarters
Special Troops – the official name of the
Ghost Army – soldiers who never got to wear
their own patches, but wore many patches of
others.
It was the first mobile tactical deception
unit in the history of American Army.
Instead of making objects disappear – which
was considered a simpler form of deception
– they were handed the task of creating
an illusion of appearing things out of nowhere.
To begin is always the hardest part.
No one knew how such a deception unit should
operate, what should be trained, how to change
a soldier into a magician.
Officers commanding 32-ton Sherman tanks battalions
were frustrated when suddenly their battalion
consisted of rubber ones that weighed 42 kilograms
(which is 93 pounds) when fully inflated,
which could be lifted by 4 men.
The 23rd was formed at Camp Pine, New York
– today’s Fort Drum, and trained for oversees
operations at Camp Forrest, Tennessee.
By the time of their arrival to France via
the United Kingdom, the 23rd Headquarters
Special Troops counted 82 officers and 1023
enlisted men, giving in total 1105 soldiers
whose job will be to pretend to be other,
even 20 times bigger army unit.
The 23rd was made of 4 Units:
The largest was the mentioned 603rd CAMOUFLAGE
ENGINEERS whose many soldiers had previously
participated in big-scale camouflage projects,
like successful masking aircraft factory in
Baltimore, Maryland, by using camouflage paint
and nets.
In the Ghost Army, they were responsible for
visual deception.
This unit consisted of artists – students
of art schools, illustrators, designers, architects,
people from advertising agencies.
Some, after war, made their name very famous
– I’ll get back to it.
They were equipped with inflatable tanks,
jeeps, artillery, trucks and planes, they
could make the whole tank formations, airfields
or troop bivouacs appear in a matter of hours.
Rubber, paint, and air compressors were their
main weapon.
They sometimes used what they called “special
effects” - wore self-painted patches of
actual formations they impersonated, pretended
to be generals and set fake command posts.
Fun fact – they would get drunk in local
bars and brothels in order to gossip about
fake maneuvers to fool the enemy spies.
The second unit was the SIGNAL COMPANY SPECIAL
– the radio men – they handled radio transmission
deception – the spoof radio.
They impersonated actual radio operators of
real units, misleading the enemy.
Germans literally owned radio waves and intercepted
nearly every transmission.
But the Signal Company Special mimicked the
individual manners of real radio operators
so well, that the enemy never discovered the
fact that those were two different persons.
They created the illusion that the real unit
was around, when actually, it was miles away.
So it was buying time for the actual military
unit to maneuver and reach the assigned position.
The third unit was the 406th COMBAT ENGINEERS
– Stage makers for other three units to
perform on.
They provided security, construction and demolition,
digging tank and artillery positions.
Another fun fact: they also did a little art
– since having bulldozers, they made fake
tank tracks around inflatable ones.
And finally the 3132 SIGNAL SERVICE COMPANY
SPECIAL: the Sonic Unit – guys who had sound
effects and the whole army stationed in Fort
Knox recorded on a wire.
Wire, because before a tape was invented,
a magnetic wire was used.
Vinyl records had little capacity and looped
sound would be a dead giveaway.
They put giant loudspeakers on a top of trucks
and halftracks and played program consisting
of sounds of tanks and trucks, noise of the
troops shouting – giving the real feel of
big mechanized column moving and setting positions.
During the night those sounds would spread
for 15 miles (which is 24 kilometers).
Night time was the best, because it was impossible
during daytime to fake tanks movement.
Established positions yes, but not moving.
Since secrecy is the key to deception, friendly
troops were often deceived and mixed with
a fake column, or landed on a fake airfield
near the dummy planes.
That was a validation of successful deception,
because knowing how deception worked on enemy
was impossible to know until the enemy attacked
or reinforced the positions where the 23rd
did its magic.
The most important factor of successful inflated
dummy operation was Luftwaffe aerial reconnaissance
which could interpret dummies as real tanks,
trucks, artillery positions, even airfields.
When dummies were insufficient, sound guys
set their gear and played their tune.
Sometimes deception consisted only of driving
trucks to and fro on a loop through a city
where German intelligence was known to operate.
Two soldiers in the back of a truck under
canvass cover gave the illusion of infantry
transport.
No one noticed that the same few trucks drove
many times through the same place.
Another thing they used – apart from visual,
sonic and radio deception – were mentioned
“special effects”.
They were used to create the so-called atmosphere
– the impression of ubiquitous US troops.
To remind you, it meant impersonating officers
(which was against army regulations), making
and wearing fake patches, making fake car
markings, setting up fake command posts, and
visiting bars near the war’s front lines,
where drunk soldiers would loosen their tongues
about the next phony movement of their army.
They actually wore so many fake and real patches
of impersonated regiments, units and battalions
- that their uniform sleeves were torn.
They, as I mentioned before, never wore their
own patch.
All that pretending to be members of a fake
unit – or a real unit deployed elsewhere
– was so good that Germans never discovered
the deception.
Did the phony army have any real guns?
Yes, they did, but the biggest they had were
a few 50 caliber machine guns.
And not all soldiers were from artistic backgrounds.
Some were miners, some policemen, some even
bartenders.
Side note: Torcé in France was the only town
in the whole Europe that was formally liberated
by the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops.
Brits also had their deception unit but since
the UK was isolated and the resources limited,
their gear was weaker than American.
Their guns would get saggy easily during the
night, and their constructions were more cumbersome.
American dummy Sherman tank was the icon of
the Ghost army.
Carried in a bag, consisted of inflatable
tubes, could be fully set within about 20
minutes.
At times, phony tanks were accompanied by
real ones in order to grant authenticity.
Sometimes they had to use bicycle pumps or
lungs to set up a dummy, sometimes strong
wind took one or two tanks into the air.
The 23rd conducted 21 operations, losing 3
members in total, one in an accident and two
while the deceived German artillery took them
for a large American division.
The Ghost Army landed in the United Kingdom
shortly before D-Day which took place on June
6, 1944.
In England, they participated in the mentioned
Operation Fortitude.
A few weeks after D-Day, the Ghost Army troops
landed in France.
At the beginning they took part in creating
a fake port made to draw enemy artillery from
the real one.
The Ghost Army first misleading operation
of covering movement of the 2nd Armored Division
was at the beginning of July 1944 and it was
neither a failure, nor a success.
However, this battle test taught the Ghost
Army that deception requires also what I called
earlier “Special Effects”, you remember:
fake patches, officers, markings, right?
They discovered that in order to convince
the enemy that you are somebody else, you
have to be that somebody, and convince not
only the enemy but civilians as well - because
among civilians the enemy has its spies.
At the end of August 1944, the Ghost Army
was tasked with tricking Germans into capitulation
of the city Brest.
In short: the US army forces should outnumber
the Nazis to such disproportion that any resistance
would appear futile.
To achieve that, the Ghost Army created two
phony tank battalions of the 6th Armored Division
and added three fake artillery batteries that
would fire flash ammunition (big firecrackers).
This Operation Brest was a major success and
a failure in one.
Success – because the Ghost Army really
fooled Germans about the major US forces preparing
for an attack, and Nazis reinforced their
positions where the Ghost Army was supposed
to draw them.
And yet it was a failure because: one - German
forces were nearly twice as big as calculated,
and two - American command launched an actual
attack in the same place the fooled Nazis
reinforced their troops.
It is speculated that this was an effect of
the Ghost Army operations being too top secret
for the other commanding officers.
In mid September 1944, in a tiny country of
Luxembourg, the Ghost Army was handed one
of the riskiest deception tasks in their career.
They again were to impersonate the 6th Armored
Division to plug a 70-mile (more than 100-kilometer)
gap.
The situation was critical: US General Patton
gained forces to conquer the city of Metz,
but his north wing was uncovered and prone
to Nazi attack in order to flank him.
The Ghost Army had to pretend to be 20 000
men of mechanized division to prevent that.
They applied their whole arsenal of tricks:
sound, spoof radio, dummy tanks, fake command
posts et cetera – you already know all that.
They were given a short history about the
6th Armored Division and they traveled to
nearby towns to share it – gossip – in
bars, public baths and brothels.
They convinced Germans so well that major
Allied forces were being amassed near the
Luxembourg city of Bettembourg, that Germans
retreated, blew bridges before just a handful
of American artists of the Ghost Army.
This was a major success.
The last Ghost Army operation was Operation
Viersen conducted in the late March of 1945.
The American 9th Army was getting ready to
cross the last natural barrier before conquering
the 3rd Reich – the Rhine River.
The deceivers of the Ghost Army got a task
of faking a crossing in a different place,
several miles away – to draw the German
army from the place where the actual attack
was to take place.
The Ghost Army was to pretend to be 40 000
men.
They were accompanied by two battalions of
real infantry.
They played their best sound effect hits day
and night, chatter of the spoof radio was
constant, they used 600 inflatable tanks,
“Special Effects”… the whole 9 yards!
The Ghost Army deception worked so well that
the Allies – while crossing the Rhine River
– met very little resistance from the German
army, and casualties suffered by the Allies
were compared to a number of casualties during
exercises - not actual war operation.
After the Rhine there was no need for deception.
Nazis were in retreat, and soon after, the
war was over.
The 23rd of June 1945 marks the day those
phantom soldiers set sail for America.
They served from England through France, Luxembourg,
Belgium, Holland, and finally to Germany.
As far as the inflated tanks and missile truck
dummies are concerned, they are still in worldwide
use.
But now they are more technologically advanced,
imitate heat signatures to mislead drones
and rocket’s systems, also materials are
better – a tank can fit into a backpack.
As you know, the 23rd Headquarters Special
Troops was a formation kept secret for many
decades after the war.
Why for so long was the Ghost Army a secret?
Because what proved to work on one enemy,
could be useful to fool the other one – Soviets.
But it doesn’t mean that Soviets didn’t
know about it.
There were some newspaper articles – one
just after the war, and one several years
later – about strange operations conducted
in Europe but they were successfully hushed
by the US government.
One that seriously violated the Ghost Army
secret was the Smithsonian article in 1985,
more than ten years before the Ghost Army
was officially declassified in 1996.
The Official History of the 23rd Headquarters
Special Troops – the most important source
about the unit’s activities – was written
in 1945 by Captain Fred Fox.
So no one knew that the famous fashion designer
Bill Blass or another – designer of Marilyn
Monroe’s dresses George Nardiello, or painter
like Ellsworth Kelly, wildlife artist Arthur
Singer, photographer Art Kane – who shot
the iconic Photo of 57 Harlem Jazz musicians
– or Jack Masey – who designed a famous
kitchen from Kitchen Debate between Khruschev
and Nixon in American National Exhibition
at Sokolniki Park in Moscow on July 24, 1959,
and many more acknowledged artists –– were
the Ghosts from the 23rd Headquarters Special
Troops.
Despite the fact the US government kept a
lid on the Ghost Army, in 1962 in the movie
The Longest Day you can find a scene of British
troops being introduced to my fellow paradummy
just before D-Day.
Real paradummies Oscar and Rupert were not
so cute as the one in the movie, but they
saved many lives of real paratroopers during
D-Day.
And this 1962 picture - in my puppet opinion
- is so far the only one to accurately hint
the actions of the Ghost Army and what was
really going on.
Why only one?
Because Michael Bay’s 2019 movie 6 Underground
starring Ryan Reynolds flashes the Ghost Army
patch here and there – hell, Ryan even wears
it on the poster – it is not what the Ghost
Army did!
They were masters of illusion and art of deception.
They did not put their patch for everyone
to see.
Again in my opinion using actual Ghost Army
patch/logo in that movie is a big misuse and
gives a false idea of who they really were!
The legacy of the Ghost Army soldiers lies
in the lives they saved by using their creativity
to trick the enemy – as we know they were
not chosen to kill.
Their performances were very risky and many
of their illusions took place very close to
the front lines.
Fan fact: they had one of the highest IQ scores
in the US army.
So there you have it.
A concise history of the Ghost Army.
And now - don’t be a dummy, subscribe to
us for new fascinating stories from history.
Thank you very many for watching, and until
the next time
Hey those are dummies
right?!
NO?!
