Rubber Tanks and Sonic Trucks: the Ghost Army of World War II (hackaday.com)

szczys writes: While you may have heard of the Ghost Army that was used to fake troop movements during WWII, it's unlikely that you truly grasp the level of skill and success these elite groups achieved. At its surface, the story is about inflatable armies that could fool German intelligence from afar. That is one visual component, but there were many more involving sound and radio communications. Before the digital age, it was quite a trick making authentic audio recordings of military vehicle sounds on 2-mile long spools of very thin wire played back from vehicles outfitted with 500 Watt speakers. The A/V wasn't complete without radio communications spoofed to look like the Ghost Army was the real deal: this used the best of personal-morse-code-style impersonators. Elite groups trained in these phony arts operated throughout the European theater. Their story was top secret long after the war because the craft was considered a strategic asset well into the cold war era.

Comments

Re:Patton vs. Bradley

[mjwx]

The big victory here, was that the Germans swallowed it hook, line and sinker. The Germans considered Patton to be the most formidable General that the Allies had. Unfortunately for Patton, he was on the shit-list, because he slapped a patient in a field hospital in Italy, who Patton mistakenly claimed was just suffering from cowardice.

The German spooks heard of this, but discarded it quickly. Why would an Army sideline a brilliant General, just because he slapped a simple enlisted man? At any rate the "Patton Threat" really played a crucial role in all this, and helped the Normandy landings to be a success.

Personal Note: I met an old German soldier a long time back, and we discussed the Normandy landings. He said, "We were waiting the whole time for Patton to land in Calais."

Hey, fooled you, most awesomely!

This was no error on the part of the Germans, well at least not a stupid one. The Allies deliberately built a huge propaganda machine centred around Patton for the express purpose fooling the Germans into believing that Patton was leading the invasion and it would be at the Pas de Calais. It wasn't just propaganda either, everything from false intelligence fed through double agents to using Hollywood experts to build an entire fake army around Patton.

And as you said, the Germans swallowed it hook, line and sinker. When Hitler's aides woke him and informed him of the Normandy landings he dismissed it as another raid and refused to allow the release of armoured reinforcements because he was that convinced the invasion would be at Calais. A deception that saves thousands of allied lives.

Re:Patton vs. Bradley

[youngone]

I have no personal view about Patton's ability, but I have read of men who served under him that were appalled by his disregard for the lives of his men.

MacArthur however was treated with barely concealed contempt by the Australians (in particular) because of his grandstanding, and the way he was followed around constantly by camera men.

He also viewed the Australians as second class soldiers, despite their heroism in appalling conditions at Kokoda (for example). He ended his career by being sacked after going behind the president's back during the Korean War.

Petreus' end speaks for itself.

Re:We did the same thing in the Gulf War

[AHuxley]

The problem now is the numbers of rushed in, poorly vetted contractors, random dual citizens working for contractors, other nations workers, private sector staff, US gov staff who are needed to provide support for the once secure all US mil only areas.
As the US looks to out source and no bid contract even more of its invasion, occupation and other massive war like efforts, the amount of random people wondering around, looking around will be interesting.
WW2 worked well as Germany only had look limited fancy new down platforms and had to work with vast radio and telephone capture. German over flight optics was only so good.
Germany had lost its spies in the UK early in WW2. The UK always had very good methods to track people globally.
The UK was also very active in hunting down Germans or people in contact with Germany in neutral nations too (MI5 section 1a teams, Camp 020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ).
UK teams would go to neutral nations and find German related radio networks and turn them or ensure the radio traffic stopped.