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

We did the same thing in the Gulf War

[OctobrX]

So I was a 93F with the 101st and one of the first things we did when we got in country was take a trip into Iraq. I was amazed at the HUGE giant amount of tanks I saw as we approached our area to run a met mission(fly a weather balloon lol). As we got closer and closer... I started to notice something. About 50 feet away, I noticed there were wires holding these inflatable vehicles down and let out the biggest cackle you'd ever heard. It was brilliant.

We were there as a part of the GHOST ops to make it look like stuff was happening. Pretty smart if you think about it.