The Ghost Army

There has been a lack of updates in the last month or so, and not due to lack of personal interest with writing this blog. I've simply not been reading a lot of non-fiction lately. I've turned to the likes of Orwell and Dostoyevsky, mostly for the purposes of being able to use "Orwellian" in a sentence more effectively and so I can smugly tell people "oh, I was just thumbing through some Dostoyevsky", which, I'm fairly sure, is what the vast majority of people read those books for. Regardless, I had to publish something for the month of October and what better than something with a spooky name? 

The fearsome tanks of the American armed forces. Some
assembly required. 

I'll set the tone for what the Ghost Army is all about. It's March, 1945 and Hitler's Germany is on the ropes. Pretty well everyone knows the war is to be over soon, but the Nazis are determined to give it one last go and put up a final stand. The Germans were pushed back to the Rhine river, the last large barrier before getting right at the heart of Germany. The goal of the Allied Powers was to break through the German defence with as few casualties as possible. Unfortunately, tanks and artillery tend to make that a rather difficult affair. 

Knowing they're to have a tough time, the Americans draw up a plan to deceive them as best they can. At first, it's one that sounds more than a little ridiculous - they would create an entire army of decoys to draw fire from the Germans while their actual forces press elsewhere, allowing them to cross the Rhine relatively unharmed. But how can they pull that off? It has to be at least somewhat more complicated yelling or, if it comes down to it, mooning. 

The solution was to create the 603rd Camouflage Engineers, a group of just over a thousand artists. Their goal was to create distractions and deceive the enemy into thinking that forces were there when there actually weren't - a simple goal but an exceedingly complex problem. Previously they were working at on the homefront, disguising such massive projects as airbases to make it look like farmland - which really is as impressive as it sounds. Now they would be thrown into the fray, being told that their job was to get as many Germans shooting at them as possible. Inexplicably, they were fine with this. 

The speakers used to send out the false sounds of war. Now
they're used for Katy Perry concerts. 

They decided the best way to pull this off was to create the deception based on three main ideas: create dummy tanks and artillery to draw the fire; send loud sounds of bridges being built and tanks rolling across to the enemy; and lastly to fake radio announcements, as one of the main ways the Germans found their foe was by intercepting radio reports. Unfortunately, the idea was unprecedented - no one has ever tried to create a whole army full of mimics before. Therefore they had to test a lot of the stuff out until things finally came together. After attempting to use wood, canvas, metal and any sort of materials they could find, they eventually went with inflatables. Yes, large inflatable tanks - that's what would be storming the battlefield. There are a number of hilarious images and videos of tanks being lifted up and bouncing around, or simply rolled over on their side. The best part of it is that they were actually rather effective - from the sky, recon planes would look down below, see the tanks, and think, well, they're... they're tanks. It would be tough to report back and say "yeah, I saw some tanks, but they might have been plastic."

A picture of one of the planes they planted. I really wish they
flew it via remote control to keep with a "Toys 'R' Us" theme. 

Next up was setting up a speaker system. They spent three weeks recording and mixing sounds - much like DJs, but with more talent - and began to create the sounds of an army rolling out to war. Men hammering away on bridges, tanks treading across the open terrain, right down to some guys swearing at each other. It was all there. It would then be pumped out of 500 pound speakers that had the range of fifty miles, which is quite a feat considering that all of this technology was very, very new. This was in addition to bringing in one hundred radio operators to fool the enemy into thinking they were announcing their positions in the land of the inflatables. They would radio in their locations hoping the Germans would pick up on it and start bombing the warfare equivalent of a child's kiddie pool.

There were also a few smaller issues to be taken care of along the way. Tank tracks would be left across the battlefield, except they were actually made by bulldozers; artillery shells were simply left around to make it seem as if they were being used or about to be; they even considered the idea of German spies in the surrounding small towns, so the men of the Ghost Army went to these places regularly talking about their units that weren't actually real, hoping that someone would hear the news and report it back. They even went as far as to get fake shoulder patches made up to make it seem that they really were part of one cohesive unit.

Before they went to the Rhine, they ran a number of trial runs to test if this could actually work. One notable example was the path between a recently liberated Paris and the German heavily fortified city of Metz, which was at that point currently being besieged from the south. They were worried a German contingent could move from the northern route and surround the troops, quickly spelling disaster for the attacking force, so the Ghost Army was called in to take the place and pretend they were another large force coming in to support them. Of course, they held little to no defensive power, but it was all irrelevant. The Germans didn't attack as they couldn't risk leaving their defensive positions to hit the enemy that didn't really exist. The plan worked perfectly. 

After a number of other trials, all of which successful and causing a shockingly few number of casualties considering the risk associated with the task, they launched Operation Viersen, the largest diversion yet. It would take 1,100 men, with a few real infantry to enhance the illusion. They set up fake repair depots, placed their shockingly effective fake tanks and artillery, as well as dummy planes with landing strips. The later was so effective that an Allied plane - a real one - actually landed on one and was promptly ushered away. The result was an American army crossing into a disorganized and tiny resistance, the plan clearly having properly deceived the Nazis. It was estimated they saved up to 15,000-30,000 lives.

So well done, Ghost Army. I may have been a touch disappointed you weren't literal ghosts created through some sort of secret CIA paranormal unit, but... it's a pretty darn great story.

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The info and pictures used for this blog were taken from the PBS documentary The Ghost Army. So, this blog was made possible by readers like you!