the lancaster kicks ass said:
Don't forget though that we had huge diversions in the south east corner of the country, it's quite funny really, there was 7 men driving in a truck driving round the dover area that we creating the radio traffic for an entire army in the hope the germans would intercept this, which they did, and make them think that, along with allot of inflatable tanks, our army was in the south east, very clever i think. They also had the same scheme going on in the north with te radio traffic to make the germans think we were about to inade through Norway................
Yup, not sure if the Brits had a unit similar, but the US had a special unit dedicated to deception, the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops. IIRC Churchill liked the idea (and I think it was originally proposed for the Brits, but do to their position it would be hard) and pressured the Americans into it. They went to some famous art colleges/schools and recruited people. The unit had many specialist, ranging from fine arts artists that made camo so real it looked real (compared to the normal camo used) and also to make camo stand out, but not so much as to make it obvious they wanted the Germans to see it. There were also radio specialists that had to learn the accents, unit specific lingo, and everything else so they could take over a unit's (up to a division once IIRC) identity on the radio without a noticeable change to the Germans. There was a lot more they used, like inflatable tanks, planes, jeeps, and trucks. Convoys of their vehicles with only two people in the back, so it would seem they were full to anyone glancing in the back. If they thought someone was giving the Germans information (such as someone some of the officers were living or interacting with) they would feed them false information. They had halftracks with naval speakers on jacks on the backs to make noise at night, from tank movements, to infantry talking. Not only this, but they had to do it so it would sound right in the given atmospherics (they had their own meteoric unit IIRC to help with this). Halftracks drove around at night to make tread marks in the dirt, etc. I remember they operated on the peninsula to the west or Normandy, which I forget the name of, and bottled up a lot more Germans then they numbered, many of which were SS. They also operated in the crossing of the Rhine IIRC, during the Battle of the Bulge, and all along the front from the Atlantic to Italy.
Their halftracks had the most firepower of any as far as one member knew, for three people they had the mounted .50, a .30 machine gun, a bazooka, each had their own carbine, grenades, etc, more than three people would normally need. The vehicles all had explosives packed into them, so if they were damaged or couldn't get away from the Germans they could obliterate the vehicle and keep their secret.
They repainted their vehicle markings for the majority of their missions to maintain their identities, and on at least one occasion had an officer from the outfit they were pretending to be walk into the HQ thinking it was their outfit, and not recognize anyone. On occasion they also had neighbouring infantry units complain that they didn't give them armoured support, even though they saw it and heard armour at night and once (Battle of the Bulge maybe) were ordered to pull back since they didn't stand a chance against the Germans. For the rest of the war and beyond the unit that had been left on one of their flanks despised the unit they were pretending to be, which resulted in many accusations of cowardice and fights, although the one unit had no idea why
The book I read:
Another book I just read of: