What was the ghost army in World War Two? The ghost army in World War Two was an American army unit that was responsible for tactical deception and misleading the enemy. Nowadays, this kind of warfare is common sense, but it was the first such unit of its kind?
The ghost army was officially called the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops and they were formed in 1944. The ghost army weren’t the first soldier to employ deception, but they were the first official unit to be tasked with doing so. The idea came from successful British attempts to deceive the Germans in North Africa several years earlier. The British troops, led by Montgomery, were facing the German troops, led by Rommel. Rommel outnumbered the British forces and he was winning battle after battle. An officer on the ground, Dudley Clarke, came up with a way to make Rommel think they had more troops than they did. They built trucks, tanks, and guns out of any material they could find, including palm trees. The subterfuge worked and the Germans thought they had far more troops and would be attacking from a different direction. This trickery helped the British win that battle because Rommel couldn’t be sure where to focus his forces.
The British attempt was so successful, that the Americans decided to form a whole unit of people devoted to deception. The British had done it with what they could find, but the Americans decided to take it to the next level. They recruited artists, modelers, carpenters, advertisers, sound experts, actors, set designers, and other people skilled in design and construction. By the end of the war, the unit had 1,100 people in it.
The Ghost Army had several props at their disposal. One of the most effective was a large number of inflatable rubber tanks, vehicles, aircraft, and large guns. These were all manufactured back home and shipped out to the front where artists painted them to look like the real thing. They used gasoline powered air compressors to inflate all of the vehicles and they ended up with a small army that they could easily position. They worked out how to camouflage the inflatable vehicles enough so that they wouldn’t arouse suspicion but not well enough that they couldn’t be seen from the air. After all, the idea was for them to be spotted. Then the sound effects people went into action. They recorded many different types of army noises, from practice to warfare, and they recorded them on records. Then they used well hidden, very large loudspeakers to broadcast the sounds great distances. There were also radio operators who would send dummy signals. Regular radio operators and Morse coders had recognizable signals and styles that the Germans recognized. The Ghost Army mimicked these styles so that even when the real operators had moved on with their units, the Germans would think they were still in the same place.
Their first job was on D-Day. They went ashore shortly after the main attack had happened and they built a fake landing harbor down the beach. They set it up to look just like the real thing, but they lit it up so that it would draw away the German fire from the real landing stations. They used their inflatable vehicles and dummy artillery to make it look real.
The Ghost Army went into action several times during the war. They added their dummy tanks and weapons to the siege of the port of Brest so that the besieged would think there were greater forces than there actually were and surrender more quickly. On another occasion they used 50 dummy tanks and sound tracks close to the front line to make the Germans think an attack was coming from a different direction, allowing General George Patton to cross into France. They also used their inflatable army to fill up a hole in General Patton’s line when he attacked the French city of Metz. They managed to hold the line for seven days, despite not having a single real weapon.
Their most daring escapade was in 1945, when the 9th Army were trying to cross the Rhine River. It was heavily defended and there was no way across it. The Ghost Army built an entire army base down river and manage to impersonate 40,000 soldiers. They used all of their inflatable vehicles and weapons, along with hundreds of dummies in army uniforms. They built buildings and used radio chatter to convince the Germans they were the main force. They even played recorded sound of an army building a pontoon bridge over the river. It worked, and the German army attacked the fake army, allowing the 9th army to safely cross the river. Amazing. And this is what I learned today.
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Sources
https://www.history.com/articles/ghost-army-world-war-ii