North
Korea issued this photo last week, which appears to show a flotilla of
landing craft assaulting a beach. Upon closer inspection, many of these
vessels are superimposed on the image. An April Fools’ Day trick? Image
courtesy KCNA.
“’All warfare is based on deception,’ wrote Sun Tzu in his seminal work The Art of War and he was right.”
NORTH KOREA MADE HEADLINES in April of 2013 when it was discovered that a photograph of its army rehearsing an amphibious assault had been doctored using Photoshop.
The
image, which was released by the reclusive regime amid rising tensions
between Pyongyang and Seoul, showed eight landing craft depositing
troops onto a beach as part of a demonstration North Korean military
might.
Oddly enough, two of the craft in the photo were reflecting
sunlight almost identically, suggesting that at least one was digitally
added to the frame (possibly even both). Then there were the plumes of
surf being thrown into the air by the speeding vessels — they also
appear to have been added electronically. The international media yanked
picture from circulation once keen-eyed journalists had spotted the
tampering. The French press agency called the level of photo
manipulation “excessive”.
Despite the stir the image created in
the western press, defence planners in Pyongyang weren’t doing anything
that hasn’t been tried by other generals throughout history.
“All warfare is based on deception,” wrote Sun Tzu in his seminal work
The Art of War
and he was right. Long before the advent of Photoshop, military leaders
have tried to mislead and confuse their enemies in all sorts of ways.
And what better time is there than April Fools’ Day to share eight of
our favourite examples of battlefield trickery.
Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts
A 19th Century painting of the fabled Trojan Horse.
Homer’s Illiad describes how Greeks in the 12th Century BCE,
unable
to breech the walls of the fabled city of Troy for 10 years,
constructed an enormous wooden horse as an apparent peace offering to
their long-time enemies. The Trojans happily accepted the token and
dragged it within the walls of their fortified city to celebrate the end
of the war. Later that night as the Trojans slept, Greek soldiers
emerged from inside of the statue and put the city’s inhabitants to the
sword. Historians believe that the story of the Trojan Horse is most
likely a myth and that the large structure
was more likely a horse-shaped battering ram.
Others have speculated that there was no horse at all and that a group
of warriors spoofed their way into the city within the ranks of a peace
delegation.
Ruse At Entebbe
The air terminal at Entebbe, Uganda as seen in 1994. (Image source: WikiCommons)
The Israelis would borrow a page from the ancient Greek epic in their famous
Entebbe Raid
of July 4, 1976. As pro-Palestinian hijackers held 106 civilian
hostages from the Jewish state in an airport in friendly Uganda, IDF
commandos infiltrated the facility inside a procession of vehicles that
were painted to resemble the motorcade of the African dictator
Idi Amin.
As the cars came to a halt in front of the main air terminal, Israeli
paratroopers leapt out and assaulted the building freeing the captives
and killing the terrorists in a brief but furious firefight. Moments
later, both the rescuers and hostages escaped to safety aboard a C-130
that had quietly touched down on the edge of the field.
Q-Ships vs. U-Boats
HMS Tamarisk — armed merchant ships like this gave German sub crews some nasty surprises. (Image source: WikiCommons)
Not so much Trojan Horses as wolves in sheeps’ clothing were the Allied
Q-Ships
of the First World War. Designed to appear to German submarine skippers
as helpless tramp steamers, each of the vessels was manned by a crew of
trained Royal Navy personnel and carried concealed cannons and machine
guns. When a U-boat would surface to engage the target, the Q-ship would
run up its naval ensign, reveal its guns and unleash a hail of fire
onto the unsuspecting enemy. More than 350 Q-ships (codenamed Q for the
port of Queenstown, Ireland from which the first of them sailed) put to
sea. In all, they sank 14 U-boats in total and damaged another 60.
Redcoats and Red Faces
General Isaac Brock outfoxed the American garrison at Detroit in 1812.
Another method of wartime deception involves making a tiny army look much larger. That was British general
Isaac Brock’s strategy while marching his scant force of 300 regulars against 2,000 U.S. troops occupying
Fort Detroit
in August of 1812. In order to cow the defenders into submission, Brock
had his infantrymen loan their spare uniforms to the accompanying
militia to give off the impression he had twice as many of his dreaded
red coats. The general also had the native war chief
Tecumseh
repeatedly parade the same 600 warriors through a small gap in the
treeline in front of the American fort. The seemingly endless procession
of tribesmen convinced the defenders that thousands of hostile natives
were about to swarm the stockade. The American commander,
William Hull, went to pieces and capitulated without a fight. Hull was later convicted of cowardice; Brock was knighted for his genius.
Midnight Express
Confederate
general P.G.T. Beauregard fooled the Yankees into thinking that
thousands of Rebs were pouring into Corinth, Mississippi. IN reality his
small army was slipping out of town.
Confederate general
P.T.G. Beauregard undertook a similar subterfuge in
May of 1862 at Corinth, Mississippi.
Outnumbered more than two to one and expecting a massive Union assault
at daybreak, the clever rebel commander ordered a single locomotive
rolled in and out of the town all night making it sound as if thousands
of fresh troops were arriving on a endless procession of trains. To add
to the charade, he had his men cheer lustily each time the lone steam
engine pulled into the station, fooling the Yankees into believing the
reinforced Southerners were spoiling for a fight. Meanwhile, Beauregard
was actually evacuating the town; the sound of the train even masked the
noise of his army breaking camp.
Quaker Guns
These
logs looked enough like cannons from a distance to fool the Union army
into thinking this rebel position was bristling with artillery.
During the Revolutionary War,
outnumbered and outgunned generals often erected phoney gun
emplacements using painted logs cut to resemble artillery pieces.
Nicknamed “
Quaker guns”
after the pacifist religious sect, just one of these harmless log
cannons towed into battle by horses looked real enough to convince an
entire force of Tories to surrender to a much weaker army at
Camden, South Carolina in 1780. Eighty years later, the beleaguered Confederates used the same ploy on a number of occasions to deter Union attacks. In 1862,
General Joseph E. Johnston erected batteries of Quaker guns at
Centreville, Virginia
to keep the Yankee army at arms length while his tiny force withdrew
and lived to fight another day. Later, Confederate earthworks at the
Siege of Petersburg were made to look all the more impregnable through the use of Quaker guns.
Tanks for Nothing
Inflatable tanks like this were harmless, but they certainly looked menacing enough to enemy reconnaissance.
Similar to log cannons,
both the Allies and the Nazis deployed dummy tanks and aircraft made of
wood and canvas during the Second World War. In fact, throughout the
North African campaign, the British built three non-existent armoured
regiments using the mock vehicles, some of which could be fitted over
jeeps and moved about the battlefield to enhance the illusion. The
Americans specialized in rubberized inflatable Sherman tanks that looked
remarkably lifelike from a distance. To this day, the U.S. Army equips
its units with $3,000
duffel bag-sized inflatable dummy tanks that are near perfect replicas of the $4 million M-1 Abrams.
Meanwhile,
one Chinese-based company sells all manner of inflatable decoy vehicles
to armies (and presumably film makers) worldwide.
An arm patch for the U.S. 21st Airborne Division of World War Two. Never heard of that unit? That’s because it didn’t exist.
Hitler Gets FUSAG’ed
Perhaps the greatest
wartime deception in all of military history occurred in the lead up to
the 1944 Normandy invasion. That’s when the Allies fooled the enemy
into thinking that a massive force, known as the
First United States Army Group (FUSAG), was poised to strike at the French Pas-De-Calais from southern England. Of course, FUSAG was a sham; the
actual Allied army was preparing to invade 200 miles to the west at Normandy. The epic fake-out was known as
Operation Fortitude.
Details of the phantom Allied army were purposefully leaked through
diplomatic channels and the press, while non-existent divisions, like
the
British 2nd Airborne, the imaginary U.S.
9th and
21st airborne and the
Fourteenth United States Army,
were all conjured into existence, complete with orders of battle and
even regimental insignia. A massive effort aimed at simulating radio
chatter of the fictional units was also mounted. Dummy landing craft and
vehicles were concentrated near Dover, England to fool spies and
observation planes. Even General Patton, who had been sidelined in 1943
for
striking a pair of shell shocked GIs during the campaign in Sicily,
was appointed to head up the fictional army. The firebrand army
commander was often seen travelling throughout southwest England by
jeep, ostensibly to visit FUSAG units. It was all a part of the
theatrics. The plan worked so well that when the Allies invaded
Normandy, the German high command held back its crack units believing
that the June 6 landings were only a diversion. Berlin, having fallen
hook line and sinker for Fortitude, was convinced that the real blow
would fall in July at the Pas De Calais.
OK,that's it for today. I hope you survive whatever pranks people try on you and your own pranks are successful!
Until next time,
Fair Winds,
Old Salt
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