Deceiving Hitler's Bombers

The first and most important element of an air raid is target acquisition. All the costs and risks of a bombing raid are wasted if the mission's objective is not correctly identified. If the attacking aircraft can be tricked into dropping their deadly payload in areas of no consequence to the war effort through deception or visual distraction, the enemy bombers will have missed their target. At the beginning of the war, it was understood that enemy bombers would invariably penetrate British defenses and that German bomber crews possessed a good understanding of British geography and key industrial and military installations. Under these circumstances, how could the most important locations be protected? Remarkable successes were achieved through camouflage, concealing key positions with dummy buildings and equipment, or, for example, with fake railway tracks, lights, and fires. To draw the Luftwaffe away from RAF airfields, numerous decoy airfields were constructed within a ten-kilometer radius of the actual airfields. These installations had to appear as authentic as possible. Therefore, suitable decoys of aircraft, roads and refuse depots, artificial runways on the airfield, real and decoys of machine gun emplacements, as well as a shelter and trenches for the crew were provided. To deceive the enemy as much as possible, mobile airfield lighting was developed. The civilian authorities also developed decoys to protect specific areas. As a result, dozens of bombs were dropped on marshes or open common land. An example of the effectiveness of this deception occurred on the night of April 1718, 1941. Although 144 aircraft attacked Portsmouth, only eight bombs fell on the city itself; the rest hit a decoy target, the surrounding area, or the nearby sea. Although visual deception was a little-noticed aspect of aerial warfare, particularly during the Blitz, it played a vital role in the defense of Great Britain and important targets abroad. The whole story of the ingenious and sophisticated methods used to deceive Hitler's bombers is indeed fascinating.