"Deception in war is the art of misleading the enemy into doing something, or not doing something, so that his strategic or tactical position will be weakened" .
Charles Cruickshank
Window is a radar countermeasure in which aircraft spread a cloud of small thin strips of aluminum which either appears as a cluster of secondary targets on a radar screen or swamps the screen with multiple returns.
The small aluminum strips were cut to one half of the target radar's wavelength. When dropped the strips would give a false echo, appearing as a bomber on radar screens. Opposing defenses would find it almost impossible to pick out the real bombers from the false echo's.(see illustration)
Right, normal indication of allied bombers.
Left, a trail of window obscures the bombers.
Gingerbread men were dummy parachutists around
2ft 6ins in height,made from Hessian and filled
with kapok. Attached to the body of the
"paratrooper" was a rifle fire simulator which
would fire down on the enemy at a pre-determined
height.They could be deployed from the aircraft
from a container which would be dropped as a
conventional bomb, albeit at a much lower level
or simply pushed out from the aircraft
through a hole in the fuselage.
June 5/6 1944 - D Day Deception by 138 Squadron
200 dummy parachutists and two SAS teams were dropped at Yvetot, 30 miles from Dieppe and 2 miles north Veauville- les-Baons.
The SAS teams had orders to allow some of the enemy to escape to spread the alarm by reporting landings of hundreds of parachutists. This would convince the enemy that the invasion had started and concentrate their movements away from the genuine landing site.
The dummy parachutists were a crude cloth representation of a human figure, a simple series of cloth bags and strips connected in a cross like shape to give the impression of a parachutist. The dummies were equipped with a device that would prevent the enemy discovering the deception. This was an explosive charge that destroyed the cloth figure by setting it on fire which suggested that the man had set his parachute on fire and lay hidden,ready for action.
For Freedom 138 Squadron
To the memory of F/Sgt JG Chadwick and the crew of Halifax LL306
