Camouflage, Concealment and Deception

The Second World War decoy airfield at Thrumster, with dummy runways still visible in 1988 as a large 'V'-shape of contrasting vegetation at photo centre.

Following devastating Allied air attacks on V-1 flying bomb launch sites in late 1943 and early 1944, the Germans began to construct a new type of launching site, which was much more difficult to recognise on aerial photography. Known as 'modified sites', these consisted of a metal ramp which could be constructed off-site and bolted onto concrete foundations, all of which could be deliberately concealed in a wood. Only three or four camouflaged huts were present at each of these new sites, making the whole operation much harder for Allied photo interpreters to find. 

The site featured here is one such 'modified site'; the launch ramp is concealed among trees at lower left and the associated huts are disguised as farm buildings.

This dummy installation, designed to represent the Police oil refinery, was built in fields approximately 6 miles north of Szczecin. To complete the deception, a dummy pipeline was also laid between the decoy and the shoreline. 

This decoy was unlikely to be mistaken for the real thing in daylight hours but at night, with realistic fires nearby, it could have deceived bomber crews into attacking it instead of the actual refinery. The absence of bomb craters in the vicinity of this site indicates the lack of effectiveness of this decoy.

During the Second World War, large bodies of water were of help to Allied bomber crews trying to locate their targets at night. The city of Hamburg had just such a body of water immediately adjacent to the city centre; in an attempt to draw Allied bombers away from this area, a scheme was developed to make the Binnenalster basin appear to be 500 metres north-east of its actual position. This was done by covering the basin with wood, wire-mesh and canvas structures painted to look like a series of city blocks, while a dummy Lombard's Bridge was built to cross the Aussenalster basin 500m to the north-east of the real bridge. The intention was that bombers using Binnenalster as an aiming point would drop their bombs harmlessly into the watery decoy. 

In practice, Allied night bombing was not accurate enough to have limited damage to one specific area and after several heavy raids on the city the decoy was no longer maintained. Associated with this scheme, the railway lines at lower right were also painted to make them blend into the city street pattern.

The lack of bomb craters in the vicinity of the decoy, in this image from 17 May 1944, indicates that it had either been recently built or was insufficiently realistic to confuse Allied airmen. The full extent of the decoy can be traced across adjacent frames from this sortie.

One solution to the problem of deceiving an enemy bomber intent on attacking a large, well-known target was to try and hide the target altogether. At Cologne, it was recognised that the city could readily be identified by its position on the River Rhine. The remedy was to place a series of smoke dischargers throughout the city which would be ignited on the approach of enemy aircraft and which could generate a smoke screen to cover the city and thereby mask the position of key aiming points.

In this image, the presence of the lone reconnaissance aircraft has caused some of the smoke generators to be switched on, particularly along the left bank of the Rhine, although much too late to deny the camera its view of the cathedral, bridges and railway station.