Fake Vampires, Wailing Ghosts, and Other Fascinating Psy-Ops and Military Deceptions

Fake Vampires, Wailing Ghosts, and Other Fascinating Psy-Ops and Military Deceptions

Khalid Elhassan - January 29, 2020

Fake Vampires, Wailing Ghosts, and Other Fascinating Psy-Ops and Military Deceptions
Making a tank look like a truck. Obscure Histories

31. Using Flim-Flam to Fool the Desert Fox

The British planned to attack Rommel in the north. To conceal, that a specialist unit is known as the Camouflage, Development, and Training Centre (CDTC) was cobbled together from filmmakers, stage magicians, painters, sculptors, and architects, and tasked with flummoxing the enemy.

Fake Vampires, Wailing Ghosts, and Other Fascinating Psy-Ops and Military Deceptions
A British Crusader tank masquerading as a truck in the desert. Wikimedia

The CDTC set out to hide the actual British troop and materiel buildup in the north. They also sought to make what buildup could not be concealed appear slower than it actually was. All their efforts were geared towards convincing the Axis commanders that the main attack would fall upon the southern sector of the line, and not the northern.

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