Many of those performances - "illusions," the men appropriately preferred to call them - took place within a few hundred yards of the front lines.Ī 93-pound inflatable tank, of the kind used by the Ghost Army (National Archives)Īnd they relied on what the Ghost Army termed, awesomely, "atmosphere" - creating the overall impression of an omnipresent military force. The Ghost Army, some 1,100 men in all, ended up staging more than twenty battlefield deceptions between 19, starting in Normandy two weeks after D-Day and ending in the Rhine River Valley. These props - "advanced technology" as advanced technology - were amazingly effective, doing what all good theater props will: setting a believable scene.
And speakers that blared pre-recorded soundtracks into the forests of France. (The unit was the brain child, one report has it, of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) The 23rd were, essentially, the Trojan Horse builders of World War II.Įxcept that their wooden horses took the form of inflatable tanks. Blass and his cohort were members of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, an elite force whose specialty was "tactical deception." They're now better known, though, as the " Ghost Army" - a troop of soldiers that doubled, in Europe's theater, as a troupe of actors.
0 kommentar(er)
