For the second assigned blog, I chose to watch a documentary on the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops. (Commonly referred to as the ("Ghost Army".) This documentary explained the unusual tactics of this battalion. There were 3 "divisions" in the Ghost Army. The 3 "divisions" were visual deception, sonic deception, and radio deception. During this documentary, troops from the 23rd Headquarters explain their jobs in the various divisions.
In the beginning of the film, the narrator describes the occupations of the soldiers before WWII. Most of them were artists. These artists were not chosen by draft, but were chosen after they wrote in and asked to share their talents. These artists were most commonly involved in the visual deception division.
This division was in charge of making the enemy think that the Americans were somewhere, but in all actuality, it was a decoy method. The artists were instructed first to disguise a factory in Baltimore where B52 bombers were manufactured, to make it look like the country side. This was done in case of a German air attack. They were then trained and sent to Europe. There they were instructed to hide tanks and build decoy tanks to draw enemy fire elsewhere. At first they had to find their own ways to make these decoys and hide them effectively. The army soon found a way. They made giant inflatable tanks out of rubber and sent them to the troops in Europe. They would set up the tanks in a way that would look like a convoy from the air. They would also use bulldozers to create fake tank tracks. From the air this looked like a battalion and that would draw enemy fire. This allowed real battalions to move elsewhere without being seen.
The next division was called sonic deception. In the sonic deception division, troops used large speakers and recordings to simulate the movement of tanks, building of bridges, or presence of troops. They did this by going out and recording various sounds which were very life like. They would then put these sounds onto records and then they would play them on giant speakers in the backs of trucks. They could mix any sounds they wanted to create appropriate scenarios. These sounds could be heard 15 miles away.
The final division was the radio deception division. During WWII, many countries relied on the interception of radio conversations to pinpoint when and where the enemy would attack. Germany was notorious for knowing where a group was stationed by looking at their radio signals. This was an issue for the Americans, so they created the radio deception division of the Ghost Army. These men would station themselves in other areas of the front and would read scripted messages over the radio waves to confuse the Germans.
I would give this documentary a 10 out of 10. I absolutely loved it. It was a side of the war I'd never heard of before and the real life accounts from the people who were actually there made it even better. I would recommend this film to anyone!
This is a tank that would have been used by the Ghost Army. It is modeled after an M4 Sherman tank.
Comments
Awesome job Sam!!