The British decoy strategy in World War II to fool German bombers

From 'bustling' fake airfields and factories with artificial lighting to massive arson attacks simulating burning towns and cities, Britain used a complex strategy of deception during World War II to fool German pilots into bombing open fields instead of hitting key targets.

These decoy sites, which began construction in 1940, had been virtually forgotten until a team led by researchers from the Universities of Keele and London recently studied them, they explain in an article published in the Journal of Conflict Archaeology .

Operated by a handful of soldiers

The 'fake' sites were often operated by teams of a handful of soldiers from brick-built bunkers who actively attempted to lure German night raiders into dropping their bombs on them in the belief that they were adding to the destruction already inflicted on British infrastructure.

Archaeologists analysed the remains of three sites in north Staffordshire, built between August 1941 and April 1943 following the directions of German radio waves (used for navigation in the early part of the war).

The idea was to divert the bombers from high-priority industrial targets in the Stoke-on-Trent area. These points of interest included Wolstanton Colliery, the Shelton Iron and Steel Works, the Michelin tyre factory, Meir Airfield and the Radway Green munitions production centre.

The sites examined were part of up to 237 “special fire” sites (nicknamed Starfish) protecting 81 towns and cities and also functioned as “QL sites”, where crews would have used controlled fires and lighting effects such as factory lights, locomotives and moving vehicles to simulate burning targets and industrial activity.

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Researchers have estimated that around 968 tonnes of German bombs were dropped on these decoys. “Using controlled fires and lights, they tricked the Luftwaffe into dropping their bombs on relatively uninhabited areas, in forests and in the countryside, far from their intended targets,” explains Dr Kris Wisniewski.

At two of the sites, well-preserved brick-built control bunkers still exist, each with two rooms: a control room on the left that would have had a telephone, mechanical switches, bunk bed and escape hatch, and the room on the right that housed electrical generators that powered the entire site.

Remnants of concrete slabs on the floor for generators were still present in both spaces, along with stove bases in the operating rooms to keep crews warm. Well-preserved expansion chambers and pipes designed to protect soldiers from bomb blast waves were also found.

The original blast walls separating the buildings were still in place, and experts also discovered the remains of blackout curtains nailed to wooden door frames, lamp stands, old electrical wiring, exhaust vents for generators, ventilation tunnels and the remains of a set of stairs placed beneath an escape hatch.

“The ingenuity of these defences shows how the British responded intelligently to the threat of an all-out attack by the Luftwaffe, which shifted its attacks from airfields to major industrial areas and cities,” says military historian Peter Doyle.

“As had happened in World War I, the theory was that fires at decoy sites would be started after a first wave of bombers had attacked their target, in the hope that subsequent waves would be lured by the deception. Luftwaffe prisoners indicated that they had orders to add more incendiary bombs to any fire they saw,” he adds.

Avoiding concussions

Researchers used drones, ground-based LiDAR laser equipment, geophysical data sets and 360-degree camera images to survey, photograph and digitally preserve the sites for future generations. “Many of these hastily constructed sites still stand in various states of preservation, but have been ignored and forgotten since the end of the war,” said Dr Jamie Pringue.

“The discovery of the expansion chamber foundations shows how, even in such desperate times, the site’s designers were still aware of how dangerous these decoy points were to the soldiers manning them and sought to give them a better chance of surviving the concussions from nearby bomb blasts they hoped to attract,” he concludes.