The Ghost Army

‘War is an art and strategic brilliance is more similar to artistic genius than one may think.’ It sounds like a deep, philosophical thought that requires a lot of thinking, doesn’t it? Well, the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops gave this a new meaning. They were a United States Army tactical deception unit during World War 2. The unit, which was 1100 men strong, was tasked with the unique mission to impersonate other Allied Army Units to deceive the enemy. They used fakery and misinformation to dupe the enemy throughout the European theatre.  The unit consisted of artists, illustrators, and radio and sound specialists from New York and Philadelphia art schools. Although the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops consisted of only 1,100 soldiers, the contingent used equipment pioneered by British forces such as dummy tanks and artillery, fake aircraft, and giant speakers broadcasting the sounds of men and artillery to make the Germans think it was upwards of a two-division 30,000-man force. The inspiration for the units had come from Operation Bertram which was carried out by British forces in the battle of El Alamein in the late 1940s. Tactics such as visual deception, sonic deception, radio deception, and atmosphere were mainly used by this unit to carry out their missions. The visual deception arm of the unit was equipped with inflatable tanks, cannons, jeeps, trucks, and airplanes that were inflated with air compressors and camouflaged imperfectly so that enemy aerial reconnaissance could see them. The sonic deception arm of the unit was equipped with state-of-the-art wire recorders which were used to mix sounds to match the scenario they wanted the enemy to believe. They mainly recorded sounds of armored and infantry units which were then mixed and played back with powerful speakers and amplifiers which played sounds that could be heard 24 km away. Radio deception or ‘spoof’ radio as it was called, mainly consisted of creating phony traffic nets and impersonating radio operators from real units. They were educated in the art of mimicking a departing operator's method of sending Morse Code so that the enemy would never detect that the real unit and its radio operator were long gone. To complement existing techniques, the unit often employed theatrical effects to supplement the other deceptions which were collectively known as ‘atmosphere’. This unit and its men operated in the background from the shadows. They created chaos and caused mayhem without leaving even an iota of suspicion behind them. With a story kept secret from us for forty years after the war with some elements still classified, this unit has deservingly earned the nickname, ‘The Ghost Army’. Written by: Kevin Manoj