[1900] in Humor
HUMOR: The Wooden Bomb
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Mon Feb 17 22:29:18 1997
From: <abennett@MIT.EDU>
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 22:21:26 EST
Hmm... I've also seen a (purported) first person account in which it was
the *british* who built the airfield near Dover, and the *germans* who
bombed it. Ah, well. It's a good story either way...
-Drew
From: Espacionaute Spiff domine! <MATOSSIAN@aries.colorado.edu>
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 13:05:02 -0500 (EST)
From: Keith Bostic <bostic@bsdi.com>
Forwarded-by: Peter Langston <psl@langston.com>
Forwarded-by: "Cochell, Jim" <jim_cochell@penmetrics.com>
Excerpted from the book, "Masquerade: The Amazing Camouflage Deceptions
of World War II," by Seymour Reit; Signet, 1980.
Another enemy decoy, built in occupied Holland, led to a tale that has
been told and retold ever since by veteran Allied pilots. The German
"airfield," constructed with meticulous care, was made almost entirely of
wood. There were wooden hangars, oil tanks, gun emplacements, trucks,
and aircraft. The Germans took so long in building their wooden decoy
that Allied photo experts had more than enough time to observe and report
it.
The day finally came when the decoy was finished, down to the last wooden
plank. Early the following morning, a lone RAF plane crossed the Channel,
came in low, circled the field once, and dropped a large wooden bomb.
The footnote for this is: Several versions of this anecdote exist, the
most reliable of which can be found in Major M. E. DeLonge's "Modern
Airfield Planning and Concealment" (New York: Pitman, 1943), page 135.
