Once-secret photos reveal the extraordinary lengths armies will go to fool the enemy.
Tanks But No Tanks: The Dummy Weapons Of War
1
Military deception is probably as old as war itself, but the earliest photos of dummy weapons date from the 1861-65 American Civil War, when “Quaker guns” (pictured) were used by both sides. The “guns” were in fact logs, mounted to give distant, telescope-squinting generals a false impression of firepower.
2
A man pretends to fire a Quaker gun. The dummy weapons were sometimes used to buy a retreating army time as they hauled away their real cannons under cover of darkness. Quaker guns were named after a Christian sect devoted to nonviolence.
3
In World War I, the arrival of tanks on the battlefield was followed shortly afterward by crude wooden dummies like this German-made decoy, apparently attempting to replicate the chilling effect a tank would have on advancing troops.
4
But it was during World War II that fake weaponry became an art form that shaped history: On the dusty battlefields of Africa, British forces battling a shrewd German general used deception to win a decisive battle.