Welcome to Steph you missed in History class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Colly Frying and I'm trace Abe Wilson. And today we're gonna talk a little bit about military history, and it's World War two specifically. And even though this particular piece, uh that we're discussing is in fact military history, if there were a history of ingenuity or sleight of hand, I think this would probably be one of the big events on that timeline. Uh So we're gonna be talking about the US Ghost Army, which was a top secret group that was assembled to create confusion and mislead access forces. And it's a really amazing story that stars ingenuity and bravado as sort of the the main elements of the piece. And the idea of military deception was of course not new to World War Two. Everyone has heard of like the Trojan Horse for example, and deceit is a tactic as part of Sun SU's art of war. Almost any culture in history that found itself at war with another culture use some type of trickery to try to outsmart the enemy, because that's sort of a vital part of getting the upper hand in a conflict is misleading so that you can kind of swoop in with your forces. But this group really went to some pretty extraordinary measures to achieve their goals, and they did some really fascinating and cool things, uh and so, and it was classified for a long time and then kind of came to light. So we are going to talk about it today because it is really cool. So to start out at the beginning like we normally do that. Twenty third Headquarters Special Troops was the one and only deception outfit that the US Army had ever authorized. The goal was to corral a group of creative thinkers to approach warfare in new ways. And this sort of trickery focused effort was inspired by the success of Operation Bertram, in which Allied forces used dummy tanks and camouflage to trick Romwel's for which is into an incorrect assessment of the Allies position and strength during the Second Battle of l A l Amain in North Africa. And also bolstering this case for a deception unit was the U S success in misleading German intelligence leading up to the Battle of Tunisia. They realized deception was working and they thought, let's just have a unit that's focused on this. The idea of forming a unit dedicated just to this is attributed to Captain Ralph Ingersoll. Before the war, he had been a celebrity journalist and he had been working with Great Britain on deception techniques to mislead the Germans in the time leading up the D Day. On Christmas Eve of ninety three, a memo to the Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations War Department at Washington, d C officially requested the creation of a unit with a mission quote to simulate a core of two infantry divisions and one armored divisions and core installations railhead dumps, etcetera. So, beginning in nineteen forty or more than one thousand young men were recruited and they were often recent art school graduates or ad agency creatives and they were handpicked for this assignment. Recruits were sent to Camp Forest and Tellahoma, Tennessee to train. Within the three were several companies. The two four Signal Company worked on radio counter intelligence. Second Signal Service Company, which was actually trained at Pine Camp, New York, worked to develop sonic deception techniques. The four of six Engineer Combat Company worked on the big construction projects and was in charge of security. And often you'll hear this effort mentioned, like when people say, oh, the Ghost Army they used inflatable tanks to deceive the Germans, and that is partially true, but as we mentioned in breaking down these different companies within the twenty three, it was a whole lot more than that. Yeah, I feel like the tanks get the big like kind of bud speedy headlines all time, which is understand Well, there's really cool video that exists, like where you can see them rolling over these inflated tanks and there. I don't know that I have ever heard any of the audio recordings, and I don't think I've ever seen anyone reference them online. So you can see where the tanks get all the attention. But I was not all there was. For instance, audio work, sometimes referred to as sonic deception, was a huge piece of the Ghost Army puzzle. Yeah, they would mount these huge speakers to project elaborate soundscapes and radio plays that were created by the Second Signal Service Company. And these men had recorded tanks and trucks and artillery units and they sound engineered them into a number of different soundtracks and these recordings would include sounds of tanks on the move or military construction, and they would even have things like vehicle sputtering. And they basically amassed this really amazing sound catalog basically every military vehicle that they had access to, doing everything those miss jeans could do, so they could kind of piece them together and create unique and specific radio dramas. Basically, so if you wanted to broadcast a battalion of vehicles starting up in the distance and moving closer, they could create that with their vast library of recordings, complete with idiosyncratic engine noises for specific vehicles and kind of mimic that distance too slowly moving forward nearness that you would hear if you were in one position with an actual troop going by. I like to imagine this as an extremely high tech version of following King Arthur around banging coconuts together. But it was very high tech even for the time. I mean, they were really kind of on the advanced edge of technology and how they were using sound. Yeah. Well, and it's like these that kind of sound work happens in movies and TV and things like that all the time. Now, Like that's yeah, that's just sort of how it works, so this is a different use for that. In addition to the three companies created with new recruits, another company was looped into the twenty third Headquarters Special Troops, and that was the sixth h third Engineer Camouflage Battalion. The men of the six h third had been working on camouflage for a couple of years already, so they brought their expertise to a group already in a fairly polished state. They had already managed an impressive accomplishment that by disguising the plant in Baltimore where B twenty six bombers were assembled, and the event that access forces wished to look for the plant, what they would see when they flew over was just a regular rural area. And before we get to how the twenty third trained and then made their way to Europe. Uh, do you want to pause for a moment for a word from a sponsor, Yes, I do so. During the spring of n the men of the twenty third were training, but they were training in skills that seemed in many ways more appropriate for a touring theater company than for a group of soldiers. So they built prototype prop vehicles, first out of wood and burlap and then out of rubber. The rubber versions looked incredibly realistic, but they weighed less than a hundred pounds apiece. The men would also train with dummy artillery and other prop equipment. They practiced sending each other fake radio messages, and they learned just enough about other different outfits that they could impersonate them, either as individuals or as a group, and men who couldn't so had to learn because they were going to have to quickly alter their uniforms and switch out patches as they sort of performed these presto changeo masquerades. In May, the majority of the twenty three boarded the U S. S. Henry Gibbons in New York, bound for Great Britain. They spent about a month near Stratford on Avon while they trained, although by all accounts there was also quite a bit of partying. Yeah, this sounds like really a lovely time that they had while they were in Britain. Uh. But the first wave of men from the twenty third shipped out to France just following DD and this was a small platoon. It was just fifteen men, and they landed at oma Omaha Beach on June fourteenth, so just out a week a little more uh, and nurses actually flew with them so that they could tend to the wounded that we're waiting there on the beach. Going from a month in the idyllic British countryside having what was kind of a party esque atmosphere into the reality of war in France was of course something of a shock. Knowing that they were there to draw fire. Some of the men thought that the twenty three was really a suicide outfit. Yeah. They they had been trained in different sort of arts and uh deceptions, but not so much in actual combat, so they really did. Some of them really did think at that point like, oh, they're just sending us there to die and take the heat off the real soldiers. But over the course of the next two months, the rest of the twenty three joined their fellows in France, leading up to their first big mission, which was Operation Elephant. About half of the men in the unit were involved in Operation Elephant, during which they pretended to be the Army's Second Armored Division. The real Second Armored Division was on the move while the twenty three kept up the appearances. Yeah, and that's sort of a theme of their their missions throughout and while this sham did indeed work, nearby German troops held their position rather than following the real second Armored Division because they did believe they were still there. This was also a pretty big learning experience. During this particular operation, it was revealed that if the inflatable tanks that they three used lost even a small amount of air, the cannons would droop and give it the whole thing away. They really there are some paintings that you can find online and in documentaries where you see sort of this droopy cannon barrel, and it really does look comical. It's an inherently comical image. Yeah, their tanks are not made to fire into the ground, so it looked very, very silly. And while they were not discovering their theatrics during Operation Elephant, it also became apparent that setting up an entire false division was going to be better executed in the dark of night. They had not waited until really late. They used some daylight hours to do it, and they also realized that they really needed to like tighten up their disguise and camouflage game if they wanted to ensure future success. The entire twenty three was then tasked with Operation Breast, which was named for the nearby French ports city that was in August. The Sonic unit was the last to arrive in France, so Breast was the first time that the twenty three had their full arsenal of tricks at their disposal, and the goal was to create the impression of an existing tank unit having far greater power than it actually did, with the hopes that they would trick the Germans into a surrender. And so the twenty three used a mix of actual tanks and dummies, flash canisters to sort of fake tanks firing, and sound mixing to create this really convincing illusion of a huge tank division. And the main bravado move of this mission came in the delivery of some of these soundscapes that they had mixed. So late at night, members of the twenty three would actually sort of creep forward with their sound equipment. They would get within about five yards in the enemy line, and they would play sounds of what sounded like officers issuing orders and people yelling counter orders, and even like fake situations of arguments where there would be accidents that were staged and that there would be cursing at these imaginary errors. They were all doing this really pretty close to enemy lines. Uh. It was pretty to think about what that must have been like, sitting there in the dark with your speaker playing these things, knowing how very close you were. It's so bring to think about. It was effective, so effective that it confused friend the units positioned about a mile away. And while it didn't get the Germans under General Herman B. Von Ramkat to turn tail, it did keep them from going anywhere. This was a good thing, since that was an estimated thirty eight thousand troops, and that was almost double what the Allies had initially estimated. If they had not been tricked into holding their line against this perceived threat from this puffed up, half fake tank battalion, they might have gone on the offensive and then really damaged the Allied forces. And throughout the rest of four and on into the twenty three, continued to run these military masquerade games, and with every mission they would kind of regroup and refine their playbook and see what had worked and what hand and they just got better and better and better. They learned how to stage and set dress their fake camps. More and more authentically. I'm gonna say, I feel like I said that weird. They learned how to stage and set dress their fake camps more and more authentically, and they started hand painting patches to mimic those of existing units, so they if they can get a hold of real ones, then they would stage fake headquarters to give out fake promotions so low ranking men would look like generals and other officers, creating the full illusion of real operations. And then late at night they would you know, go where they were called and inflate their fox vehicles and artillery undercover of darkness, so that when dawn came, it would appear as though a huge surge of troops had arrived in the area. And in addition to providing this false image of battle ready army troops where there was really only a line of fake vehicles and prerecorded noise, the twenty Third's ability to seem to appear out of thin air and vanish just as quickly actually had a really unnerving effect on the enemy, so the German Army started calling them the phantom Army. Other tricks included the ongoing burning of fires at camps that were deserted in different ways to create fake tank tracks. In addition to the inflatable tanks and trucks, they also used dummy planes and buildings. They could mix fake radio transmissions within with the real ones to confuse the enemy, and they mounted fake parachute drops and put up signs directing Allied vehicles that were never actually coming. But this elaborate spectacle also included a whole lot of acting on the part of the troops. So knowing that any US troops were always being watched by German soldiers or spies, or sometimes there were French people working for the Germans as informants, the boys of the twenty three would really employ all manner of ruses. They would change out their unit insignias as we mentioned, on uniforms as well as on vehicles. They would do quick stencil work to change everything up, and they would make sure that they were seen about town wherever they were kind of drinking and hanging out. And if they were asked what unit they were a part of, they would just make up names or reference the unit that they were covering for. And some of them even would uh sort of mount these these fake little tableau where they would feign drunkenness and blab false information in public places. So this sort of became this ongoing game of misinformation and subterfuge where they were just sort of always acting. This wasn't completely flawless, though sometimes there were mistakes and problems. On occasion, a dummy tank would be inflated facing the wrong direction. Because all of these set up parts are being done at night, it was easy enough to lift one and turn it around, but if it was already daylight when they realized the problem, they were going to have to do it with really careful timings so as not to be noticed. At one point, several vehicles that had been inflated in the night were warmed so much the sun came up that the air expanding inside them caused them to pop loudly as they sprang leaks. And while while this sort of sounds hilarious, it was happening during a war. So all of these accidents put the men involved at serious risk. And all in all, there were twenty one missions mounted by the twenty three and before we get to sort of the biggest one that they undertook, uh, if you want to do a quick word from a sponsor, let's do so. The biggest in what is arguably the most successful of the twenty third missions was Operation Vierson, and this took place near the war's end, relatively speaking, it wasn't right at the end, but it was in March, and this basically launched a big visible decoy mission to once again cover the movements of other troops. While parts of the Ninth Army were moving north to quietly cross the Rhine, the twenty three was making a big show of pretending to be those troops farther south. They masqueraded as the ninth and ran practice and training maneuvers for a crossing at Beierson and just publicly enough to draw lots of attention. And this was really a massive effort. So they set up fake medical and engineering facilities. They had trucks and sonic crews creating the illusion of convoys moving supplies. At one point they were just having trucks loaded up where they would be driving them back and forth, and they would put two guys at the very back, so it looked like it was full of troops, but in fact there are only two guys at the back. They arranged everything perfectly so that an aerial reconnaissance taking pictures would have no idea that the entire thing was a hoax. They one of the reasons that they used artists was so they could conceptually visualize, like how things would look from multiple angles, even when they didn't have those angles available to them, So they really made this whole thing beautifully realistic, even though it wasn't back to all a hoax. When the real Ninth crossed the rhyme, the Germans were taken totally by surprise. Those German troops that could resist them were disorganized and unprepared, so US casualties were very few. The twenty three received a commendation from the Ninth Army Commander William Simpson for their effort. A later estimate by Simpson placed the number of troops that were saved by this deception at ten thousands UH and it ended up being the twenty last mission of the war, and in September the three was completely shut down. So one of the inherent dangers of being in a ghost army designed to draw attention is that it also draws fire. So it's easy to think of all this pageantry and strategic slide of hand is really fun and fascinating, but it really put the men involved at great risk. At one point they were actually set up in Bastone, and they actually missed the start of the Battle of the Bulge by about four hours. They had been pulled out around midnight of December six, and this is at point and the fighting started around four am. So had those men been trapped there with their phony equipment, they would have been in incredibly dire straits and unable to defend themselves. During the Battle of the Bulge. The three returned to Luxembourg's any where they had already spent a lot of time, and fired from the rooftops at the incoming Liftwaffe aircraft. This is the only time they ever really for real fired at the enemy. Yeah, it was there one there, one time that they actually got to perform actual combat activities. Uh. And the twenty three after that was very quickly moved to Verdunn. So, in part, the Allies wanted to maintain the secrecy of the Ghost Army, and in another part they realized that this blow up dummy artillery was not going to be any good in a fight, so they just wanted to clear them out. And the men ended up spending Christmas in Verdune. While the group had been extraordinarily lucky throughout their time, their luck finally ran out in the spring of n On March twelfth, while impersonating the eightieth Infantry, the twenty three drew German artillery fire. Two of their men were killed in fifteen others were wounded. This was really their worst day. In spite of having been an incredibly dangerous areas any times, they kept up false appearances all through the war. And one of the problems that comes up when UH discussing the twenty three and their effectiveness and sort of assessing what they were able to achieve lies in the fact that so much of their work was secret, and often it fooled Allied forces as well as the enemy. Like the Allied forces didn't even really know what was going on with them a lot of the time, they thought they were just another unit. After the war, most of the men stayed quiet about the amazing works of deceptive aren't that they had been part of. The work was classified, so in the event that the US found itself at war again, having a ghost army would be a really valuable asset. So the military didn't want to tip its hand and reveal this resource. But finally in NINETI so almost nineteen years ago from when we're recording this, the work of the twenty three was declassified and the men who had only been able to give KG answers to their families about what they had done in the war were now free speak of their incredible efforts. One of the truly significant aspects of the twenty three and the work that they did is the fact that an entire division of creative people was successfully managed within the structure of the military. Yeah. This is one of those things that people often go like, look, these were all artists and they totally were able to work together in this this effort. And I don't know if that speaks to like their level of commitment or independence. You know, It's one of those things that often likes to get bandied about, particularly when you're talking about modern business, like, oh, it's hard to manage creative people. It's like these guys managed and they were doing some scary stuff. Yeah. I think it also speaks to the like perpetual mythologizing of creative work as some kind of extraordinary thing, when in a lot of cases it is work. Yeah, which isn't to say that like creative inspiration isn't really fabulous and cool and unique in many ways. But I just I find that to be a really interesting one that we do mythologize working with creative types. And I say of this as a creative person married to an artist as well, Like, but they can it can be anybody can be managed, any sort of effort that can be put together. Uh, it's it's all about, you know, using people's assets. And another really incredible legacy is the artwork that a lot of these men were doing while they were deployed. I'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. Yeah, it's really no surprise that a lot of the men who were involved in effectively doing art for the army went on to careers in the arts. So for example, Bill Blast of course went on spuilt a fashion empire. He had actually been sketching women's clothing during the war. Yeah, there was one interview that I saw with one of the other members of the twenty three and he was saying, and I don't know if he was serious or not, that Bill Blast would read Vote magazine in foxholes, But I have no idea, but I loved it. Art Kane, of course, became a very well known photographer. His photo entitled A Great Day in a Loan, which was taken in nine, featured fifty seven prominent jazz musicians and it's still considered one of the most important images of jazz history. And he also took a lot of incredible celebrity portraits, and he was the photographer for the one and only DeLorean magazine ad to ever run. Ellsworth Kelly made a career as a painter and a sculptor and became known for use of really bright color and very hard edges. Arthur Singer became an illustrator and he really became known for his incredibly detailed bird illustrations. So if you have ever looked at an illustrated birding field guide, odds are really good that you've seen as work because it's been in everything. Jack Macy went on to design backdrops for the State Department. Eventually he designed the kitchen set that was used for the Nixon Cruis Chef debate of nineteen fifty nine. And there's a really wonderful documentary called The Ghost Army that I highly recommend for people that UH want to hear accounts from some of the surviving members of the twenty third And one of the reasons I really loved it too, is that, uh, it being a visual medium, they're able to show a lot of the artwork that these men were doing while they were in France and in performing all these amazing maneuvers. And one of the men said something like, you know, we were in all these crazy circumstances, but we could always find time or a place to duck away and do a quick watercolor. But I think it's just super terming, like they just were all artists at heart, even though they were part of this amazing war effort. And that documentary is as of this recording in early fifteen, is available on Netflix, and it's a little longer than an hour, uh, and you get to see a lot of this really amazing art and just interviews with these guys, and it deals a little bit more with with them as individuals rather than like what we've covered is so much of sort of the bigger, kind of broad strokes of the whole unit, but this really focuses on some of the different men and has interviews with them that are really quite charming and touching and really really entertaining. Uh. So I highly recommend that. And that is the Ghost Army, which is just such a The whole thing is so cool, and I'm surprised even though it does pop up sometimes in like uh, you know list goals online, Uh, people don't really know about it. Like it's another one of those things where I thought, oh, everyone's heard about this, We've had a few requests for it. But then when I mentioned it to people, they look at me like, I don't know what you're talking about. And then when I say a few things, they get sort of this, like agog really what. So clearly this is there's there's some gap in in their uh, in the knowledge about these guys, and it's they did such amazing things that I think everybody should know what their work was. Like. Do you also have some listener mail for us? I do. I have two pieces, and they're both super fun and one is really more of a thank you, but so the first one is from a very young listener and it is so charming that, uh it made me crazy. Yes, so this is from our listener Penny, and she says, dear stuff you missed in history class people. I extremely love the podcast on the Curse and Mary Celeste. I think that the crew breathing the whiskey fumes was bad for them. What do you think. I run to one or two of your podcasts every day, but dad makes me run. I would rather just listen to your podcast alone. We went on vacation to Colorado and listen to your podcast in the car, but we did not have to run. I have a podcast request about the Emperor Penguins of and Antarctica, as I am a great fan of penguins and my room is stuffed with them, and this is from our listener, Penny. She says, ps, I love your podcast pps. I'm seven years old and homeschooled, and your podcasts are a lot of help to me. And then she drew this amazing picture of penguins and they're holding little flags, and one of them says Tracy and Holly, and I have a kinship with her because I too love penguins. So I'm gonna figure out a way to do something on emperor penguins in Antarctica. Thank you, Penny. That was awesome. I've actually been hanging onto this one for a few months. I just love it so much. I kind of keep it out at my desk because I find it terribly charming. I remember when that one came in and we were both delighted. Oh that's so cute. And the other one is from and I hope I am pronouncing the name right our listener, Nicole, and she sent us this amazing parcel and she wrote his postcard, this is ladies, I thought you might enjoy these planners. I make a small run of them each year and chose these covers just for you. And this is from Nicole at Year of the Calendar dot com. And she sent it on the postcard of one of her sheep named Uncle honey Bunch, who is a Shetland weather and he's adorable. And I love that his name is Uncle honey Bunch. And also, oh, my goodness, you don't even know how you hit the sweet spot with planners for me. I was so excited when they came that I started. I am in tracy about all the lists I was making in them, Uh, because they're awesome. They're really cool planners. They're a little bit sassy. There's a little bit of adult language in them, which I love. It just has a fun way to lay out the year. It's really organized in a really smart and fun way that. Uh, I just I adored it. There's so many little extras and little how to draw things within it, and oh it's magical. I have such a calendar addiction and such planner addiction specifically that that was a good one, cy Nicole. I cannot thank you enough for that. That was an absolute delight to open. And she's she's really not exaggerating, Nicole, Like I was not physically present in the office when these arrived. She texted me a video of paging through it. So that is how excited Hollywood is about the planners. I love them, like all caps love. I love them. They're awesome. I also love them. But I am the person that has good intentions about planners every year, and I will keep up with the planner for about three days. Oh yeah, No, mine is already gonna starting to look dog eared because I drag it everywhere with me. That's awesome. And it's good because it's a good size where I can tuck in little notes and stuff, and like if I do a little sketch of like a costumer or something that I want a stitch, I can shove it in there. There's some good spaces. It's really cool planner. I love it. I love it again, all caps love UH. You would like to write us an email, you can do that at History Podcast at house stubworks dot com. You can also connect with us on Twitter at mist in History or at Facebook dot com slash missed in History. Can also find us on Tumblr at mist in History dot tumbler dot com, at pinterest dot com slash mist in history. And I'm hoping we can find some good examples of some of the artwork that we talked about today, and I know there are photos of some of these fake tanks and artillery pieces and stuff that hopefully we'll find and put on Pinterest. And you can also visit the mist in History spreadshirt store, which is missed in History dot spreadshirt dot com, so you can buy missed in History goodies to where or towed around. You can put your planner in one of those, or you can get a phonecase you're covered. You would like to learn a little bit more about what we talked about today, you can go to our parents sitehouse stuff works type of the word camouflage and you'll get how military camouflage works. Well, it's some other camouflage articles about how it works in nature. You can also visit us at Miston history dot com for show notes and archive of all of our episodes all kinds of little goodies uh, and if you would like to do that, we highly encourage you to visit at again, house to works dot com or Mr Hisstory dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Because it has stuff works dot com. M

Welcome to Steph you missed in History class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Colly Frying and I'm trace Abe Wilson. And today we're gonna talk a little bit about military history, and it's World War two specifically. And even though this particular piece, uh that we're discussing is in fact military history, if there were a history of ingenuity or sleight of hand, I think this would probably be one of the big events on that timeline. Uh So we're gonna be talking about the US Ghost Army, which was a top secret group that was assembled to create confusion and mislead access forces. And it's a really amazing story that stars ingenuity and bravado as sort of the the main elements of the piece. And the idea of military deception was of course not new to World War Two. Everyone has heard of like the Trojan Horse for example, and deceit is a tactic as part of Sun SU's art of war. Almost any culture in history that found itself at war with another culture use some type of trickery to try to outsmart the enemy, because that's sort of a vital part of getting the upper hand in a conflict is misleading so that you can kind of swoop in with your forces. But this group really went to some pretty extraordinary measures to achieve their goals, and they did some really fascinating and cool things, uh and so, and it was classified for a long time and then kind of came to light. So we are going to talk about it today because it is really cool. So to start out at the beginning like we normally do that. Twenty third Headquarters Special Troops was the one and only deception outfit that the US Army had ever authorized. The goal was to corral a group of creative thinkers to approach warfare in new ways. And this sort of trickery focused effort was inspired by the success of Operation Bertram, in which Allied forces used dummy tanks and camouflage to trick Romwel's for which is into an incorrect assessment of the Allies position and strength during the Second Battle of l A l Amain in North Africa. And also bolstering this case for a deception unit was the U S success in misleading German intelligence leading up to the Battle of Tunisia. They realized deception was working and they thought, let's just have a unit that's focused on this. The idea of forming a unit dedicated just to this is attributed to Captain Ralph Ingersoll. Before the war, he had been a celebrity journalist and he had been working with Great Britain on deception techniques to mislead the Germans in the time leading up the D Day. On Christmas Eve of ninety three, a memo to the Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations War Department at Washington, d C officially requested the creation of a unit with a mission quote to simulate a core of two infantry divisions and one armored divisions and core installations railhead dumps, etcetera. So, beginning in nineteen forty or more than one thousand young men were recruited and they were often recent art school graduates or ad agency creatives and they were handpicked for this assignment. Recruits were sent to Camp Forest and Tellahoma, Tennessee to train. Within the three were several companies. The two four Signal Company worked on radio counter intelligence. Second Signal Service Company, which was actually trained at Pine Camp, New York, worked to develop sonic deception techniques. The four of six Engineer Combat Company worked on the big construction projects and was in charge of security. And often you'll hear this effort mentioned, like when people say, oh, the Ghost Army they used inflatable tanks to deceive the Germans, and that is partially true, but as we mentioned in breaking down these different companies within the twenty three, it was a whole lot more than that. Yeah, I feel like the tanks get the big like kind of bud speedy headlines all time, which is understand Well, there's really cool video that exists, like where you can see them rolling over these inflated tanks and there. I don't know that I have ever heard any of the audio recordings, and I don't think I've ever seen anyone reference them online. So you can see where the tanks get all the attention. But I was not all there was. For instance, audio work, sometimes referred to as sonic deception, was a huge piece of the Ghost Army puzzle. Yeah, they would mount these huge speakers to project elaborate soundscapes and radio plays that were created by the Second Signal Service Company. And these men had recorded tanks and trucks and artillery units and they sound engineered them into a number of different soundtracks and these recordings would include sounds of tanks on the move or military construction, and they would even have things like vehicle sputtering. And they basically amassed this really amazing sound catalog basically every military vehicle that they had access to, doing everything those miss jeans could do, so they could kind of piece them together and create unique and specific radio dramas. Basically, so if you wanted to broadcast a battalion of vehicles starting up in the distance and moving closer, they could create that with their vast library of recordings, complete with idiosyncratic engine noises for specific vehicles and kind of mimic that distance too slowly moving forward nearness that you would hear if you were in one position with an actual troop going by. I like to imagine this as an extremely high tech version of following King Arthur around banging coconuts together. But it was very high tech even for the time. I mean, they were really kind of on the advanced edge of technology and how they were using sound. Yeah. Well, and it's like these that kind of sound work happens in movies and TV and things like that all the time. Now, Like that's yeah, that's just sort of how it works, so this is a different use for that. In addition to the three companies created with new recruits, another company was looped into the twenty third Headquarters Special Troops, and that was the sixth h third Engineer Camouflage Battalion. The men of the six h third had been working on camouflage for a couple of years already, so they brought their expertise to a group already in a fairly polished state. They had already managed an impressive accomplishment that by disguising the plant in Baltimore where B twenty six bombers were assembled, and the event that access forces wished to look for the plant, what they would see when they flew over was just a regular rural area. And before we get to how the twenty third trained and then made their way to Europe. Uh, do you want to pause for a moment for a word from a sponsor, Yes, I do so. During the spring of n the men of the twenty third were training, but they were training in skills that seemed in many ways more appropriate for a touring theater company than for a group of soldiers. So they built prototype prop vehicles, first out of wood and burlap and then out of rubber. The rubber versions looked incredibly realistic, but they weighed less than a hundred pounds apiece. The men would also train with dummy artillery and other prop equipment. They practiced sending each other fake radio messages, and they learned just enough about other different outfits that they could impersonate them, either as individuals or as a group, and men who couldn't so had to learn because they were going to have to quickly alter their uniforms and switch out patches as they sort of performed these presto changeo masquerades. In May, the majority of the twenty three boarded the U S. S. Henry Gibbons in New York, bound for Great Britain. They spent about a month near Stratford on Avon while they trained, although by all accounts there was also quite a bit of partying. Yeah, this sounds like really a lovely time that they had while they were in Britain. Uh. But the first wave of men from the twenty third shipped out to France just following DD and this was a small platoon. It was just fifteen men, and they landed at oma Omaha Beach on June fourteenth, so just out a week a little more uh, and nurses actually flew with them so that they could tend to the wounded that we're waiting there on the beach. Going from a month in the idyllic British countryside having what was kind of a party esque atmosphere into the reality of war in France was of course something of a shock. Knowing that they were there to draw fire. Some of the men thought that the twenty three was really a suicide outfit. Yeah. They they had been trained in different sort of arts and uh deceptions, but not so much in actual combat, so they really did. Some of them really did think at that point like, oh, they're just sending us there to die and take the heat off the real soldiers. But over the course of the next two months, the rest of the twenty three joined their fellows in France, leading up to their first big mission, which was Operation Elephant. About half of the men in the unit were involved in Operation Elephant, during which they pretended to be the Army's Second Armored Division. The real Second Armored Division was on the move while the twenty three kept up the appearances. Yeah, and that's sort of a theme of their their missions throughout and while this sham did indeed work, nearby German troops held their position rather than following the real second Armored Division because they did believe they were still there. This was also a pretty big learning experience. During this particular operation, it was revealed that if the inflatable tanks that they three used lost even a small amount of air, the cannons would droop and give it the whole thing away. They really there are some paintings that you can find online and in documentaries where you see sort of this droopy cannon barrel, and it really does look comical. It's an inherently comical image. Yeah, their tanks are not made to fire into the ground, so it looked very, very silly. And while they were not discovering their theatrics during Operation Elephant, it also became apparent that setting up an entire false division was going to be better executed in the dark of night. They had not waited until really late. They used some daylight hours to do it, and they also realized that they really needed to like tighten up their disguise and camouflage game if they wanted to ensure future success. The entire twenty three was then tasked with Operation Breast, which was named for the nearby French ports city that was in August. The Sonic unit was the last to arrive in France, so Breast was the first time that the twenty three had their full arsenal of tricks at their disposal, and the goal was to create the impression of an existing tank unit having far greater power than it actually did, with the hopes that they would trick the Germans into a surrender. And so the twenty three used a mix of actual tanks and dummies, flash canisters to sort of fake tanks firing, and sound mixing to create this really convincing illusion of a huge tank division. And the main bravado move of this mission came in the delivery of some of these soundscapes that they had mixed. So late at night, members of the twenty three would actually sort of creep forward with their sound equipment. They would get within about five yards in the enemy line, and they would play sounds of what sounded like officers issuing orders and people yelling counter orders, and even like fake situations of arguments where there would be accidents that were staged and that there would be cursing at these imaginary errors. They were all doing this really pretty close to enemy lines. Uh. It was pretty to think about what that must have been like, sitting there in the dark with your speaker playing these things, knowing how very close you were. It's so bring to think about. It was effective, so effective that it confused friend the units positioned about a mile away. And while it didn't get the Germans under General Herman B. Von Ramkat to turn tail, it did keep them from going anywhere. This was a good thing, since that was an estimated thirty eight thousand troops, and that was almost double what the Allies had initially estimated. If they had not been tricked into holding their line against this perceived threat from this puffed up, half fake tank battalion, they might have gone on the offensive and then really damaged the Allied forces. And throughout the rest of four and on into the twenty three, continued to run these military masquerade games, and with every mission they would kind of regroup and refine their playbook and see what had worked and what hand and they just got better and better and better. They learned how to stage and set dress their fake camps. More and more authentically. I'm gonna say, I feel like I said that weird. They learned how to stage and set dress their fake camps more and more authentically, and they started hand painting patches to mimic those of existing units, so they if they can get a hold of real ones, then they would stage fake headquarters to give out fake promotions so low ranking men would look like generals and other officers, creating the full illusion of real operations. And then late at night they would you know, go where they were called and inflate their fox vehicles and artillery undercover of darkness, so that when dawn came, it would appear as though a huge surge of troops had arrived in the area. And in addition to providing this false image of battle ready army troops where there was really only a line of fake vehicles and prerecorded noise, the twenty Third's ability to seem to appear out of thin air and vanish just as quickly actually had a really unnerving effect on the enemy, so the German Army started calling them the phantom Army. Other tricks included the ongoing burning of fires at camps that were deserted in different ways to create fake tank tracks. In addition to the inflatable tanks and trucks, they also used dummy planes and buildings. They could mix fake radio transmissions within with the real ones to confuse the enemy, and they mounted fake parachute drops and put up signs directing Allied vehicles that were never actually coming. But this elaborate spectacle also included a whole lot of acting on the part of the troops. So knowing that any US troops were always being watched by German soldiers or spies, or sometimes there were French people working for the Germans as informants, the boys of the twenty three would really employ all manner of ruses. They would change out their unit insignias as we mentioned, on uniforms as well as on vehicles. They would do quick stencil work to change everything up, and they would make sure that they were seen about town wherever they were kind of drinking and hanging out. And if they were asked what unit they were a part of, they would just make up names or reference the unit that they were covering for. And some of them even would uh sort of mount these these fake little tableau where they would feign drunkenness and blab false information in public places. So this sort of became this ongoing game of misinformation and subterfuge where they were just sort of always acting. This wasn't completely flawless, though sometimes there were mistakes and problems. On occasion, a dummy tank would be inflated facing the wrong direction. Because all of these set up parts are being done at night, it was easy enough to lift one and turn it around, but if it was already daylight when they realized the problem, they were going to have to do it with really careful timings so as not to be noticed. At one point, several vehicles that had been inflated in the night were warmed so much the sun came up that the air expanding inside them caused them to pop loudly as they sprang leaks. And while while this sort of sounds hilarious, it was happening during a war. So all of these accidents put the men involved at serious risk. And all in all, there were twenty one missions mounted by the twenty three and before we get to sort of the biggest one that they undertook, uh, if you want to do a quick word from a sponsor, let's do so. The biggest in what is arguably the most successful of the twenty third missions was Operation Vierson, and this took place near the war's end, relatively speaking, it wasn't right at the end, but it was in March, and this basically launched a big visible decoy mission to once again cover the movements of other troops. While parts of the Ninth Army were moving north to quietly cross the Rhine, the twenty three was making a big show of pretending to be those troops farther south. They masqueraded as the ninth and ran practice and training maneuvers for a crossing at Beierson and just publicly enough to draw lots of attention. And this was really a massive effort. So they set up fake medical and engineering facilities. They had trucks and sonic crews creating the illusion of convoys moving supplies. At one point they were just having trucks loaded up where they would be driving them back and forth, and they would put two guys at the very back, so it looked like it was full of troops, but in fact there are only two guys at the back. They arranged everything perfectly so that an aerial reconnaissance taking pictures would have no idea that the entire thing was a hoax. They one of the reasons that they used artists was so they could conceptually visualize, like how things would look from multiple angles, even when they didn't have those angles available to them, So they really made this whole thing beautifully realistic, even though it wasn't back to all a hoax. When the real Ninth crossed the rhyme, the Germans were taken totally by surprise. Those German troops that could resist them were disorganized and unprepared, so US casualties were very few. The twenty three received a commendation from the Ninth Army Commander William Simpson for their effort. A later estimate by Simpson placed the number of troops that were saved by this deception at ten thousands UH and it ended up being the twenty last mission of the war, and in September the three was completely shut down. So one of the inherent dangers of being in a ghost army designed to draw attention is that it also draws fire. So it's easy to think of all this pageantry and strategic slide of hand is really fun and fascinating, but it really put the men involved at great risk. At one point they were actually set up in Bastone, and they actually missed the start of the Battle of the Bulge by about four hours. They had been pulled out around midnight of December six, and this is at point and the fighting started around four am. So had those men been trapped there with their phony equipment, they would have been in incredibly dire straits and unable to defend themselves. During the Battle of the Bulge. The three returned to Luxembourg's any where they had already spent a lot of time, and fired from the rooftops at the incoming Liftwaffe aircraft. This is the only time they ever really for real fired at the enemy. Yeah, it was there one there, one time that they actually got to perform actual combat activities. Uh. And the twenty three after that was very quickly moved to Verdunn. So, in part, the Allies wanted to maintain the secrecy of the Ghost Army, and in another part they realized that this blow up dummy artillery was not going to be any good in a fight, so they just wanted to clear them out. And the men ended up spending Christmas in Verdune. While the group had been extraordinarily lucky throughout their time, their luck finally ran out in the spring of n On March twelfth, while impersonating the eightieth Infantry, the twenty three drew German artillery fire. Two of their men were killed in fifteen others were wounded. This was really their worst day. In spite of having been an incredibly dangerous areas any times, they kept up false appearances all through the war. And one of the problems that comes up when UH discussing the twenty three and their effectiveness and sort of assessing what they were able to achieve lies in the fact that so much of their work was secret, and often it fooled Allied forces as well as the enemy. Like the Allied forces didn't even really know what was going on with them a lot of the time, they thought they were just another unit. After the war, most of the men stayed quiet about the amazing works of deceptive aren't that they had been part of. The work was classified, so in the event that the US found itself at war again, having a ghost army would be a really valuable asset. So the military didn't want to tip its hand and reveal this resource. But finally in NINETI so almost nineteen years ago from when we're recording this, the work of the twenty three was declassified and the men who had only been able to give KG answers to their families about what they had done in the war were now free speak of their incredible efforts. One of the truly significant aspects of the twenty three and the work that they did is the fact that an entire division of creative people was successfully managed within the structure of the military. Yeah. This is one of those things that people often go like, look, these were all artists and they totally were able to work together in this this effort. And I don't know if that speaks to like their level of commitment or independence. You know, It's one of those things that often likes to get bandied about, particularly when you're talking about modern business, like, oh, it's hard to manage creative people. It's like these guys managed and they were doing some scary stuff. Yeah. I think it also speaks to the like perpetual mythologizing of creative work as some kind of extraordinary thing, when in a lot of cases it is work. Yeah, which isn't to say that like creative inspiration isn't really fabulous and cool and unique in many ways. But I just I find that to be a really interesting one that we do mythologize working with creative types. And I say of this as a creative person married to an artist as well, Like, but they can it can be anybody can be managed, any sort of effort that can be put together. Uh, it's it's all about, you know, using people's assets. And another really incredible legacy is the artwork that a lot of these men were doing while they were deployed. I'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. Yeah, it's really no surprise that a lot of the men who were involved in effectively doing art for the army went on to careers in the arts. So for example, Bill Blast of course went on spuilt a fashion empire. He had actually been sketching women's clothing during the war. Yeah, there was one interview that I saw with one of the other members of the twenty three and he was saying, and I don't know if he was serious or not, that Bill Blast would read Vote magazine in foxholes, But I have no idea, but I loved it. Art Kane, of course, became a very well known photographer. His photo entitled A Great Day in a Loan, which was taken in nine, featured fifty seven prominent jazz musicians and it's still considered one of the most important images of jazz history. And he also took a lot of incredible celebrity portraits, and he was the photographer for the one and only DeLorean magazine ad to ever run. Ellsworth Kelly made a career as a painter and a sculptor and became known for use of really bright color and very hard edges. Arthur Singer became an illustrator and he really became known for his incredibly detailed bird illustrations. So if you have ever looked at an illustrated birding field guide, odds are really good that you've seen as work because it's been in everything. Jack Macy went on to design backdrops for the State Department. Eventually he designed the kitchen set that was used for the Nixon Cruis Chef debate of nineteen fifty nine. And there's a really wonderful documentary called The Ghost Army that I highly recommend for people that UH want to hear accounts from some of the surviving members of the twenty third And one of the reasons I really loved it too, is that, uh, it being a visual medium, they're able to show a lot of the artwork that these men were doing while they were in France and in performing all these amazing maneuvers. And one of the men said something like, you know, we were in all these crazy circumstances, but we could always find time or a place to duck away and do a quick watercolor. But I think it's just super terming, like they just were all artists at heart, even though they were part of this amazing war effort. And that documentary is as of this recording in early fifteen, is available on Netflix, and it's a little longer than an hour, uh, and you get to see a lot of this really amazing art and just interviews with these guys, and it deals a little bit more with with them as individuals rather than like what we've covered is so much of sort of the bigger, kind of broad strokes of the whole unit, but this really focuses on some of the different men and has interviews with them that are really quite charming and touching and really really entertaining. Uh. So I highly recommend that. And that is the Ghost Army, which is just such a The whole thing is so cool, and I'm surprised even though it does pop up sometimes in like uh, you know list goals online, Uh, people don't really know about it. Like it's another one of those things where I thought, oh, everyone's heard about this, We've had a few requests for it. But then when I mentioned it to people, they look at me like, I don't know what you're talking about. And then when I say a few things, they get sort of this, like agog really what. So clearly this is there's there's some gap in in their uh, in the knowledge about these guys, and it's they did such amazing things that I think everybody should know what their work was. Like. Do you also have some listener mail for us? I do. I have two pieces, and they're both super fun and one is really more of a thank you, but so the first one is from a very young listener and it is so charming that, uh it made me crazy. Yes, so this is from our listener Penny, and she says, dear stuff you missed in history class people. I extremely love the podcast on the Curse and Mary Celeste. I think that the crew breathing the whiskey fumes was bad for them. What do you think. I run to one or two of your podcasts every day, but dad makes me run. I would rather just listen to your podcast alone. We went on vacation to Colorado and listen to your podcast in the car, but we did not have to run. I have a podcast request about the Emperor Penguins of and Antarctica, as I am a great fan of penguins and my room is stuffed with them, and this is from our listener, Penny. She says, ps, I love your podcast pps. I'm seven years old and homeschooled, and your podcasts are a lot of help to me. And then she drew this amazing picture of penguins and they're holding little flags, and one of them says Tracy and Holly, and I have a kinship with her because I too love penguins. So I'm gonna figure out a way to do something on emperor penguins in Antarctica. Thank you, Penny. That was awesome. I've actually been hanging onto this one for a few months. I just love it so much. I kind of keep it out at my desk because I find it terribly charming. I remember when that one came in and we were both delighted. Oh that's so cute. And the other one is from and I hope I am pronouncing the name right our listener, Nicole, and she sent us this amazing parcel and she wrote his postcard, this is ladies, I thought you might enjoy these planners. I make a small run of them each year and chose these covers just for you. And this is from Nicole at Year of the Calendar dot com. And she sent it on the postcard of one of her sheep named Uncle honey Bunch, who is a Shetland weather and he's adorable. And I love that his name is Uncle honey Bunch. And also, oh, my goodness, you don't even know how you hit the sweet spot with planners for me. I was so excited when they came that I started. I am in tracy about all the lists I was making in them, Uh, because they're awesome. They're really cool planners. They're a little bit sassy. There's a little bit of adult language in them, which I love. It just has a fun way to lay out the year. It's really organized in a really smart and fun way that. Uh, I just I adored it. There's so many little extras and little how to draw things within it, and oh it's magical. I have such a calendar addiction and such planner addiction specifically that that was a good one, cy Nicole. I cannot thank you enough for that. That was an absolute delight to open. And she's she's really not exaggerating, Nicole, Like I was not physically present in the office when these arrived. She texted me a video of paging through it. So that is how excited Hollywood is about the planners. I love them, like all caps love. I love them. They're awesome. I also love them. But I am the person that has good intentions about planners every year, and I will keep up with the planner for about three days. Oh yeah, No, mine is already gonna starting to look dog eared because I drag it everywhere with me. That's awesome. And it's good because it's a good size where I can tuck in little notes and stuff, and like if I do a little sketch of like a costumer or something that I want a stitch, I can shove it in there. There's some good spaces. It's really cool planner. I love it. I love it again, all caps love UH. You would like to write us an email, you can do that at History Podcast at house stubworks dot com. You can also connect with us on Twitter at mist in History or at Facebook dot com slash missed in History. Can also find us on Tumblr at mist in History dot tumbler dot com, at pinterest dot com slash mist in history. And I'm hoping we can find some good examples of some of the artwork that we talked about today, and I know there are photos of some of these fake tanks and artillery pieces and stuff that hopefully we'll find and put on Pinterest. And you can also visit the mist in History spreadshirt store, which is missed in History dot spreadshirt dot com, so you can buy missed in History goodies to where or towed around. You can put your planner in one of those, or you can get a phonecase you're covered. You would like to learn a little bit more about what we talked about today, you can go to our parents sitehouse stuff works type of the word camouflage and you'll get how military camouflage works. Well, it's some other camouflage articles about how it works in nature. You can also visit us at Miston history dot com for show notes and archive of all of our episodes all kinds of little goodies uh, and if you would like to do that, we highly encourage you to visit at again, house to works dot com or Mr Hisstory dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Because it has stuff works dot com. M