British bombers fly overhead.
The skeleton crew of Nazi soldiers scramble for cover.
Bombs fall from the sky, landing inches away from the Germans, but they do not explode.
After the coast is clear, the Germans leave their shelter to investigate.
Lying on the ground next to their decoy planes is a wooden bomb.
Written on the side are the words “wood for wood.”
During World War II it was common to build decoy tanks, airplanes, and bridges to fool
the opposing side into thinking there were forces located where there really weren’t.
This was done so that the opposition would waste time and resources trying to destroy
the decoys.
There was one fake Nazi base that has gone down in history.
It was an elaborate airfield constructed of wood located just outside of Amsterdam.
This air base was discovered and targeted by British Royal Air Force bombers.
But their mission wasn’t to destroy the fake air base.
Instead of actual bombs, the pilots dropped wooden replicas with snide remarks written
on the sides.
So, why did the RAF drop fake wooden bombs on a fake Nazi air base?
The reason is so crazy that it’ll make you laugh.
As the war in Europe raged on, the Nazis built a number of decoy bases to try and trick Allied
forces.
Unfortunately, this tactic worked on more than one occasion, leading the Allies into
ambushes, or wasting their resources on targets that had no strategic value.
However, in this one particular situation, the British played the Nazis for fools.
Nazi soldiers and engineers meticulously built an entire air base made of wood.
This project took several weeks, and during the building phase, the Nazis did their best
to hide the true nature of the decoy from RAF reconnaissance planes.
The plan was to trick Allied Intelligence into thinking there was an important facility
being built in the forests of Germany, when in reality there wasn’t.
Their mission succeeded in getting the attention of the RAF.
Planes were sent over the area to verify that the Germans had indeed built a base there.
From the sky it looked like the air base was fully stocked and operational.
The Nazis had built hangars, oil tanks, anti-aircraft guns, and planes all made of wood.
Although many of the structures looked real from the sky, they were just empty shells
meant to throw off the Allies.
The Nazis believed their hard work had paid off when RAF planes flew over more frequently.
It was only a matter of time until the British Air Force wasted pilots, money, and resources
on destroying their fake air base.
Surprisingly, almost immediately after completing the decoy, the RAF made their move.
A bomber took a run on the decoy air base.
The Germans dove for cover expecting their hard work to go up in a fiery explosion.
But to their surprise, all they heard were dull thuds as objects landed in the muddy
fake airfield without any sort of explosion.
When the Nazi soldiers went to examine the payload that the RAF plane had released, they
were shocked.
The objects that had been dropped from the bomber were fake wooden bombs.
The British had known all along that the Nazis were building a decoy air base.
They had waited until the Germans had completed their ruze, and then made them aware that
it had fooled no one.
The Nazis were now the ones who wasted their time and resources as no Allied planes would
drop actual bombs, and no troops would be sent in to try and destroy the fake air base.
The British had embarrassed the Nazis with their wooden bombs.
But why did the Royal Air Force partake in such escapades?
Why didn’t they just ignore the base all together?
And what anecdotal evidence actually exists about the wooden bombs?
There are hundreds of testimonies from both sides of the war about the wooden bombing
of the decoy air base.
Although it was embarrassing, even former Nazi soldiers recount the event with mild
amusement.
At the time, Wermer Thiel was a Luftwaffe pilot who saw the dropping of the wooden bombs.
In October of 1943 he was given orders to move decoy wooden aircraft around a fake airfield,
and turn light beacons on to make it look like the base was active.
The Nazi commanders had received word that there was an incoming RAF bombing run.
This is what Thiel and his comrades had been waiting for; they were about to trick the
Allied forces.
Thiel recounts having dozens of fake wooden planes that were sheathed in canvas and held
together by ropes.
As the RAF bomber flew overhead, Thiel took cover.
When he was given the all clear he was shocked to find “six to ten bombs on the floor,
made of quality solid wood with ‘Wood For Wood' written on them.”
The Nazis were astonished.
Not in a million years did they think the Allies were onto their plan.
They were sorely mistaken.
In fact, Lieutenant Commander Thiel even said in a later interview that he and his Nazi
brothers “thought it was meant as a joke.
Something like ‘look how stupid you are.
You built a dummy airfield.
We saw it and it’s not worth dropping a real bomb'.”
Basically the British just wanted to embarrass the Nazis by letting them know they were onto
them all along.
These fake bombs were most likely the result of young pilots trying to make their Nazi
adversaries feel silly.
It is important to remember that at the time, many of the pilots and soldiers fighting in
World War II were in their early twenties or late teens.
But even if it wasn’t just a way to embarrass the Nazis, using the wooden bombs allowed
the British pilots to inform their adversaries that they had been bested.
You may be wondering where these fake bombs came from and were British pilots wasting
time making them?
The answer is that the wooden bombs were just kind of laying around.
They were created to be used in training missions, and were identical in shape to the real bombs
dropped on Axis forces.
However, since they were carved out of wood, they cost significantly less than the real
thing.
Since the war in Europe had been raging on, there wasn’t a ton of time to train new
recruits, so the bombs sat idly by.
The RAF pilots who spotted the fake air base may have thought the training bombs could
be put to good use by embarrassing the Nazis.
British Intelligence also may have been in on the joke, as it was reported by an American
journalist that communications from British Intelligence in Holland had identified the
fake air base that contained over one hundred dummy planes made of wood.
British Intelligence would have informed the RAF of what had been discovered and may have
hinted at letting the Nazis know they hadn’t been fooled.
Whether the wooden bombs were the idea of some young British pilots who wanted to embarrass
the Nazis.
Or British Intelligence wanting to show they couldn’t be bested.
One thing is for sure: the British felt that a wooden air base deserved wooden bombs.
To be fair, there are no official reports of the wooden bombs being used on the decoy
air base, but this isn’t surprising.
If it were just a joke being played on the Nazis, the British pilots were still taking
a huge risk flying into enemy airspace.
They also would be using a bomber and vital fuel that may have been put to better use
by bombing a real target.
Therefore, the wooden bombing run on the decoy base was probably not sanctioned by the high
command of the Allied forces.
But this wasn’t the only example of decoys being built to fool the enemy in World War
II.
There are numerous accounts across Europe, and even in the Pacific, of fake bases, vehicles,
and armies being constructed to fool the opposition.
There are accounts of fake airmen being dropped into enemy territory to trick them into moving
units away from areas that Allied forces were actually trying to get to.
This tactic was most famously used during the D-Day landing when “paradummies” were
dropped to trick the Germans into moving troops away from the actual incursion zones.
This helped Allied forces to capture key points on the French coast while the Nazis were scratching
their heads as to why the fake paratroopers were not firing back.
One of the most common forms of decoys in World War II were inflatables.
Both the Axis and Allied powers would use inflatable tanks, artillery guns, and even
bridges to fool the enemy.
A favorite inflatable decoy during the second World War were rubber tanks.
These balloon vehicles were the size of actual tanks, except they were made of rubber, air,
and some scaffolding.
There was even a division of the military that specialized in creating such decoys.
The inflatable tanks were easy to assemble and take down.
Once they were deflated, the materials could fit into a duffle bag and be transported to
the next location as needed.
Once the soldiers were ready to deploy the decoys, the inflatable tanks were taken out
of their bags, pumped full of air from a generator, and were good to go.
This whole process could be completed in 20 minutes, which meant that in that amount of
time, an army could double its size, or at least that’s how it would appear to the
enemy.
Inflatables were so successful that in 1940 Allied forces used 100 fake airfields and
around 400 decoy aircraft to trick the Nazis into bombing fake targets.
In a bombing run on August 4th, the Luftwaffe sent three waves of bombers to destroy the
fake air bases.
This kept an actual military factory from being targeted, and the real structure was
almost completely unharmed during the bombing run.
In the Pacific theater during World War II the Japanese were masters of creating decoys.
They would use straw to create fake planes that tricked Allied attackers into spending
their ammunition on decoy targets.
The Japanese forces would also use inflatable tanks and artillery guns to throw off the
Allies.
When there were no other resources available, the Japanese would even make decoy vehicles
out of volcanic ash that was sticking out of the ground.
The rock was soft and easy to sculpt using nothing but a knife.
It wasn’t until modern day surveillance and reconnaissance technology that decoys
became all but obsolete.
Now with the high resolution images that can be taken with satellites and drones, inflatable
tanks, and wooden airfields, are a thing of the past.
Now watch “The Inflatable Tanks That Fooled Hitler.”
Or check out “Most Terrifying Weapons of World War 2.”