Egypt, 1941.
In the deserts of North Africa the allied effort to defeat the Nazis is reaching critical
mass.
Luftwaffe bombers stationed in Italy are savaging Allied resupply ships making the dangerous
run across the Mediterranean and docking in the port of Alexandra.
The attacks are absolutely crippling the allied efforts to fend off the Germans in north Africa.
If the allies fail here, the Suez canal and the all-important oil trade routes to the
middle east will be in German hands, and the war all but lost.
Something drastic has to be done to take the heat off the incoming ships.
A major resupply force is incoming, and the loss of these ships will be a devastating
blow to the Allied forces.
In desperation, the British military turns to one man: Jasper Maskelyne, a simple stage
magician from London.
Jasper Maskelyne was third in a line of illusionists spanning back to his grandfather.
A very talented performer, Maskelyne did well for himself wowing crowds in London as he
swallowed razor blades and appeared to display telepathic powers.
His illusions were jaw-dropping, and had it not been for the Germans very rudely kicking
off another world war, who knows where his career may have taken him.
Sadly the Germans weren't exactly team players in the first half of the 20th century, and
when war broke out Maskelyne's ticket sales plummeted.
Nobody was interested in watching a magician make razor blades disappear when the Germans
were making soldiers and civilians disappear by the dozens with high explosives all across
Europe, completely upstaging Maskelyne.
This simply wouldn't do, and out of a sense of professional pride and patriotism both,
Maskelyne sought to do his duty and enlist.
At 37 years old he wasn't exactly a prime candidate for enlistment however, and the
British had yet to realize just how very close to losing the war they would come.
So instead Maskelyne sought to enlist in a camouflage unit, campaigning with the War
Office to put his talents as an illusionist to use.
However, the hard-nosed career soldiers running the War Office saw magic as entirely too unorthodox,
and untested, to risk putting up under real enemy scrutiny, preferring to stick to tried
and true camouflage techniques.
Ever insistent though, Maskelyne was finally accepted into the military and shipped off
to camouflage school.
In the days before high definition video cameras mounted on drones, or super powerful cameras
attached to satellites, battlefield surveillance was often conducted by high flying planes
or soldiers on fast-moving motorcyles.
Most of the efforts of camouflaging equipment then was thus directed at fooling aviators
high up in the sky or soldiers peering through binoculars from miles away.
At camouflage school, Maskelyne was once more met with derision when he suggested utilizing
stage techniques to enhance efforts to conceal friendly troops or mislead the enemy.
Maskelyne would find his chance to prove himself though when an Inspector General visited the
school on a tour.
Maskelyne set about concealing a machinegun bunker and creating a fake one.
Allegedly, the inspector general was impressed when he whacked his legs on a broom handle
that was supposed to be a machine gun barrel.
Maskelyne was soon dispatched to Cairo, Egypt, to join efforts in camouflaging vital equipment
and troop positions.
However, for a third time his efforts to use stage techniques and experimental trickery
was rebuffed, and he was relegated to entertaining the troops with his illusions.
However, eventually Maskelyne negotiated a deal with his superiors- in exchange for performing
for the troops and raising morale, Maskelyne would be allowed to assemble his own squad
of camouflage artists.
His superiors agreed, and the Magic Gang was born.
To form his ragtag bunch of experimental wartime illusionists, Maskelyne turned to the most
unlikely of recruits.
Interviewing over 400 prospective members, Maskelyne selected a murderer's row of cartoonists,
electrical engineers, chemists, carpenters, and other unlikely soldiers drafted or volunteered
into the war- men who's unique talents and viewpoints were less in line with the rigid,
orderly structure of the military, but perfect for Maskelyne's plans to fool Hitler using
magic.
Months later, Maskelyne would get his chance to put his techniques to the test.
After the loss of critical supplies to German bombers, a vital supply run was being planned
for the Alexandria port.
Somehow those bombers had to be convinced to strike elsewhere, and give the ships enough
time to dock, unload their supplies, and head back out to sea.
Maskelyne knew exactly what to do, but it would require a lot of faith from the British
military and a whole lot of manpower.
Maskelyne's plan was simple: he'd just make the entire Alexandria harbor disappear, and
give the Germans a new, fake harbor to bomb instead.
A few miles away from the real harbor, at an inlet named Maryut Bay, the Magic Gang,
with the help of hundreds of soldiers, began to construct a smaller scale version of Alexandria
harbor using cardboard.
Rather than create full-size replicas of the buildings, the entire operation was down-scaled,
but used perspective tricks to fool the high flying German bombers into thinking it was
the real deal.
Vehicles and other objects that could be used for reference were recreated at smaller scale,
making the also smaller scale buildings look the right size by comparison.
Lights were strung up all across the fake harbor, and explosive charges were buried
in the ground.
As the convoy of ships arrived at port, the lights at the real harbor were turned off,
and when the Luftwaffe attack came, the Magic Gang began to set off explosives in the fake
harbor.
This made the German bombers believe that their fellow airmen were already bombing the
target, and convinced them to drop their own loads.
For three straight nights the German bombers dropped their loads all over empty desert,
failing to hit anything of value.
Makelyne was immediately promoted for the success of his harbor illusion, and his use
of light and shadow to enhance existing camouflage techniques were spread all across the allied
forces.
His next test would be even more critical- helping protect the Suez Canal from enemy
bombers.
If the Germans managed to shut down the Suez Canal, the Allies' oil supply routes would
be seriously compromised, and so would the war effort.
Moving a feature as large as the Suez Canal would be completely impossible, no matter
the amount of trickery involved.
So instead, Makelyne focused on simply making the harbor itself extremely difficult to accurately
target by high flying bombers.
The Magic Gang set to work by installing 21 powerful search lights all along the length
of the canal.
Multi-faceted, rotating mirrors would send up beams of blinding light up to 100 miles
in the sky, making it incredibly difficult for German bombers to accurately target the
canal.
Next, Maskelyne was ordered to aid General Montgomery in his attempts to defeat the formidable
German Field Marshal Rommel at the second battle of El Alamien.
Montgomery's plan was simple- he would attack from the north with his main forces, while
sending a smaller, diversionary attack south.
Maskelyne was tasked with making the southern force look like the real attack by disguising
trucks and jeeps as tanks and anti-tank guns.
With the aid of plywood and canvas, hundreds of vehicles were made to look like Montgomery's
main forces, bolstered by over a thousand inflatable dummy tanks.
The deception was aided with the addition of fake tank tracks in the desert and by setting
up a daily chatter of fake radio conversations as well as the sounds of construction.
This plot would end up fooling the wily Rommel, and ultimately lead to Montgomery's famous
victory.
Maskelyne would go on to continue practicing his art of illusion and trickery and aiding
the allies to victory.
Well, at least that's Maskelyne's version of events.
A well-known stage performer, official investigations into Maskelyne's war record shows that many
of his so-called accomplishments were likely completely overstated- seen as most of the
accounts of his exploits came from his ghost-written autobiography.
In truth, the official record shows that while Maskelyne did aid in allied efforts to camouflage
friendly forces, he never received any official recognition.
His so-called Magic Gang was also discovered to be yet another illusion, as no such unit
ever existed.
Furthermore, his efforts to aid in the camouflage of the Suez Canal were met with modest success,
and it was more the dedicated British anti-aircraft gunners and fighter pilots who kept the canal
open than Maskelyne and his magic lights.
In the end Maskelyne's account of his own exploits are much like his magic act, in that
the audience is largely left wondering how much of it was real, and how much of it merely
a fabrication.
Now watch this, Hitler’s Child Army, or click this other video instead!