23rd Special Troops (United States)

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Dummy of a tank of the type M4 Sherman

The 23rd Special Troops (also known as "23rd Headquarters, Special Troops") were a secret military association of the United States Army , which was set up to actively deceive the German Wehrmacht and was used in Europe from June 1944 during World War II . After their existence was kept secret for decades after the war, it was not until the 2000s that they became known to a broader public under the name Ghost Army (" Ghost Army "). The association had around 1,100 members and consisted of four departments, which were mainly specialized in deception maneuvers with the help of false radio messages, loudspeakers and dummies .

history

The 23rd Special Troops was formed in January 1944 on the orders of General Jacob L. Devers , Commander in Chief of the US Forces in Europe. He was under the jurisdiction of the 2nd US Army . The four units of the association, which was run internally under the cover name "Blarney", had the following official names:

  • 603rd Camouflage Engineer Battalion
  • 406th Combat Engineer Company
  • 23rd Signal Company, Special
  • 3132nd Signal Service Company

The largest and best-known of its constituent parts, the 603rd Camouflage Engineer Battalion , a unit specializing in camouflage and deception , which had been accepted as volunteers by numerous students from arts and architecture faculties and employees of advertising agencies, had already existed. For example, she was given the task of visually integrating building complexes for the armaments industry into the environment using camouflaging paintwork and nets, and thus protecting them from possible detection from the air. Several 603rd veterans made artistic or creative careers after the war, including fashion designer Bill Blass and painter and sculptor Ellsworth Kelly .

In retrospect, one of the most spectacular methods of the “Ghost Army” was the use of inflatable dummies such as tanks, jeeps and guns, with which the enemy was deceived about the positions of combat units. The first of these dummies were used a few days after the Allied landing in Normandy . The troops, almost exclusively equipped with dummies, had their first combat mission at the beginning of July 1944 with around 400 soldiers in a forest near Cerisy-la-Forêt when they took over the position of a secretly withdrawn armored division to simulate their continued presence.

Another sub-unit of the 23rd was the 3132nd Signal Service Company , in which sound engineers and sound effects experts initially experimented with modern recording and playback technology. Special recordings of typical noises from military equipment and troop movements were mixed into sound collages that were distributed via loudspeaker trucks in order to simulate the existence of large troop units and corresponding activities. Another subunit was the Signal Company, Special (former name: 244th Signal Operations Company ), a radio troop specializing in deception by spreading false radio messages. The support unit 406th Combat Engineer Company , trained among other things in desert combat, served the safety of the other specialists and was responsible for difficult construction work in the area, for which they had dozers and other heavy equipment. The various units of the Ghost Army had their first joint operation at the battle of the north-west French port fortress of Brest in August 1944.

The 23rd Special Troops carried out 21 operations until their last war mission to support the US invasion troops crossing the Rhine at Viersen in March 1945 ( Operation Grenade ) . As a rule, the Ghost Army simulated the presence of an actual military unit that was deployed elsewhere at the time. Using the various means of deception, around 1,100 soldiers were able to simulate a force of up to 30,000. There is hardly any reliable data or divergent assessments about their success. The documentary filmmaker Rick Beyer, who devoted himself to the Ghost Army from 2005 to 2012 , did not find any evidence during his research that the Wehrmacht was aware of the existence of the secret army.

In the last days of the war, the members of the 23rd guard duties were assigned to temporary camps for "displaced persons" in the area around Trier . In July 1945 the troops returned to the United States and should be prepared for the deployment in the Pacific War , which it did not come to after the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki . In September 1945 the unit was disbanded. The secrecy of the official military files in which the activities of the unit are documented was not lifted until 1996.

documentary

  • Rick Beyer: Ghost Army. (USA, 2012, 60 minutes)
    • German TV version: Operation Ghost Army - deception maneuvers in World War II. (2014, 44 minutes, available on YouTube )

literature

  • Jonathan Gawne: Ghosts of the ETO: American Tactical Deception Units in the European Theater 1944–1945. Casemate, Havertown 2002, ISBN 978-1-93514-992-7
  • Jack Kneece: Ghost Army of World War II. Pelican, Gretna 2001, ISBN 978-1-56554-876-3
  • Rick Beyer and Elizabeth Sayles: Artists of Deception: The Ghost Army of World War II. Plate of Peas, 2011, ISBN 978-0-61553-434-3

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Gawne: Ghosts of the ETO, p. 18.
  2. ↑ Rick Beyer: Attack of the Ghost Army (PDF), in: America in WWII from June 2013, accessed on August 29, 2014 (English)
  3. ^ Gawne: Ghosts of the ETO, p. 35.
  4. ↑ Rick Beyer: Inside the 23rd, on the website for the film Ghost Army , accessed on September 9, 2014 (English)
  5. ↑ Sylviane Gold: The Imprint of a Phantom Army: A Review of 'Artists of Deception,' at Edward Hopper House Art Center in Nyack, in: New York Times of April 19, 2013, accessed on August 29, 2014 (English)
  6. ↑ a b Christoph Gunkel: Secret War Tactics: Deployment of the Rubber Army, in: Spiegel Online from April 20, 2010, accessed on August 29, 2014
  7. ↑ a b c The 23rd Headquarters Special Troops (World War II), ( Memento from October 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) on the website of the National Army Security Agency Association , accessed on August 29, 2014 (English)
  8. ↑ Second World War: How a Phantom Army Fooled Hitler, ( Memento from November 18, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) in: PM Magazin , accessed on August 29, 2014
  9. ↑ Jillian Steinhauer: The Artist-Filled Shadow Army of World War II, in: Hyperallergic from May 20, 2013, accessed on August 29, 2014 (English)
  10. ↑ Beyer / Sayles: Artists of Deception, p. 40
  11. ↑ Leah Binkowitz: When an Army of Artists Fooled Hitler, in: Smithsonian.com of May 20, 2013, accessed on August 29, 2014 (English)