Aerodrome dummies

Stieglitz, something from your neighbourhood: photos taken at Melsbroek in late 1944. All from the personal archive of F/Lt Jimmy Taylor, no. 16 Squadron.

That early decoy shurly looks very basic VoyTech. It seems that the standards for the quality of the decoys also made a great progress during the war.

J.V.

I photocopied this from an old magazine, probably Aviation News or Scale Aircraft Modelling (1970ish) who ran an article on these decoys.

Simple German decoy used at the outbreak of war

Here’s some interesting statistics of the costs of these dummies! Taken from War Economy, which is one of the Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War books. That states that (and this is a lot of money in those days for a small struggling country as far as defence went!!)

In 1941 NZ spent £30,000 on dummy aircraft. In 1942 NZ spent £108,000 on dummy aircraft. And in 1943 NZ spent a further £7,000 on dummy aicraft. A total of £145,000. That would equate to millions of dollars in today’s money

So they must have been considered worth the money.

and here’s some various stuff:

http://www.laynor.org/free_info.html

One at Ghedi airfield in Italy

Martin

Thanks Martin, interesting pictures. Here’s one of an RNZAF dummy Hudson.

I know that hangars (as in on “genuine” airfields) were often camouflaged as rows of houses to fool marauding fighters…

Correct, Daz

see the building behind the P-47D on a former Luftwaffe base:

Martin

I know that hangars (as in on “genuine” airfields) were often camouflaged as rows of houses to fool marauding fighters…

Here are two pics taken from Avions # 117 (French magazine – Dec 2002)

A He-111 found on a Normandy airfield in August 1944 and a Ju-88 that never flew eigher (Salon de Provence, South of France)
Lots of other examples are included, from various airfileds (one from Stavenger for example)

Luftwaffe used them for two opposite goals :
* to divert allied planes from real airfields (with such plane models but too with false tower and hangar)
or
* to hide real activity of an operational one (for example with false cows as some pics show it)

sometimes, false and real machines (some still operational or some damaged beyond repair) were placed side by side.

I take it the ‘410 would be skinned over? The frame looks terribly naked to me!

See the He-111 photo – they received skins ‘in the field’ – the photo of the Me-410 is as they came from production.

Martin

Martin – I take it the ‘410 would be skinned over? The frame looks terribly naked to me! 😀

Me-410

Martin

Dave

yup – the Luftwaffe used dummy aircraft, too. Must dig for photographs.

In the meantime, here’s a nice Tomahawk:

Martin