Military do it all the time (or used to, anyway).
RNAY Fleetlands, 1985; a buzz going around those waiting for the air display at the golf course (oh, alright – and the helipad!). There was a Buccaneer, maybe just wreckage, somewhere in one of the work shops! Others had it marked down in their pads twice, even!
XX898 was written off 17/6/82 on approach to RAF Lossiemouth, and yet someone had marked it down in which ever hanger it was where some Gazelles were under maintenance. Solution (after I’d had a word with a sympathetic guy behind the barrier) was simple: both Gazelle XX393 and XX398 had had their serials ‘adapted‘ with nothing more than black tape to look like XX898 – a Buccaneer registration. When you looked at it, it wasn’t even done very well (squared edges, etc) but it was enough to convince the unsuspecting.
Sympathetic guy has big grin on his face as he explains to the (by now) large crowd of annoyed number tickers how they have been fooled! He was then lynched and hung from a Chinook rotor…
Wasn’t there a similar thing with a Tornado at an IAT Fairford several years ago (eary 90s?) – two aircraft on display with the same serial? I was told that they could only be told apart because they wore different tactical numbers…
Flood.â„¢
A “trick” regularly adopted the Israeli AF thus creating the impression that they had a larger airforce.
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