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Fake Vampires, Wailing Ghosts, and Other Fascinating Psy-Ops and Military Deceptions

Khalid Elhassan January 29, 2020 33 min

North Vietnam - Viet Cong Fighter — Viet Cong. Wikimedia

24. Tricking the Confederates Into Destroying A Valuable Captured Ship

During the Civil War, the Union’s USS Indianola ironclad river gunboat served in the Western Theater with the US Navy’s Mississippi Squadron, operating in the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers. She ran past Confederate batteries in Vicksburg to reach the Red River and help block Confederate supplies from sailing down its waters. However, once she got there she was attacked by Confederate rams on the night of February 24^th, 1863, ran aground and was captured.

The Indianola’s capture derailed Union plans to blockade the Red River, and its presence in Confederate hands was too great a threat to Union operations in the region to be endured. So plans were made to recapture the ironclad, or destroy it so as to deprive the enemy of its use. That set in motion one of the war’s most successful deception operations.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.