21. Operation Bertram: Stage Magic on a Grand Scale
To trick the Axis at El Alamein into thinking that they would attack in the south instead of the north, the British went into stage magic-type misdirection in a big way. As a preliminary, the Germans were fed misinformation via turned spies. Simultaneously, using the tricks of stage magic, the British built wood and canvass contraptions to fool Axis aerial reconnaissance by making concentrations of armor appear like trucks. Other mockups were rigged to make transport trucks look like menacing concentrations of tanks. To misdirect the buildup of supplies and munitions, the CDTC set up fake ammunition dumps. With water being the most precious resource in the desert – one whose concentration in a particular place offered a strong thing that something major was planned there – the British built a 200-mile dummy water pipeline to the southern sector of the Alamein line.
The deception worked, and when the Battle of El Alamein commenced with a massive artillery bombardment on the night of October 23rd, 1942, the enemy commanders were surprised that the British Eighth Army’s main thrust came in the north, and not in the south as had been expected. As had been predicted, fuel shortages prevented the Axis from effectively redeploying troops from the southern sector to reinforce and meet the threat to the north. The battle ended in a complete British victory, and a retreat that culminated 6 months later in the complete surrender of all Axis forces in North Africa.
