During World War II, Germany built wooden airfields to deceive the Allies – so they bombed them with wooden dummies.

During World War II, the Germans built mock wooden airfields with wooden aircraft and vehicles to fool the Allies. However, the RAF responded by waiting until the Allies were ready and then dropping a single mock wooden bomb on them.

This story has been told in many ways, with the location of the airfield and the way it was bombed varying, but the gist is this:

An enemy decoy airfield in occupied Holland was the beginning of a story that has been retold by experienced Allied pilots ever since. The German “airfield” was constructed with the utmost care and almost entirely of wood. It featured wooden hangars, oil tanks, gun emplacements, trucks, and aircraft.

The Germans took so long to build their wooden mock-up that the Allied photo experts had more than enough time to observe and report on it. Finally, the day came when the mock-up was finished down to the last wooden plank. And early the next morning, a lone RAF aircraft crossed the Channel, approached at low altitude, circled the field once, and dropped a large wooden bomb.

Could this story be true? The use of mock airfields and other imaginary facilities during World War II was by no means a legend.

Both sides tried to deceive each other. There’s no doubt that the Germans built wooden airplanes and sometimes entire airfields to keep the Allies away from the actual airfields. They also painted bomb damage on existing airfields to make them appear unusable and protect them from further bombing.