Your comment about the jet program reminded me of something I read once about the US military trying to conceal a top secret jet (I think it was the SR-71) from spy satellites. The thing I read said that the planes heated up the runway where they sat, which would show up on thermal images of the runways. Iirc, they would go out and heat the runways further to make it seem like there were more planes or to change the shape of the heat signature.
This is based entirely off of memory, and I can’t find the right search terms to look for more info, so take it with a grain of salt.
There were fields of inflatable tanks and other vehicles in England during the build up to Normandy but these were not deployed across enemy held beaches for hopefully obvious reasons.
Normandy, IIRC had one of the beaches, the tanks were mostly inflatable of the inflatable sort to try and pull resources from the main advance.
Also, iirc the early jet program used plywood props with fake spinners to conceal the planes on the runway.
Your comment about the jet program reminded me of something I read once about the US military trying to conceal a top secret jet (I think it was the SR-71) from spy satellites. The thing I read said that the planes heated up the runway where they sat, which would show up on thermal images of the runways. Iirc, they would go out and heat the runways further to make it seem like there were more planes or to change the shape of the heat signature.
This is based entirely off of memory, and I can’t find the right search terms to look for more info, so take it with a grain of salt.
There were fields of inflatable tanks and other vehicles in England during the build up to Normandy but these were not deployed across enemy held beaches for hopefully obvious reasons.
Would’ve been a hoot, though, if the winds were right that day.