1st Army Camouflage Section, North Africa April 1943

While researching a Royal Engineer Service Record from WW@ I found that he had been posted to 9 Corps Camouflage Section and then to 1st Army Camouflage Section in February and April 1943. Can anyone tell me exactly what Camouflage Sections did? Pre war he had been a carpenter and joiner and I am wondering whether his pre war skills were being utilised to build dummy vehicles, tanks etc??

Thanks

Mike

 

For starters. Middle East Command Camouflage Unit.
Middle East Command Camouflage Directorate - Wikipedia
Operation Bertram - Wikipedia

Tim

 

From my fathers notes just prior to Alamein he was with 5 RHA.

In the evening we began to move, not a word to us of what we were
about, as we moved a coloured Battalion’s troops erected a decoy in the
position we were situated ,they put up canvas mock-ups in our place.

From Wiki.
The British Middle East Command Camouflage Directorate (also known as the Camouflage Unit or Camouflage Branch)[2] organised major deception operations for Middle East Command in the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War. It provided camouflage during the Siege of Tobruk; a dummy railhead at Misheifa, and the largest of all, Operation Bertram, the army-scale deception for the decisive battle of El Alamein in October 1942. The successful deception was praised publicly by Winston Churchill.

 

Jasper Maskelyne - Wikipedia

2 books I have read covering this are:

Masquerade (The Amazing Camoflage Deceptions os WW2) - Seymour Reit

Trojan Horses - Martin Young & Robbie Stamp

TD

 

Thank you all this is fantastic
Best regards

Mike

 

I was watching a programme the other evening about the US equivalent - Ghost Army

Ghost Army - Wikipedia
This is the trailer to the programme I watched -

TD

 

It's really interesting to think that Mike's father might have been one of those who constructed the screens to disguise tanks as trucks (or to create dummy tanks) for Operation Bertram!

P.S. there are some aerial photos of a Crusader and a dummy Crusader tank on my blog - found them in the Canadian archives - Dummy tanks

 

From the War Establishment point of view:

XII/200/1 Camouflage Section, North Africa
Effective date 7th January, 1943
Notified in A.C.Is. 31st March, 1943

Section headquarters
1 Captain
1 Subaltern
1 Staff-serjeant
2 Carpenters and joiners
1 Clerk
1 Draughtsman, architectural
1 Pioneer, R.E.
1 Batman

3 Sub-sections, each
1 Serjeant
2 Carpenters and joiners
3 Pioneers, R.E.

The 21 rank and file include 4 corporals.

Weapons
2 Pistols, .38-inch
25 Rifles, .303-inch

no transport

 

You might also try and find copies of these two auto-biographies for a better understanding of the work of the camofleurs:

- Barkas, Geoffrey The Camouflage Story (From Aintree to Alamein) 1952
- Sykes, Steven Deceivers Ever: Memoirs of a Camouflage Officer 1990

 

Did you make this? Love it

 

No, not my work.

Many variations on this theme have been floating around Facebook for a while now.

Gus