Camouflaged Nazi Airlfields

[Dave Homewood]

I find the subject of camouflaged airfields used by the Germans in WWII very interesting.

Here's a control tower disguised as a school in Holland from the EVENING POST, VOLUME CXXXVIII, ISSUE 119, 16 NOVEMBER 1944 (the NZ Herald two days before reported this was in Belgium, rather than Holland)


And this photo from the same airfield and same newspaper shows the disguised hangar doors opening. From the air this place would look innocent.

[Dave Homewood]

And this photo from the collection of the late Ron Watts shows false houses that he and his No. 488 (NZ) Squadron men found on a German airfield. They were made of rushes to make it look like farms and houses rather than an airfield:

[Mustang51]

Dave, Have a look at how the North American Aviation factory was camouflaged to look like a residential suburb. Amazing lengths they went to but then, there was a huge wartime industry in manufacturing fake trucks, aircraft, tanks etc. Wonder where that airfield is and if anything in those pics still exists? Would be nice to see if that is the case.

[Dave Homewood]

Ah yes, I have seen photos of that, it is indeed truly amazing. I think other big factories (Lockheed Vega?) did similar things in the USA.

I also recall seeing a mid-WWII photo of RNZAF Station Hobsonville from the air and it's vital grass airfield had been painted up with roads, hedges and the likes to make it look like farm land. That may be in one of Peter Cooke's books? I'd love to find that photo again.

[nuuumannn]

During the Great War, both the Germans and British attempted camouflaging their airship sheds; pretty hard to miss a 700 foot long rectangular building, though.

While not about camouflaging German airfields, there is a great book produced by English Heritage called Fields of Deception; Britain's Bombing Decoys of World War Two and it focusses on measures taken to conceal existing airfields and the production of decoy sites to lure German bombers away from bombing original ones. This included the production of decoy aircraft and vehicles. The airship sheds at RAF cardington were used to produce inflateable aeroplanes and tanks!

The Germans had extensive aerial photography of British airfields and related sites as Lufthansa had aeroplanes with concealed cameras fitted (Sid Cotton wasn't the only one doing this), so they got some real good photos. The military airfields were camouflaged. The Royal Commission of Ancient and Historic Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) has a massive collection of aerial photographs. Take a look here:

ncap.org.uk/feature/luftwaffe-over-scotland

This is a link to the RCAHMS catalogue, copies of which we used to use to order photos for exhibitions. It's a big document.

canmore-pdf.rcahms.gov.uk/wp/00/WP003869.pdf

[isc]

Another method of photo reconasence during the 1930s was cycle tours by groups from the Hitler Youth, it seems they could get almost anywhere, while adults in cars aroused suspition. isc