Sonic warriors’ tank tapes deceived Germans into defending wrong beaches
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BRITAIN’S “sonic warriors” helped deceive the German army into thinking the D-Day landings would take place 80 miles away, previously unseen documents have revealed.
Specially trained and equipped units played tapes of army activity, including tanks, trucks and gunfire to fool the Germans into thinking they faced a bigger force in a different location.
Lord Mountbatten, the head of Combined Operations, said sonic deception should be used to replicate a “feint landing to be carried out at some distance from the actual landing”.
The Sunday Telegraph obtained exclusive access to files – stamped “MOST SECRET” and meant to stay sealed until 2044 under the 100-year secrecy rule – at the National Archives at Kew. They reveal one of D-Day’s most extraordinary stories.
The idea of using sounds of war as a deception strategy was conceived by Col Cecil Disney Barlow, of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry, who was tasked with developing his light scout car units at a remote Scottish base on the Ayrshire coast at Ballantrae. The location was well-suited to record the sounds of Sherman and Churchill tanks, as well as other weapons and equipment, while not drawing attention.
To this day locals have little idea of the work that was carried out, while the invention was so closely guarded that Col Barlow’s family had no idea of his secret wartime role.
Penelope Marland, his daughter, said: “I know he was involved in something very secret but I was three when he died, and none of the relations told us anything. It was his idea to make recordings to make it sound as if there was a big army about to attack, not in Normandy but pretending it was in Calais.”
During the Normandy landings on June 6 1944, Col Barlow’s sonic warfare vehicles were mounted on landing craft 80 miles from the real D-Day landing sites. The recordings contributed to the delay of German reserves being sent to the real landing beaches.
Early tests involved a “lash-up” of speakers fixed to chairs but proved the concept. The finished equipment, code-named “Poplin”, consisted of two three-foot cube speakers and an amplifier mounted on a White scout car which played the sounds of manoeuvres from a reel to reel tape player.
Col Barlow was killed aged 39 on July 26 1944 in the breakout from the Normandy beachhead. The citation on his OBE said he had invented a “new form of warfare which may well play an important part in future campaigns”.