Forty-nine-year-old General Erwin Rommel was elated. At his
command caravan in the scorching desert of Libya in North Africa, he had just
read a decoded message sent by the U.S. military attaché in Cairo, Colonel
Bonner Fellers, to Washington, D.C. Unbeknownst to General Archibald Wavell,
British commander in the Middle East, the Germans had cracked the Black Code
used by the Americans in various embassies around the world. It was June 15,
1941.
Three days earlier, Wavell, with high hopes for a smashing victory,
had sent his Western Desert Force in an all-out assault, code-named Operation
Battleaxe, against Rommel’s vaunted Afrika Korps. The Desert Fox, as the wily
German general had become known, had been forewarned of the British attack
through wireless intercepts of the Black Code. He set an ambush of powerful
88-millimeter guns.
Battleaxe, Rommel gleefully learned from the intercept, had
been a disaster for the British. The Western Desert Force had lost ninety-nine
tanks out of the two hundred and twenty-five in the assault, and numerous
others had broken down. More than a thousand Tommies (as British foot soldiers
were called) had been casualties.
Rommel, who had become a legend on the homefront, stood at
the Egyptian border with Libya, waiting for a green light from Adolf Hitler to
plunge forward, seize Alexandria, then capture Cairo and the nearby northsouth
Suez Canal, Great Britain’s lifeline to the Middle East.
Now the bloody conflict in North Africa had become a race
for supplies. Rommel also had suffered sizeable losses in crushing Battleaxe,
so before he could strike, he would have to receive large amounts of weapons,
ammunition, food, clothing, and other war gear. His supply line stretched from
Europe southward across the Mediterranean Sea to Tripoli, Libya, then hundreds
of miles eastward by truck to the front lines.
Wavell was resupplied almost entirely by convoys dodging
German U-boats and bombers on the Mediterranean to Alexandria, a city of one
million Egyptians.
If Wavell could replenish his force by sea before Rommel
could get his needed supplies across the vast distances of barren desert, the
British might be able to hold Alexandria, Cairo, and the nearby Suez Canal.
Both Wavell and Rommel were acutely aware that the harbor at
Alexandria was the key to the looming showdown. So the British rushed in all
the antiaircraft guns that could be spared from other locales in the Middle
East and ringed the Alexandria harbor with them. The Royal Air Force, also
hardpressed, brought in more fighter planes.
Rommel, meanwhile, stepped up Luftwaffe bombing assaults
against Alexandria, especially its waterfront and the shipping there. Almost
every other night, the air raid sirens wailed over the large city, searchlights
criss-crossed the dark sky, and bomb explosions rocked the region.
In the wake of the Battleaxe disaster, one of General
Wavell’s staff officers called on Major Geoffrey Barkas, head of Middle Eastern
camouflage, and gave him a seemingly impossible task: conceal Alexandria harbor
to protect it against German bombing attacks.
Barkas was a prewar film producer who had volunteered for
the army within days of the outbreak of war in September 1939. At the time, he
told senior officers that he would serve in any worthwhile job, never dreaming
that his eventual mission would be to try to outsmart the craftiest of German
generals, Erwin Rommel.
Now Barkas promptly called on an old friend from the
peacetime entertainment world, Lieutenant Jasper Maskelyne, who had been born
into the world of magic thirty-eight years earlier. For sixty-six years, he,
his grandfather, and his father had been Europe’s first family of conjuring.
Jasper had been only nine years old when he made his debut on the stage—and
mystified the audiences.
On May 10, 1940, Jasper had been on a London stage drinking
a glass of razor blades. When he began withdrawing from his mouth the six sharp
blades, knotted to a cotton string that kept him from swallowing them, a
British army officer burst into the crowded theater. “Hitler’s just invaded
France, Belgium, and the Netherlands!” he shouted excitedly.
Patriotic fervor swept the British Isles, just as it had
when Great Britain declared war on Nazi Germany on September 3, 1939, two days
after Adolf Hitler had sent his potent war juggernaut charging into militarily
weak Poland. Among those standing in long lines to enlist was Jasper Maskelyne.
Other men were volunteering to take up arms against the Nazis, but Jasper
stunned the recruiting officers by declaring that he planned to mobilize the
domain of magic against the Führer.
High-ranking British army officers were reluctant to grant a
commission to a man, albeit a famous one, who apparently wanted to help win the
war by waving magic wands or casting spells over German leaders. However, with
the surrender of France on June 22, 1940, England was in dire danger of
invasion. In this desperate situation, even a magician might be useful, so
Maskelyne was awarded a lieutenant’s commission.
Now, at the encampment of the Camouflage Experimental
Section in the desert outside Cairo, Major Barkas told Maskelyne that “hiding”
Alexandria harbor was in his hands. Jasper seemed to be elated by the herculean
task. Alexandria harbor would be by far the largest stage on which he, or any
magician, had ever performed. During his conjuring career, he had vanished
people, motorcycles, and even an elephant. But an entire harbor!
Soon after dawn the next day, Maskelyne and his Magic
Gang—six magicians, artists, movie set designers, and cartoonists—were standing
on a bluff looking down on Alexandria harbor, which was crammed with vessels of
all types and sizes. Guarding the entrance to the busy waterfront was the giant
lighthouse on Pharos Island, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The
beacon had been built around 240 B.C. and was higher than a thirty-six story
skyscraper.
The Britons were sobered by the thought of concealing such a
large and bustling area. Alexandria harbor was an easily located target for
German bombardiers. They would home in on the Pharos lighthouse from a long
distance in the desert. A pathfinder plane preceding the main flight would
follow the familiar Egyptian coastline, then light Alexandria harbor with
flares and incendiary bombs. Succeeding waves of bombers would unload their
lethal cargoes into the brightly burning fires.
At the end of a day of inspection of the harbor, members of
the Magic Gang set up their operation in a quonset hut and traded fanciful
ideas on how to hide the vast target. Finally, Jasper Maskelyne declared:
“There’s only one solution. We’ve got to move it!”
As his associates watched eagerly, Maskelyne tapped his pipe
on a large wall map of the Cairo–Alexandria region. “Here’s Alexandria harbor,”
he stated. “And over here”—he moved his finger a few inches across the map—“is
Maryut Bay, about a mile down the coast.”
Now the others were getting the picture. “See how the Maryut
shoreline curves? Almost like here in Alex!” Jasper pointed out.
“At eight thousand feet, a Jerry bombardier would have
trouble telling one from the other,” one man chimed in. Exclaimed another: “Particularly
at night, and with ack-ack shells exploding around him!”
“Exactly!” Maskelyne declared. “The beauty of the idea is
that we won’t have to move or cover anything. All we’ve got to do is to lay
down a network of ground lights and structures at Maryut resembling those in
Alex. When we know Jerry planes are on the way, we just turn out the Alex
harbor lights and switch them on at Maryut. Then we set off explosives we’ve
planted at Maryut, and the fires will draw Jerry like bees to honey!”
“Well, what about the next morning when Jerry recon planes
come over to take pictures of the damage at Alex harbor?” one man asked.
“As long as the Jerry recon boys see rubble around Alex
harbor, they’ll become convinced that their bombardiers had been right on
target,” Jasper said. “If Jerry wants rubble, we’ll give him rubble—plenty of
it!”
Maskelyne and his gang plunged into their daunting task. The
area around Maryut was sealed off to keep out inquisitive natives—and German
spies. Some two hundred army engineers and other craftsmen were assigned to the
project.
Working with Royal Navy people, one member of the Magic Gang
supervised the creation of canvas ship superstructures. Dim night lights were
placed on these dummies. Tall wooden stakes with similar lights atop them were
planted in Maryut Bay to give the impression from high above that scores of
other ships were at anchor.
Night aerial photos of Alexandria harbor were used as a
pattern for Maryut, where hundreds of electric lanterns were staked into the
sand and mud. Then they were wired together to be switched on when Luftwaffe
bombers were approaching.
Scores of plywood sheds and small buildings were built. Many
of them were packed with explosives that would give off flash and smoke
identical to that of detonating bombs.
“Duplicating” the towering Pharos lighthouse was a major
task in itself. The masquerade was built around the fact that German
bombardiers, high in the sky in the blackness, would be unable to determine how
high a structure was. A working “lighthouse” was created by mounting truck
searchlights on a plywood slab held up by six stilt legs. These genuine lights
were connected to a timer that would switch them on and off, giving the
impression that the platform appeared to be rotating.
Making this ploy work would require delicate timing. Once
German airmen had time to take a bearing on the phony lighthouse, it would be
switched off, just as the Pharos lighthouse had been.
Jasper Maskelyne clearly was reveling in his role of master manipulator
for the entire project. All of the lights and explosives detonators at Maryut
Bay were connected to a console that Jasper would operate atop the genuine
Pharos lighthouse.
In the meantime, feverish work was underway to “bomb” the
real harbor at Alexandria when the time came. Thousands of tons of rubble were
trucked in and distributed in numerous places, then covered with tarpaulins.
After a Luftwaffe attack—hopefully on Maryut—the entire rubble would be
uncovered for the benefit of German aerial photographs after daylight.
Bomb craters were painted on huge slabs of canvas, and these
would be laid on the ground or hung from Alexandria buildings to simulate heavy
damage. Scrap piles were raided throughout the region. Truck and vehicle hulks,
already wrecked, were hauled in and would be put next to the phony craters.
Thousands of papier-mâché bricks were rapidly manufactured,
and these would be strewn about the premises. As a mute testimony to the
“accuracy” of German bombardiers, dummy masts would protrude from the water in
the harbor, graphic testimony that ships had been sunk.
If the Maryut machination was to bamboozle the Germans,
bombers would have to be met by a good-sized amount of antiaircraft fire. So
Maskelyne coerced the Alexandria harbor defense commander to
shift—reluctantly—many guns and crews to Maryut. At the same time, orders were
given to the gunners remaining at Alexandria not to fire unless directly
attacked.
Now everything was ready for the Great Performance. The
show’s schedule had been refined, the scenery and props were in place, and the
performers had been rehearsed. Like actors in prewar music halls of Europe, all
the thespians were nervous. “Opening night” was at hand. Only the
“audience”—the German bomber force—would decide if the performance would be a
hit or a miserable failure.
Two nights later, reports from the desert told Maskelyne and
Frank Knox, an Oxford professor, that a German bomber force was winging toward
Alexandria. The two men were both elated and anxious. Atop the Pharos
lighthouse, they were prime targets to be killed.
“Don’t worry about it,” Maskelyne reassured the other. “If
we get done in, we won’t have to explain why our project had been a disaster!”
Minutes later, after it was estimated that the lead
Luftwaffe bombardier had taken his bearings from the powerful illumination atop
Pharos lighthouse, Maskelyne slammed down a switch—and Alexandria harbor was
gripped by blackness. Another lever was activated, and the dummy lighthouse at
Maryut was ablaze. Then the searchlights at Maryut began to crisscross the sky,
and as the Luftwaffe flight neared, the antiaircraft guns at Maryut opened
fire.
When the sky force came ever closer and the magicians in the
Pharos lighthouse felt the bombardiers were close enough to spot the Maryut
illumination, the dummy harbor was suddenly blacked out, just as had been the
case for months when Alexandria had been attacked. Much to the delight of
Maskelyne and his companion, the Luftwaffe bombers ignored Alexandria and began
dropping bombs on the phony harbor at Maryut.
Now, as planned, a series of blasts were set off at Maryut
by the two men in the Pharos lighthouse. Thick fingers of flame—all planted
earlier by the Magic Gang—leaped into the black sky. Piles of dry timber,
previously placed, were ignited. Succeeding flights dropped their explosives on
the sandy desolate beaches. The dummy harbor had been virtually “destroyed.”
In the meantime, Maskelyne’s “rubble strewers” raced through
the dark streets and alleys of Alexandria, removing the tarpaulins from the
crushed masonry and bricks, spreading the canvases with painted bomb craters,
and scattering thousands of papier-mâché bricks.
As soon as the final German bomber headed back to its base,
scores of Royal Engineers went to work at Maryut. Fires were extinguished, the
genuine wreckage was covered by sand, and the destroyed “stage
props”—shrubbery, cardboard buildings, and harbor lights—were replaced. The
dummy harbor had to be ready for a return engagement by the Luftwaffe.
All that day, the joy of the Magic Gang was tempered. After
receiving aerial photos of the “damage” inflicted on Alexandria harbor, would
the Germans realize that they had been duped? Only if another bomber force
swallowed the bait and again pounded the dummy harbor at Maryut would it be
known if the deception had been successful.
That night, the bombers roared in lower than usual, no doubt
bent on inflicting even more damage. They pounced on Maryut, which soon was
engulfed in flames. For eight successive nights, the Luftwaffe returned. Each
morning, the Magic Gang, along with the Royal Engineers, replaced the
“destruction” at Maryut and created “wreckage” at Alexandria.
Suddenly, the Germans lost interest in Alexandria. Ultra,
the ingenious British interception and decoding machine at Bletchley Park,
north of London, disclosed the reason. Adolf Hitler was about to launch
Operation Barbarossa, a massive invasion of the Soviet Union, and large numbers
of bomber units were transferred from North Africa to support Barbarossa.
In the next twenty months, millions of tons of the
accoutrements of war would land safely at Alexandria harbor, supplies
eventually used to help drive the Germans out of North Africa.
