During World War II, Germany Built Wooden Airfields to Fool the Allies, So They Bombed It With Wooden Bombs

During WWII, the Germans built fake wooden airfields with wooden aircraft and vehicles in order to trick the Allies, however, the RAF responded by waiting for them to finish and then dropped a single fake wooden bomb on it.

This story has been told in many ways, where locations of where the airfield was and how it was bombed being different but the gist is this:

An enemy decoy airfield, built in occupied Holland, let to a tale that has been told and retold every since by veteran Allied pilots. The German “airfield,” was constructed with meticulous care, made almost entirely of wood. There were wooden hangars, oil tanks, gun emplacements, trucks, and aircraft.

The Germans took so long in building their wooden decoy that Allied photo experts had more than enough time to observe and report it. The day finally came when the decoy was finished, down to the last wooden plank. And early the following morning a lone RAF plane crossed the Channel, came in low, circled the field once, and dropped a large wooden bomb.

Could this story be true? The use of decoy airfields and other make-believe facilities during the Second World War was no legend at all.

Both sides tried to fool each other and there is no doubt that the Germans built wooden airplanes and sometimes complete airfields to keep the allies away from the actual airfields. They also painted bomb damage on existing airfields to make them look unusable and spare them from further bombing.