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The intriguing story of the WW2 airfield that wasn't there!
Read stories from the people who held thise closely-guarded secret for years
Part of the remarkable story of the war of deception to confound Hitler
The Dummy Drome
is a well-researched story about an aerodrome that wasn't really there - this was RAF Wick's decoy
airfield near Sarclet, by Thrumster in Caithness.
The featureless landscape was
grazed by sheep finding what sustenance they could and there were no people or
structures in sight. Even the 'solid ground' was only an illusion: a wide
expanse of heather covered a great depth of peat bog that couldn't be ploughed
for fear machinery and animals would sink.
This deception was exactly
what was needed - an illusion dreamed up by military strategists and cinema-set
designers in faraway offices. For a brief period it was busy, active and vital,
full of people and buildings with three broad and very obvious tracks with
lights and noise. It was very much on the map, specifically designed to draw
attention to itself.
The Air Ministry
cartographers who made it look larger than it really was transposed the design
of a real aerodrome onto a blank area on the map of northern Scotland. The
planners added standard building designs in the right places. Huge quantities
of raw materials were brought to the site and construction workers created
runways that a plane could not land on. Artists and craftsmen made planes that
couldn't fly and even painted them onto canvas. Men and women from all over the
country came here to work at a place that was not a working airfield, although
their very presence as they moved about was an essential part of its apparent
function.
The Dummy Drome
tells the story of how it became a part of the lives of the people
who built it, worked there or lived nearby. These hitherto untold stories
reveal the experiences and recollections of the ordinary people who knew it and
who were sworn to secrecy. This was only
one of over 200 similar decoy sites, and it is possible to piece
together what's left of it on the ground some 80 years later, since it is clearly
visible from the air.
