Last month the world celebrated Armistice Day, the anniversary of the ending of WWI. While looking back on the “war to end all wars” a few historians discovered a story that had been forgotten by the ages. Le Figaro newspaper dug up a massive project that was underway by the French government, building a second Paris.
Located just a few miles north of the actual city, the twin was being built as a decoy. Fear of German bombers destroying the city prompted a massive-scale replica to fool the enemy into destroying the wrong Paris. Construction began in 1918 and the planners completed an impressive amount of work before the war was ended. And because the public was kept largely in the dark almost no one had heard of the plan until it was unveiled in November 2011.
“It’s an extraordinary story and one which even Parisians knew very little about,” said Professor Jean-Claude Delarue, a leading historian based in the French capital. “The plan was kept secret for obvious reasons, but it shows how seriously military planners were already taking the new threat of aerial bombardment”.
Unfeasible as it sounds now, the primitive technology of the time is what gave the plan potential. Radar was a brand new, hardly-used invention so there was no fear of the Germans simply plugging in coordinates and hitting a target. Their bombing method of choice was the Gotha GV, a heavy plane where the crew simply dropped the bombs by hand, not the most sophisticated of methods. Since they relied heavily on eyesight and bombed almost exclusively at night, lighting the new Paris correctly was of utmost importance, so the government hired an Italian electric engineer to illuminate the fake target.
- A fake subway station
In addition, Paris landmarks would need to be replicated. Gare du Nord station, the Champs-Elysées, and even entire neighborhoods were constructed. No detail was spared as the roofs of buildings were covered in a special translucent paint to replicate the dirty windows of Paris factories.
Since much of the project was kept secret, it remains unknown how much they were planning to actually build. The war ended before it was given a single test, but it’s curious to wonder if they would have gone as far as recreating an entire Arc de Triomphe or even Eiffel Tower. Who knows how well it could have worked; hopefully better than it did for Gob Bluth.
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Pictures and Information courtesy of: Telegraph and Smart Planet.
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“Radar was a brand new, hardly-used invention so there was no fear of the Germans simply plugging in coordinates and hitting a target.”
radar certainly would’ve been “brand new” in 1918, since it wasn’t invented ’til decades later.
not to mention the sentence is a non sequiter, confusing detection with guidance…
Wikipedia states that the term RADAR wasn’t coined before 1940. But it also states that “As early as 1886, Heinrich Hertz showed that radio waves could be reflected from solid objects.” and that they had a concept of using radiowaves for detecting objects long before 1940. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar
Radar was put to use in the 30′s and used in world war II where the name radr was coined from the navy’s radio detection and ranging. So I wouldn’t call an approximately 20 year span “decades later”
” I wouldn’t call an approximately 20 year span “decades later””
Really? 20 years seems on the order of decades to me (as opposed to years or centuries).
I might call 30 years decades, but I don’t really think a pair.
Just me, though.
10 years- Decade.
20 Years- Decades, plural.
^^ This. I can’t believe people are so dumb they’d want to argue against that. Must be those 1+1×0=0 people…
^^ The correct answer: 1+1×0=1
If it was (1+1)x0 then your answer would be correct
They might have had simple radio beacon direction finding and null-loop antennas to get a bearing on the signal, but even that would have been pressing the state of the art in 1918. And real easy to jam or spoof.
No, this could have worked if the opposition bombers were working at night and restricted (by the existing tech) solely to compass bearing, speed and time based dead reckoning. Getting there three minutes early wouldn’t have raised suspicions.
Aaah, I get it!
And tomorrow when the Germans come flying in to destroy the real Paris they’ll actually be destroying the fake Paris, but they’ll think that it’s the real Paris, but we’ll know, that it’s the fake Paris.
A plan worthy of Inspector Clouseau.
or Mel Brooks.
The Germans wouldn’t have been fooled since they’ve seen the trick before. A small contingent of WWII German SS was part of Hedly Lemmar’s band of outlaws hired to raze the town of Rock Ridge in the late 1880′s.
^ Blazing Saddles reference for the win!
Just like what Maskelyn did in the *second* world war (when RADAR was just getting going – see Sir Watson-Watt’s bio [yes, he was a descendant of James Watt]), only he did replicate Cairo in miniature in the desert and fooled the attacking Jerries successfully.
Alexandria, not Cairo.
Right, my bad – shows what relying on memory will do. In fairness, I read about this a good 15 years ago, or was it…..hmmm, oh well.
Proves the point. If the technique worked in WW2 it certainly would have worked back in WW1 when pilots navigated entirely visually.
This was tried successfully against the German Afrika Korps during WWII. The brainchild of a former magician named Jasper Maskelyn, the bombing of Alexandria and its port was prevented by a very similar ruse. A scale city was built down the coast in the form of lights, as it was only necessary to fool the Germans at night. One cool story amongst many of this former magicians escapades…
Mel Brooks did this in Blazing Saddles…..
It worked then!!!
As you recall, it took longer to build the fake town than planned, so there was a coin tollbooth put up on the road leading to the town, to slow down the gang of ruffians.
I guess there were no German land forces advancing on the fake Paris, so they didn’t have to put up a tollbooth.
…somebody’s gotta go back to Berlin and get a s**tload oh dimes!!
+1 Internets for you!
Somebody’s gotta go back to Berlin and get a s**tload a dimes!!
And then the war was over. And the French insisted on an amazingly onerous treaty with the Germans that set the stage for WWII.
Well done.
Should have kept building.
Sheriff Bart: Listen to me, and listen to me good. I want you to get all the brothers together, round up all the lumber, canvas, paint and nails you can lay your hands on and meet me tonight 3 miles due east of Rock Ridge at midnight. You understand? Now, before the sun comes up, we’re going to build on this site an exact replica of the town of Rock Ridge. Every building, every storefront, every rock and every tree, right down to the orange roof on Howard Johnson’s outhouse.