A newly unearthed collection of rare World War II photographs has revealed one of the war's top-secret projects - dummy aircraft built to fool enemy pilots.
The wooden fighters and bombers were scattered around airfields in 1942 as Japan continued its push down the Pacific and wartime leaders feared New Zealand
could become the target of enemy air raids.
Matthew O'Sullivan, keeper of photographs at the Air Force Museum in Christchurch, said that, until last year when the collection of photographs was donated to the museum, little was known about the dummy aircraft.
"The dummies were, of course, intended to draw the enemies' fire and distract attention from the real thing," Mr O'Sullivan says in Air Force News.
Dummies of Hudson bombers and Hurricane and Kittyhawk fighters were built by private joinery companies after Air Headquarters ordered the Public Works Department to build them.
The department was short of manpower so the private companies were paid costs plus a 10 per cent margin.
Mr O'Sullivan said that by 1943 the threat of Japanese air attacks had lessened and production of the dummy aircraft was stopped.
He said 254 of them were delivered. The early examples cost between £210 and £840.
Later, the cost of a fighter was £230 and a bomber was £430.
"The aircraft needed to appear realistic when viewed from a speeding aircraft at 50ft [17m]," Mr O'Sullivan said.
"They also had to be capable of being wheeled into a different position each day, as the same grouping every day would arouse the suspicions of enemy reconnaissance."
Some of the dummy aircraft were later shipped to the Pacific Islands and others were sold for £2 each.
Mr O'Sullivan said that there were few good pictures of the dummy aircraft taken from the ground, although aerial photographs in the museum's collection showed the dummies on various airfields.
- NZPA
