Dummy AA battery?

[Nightjar]

First thing I thought of when I saw the subject line, but then I had read the book. It seems that some things were so hard to camouflage that it was easier to build dummy versions.

The unit even built an entire rail head in the Western Desert, at 2/3 size to save on materials, using wood and canvas for rolling stock and lorries. They used water tins cut and shaped to replicate the rails, carefully tapering the tracks over several miles (I think it was something like 20 miles away from the real one), so the size change was not obvious. They put a bloke in a trench some way off and his job was to fire explosive charges under stocks of contaminated petrol when the site was bombed, so it looked as though real stores were going up.

[Nightjar]

It is a perfectly serious post. The camouflage unit did exist and they made a number of dummy installations as part of their work.

1914, when Britain started mounting pairs of quick firing AA guns around the coast, although guns had been used against balloons as early as the Franco-Prussian War. :-)

The electrical battery size was first standardised in 1947, although it had been in use before that.

[Uncle Peter]

Only one is any good, I saw someone with a Samsung phone which looked li= ke a camera. There was a proper optical zoom lens on one side. He call= ed it a phone camera instead of a camera phone.

-- =

What do you call a cheap circumcision? A rip off.

[Uncle Peter]

I dunno how they work.

-- =

Barry bit Ben's bum before Betty bumfingered big Bertha's buttocks besid= e Brian's burning bonfire. -- Ronnie Tompkins, circa 2014.

[Uncle Peter]

I see no benefit of it over Ebay, and Ebay is easier to use, and has 2nd hand things available, and small private sellers. I looked at selling things on Amazon once, and the fees were extortionate, no wonder things cost more on there.

[damduck-egg]

Was that unit where they called on the services of theatre/film prop men and a stage illusionist or magician?

G.Harman

[Uncle Peter]

Of course it is, it's just like any other smartphone, but the reverse si= de has a far bigger lens.

-- =

He'll be coming in her crevice when he comes, he'll be coming in her crevice when he comes, when he's coming in her crevice, his poles's the size of Nevis, he'll be coming in her crevice when he comes.

[Uncle Peter]

ICs cannot cause movement.

-- =

What do you call 4 sheep tied to a post in Wales? A leisure centre!

[Uncle Peter]

Not in my experience.

Then we agree for once.

Really? Can I go on there right now and sell my lawn mower?

They do. I worked out how much it would cost to sell computers on there. It was more than double.

[Nightjar]

Magician Jasper Maskelyne did start out in the Royal Engineers camouflage section, before transferring to MI9 to create devices to hide POW escape equipment, then briefly back to camouflage before ending up entertaining the troops. If you believe his accounts, he won the war virtually single handed with his deceptions. However, his superiors are said not to have been quite so impressed with his abilities, which is probably why he was moved around so much.

In general, camouflage officers usually had an artistic background of some sort; painters, sculptors, film makers and stage designers. I don't know whether there were any prop men, but I would have thought they were more likely to end up making gadgets for the SOE.

The chap who devised the dummy railhead was artist Steven Sykes, who later designed a major chapel in the new Coventry Cathedral:

Sir Peter Scott worked on naval camouflage.

[damduck-egg]

Ta , It was more the originators of such things rather than blokes making the parts I was thinking of so prop men was the wrong term to use. As for the gadget makers many years ago I had a copy of the Secret War

1939-1945 which described the sometimes crazy antics of the Department of Miscellaneous Weapon Development. Must get hold of it again for a read although as it dates from the 50's it will be a dated. Foreword by the author Nevil Shute who was one of the "Wheezers and Dodgers" as the Departments staff came to be called as he was an aviation engineer before becoming a writer.

G.Harman

[Bob Eager]

Actually, Shute (real name Nevil Shute Norway) was both for quite a while, but kept it quiet (hence the pen name). He wrote Marazan, his first novel, while working on the R100. There was a lot of politics involved ('capitalist private enterprise R100' vs. 'socialist government R101'). It would have not been good to show an R100 engineer moonlighting as a novelist. He started a company of his own later, but was no good at running companies, just starting them, so he ended up just writing.

Fascinating to read the stories of sunbathing on top of the R100 while en route to Canada, and his (possibily biased) views of the R101 design. His autobiography, 'Slide Rule', is well worth reading, although more interesting for the first half or so.

[Tony Bryer]

The best of his books are superb, though I don't go much on the ones with dream and time shift plots. Trustee from the Toolroom is probably my favourite. He spent his last ten years (sadly only living to 60) at Langwarrin, just south of Melbourne.

[damduck-egg]

ord by

Quite true, I should really should have said before becoming well known as a writer. G.Harman

[whisky-dave]

I'm sure I remmeber the days when tehy were called HP7s

[charles]

"pen cells", surely predates that.

[Johny B Good]

Of course! That goes without saying, I mean a "herd of bulls"? Does anyone know of any farmer that keeps a _herd_ of bulls?

I suppose its just possible in the case of a stud farm but I imagine the biggest danger would be a backside full of rock salt if the farmer were to see such mindless cruelty.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, not every contender for a "Darwin Medal" manages to attain the necessary status required to qualify for this award.

[The Natural Philosopher]

U7 IIRC before manganese technology

[Johny B Good]

I'm afraid Pounder's mis-configured news reader client (staggeringly, Outlook Express rather than the expected Live Mail) is confusing you by attributing quoted text as his own.

Annoyingly, he's not the only contributer who commits such atrocity.

[Johny B Good]

At last! Back on topic. :-)