Oscar Goes To War

Oscar Goes To War. Served: 1939 - 1944.

All warfare is based on deception. , Sun Tzu, The Art of War (4th century B.C.)

, The development of paratroop forces quickly fostered the idea of using decoys for deception purposes. The first use of paratroop decoy dummies was by the German Army in the assault upon Fort Eben-Emael, Belgium, in May 1940. An American manufacturer, George Freedman, of Ashland, Massachusetts secretly created a decoy for the British in 1939. Codenamed "Rupert" it appeared in Operation Titanic, a major deception ploy used during the June 1944 Normandy Invasion. The U.S. military continued developing the concept, creating the "Navy PD Pack" and later the Army "simulator, decoy paratrooper: self-destructive," codenamed "Oscar." Paratroop decoys were used by the Allies during Operation Dragoon, the August 1944 invasion of southern France. Afterwards, "Berlin Sally", a German radio propagandist, referred to the decoys as the "product of a fiendish Anglo-Saxon mind.", [Captions:] , George Freedman posed with the prototype "Rupert" developed for the British Army., The Navy developed the PD Pack for Marine airborne operation., The 48-inch high "Oscar" was rigged with a sound device to simulate gunfire and a TNT block to destroy the figure.