On the night of March 18, 1945, soldiers from a small and highly unusual U.S. Army unit were setting up rubber tanks in a muddy field in western Germany. The tanks were inflatable — neoprene-coated fabric shells pumped full of air by gasoline compressors, each one weighing about 93 pounds and capable of fooling a German reconnaissance pilot from several hundred feet in the air. The men placing them worked quietly and carefully. They wanted the Germans to find the tanks. The whole point was to be seen.
Ten miles away, the real Rhine crossing was being planned. The genuine assault troops of the Ninth Army’s XVI Corps were massing in a different location entirely, preparing to storm one of the great natural barriers of the European theater. If the deception held, the German defenders would be looking the wrong direction. If it failed, tens of thousands of Americans would cross a heavily defended river against a prepared enemy.
The unit responsible for this operation was the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, a 1,100-man outfit that had spent the previous year convincing the German military that it was two full divisions. Its soldiers included painters, designers, actors, and sound engineers. Its equipment included inflatable armor, halftrack-mounted speakers, and a radio deception capability that could mimic any unit in the theater. For roughly twenty months it had been staging what its own members called “multimedia deception shows” across France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany. Operation Viersen, the Rhine crossing deception of March 1945, was their last and largest performance.