The unit sailed from Naples in March 1945 and joined what was designated Operation Craftsman, a series of deceptions supporting the Allied operations against the Gothic Line in northern Italy. The specific operations conducted by the 3133rd included deceptions in the Serchio Valley on April 4-5, 1945, and in the area near Bologna on April 14-15, 1945. The timing of the Bologna deception placed it in the final days of organized German resistance in Italy, as Allied forces conducted the operations that would lead to the German surrender in that theater on May 2, 1945.
The 3133rd’s commander later reported that a captured German commander stated he had been deceived — that the operations had produced the intended disorientation about Allied unit locations and intentions. This after-action testimony, while not independently confirmable from currently available German records, is consistent with the kind of tactical confusion the sonic deception was designed to produce.
After the German surrender in Italy, the 3133rd deployed to Yugoslavia and Greece in 1946 and was disbanded that year. Its service was separately recognized — the Congressional Gold Medal in 2024 covered both the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops and the 3133rd Signal Service Company Special, acknowledging that the two units, though operationally separate, shared a mission and a kind of service that warranted recognition together.
## The Connection Between Seeing and Deceiving
There is a philosophical dimension to what the artists of the 23rd did that their contemporaries in the conventional Army would not necessarily have articulated, but that is visible in retrospect.