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Amongst the papers my father left was the following transcript of the talk entitled Decoys that he gave to the Hythe RAFA in June 1998.

Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Nice and polite, I hope that it puts you on your guard. It was meant too. The object of a decoy is to lead you astray. A kind of conjuring trick. Now you see it. Now you don't.

I looked up the word 'decoy' in the dictionary.

A decoy is a lure like the little fish bait or shiny spinner or coloured fly on the end of a fishing line, designed and selected to lure a big fish.

But I'm not going to talk to you about fishing this evening. I want to tell you something about RAF decoys.

Some of you WAAFS may think you have already heard about airmen who can spin a yarn, hoping to catch a bird. My story is not like that. Well, not exactly anyway. We certainly were trying to lure some pretty dangerous fly by nights. There is a long tradition in warfare of setting up a sitting duck to lead the unwary up the garden path.

I know, I am mixing my metaphors, but an example in world war one was the use by the British Navy of Q ships. Clapped out merchant ships which through the periscope of a U boat would look unarmed, but having lured the submarine to the surface and nicely into range, part of the bulwark would swing open and the muzzle of a gun would appear and let fly. That would be one less U-boat to harass our merchant navy. Clearly a tactic like that can easily backfire.

When Mata Hari lured those khaki clad officers into her web - I said 'web' - but you can read 'bed' if you like. Her plan also backfired and she lost her head. Well actually she was shot as a spy by a French firing squad.

I hope you have all got my message. Decoys are a long established weapon of warfare. I think it was a thousand years or more BC that the Trojans pulled a Wooden Horse inside their city walls. Odysseus or Ulysses, if you prefer, climbed out of it in the night and opened the city gate and 'burned the topless towers of Ilium'.

For the first 18 months of my service in the RAF, I served on a Decoy site. And that is what I want to talk to you about.

I suppose they realised that I would not have made a good Mata Hari, so after my square bashing on Blackpool promenade and presumably not impressed by my qualifications to train as a W/Op, I was posted to a Balloon Barrage station at RAF Hook. It was the week before Christmas 1940 and blowing very cold. My route from Blackpool had taken me via Mildenhall and Waterbeach, where the snow seemed to blow horizontally every morning as we made our way to the cookhouse, with our pint mugs and 'irons' in our hands. That pint of tea was good.

As a posting, Hook, near The Ace of Spades on the Kingston bye pass, sounded a real piece of cake. Apart from my gang of twenty new recruits with squeaky boots, it seemed we were chosen to spent Christmas with a large contingent of WAAFS. I was quite young at the time: but not that young. But certainly misguided and over optimistic. Flight sergeant in the Orderly Room made it clear that we were not expected and that he had no beds for us - Don't get excited! One of the balloon hangers was empty. Not completely. Piles of balloon silk were rolled up and we were invited to use them as mattresses. I think it was the day after Boxing Day that we were loaded together with kit bag over our shoulders, into the back of a three toner and driven into the unknown.

In fact we stopped outside a pub about a mile outside of Warlingham, just across the valley from Kenley, south of Croydon. From nowhere a couple of corporals and a sergeant seemed to have attached themselves to our mob and lined us up in single file to march at leisurely pace behind the local bobby. Outside almost every house, we halted and one, two or three of us were detailed off to go inside and make ourselves at home. We had already had civvy billets in Blackpool, so it was not such a great surprise. But our hosts were not Blackpool landladies. Most of them were very hospitable. I and three others, Dave, Sandy and Pinky stayed with Mr and Mrs Bennett for nearly a year and a half.

A really cushy billet. Half a crown a day and all found. What was beer in those days? Four pence a pint and cider tuppence. We paraded for pay every fortnight. That was almost the only time we saw an officer.

Are you getting tired of this autobiography? Would you like me to tell you about Decoys?

You are not going to get the choice anyway! But I'll take you to Farleigh Common later.

Let me just explain how you got lumbered with my rambling on. It was Joe's fault. I was the sitting duck. Just before one of our monthly meetings I mentioned to him that I had just been sent details that the Flixton Aviation Museum, near Bungay on the Suffolk / Norfolk border where a Reunion of Decoymen was to be held in June and I asked him if the Committee would be interested to arrange a trip to the Museum.

By the end of the evening he announced that I had volunteered to give a talk about Didicoys or Decoys or something.

I was told as an 'erk' Never to volunteer. They'll call you when they want you. They did. Eventually I was shipped off to Burma, just after the Japs had grabbed it all . But that's another diversion.

I will start with STARFISH because that was the kind of decoy that I served at, on Farleigh Common.

Following the battle of Britain it was decided to protect our cities and airfields by setting up a series of decoys that would lure the Luftwaffe away from their intended targets.

The operation was a combined ops enterprise though the RAF got the lions share of the work. HQ was located at Shepperton Film Studios under Col. (later Sir) John Turner. The film studios are used to creating a world of make believe, so they were the obvious people to design and set up our sites.

When I was trucked onto Farleigh Common Starfish site for the first time that late December morning, the film crews were already busy erecting a series of skeletal structures all over a valley farm, covering an area of about one mile by a quarter with scaffolding towers and blocks of wire baskets. Pairs of one thousand gallon galvanised tanks were positioned on top of 20 foot high towers, one filled with water and the other with diesel or paraffin. Under each tank a simple control system like a WC flush released the liquids down pipes into 15 foot heavy cast iron troughs filled with coal or coke over a bed of fire lighter materials. Electrically wired flash bang detonators assured ignition by a switch in the dug out. The idea was that the coal would be lit when enemy bombers were in the area at night and after the cast iron trough was good an hot the diesel was released. This boiled and the vapours ignited. The water was then released onto the burning oil causing a virtual explosion of fire and steam. It was all very impressive but films lost some of their magic.

Patterns of fire baskets were arranged to look like blocks of buildings. Each basket, about the size of a tea chest was made of wire mesh and stuffed with oil soaked wood shavings or similar inflammable materials, each wired up for controlled ignition. To keep the rain out, each fire was covered with tarred roofing felt.

My first job was to take a spade and dig a trench in a corner of the site, well away from the fires. Only about three feet deep but eight feet wide and 15 feet long with a ramp at each end for rolling 45 gallon drums of fuel into safe storage and ready for reloading after operations. This was before the days of JCBs and fork lift trucks. Of course Pilot Officer Prune came down after we had finished to tell us that we had dug the hole in the wrong corner. We filled it in and started all over again.

The elite craftsmen, the two electricians and two drivers as well as the NCO's (all 'Regulars') usually waltzed around in their smart uniforms. The rest of us 'erks', all AC2 ACH/GH's - the lowest form of life in His Majesty's Air Force - were togged out in dark blue overalls and gum boots that were soon splattered with mud and soaked in oil.

I suspect we 'erks' were shared out by lot between the three NCO's into three squads of 6 men. I was on guard duty every third night for the rest of my time on that Starfish. I did two hours 'on' and four hours 'off' tramping around the site with a heavy Browing Automatic. Corporal taught me to take it to pieces, clean and oil it and put it back together again but I never learned to aim it or fire it but we never reported any intruders on our site. Civilian neighbours know to give us a wide berth.

We only operated about half a dozen times, which is quits as well as it was a very filthy business. Our landlady showed amazing tolerance! There was a war on, of course!

Until they found us a Nissen Hut, our Guard Room was a Scout Hut at the end of the valley. Bunks along one side allowed us to get our heads down when we were not out on patrol. One night, I remember, I was fast asleep on the lower bunk. Pinkie was above me. I opened my eyes to see him dropping to the floor at great speed and the loud bang of an HE exploding just outside the door.

We hadn't even 'lit up'. Afterwards Pinkie said "Didn't you hear its whistle?" I had rolled over with a clear conscience and gone back to sleep. It wasn't a dream but the bomb in fact landed nearly a quarter of a mile away.

The only casualty we ever suffered on that site was me!

It was during the summer so I was stripped comfortably to the waist. The tarred roof felt needed replacing at intervals as the wind tore it. I was detailed to collect the old bits and make a bonfire in a safe corner. You know what boys are like with sticks and bonfires. I must have flicked one of the pieces of burning felt, it splattered me with hot tar. Corporal swore. Sergeant decided to send me off to the nearby mental hospital where medical attention was possible. The tar had solidified on my bare arms and had to be carefully dissolved away before applying an antiseptic coat of brilliant gentian violet. I kept my shirt on after that.

I would not like you to think I was fighting a one man war. There were ten thousand of us engaged on Decoy work scattered all over the country. Starfish sites only operated at night and were designed to look like industrial complexes. There were many other kinds of decoys.

Col Turner's Department also set up airfield decoys to attract daytime strafing as well as night bombers. 'K' Sites were Dummy Airfields with dummy aircraft well dispersed, an old ambulance and fire tender, cardboard buildings and simulated defences including gun emplacements which were regularly manned. The Dummy aircraft were moved about from day to day.

Q Sites were night time airfields. The early goose neck flared Flare Paths were later replaced with electric lighting.

Dummy railway marshalling yards and docks were operated where appropriate.

In the UK including Northern Ireland we had
230 Dummy airfields
400 Dummy urban and industrial sites

My final tribute to the Starfish is the following, taken from a press cutting:-

"STARFISH DECOY SECRET SAVED BRITISH CITIES
Fires flickering at night in the heart of the countryside during the Blitz years, fooled the Luftwaffe into dropping thousands of bombs on open land."

Starfish was first tried out in December 1940, it drew off five Nazi blitz attempts that month. By the end of the war Starfish decoyed 100 major strafing and 5% of German bombs were dropped harmlessly, saving an estimated 2,500 lives and 3,000 casualties.

Other decoys were also used. During the daylight attacks in 1940 and early 1941, dummy planes and dumps decoyed 36 attacks meant to hit the RAF. At night, farms became airfields. Phoney landing lights simulating the real thing. But it was the Starfish that saved the lives of civilians and prevented the destruction of millions of pounds worth of property.

In April 1941, 144 Nazi planes headed for Portsmouth. Eight bombs fell on the town. Then the planes passed on, lured by Starfish, to drop hundreds more bombs in open country.

In one night 150 bombs intended for Cardiff went astray. Many hundreds of bombs meant for Bristol missed. A Middlesborough blitz miscarried. Starfish did not always work well with widespread cities like London, Birmingham. At Glasgow success was hampered by tram flashes, though one night 100 bombs were dropped away on the hills. A full mood that lighted up Liverpool docks beat Starfish during Merseyside's worth week of bombing. But an attack on Nottingham was diverted, a starfish blazed into the night as German planes wheeled, dropping their bombs in the Belvoire valley 14 miles away. The pilots thought the Starfish was Derby, also scheduled for blitzing and took it as their guide in dropping their bombs where they thought Nottingham lay.

Starfish was one of the best kept secrets of the war. Farmers who had RAF decoys experts billeted on them did not talk. Nor did they complain -though location of a Starfish on their land meant great risk to them and their families. In fact, in 730 attacks on decoys only four civilian casualties occurred.

Of course there were a number of sad tragedies where our own pilots were mislead by our decoys. In spite of coded signals some RAF aircraft tried to land on decoy airfields.

The following is quoted from 'Decoy Sites in Norfolk and Suffolk':-

"Fog was encountered as the Wellington of 214 Squadron returned from a long trip to Berlin. Forced down to a low altitude and fuel tanks virtually gone (hit by flak), the crew spotted first a red light and then another flashing the letter K in morse. The W/Op interpreted this as 'Carry on'. The Wellington repeatedly signalled SOS on its own lights. A flarepath was spotted and the bomber made a straight in approach. It tore through the tops of some trees, hit the ground hard, bounced a couple of times and hit the ground hard collapsing the under carriage. None of the crew were seriously hurt though the Wellington was a write off. The pilot's name was Cranswick."

Of course if this were an autobiography there would be more personal anecdotes to tell, like:-
The Messersmitt that missed me, and I hadn't even got to the Starfish by then.
The airfield that was built and finished but never commissioned because the ground it was built on was too soft.
The landmine that hovered over Warlingham but gave us enough time to down our pints before we scarpa'ed and ran into more trouble.
Me German school exchange friend who was staying with me when war broke out. (see 'Friend in both camps' on this web site)
And I haven't even mentioned the nurse from the mental hospital at the end of our road.

But I didn't come simply to shoot a line, and I think you have had enough, but in defence to my decoy comrades let me just say that without those K site dummy airfields we might have lost the Battle of Britain, because they attracted half the attacks meant for the real operational airfields. Between 1940 and 1944 the night time Q site airfields were bombed as much as the real, operational airfields.

Not many decoymen had as quiet a time as I did.

Thank you.
Trevor Denniff June 1998

Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation Museum, Flixton, Bungay, Suffolk
Decoy Sites by Huby Fairhead
Colonel Turner's Department - Memoirs of the men that operated the secret decoy sites, edited by Huby Fairhead
The Dummy Airfield 'K' Sites - Reminiscences by Geoff Hall and Doug Feary

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