- The French tried to outsmart the Germans during WWI by building a fake Paris.
- Fearful of an overnight aerial attack, the French began building a fake town miles away from actual Paris.
While countries deploy many methods during war, the French got innovative during World War I in an effort to trick German bomber pilots by creating a "decoy Paris."
The plan to build a fake Paris to trick German bomber pilots in the time before radars and missile defense systems was discovered after John Ptak found a map that showed the plan and design for the fake city from 1917, Bloomberg reported.
Ptak stumbled across the map in a copy of a 1920 article "A False Paris Outside Paris—a 'City' Created to be Bombed" in a copy of Illustrated London News.
The Daily Beast reported that the idea began to be floated in 1917, a few years after Paris was first bombed by the Germans in 1914. The idea was to trick bombers, who at the time relied on imprecise locations, by creating the illusion that the city was actually a few miles on the outskirts of the actual Paris.
Bloomberg reported that while the lights in actual Paris were turned off at night, at the time of areal attacks, there would be dim lights in the constructed fake Paris to make it seem like people were trying but failing to keep themselves undetected in the dark.
"Fake cities had limited utility, of course, but the idea did have its place," Ptak told Bloomberg. "Even in the extraordinary history of deception, sham Paris was extraordinary."
Fake Paris was never actually completely constructed as the war ended in 1918. The city was meant to have three zones, but only one was ever constructed. The fake city was made about 15 miles north of Paris, and even had replicas of monuments like the Arc De Triomphe, Bloomberg reported.
The Daily Beast reported that in that zone that was created, artists had painted fake neighborhoods, street lights were installed and a wooden train was even made to move along tracks as those it was real. Bloomberg added that the same man who lit up the Eiffel Tower created lights for lights for the town.
Fernand Jacopozzi, the Italian engineer who helped come up with this idea to create a fake Paris, was adamant about using the lights to create the illusion that there were people in this fake neighborhood who were quietly trying to stay hidden.
"The plan was kept secret for obvious reasons, but it shows how seriously military planners were already taking the new threat of aerial bombardment," Professor Jean-Claude Delarue, a Paris-based historian based told The Telegraph.