on Munassib was shocked to find itself being fired on by the massed "dummy" guns. Final stages To achieve the deception, trucks were parked openly in the tank assembly area for some weeks. Real tanks were similarly parked openly, far behind the front. Two nights before the attack, the tanks replaced the trucks and were covered with "Sunshields" before dawn. The tanks were replaced that same night with dummies in their original positions so that the armour remained seemingly two or more days' journey behind the front line. To reinforce the impression that the attack was not ready, a dummy water pipeline was constructed in "Operation Diamond", at an apparent rate of 5 miles per day. Two of Barkas's camouflage officers, Phillip Cornish and Sidney Robinson, supervised the work. Some days' worth remained to be built at the time of the actual attack. The pipeline was supported by dummy pump-houses, overhead tanks and filling stations, complete with straw men. Real traffic was made to drive nearby to create tracks. Results After the battle, the captured German panzerarmee general Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma told Montgomery that he had believed the allies had at least one more armoured division than they did, and that the attack would be in the south. Rommel's stand-in, general Georg Stumme, thought the attack would not begin for several weeks. German documents and prisoners of war confirmed that the German commanders had believed in the existence of the decoy unit, and had not anticipated the true avenue of attack. Bertram had succeeded in all its objectives. On 11 November 1942, Winston Churchill described the battle at El Alamein to the House of Commons, London and praised the success of Operation Bertram: Notes References Sources Books Websites 1942 in Egypt World War II deception operations Military use of mimicry