I'd be grateful if anyone could post locations of the visible remains if any WWII bombing decoys, be these docks, cities, Starfish or other sites.

For those unaware of these, they were sites built as decoys to attract German bombers away from their true targets, and fool them into dropping them bombs (relatively) harmlessly in deserted areas away from their intended targets or populated areas.

They are also reputed to owe muchof their existence to the magician Maskelyn, and experts from the film industry's special effects units.

In operation, the site would have lights strung up to look like recognisable patterns of streets lights in the target area, have pools of water to reflect star/moonlight like dock areas, be fitted with pyrotechnics to look like flashes from the power poles of electric trams, and odd lights to look like building or vehicles. During a raid, the lights would be occasionally allowed to go on just long enough to tempt the navigators, then extinguished. Remember, naviation in WWII was rough, especially at night, no GPS and only rudimentary radio location, so any visual cue was a gift.

Once a raid started, the ground operators would trigger preset fires, fuel dumps and explosions to simulate the effects of the bombs striking their intended target, to encourage the remainder of the bombers to drop their load in the same area.

The Kilpatrick hills houses such a site that protected the docks at Clydebank, but I've yet to come across any remains or evidence of their existence there, although I suppose a helicopter flight would do the trick, if I happened to have one.

There is a further site I have details for on north Bute, which is also designated a SSSI. This is only accessible on foot, so I plan to have a go at it late winter or spring, as there's no point in doing this when there's any lush vegetation about.

The name's right, QL Starfish was the classification given to primarily naval decoys. There were obvioulsy others, but little detailed detail appears on the web yet.

I don't understand how the structure shown could be part of such a feature though (and I'm only thinking out loud now):

All the elements were intended to provide visual/illuminated features to decoy night bombers from thier intended targets. By defintion, nothing underground would therefore be of any value to that aim.

It can't be a shelter. No-one's going to deliberately sit under an area where bombs are being attracted to, even if they've got a nice shelter, as it's completely pointless as they couldn't do anything.

Starfish sites etc. were remotely controlled electrically, from a safe distance, where the fires, flares and other diversions could be set off as required in response to observation of the enemy bombers flight.

Be interesting to see if the paper reveals more detail, and grid refs are handy. Kilsth hills not an area I know well, although I've been around there fair few times, (yes, the inevitable ROC post lies there) I really do just pass through the area. Even visiting customers was a pain, as they're hard to find, even with directions.

Forget their name now, there's a world famous label company there, does the graphic for car instruments. Couldn't believe the day I rolled into their car park, and there was a trashed Aston Martin Lagonda (the 200 mph modern square saloon) just lying there, ruined, having been used for developing the digital dasboard. Give us a clue if you know the name, it's irritating me now.

The missus was shopping and I dived into the local studies room of the library for a quiet half hour. The paper consists of about 10 pages, is very detailed with precise measurements, sketches and descriptions of construction etc. The info was passed onto other authorities - one which was a decoy recording place I think. I'll get back over there tomorrow morning if I can and copy it.

Remembering some of the info through your query about the structures being 'underground'  I'm sure the investigation of the pupils said the bunker complex was a considerable distance away from lights etc. In the case of the Drumnessie one in the hills it could be that the actual decoys were on the other side of the hills - in the area where the Carron Vallley Resevoir is now. The title of the report is 'Drumnessie Decoy Station' so I assume it is the remote control centre for the actul decoy apparatus.
The one in the photo above has an adjacent underground structure about 8m away from it. Both could be linked by an underground passage. Needs to be looked at again.

Label/graphic company was McGavigans.

Opposite hillside would make sense, let them keep an eye on things.

Once a raid was underway, they would fire things off to reinforce the illusion.

Some areas had simulated runway lights that could be flashed on and off, giving just enough of a taster to make the bombers think they were near their target and go for it.

In civil areas, they'd fire off flares and arc to look like the arcing of electric trams, again the pattern would be reconisable as streets in the real target area.

The worrying thing about these operations is that after the war, the British bombers admitted that night navigation was pretty much a guessing game, and when they used their aircraft's navigation when they were static on the ground i.e. not at 10,000 feet trying to avoid flak and fighters, they reckoned they were doing well if they could fix their postion within about 5 miles!

That was what made radio navigation and the various location beams such deadly secrets at the time, although the public had no idea of them then.

Amazing what a good rummage about in the cobweb shrouded corners of the memory can do, and one of the web's latest search tools.

I know I'd come across some references to local info somewhere, even though the site it was on had nothing to do with Scotland as such.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~rwbarnes/defence/decoys.htm

This site is about Cumbria, but the author had been up here in 1984, and the pics on the site seem to tie in with what you've got.

You've seen it in the flesh, so will be better able to judge, but to me, the overground construction looks pretty much the same as the site you photographed, so I'd say you do have a control room.

You might be referring to this site:

http://www.britarch.ac.uk/projects/dob/

Which leads to this one:

http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/specColl/dob/

Funnily enough, I was having a root around it this morning, but abandoned it. Although it refers to The Defence of Britain, and the first site has a pic of tank defences in Angus, I couldn't dig a single item from Scotland out of it.

That didn't bode well, as it also says the project is compelete, and there won't be any more updates being fed into the database, as it's now closed.

Maybe you want to give it a kick in case I was doing something fundamentally wrong, and that's why I couldn't get anything Scottish out of it.

However, yes, the pics look basically the same. They're also very similar to photo's that appeared elsewhere, and were accounted for as water board sites, which had antennas fitted to them, whch we decided were data links.

Too much greenery at this time of year.

I do find the positionng of the decoy site and control room most alarming and peculiar, unless they were playing on the fact that most night bombing tended to be less than accurate. Maybe they were playing the numbers on the basis that the one thing least likely to be hit was what was actually being aimed at.

That why the original ROC (Royal Observer Corp), post Cold War, was so important.

When an air raid was in progress, the factories etc. had to shut down, or they were sitting ducks.

According to the Starfish stories, one of the key elements to their success was to have the intended target absolutely blacked out when a raid was in progress, and why the glimpses that the Starfish decoy provided were effective, being believed to be the 'unavoidable' lapses in blackout preparations expected at the real site.

Try firing up the getmapping.com aerial photo site, start at Kilsyth and work your way north. Follow the road north to site, and there appears to be visible parallel lines to the west of the spot marked as the Site.

I'd give you link, but the url doesn't change to reflect the displayed location when you roam to a point (I thought it used to, maybe they changed the way it works).

I know you won't be able to see this quote Captain, so I'm passing it on complete for your benefit:

Quoted Text

From "The Clydebank Blitz" by IMM MacPhail:

The mission of the German pathfinder force was to start fires which would serve as markers for the follow - up aircraft was accomplished with a considerable degree of success from the German point of view; and the fires which began then determined the pattern of the later bombing.

The effectiveness of the incendiaries was largely, if not entirely, dependant on the accident of where they fell. Generally at industrial sites where the structures were of brick, concrete and metal, incendiaries caused very little damage.

But in the Clydebank area two of the first fires that started were at industrial sites full of inflammable material - Singer's timber yard and Yoker Distillery, just over the boundary with Glasgow.

In the forty acres of the timber yard belonging to the Singer Manufacturing Company, engaged during the war in the manufacture not only of sewing machines but also of armaments, including the Sten machune guns, a vast store of wood, estimated as worth at least 500,000 pounds, and, in addition, Goverment stocks of timber of unknown value stored there, were completely destroyed by fire.

Yoker Distillery, one of the oldest in Scotland, was on the other side of the Yoker Burn from Clydebank, but the flames and smoke were to attract to the eastern portion of Clydebank the later German bombers, who were not looking for specific targets but just dropped their bombs on or near the fires.

In the eastern parts of Clydebank, even as far west as Radnor Park, the aroma of whisky from the Distillery was already evident in the small hours of Friday morning.

Quoted from Apollo

Try firing up the getmapping.com aerial photo site, start at Kilsyth and work your way north. Follow the road north to site, and there appears to be visible parallel lines to the west of the spot marked as the Site.

I don't really see anything but enclosures/dykes. Lots of tufty type grass in the area which sort of hides ground features froma distance. A closer inspection would be required because they will still be there, the school surveyed it in 1997.

Norhing to do with the decoys as such, but this account gives a feel for the severity of the attacks on Scottish targets. Even though I do know better, because the media ignores these events in Scotland, I always think of England almost as being the sole recipient of such intense raids.

The report is useful in that it does establish a timeline for the raids, which could be helpful in trying to track down more detailed info of the decoys.

It would be interesting to gain enough info to get some sort of estimate of just how much ordnance the decoys prevented reaching their intended target, and whether or not they were effective. This is relative, since successfuly diverting even one attack would be worthwhile, had it had the potential to wreak serious damage or a serious death toll.

Just shows how you can miss things, even when you're looking.

I was doing a quick 'check run' over a site with a forum I have a tiny involvement with, Isle of Bute V-Day, and I noticed that a reference to the decoy had been added while I wasn't looking  

Worth a visit to read the items on Bute's War, and the related book written by one of the surviving residents of the time.

Quoted Text

At the north end of the Isle of Bute a decoy village was constructed and maintained by the Royal Navy. The village was illuminated at night (using generators) in an attempt to confuse enemy bombers, and hopefully to draw them away from Greenock or Clydebank. No bombs fell on Rhubodach, although a German plane returning from the Greenock blitz jettisoned 2 bombs near the Greenan Loch.

There must have been a decoy site in the hills above Greenock somewhere as I remember copious stories about fires being lit on the hills to fox(!) the german bombers. There are certainly plenty of bomb craters on these hills and the ones above Gourock.

Possibly not, with the Observer Posts and gun sites in the area, they wouldn't want to attract bombs. The decoys proper seem to have been in the Kilpatrick hills, on the other side of the water, and away from any guns etc.

The confirmed sites I know about are generally in areas remote from any other interesting features. There's one that's all but lost on the northern end of Bute. The grid ref's rubbish, so it would need a field walk to find and confirm, and earlier reports say it's overgrown and no longer to be found. I'd like to prove that wrong one day (shhh)

After all, I did manage to go find the ROC Post there after it was forgotten

I am not suggesting it would have been that close to Greenock, I rather think it might have been south of Loch Thom and the Gryffe reservoirs as the shape of the water resembles that of the Clyde at Gourock.  

I have found the Mathernock AA site on the aerial photos ( 55* 54' 10.4" N  4* 41' 9.1" W)  Shows up quite clearly!  I am sure I have seen in on the site listed as Matternock but I cannot find it. The site was used by The Mount School, Greenock as an outdoor education venue in the late 60s / 70s.