Jasper Maskelyne was a world famous magician and illusionist in the 1930s. When war broke out, he volunteered his services to the British Army and was sent to Egypt where the desert war had just begun. He used his skills to save the vital port of Alexandria from German bombers and to 'hide' the Suez Canal from them. He invented all sorts of camouflage methods to make trucks look like tanks and vice versa. On Malta he developed 'the world's first portable holes': fake bomb craters used to fool the Germans into thinking they had hit their targets. His war culminated in the brilliant deception plan that won the Battle of El Alamein: the creation of an entire dummy army in the middle of the desert.
- ISBN10 0304367095
- ISBN13 9780304367092
- Publish Date 13 October 2005 (first published 17 February 1983)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 2 August 2010
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Orion Publishing Co
- Imprint Cassell Military
- Format Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
- Pages 320
- Language English