These soldiers were moving tanks... inflatables

One photograph shows four soldiers carrying a tank with their bare hands. It is not an extraordinarily light combat vehicle, but an inflatable decoy. During World War II, the 23rd U.S. Special Troop Headquarters used this type of equipment to create false impressions of present forces.

This unit, nicknamed the Ghost Army, combined visual decoys with sound effects, deceptive radio transmissions and staged scenes. Some of its soldiers had been recruited from art schools. The work required understanding what the enemy could see or hear.

Some of these operations remained classified until 1993. The documents now accessible make it possible to distinguish these stratagems from a really non-existent army: the soldiers were indeed there, but their mission was to make believe other presences. The tank carried in the photo was fake; the operation that employed it was real.