Jasper Maskelyne
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Jasper Maskelyne (1902 - 1973) was a British stage magician in the 1930s and 1940s. He was a progeny of an established family of stage magicians, the son of Nevil Maskelyne and a grandson of John Nevil Maskelyne. He could also trace his ancestry to the royal astronomer Nevil Maskelyne.
He is most remembered, however, for the accounts of his work for British Military Intelligence during World War II, creating ruses, deception and camouflage on a large-scale basis.
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Wartime trickery
According to the autobiographical Magic: Top Secret and David Fisher's biography The War Magician (see below), Maskelyne's wartime career was as follows.
When World War II erupted, Maskelyne joined the Royal Engineers, thinking that his skills could be used in camouflage. He convinced skeptical officers by creating the illusion of a German warship on the Thames using mirrors and a model. He was eventually deployed to the African theater in the Western Desert, although he spent most of his time entertaining the troops.
In January 1941, General Archibald Wavell created A Force for subterfuge and counterintelligence and Maskelyne was assigned to serve in it. Maskelyne gathered a group of 14 assistants, including an architect, art restorer, carpenter, chemist, electrical engineer, electrician, painter and stage-set builder, to help him. It was nicknamed the Magic Gang.
The Magic Gang built a number of tricks. They used painted canvas and plywood to make jeeps look like tanks - with fake tank tracks - and tanks look like trucks. They created illusions of armies and battleships.
His largest trick was to conceal Alexandria and the Suez Canal to misdirect German bombers. He built a mockup of the night-lights of Alexandria in an adjacent bay three miles away with fake buildings, lighthouse and anti-aircraft batteries. To mask the Suez Canal, he built a revolving cone of mirrors that created a wheel of spinning light nine miles wide.
In 1942 he worked in Operation Bertram, prior to the battle of El Alamein. His task was to make German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel think that the attack was coming from the south, when British General Bernard Montgomery planned to attack from the north. In the north, 1000 tanks were disguised as trucks. On the south, the Magic Gang created 2000 fake tanks with convincing pyrotechnics. There was a fake railway line, fake radio conversations and fake sounds of construction. They also built a fake water pipeline and made it look as if it would never be ready before attack. Camouflage did contribute to the victory.
After the battle, the Magic Gang was disbanded and although Winston Churchill praised his efforts, Maskelyne did not receive the appreciation he desired.
After the war, Maskelyne tried to resume his stage career without much success. He moved to Kenya and founded a driving school.
Jasper Maskelyne died in 1973.
Doubts
The standard Maskelyne account has, however, been critically analyzed by military historian and magician Richard Stokes. In a 21-article series originally written in 1993-95 for the Australian magic magazine Geniis Magic Journal, Stokes documents many chronological inaccuracies and unsubstantiated events, concluding that Maskelyne's wartime exploits have been heavily fictionalized, particularly via the ghost-written Magic: Top Secret.
Books of Jasper Maskelyne
- White Magic (1936) - Maskelyne family history
- Magic: Top Secret (1949) - ghost-written account of his WW2 exploits
Books about Jasper Maskelyne
- David Fisher - The War Magician (1983, reprinted 2004) - novelized biography
External links
- Magic at War; UK Channel 4 microsite about Maskelyne (http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/R/real_lives/jasper.html)
- Jasper Maskelyne, Master of Make-Believe: Richard Stokes articles online (http://www.maskelynemagic.com/)