London, Nov 10 (ANI): It has been revealed that a fake Paris, complete with Champs-Elysees and Gard Du Nord, had been built towards the end of the First World War to fool German bombers.
According to archives unearthed by Le Figaro newspaper, military planners believed that German pilots could be fooled into destroying the dummy city rather than the real one.
It was situated on the northern outskirts of Paris and featured sham streets lined with electric lights, replica buildings and even a copy of the Gare du Nord, the station from which high-speed trains now travel to and from London.
"It's an extraordinary story and one which even Parisians knew very little about," the Daily Mail quoted Professor Jean-Claude Delarue, a leading historian based in the French capital as saying.
"The plan was kept secret for obvious reasons, but it shows how seriously military planners were already taking the new threat of aerial bombardment," he said.
The scheme of luring German pilots to the wrong targets was hatched by DCA air defence group (Defense Contre Avions) in 1918, as the war was coming to an end.
French planners chose an area around the commuter town of Maisons-Laffitte, some 15 miles from the centre of Paris, and on a stretch of the River Seine similar to the one in the capital.
Despite such details, the replica Paris was not quite finished before the last German air raid in Paris, in September 1918, and the fake Paris was rapidly deconstructed after the war. (ANI)
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