Psychological WarfareLinebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
History
Psychological Warfare
Linebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
Psychological warfare
[Illustration: _Figure 41: Leaflet Distribution: Attaching Fuzes._
Packaged leaflets must spread out. Bundles of paper which fall intact
make little impact on the enemy unless they hit him on the head. Their
subsequent employment is rarely related to propaganda. To be effective,
leaflets must scatter. World War II saw the adaptation of various
scattering devices, of which the most effective was the barometric fuze,
shown here. The others included self-timing packages, slip-strings which
unwrapped the package in the air, and a belly-tank which fed leaflets
out at any desired speed, either in a continuous stream or in bursts.]
The lower down the echelon, the nearer the armies of the world came to
standardizing psychological warfare organization. They did this for the
same reason that they all organize into regiments instead of centuries,
cohorts, or tribes. Modern war is a self-standardizing process if the
enemy experience is to be copied, enemy techniques improved, allied
assistance accepted, and military practice kept up to world standards.
Psychological warfare units needed printing and radio sections; to
service these sections they all needed intelligence and analysis
offices; to distribute their materials they all needed agents and
liaison. Black propaganda organization varied more than did white, but
it was amazing to Americans, uncovering Japanese subversive-operations
units, to see how much the Japanese organization resembled their own.
[Illustration: _Figure 42: Leaflet Distribution: Packing the Boxes._
Sometimes boxes were used instead of bombs. These, being square,
facilitated the packing process, since the rectangular packages could be
used just as they came out of the printshop. The fuze is attached to the
package, not to the box.]
[Illustration: _Figure 43: Leaflet Distribution: Loading the Boxes._
Boxes were built to fit the bomb bays. Boxes were opened, one after the
other, by a trip lever, shown above at left. Each box can be emptied in
turn, giving the pilot the opportunity to select more than one target.]
[Illustration: _Figure 44: Leaflet Distribution: Bombs at the Airfield._
Leaflet bombs, filled with rolls such as those shown in figure 40, are
delivered to the bomber. The scene shown is somewhere in England.
Officers and men picked up British slang for leaflet operations, and
called such missions "nickelling."]
[Illustration: _Figure 45: Leaflet Distribution: Loading the Bombs._ The
bombs were loaded as shown. The entire bomb dropped out of the plane and
was disintegrated in the air by a small explosive charge. No
illustration can do justice to the sight of such a bomb in the actual
dropping, since the leaflets tend to look scattered or to disappear
under normal flight conditions. Army motion picture films preserve the
process for the official record, however.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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