Captain Henry C. Johnson, commanding the diversion groups, said: “The decoy screen proved effective as in addition to several enemy salvos falling short of or bursting in the air over the gunboats, the PTs and the launches were subjected to a considerable degree of large-caliber fire which passed well over them.” Happy with the confusion they had sown, the eastern diversion group sailed west to join a western task unit with a similar mission. Off the Baie de la Ciotat, between Marseilles and the port of Toulon, the eastern group joined company with four more launches, 11 crash boats, and eight PTs of Squadron Twenty-Nine, under the control of the destroyer _Endicott_. Skipper of the destroyer was a sailor who might be expected to know a bit about a PT’s capabilities. His name was Lieut. Commander John Bulkeley. The armed motor launches and the destroyer bombarded the beach behind a screen of PTs. The crash boats trailed balloons, laid smoke screens, fired ripples of rockets at the beach, laid delayed-action bombs in shallow water to imitate frogmen at work, and broadcast noises of many landing craft. The crash boats hoped to give the impression of a convoy ten miles long and eight miles wide. At 4 A.M. troop-carrier planes flew over the town of La Ciotat and dropped 300 booby-trapped dummy paratroopers. Radio Berlin broadcast an alarm. “The Allies are landing forces west of Toulon and east of Cannes. Thousands of enemy paratroops are being dropped in areas northwest of Toulon.” With great bitterness, five hours later, Radio Berlin broadcast: “These paratroops were found later to be only dummies which had booby traps attached and which subsequently killed scores of innocent civilians. This deception could only have been conceived in the sinister Anglo-Saxon mind.” This complaint came from the nation that was the world’s acknowledged master at the nasty and unmanly art of booby-trappery. Radio Berlin continued: “Large assault forces have attempted to breach defenses west of Toulon, but as the first waves have been wiped out by mine fields, the rest lost heart and withdrew and returned to an area in the east.” For two more nights the deception forces shelled the beach and made noises like a mighty host. For two days the Germans announced that the main Allied intention was to take Toulon and Marseilles by direct assault, and talked of driving off an invasion force including five battleships. Before sailing away after the last phony demonstration, Lieut. Commander Bulkeley broadcast a message, saying that the landings at La Ciotat would be postponed for a few days “because of the furious resistance on the beach,” but that they would definitely come. The Germans reinforced the La Ciotat area with mobile artillery and infantry units, sorely needed elsewhere. Radio Berlin, after the final demonstration, said: “An additional and futile attempt of the American forces to land large bodies of troops west of Toulon has failed miserably.”