From fake airfields and factories with artificial lighting to create the impression of bustling activity, to purposefully starting large fires that simulated burning towns and cities, a complex deception strategy was used by Britain during World War Two to trick German pilots into bombing open countryside instead of hitting their targets.

Now, in what is the first detailed examination of its kind, researchers at Keele University and Goldsmiths, University of London, have shed new light on the 'largely forgotten' decoy sites, that were often operated by brave crews from brick-built bunkers who were actively trying to attract the German night raiders to drop their bombs on them in the belief they were adding to the destruction already inflicted.

Researchers investigated the remains of three decoy sites in North Staffordshire, that were deliberately built along German radio beam directions – used as navigation in the early part of the war - to divert bombers from the high priority industrial target sites in the Stoke-on-Trent area that included Wolstanton Colliery, Shelton Iron and Steel Works, the Michelin tyre factory, Meir Aerodrome and Radway Green munitions factory. Their findings have been published in the Journal of Conflict Archaeology.

The three sites examined were all initially built as 'Special Fire' sites - nicknamed Starfish – and also functioned as 'QL sites', where crews would have used controlled fires and lighting effects to simulate burning targets and industrial activity, such as factory lights, locomotive glows and moving vehicles. By the end of the war there were 237 Starfish sites protecting 81 towns and cities, factories and other potential targets. It has been estimated that around 968 tons of German bombs were dropped on the decoys.

Dr Kris Wisniewski, lecturer in Forensic Science at Keele University, said: "This ground-breaking research is the first detailed examination of the surviving remains of permanent Starfish decoy sites that were intended, through the use of controlled fires and lighting, to deceive the German Luftwaffe into dropping their bombs on to relatively uninhabited areas, in woodland and in the countryside, away from their intended targets."

Well-preserved, brick-built control bunkers remain at two of the sites, each with two rooms – a control room on the left that would have a telephone, mechanical switches, bunk bed and escape hatch, and the room on the right that housed electrical generators that powered the whole site.

The remains of concrete pads on the floor for the generators were still present in both bunkers, along with stove bases in the operations rooms for fires to keep the crews warm. Researchers also found expansion chambers and well-preserved pipes connecting to them that were designed to protect the crew from concussion waves from the exploding bombs they were hoping to attract.

Original bomb blast walls separate to the buildings were still in situ, with theteam also discovering the remains of black-out curtains nailed onto wooden door frames, platforms for electrical lamps, old electrical wiring, exhaust outlets for generators, ventilation tunnels and the remains of a set of ladders still positioned beneath an escape hatch.

Evidence of the nature of the wartime effort in Britain, and of buildings that had been constructed from wartime-created brick companies, were also discovered, with bricks labelled PB Co Ltd - Potteries Brick Company - and a 'V' for Victory stamped on the bottom which researchers believe indicates it had been produced for the defence of Britain.

Professor Peter Doyle, military historian at Goldsmiths, University of London, said: "The ingenuity of these defences shows how the British responded intelligently to the threat of all-out attack by the Luftwaffe as it shifted its attacks away from airfields to major industrial areas and cities.

"Just as had happened in World War One, the theory was that the fires on the decoy sites would be started after a first wave of bombers had attacked their target, hoping that the following waves of bombers would be drawn to the decoy site to carry out their attacks. Luftwaffe prisoners had indicated they were under orders to add further incendiaries to any fires they saw alight.

"Examining surviving sites like this with this level of detail provides a real opportunity to consider the complexity and intensity of the defence of Britain at this more crucial period in our history."

The researchers used drones, ground-based LiDAR, geophysical datasets and 360-degree camera imagery to digitally study, image and preserve the sites for future generations.

Dr Jamie Pringle, Reader in Forensic Geoscience at Keele University, said: "Many of these hurriedly made decoy sites still remain today in various states of preservation but they have been largely overlooked and forgotten about since the end of the war.

"The discovery of the expansion chamber foundations shows how, even in such desperate times, site designers were still aware of how dangerous these decoy sites were for the crews manning them and tried to give them a better chance of surviving concussions from nearby bomb blasts which they were actively hoping to attract.

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