They were built as fake WWII factories, airfields and towns to fool Luftwaffe night bombers and manned by heroes - now scientists and historians are uncovering the UK's decoy sites.
Ingeniously built along the German radio beam directions they used to navigate, brave ground crews lit fires and shone lights to lure the Nazis into offloading all their bombs there - instead of their real targets.
Keele University and Goldsmiths, University of London, estimate our forgotten 237 Special Fire sites, a plane dubbed 'Starfish', took 968 tonnes of German bombs destined for 81 real towns, industrial plants and munitions factories.
Now their new analysis of three decoy sites in North Staffordshire unmasks the courage of the heroes who knew success meant having Luftwaffe bombers dump their deadly payload right on top of them.
The three ruins they studies protected high-priority targets like Shelton Iron and Steel Works, the Michelin Tyre Factory, Wolstanton Colliery, the Meir Aerodrome and the Radway Green munitions factory.
Prof Peter Doyle, military historian and earth scientist at Goldsmiths, explained: "It's been a real eye-opener to work on something so obscure and yet so important.
"You're trying to attract the bombers to attack you. It's crazy sounding but this is why we've described how these guys were pretty brave, they were unsung.
"Every single one of these bombers was going to do damage - so you have aircraft shooting other aircraft down or you bring in something clever to persuade the Germans to drop their bombs."
As for the value of the decoys, he explained: "The Michelin Tyre Factory - without tyres you don't have aircraft that can take off, you can't have trucks.
"Without ceramics you're not going to be able to have particular electronic elements or devices. You're not going to be able to use those in certain munitions factories and so on."
The three sites also functioned as 'QL sites', where crews used controlled fires and lighting effects to simulate burning targets and industrial activity, such as factory lights, locomotive glows and moving vehicles.
He added: "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.
"They were 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 provides a real opportunity to consider the complexity and intensity of the defence of Britain at this more crucial period in our history."
Well-preserved, brick-built control bunkers remain at two of the sites, each with two rooms – a control room once housing a telephone, mechanical switches, bunk bed and escape hatch and one housing electrical power generators.
The remains of the generators concrete floor 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 connecting pipes designed to protect the crew from concussion waves from the exploding bombs they hoped to attract.
Dr Kris Wisniewski, lecturer in Forensic Science at Keele University, said: "You can see a slightly yellow brick building in the middle of the field, no context to it.
"It's only when you start delving into why it's there and what it is, that you start thinking 'actually this is pretty special'.
"This ground-breaking research is the first detailed examination of the surviving remains of permanent Starfish decoy sites intended to deceive the German Luftwaffe into dropping their bombs in woodland and in the countryside, away from their intended targets."
Some of the structures still boasted their bomb blast walls while the scientists found remains of black-out curtains nailed onto wooden door frames, old electronics and a ladder still positioned beneath an escape hatch.
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.
Evidence of the nature of the wartime effort in Britain, were also discovered, with bricks stamped with a 'V' for Victory in the bottom corner indicating it had been produced for the defence of Britain.
The findings have been published in the Journal of Conflict Archaeology.
Dr Jamie Pringle, Reader in Forensic Geoscience at Keele University, said of the state of these decoy sites now: "On site they're variable, it's been about 80 years since they've been used.
"Many of these hurriedly made decoy sites still remain today in various states of preservation but they have been largely overlooked and forgotten about."
The researchers found control bunkers with diesel generators, which were used to fire up the lights, with Dr Pringle adding: "They'd be mimicking some of the coal bits coming out from the trains to try and mimic train glows, I guess."
He added: "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.
"They tried to give them a better chance of surviving concussions from nearby bomb blasts which they were actively hoping to attract."
He said the study may be limited to Staffordshire, yet further work should be carried out to survey and digitally record examples of other bombing decoy sites across the UK.
He remarked: "This study provides new knowledge on this desperate time for Britain during WWII."
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