Tony Ayrton
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Antony Maxwell Ayrton (1909 – 4 April 1943) known as Tony Ayrton, was an artist and camouflage officer. He is best known for his work on the large-scale
deception Deception is the act of convincing of one or many recipients of untrue information. The person creating the deception knows it to be false while the receiver of the information does not. It is often done for personal gain or advantage. Tort of ...
for the decisive
second battle of El Alamein The Second Battle of El Alamein (23 October – 11 November 1942) was a battle of the Second World War that took place near the Egyptian Railway station, railway halt of El Alamein. The First Battle of El Alamein and the Battle of Alam el Halfa ...
,
Operation Bertram Operation Bertram was a Second World War military deception, deception operation practised by the Allied forces in Egypt led by Bernard Montgomery, in the months before the Second Battle of El Alamein in 1942. Bertram was devised by Dudley Clark ...
.


Early life

Ayrton was born in 1909 into a creative family of some merit. His father, perhaps the most conventional, was the architect
Maxwell Ayrton Ormrod Maxwell Ayrton Royal Institute of British Architects, FRIBA (1874 – 18 February 1960), known as Maxwell Ayrton, was an England, English architect. He spent most of his adult life working in London and designed houses, public buildings, ...
; one uncle was the actor
Randle Ayrton Frederick Randle Ayrton (9 August 1869 – 28 May 1940) was a British actor of stage and screen, and was also a producer and director. Early life Ayrton was born in Chester to William Frances Ayrton, a wealthy wine-merchant who was a par ...
, while another was the artist William Ayrton. Tony himself became an artist.: ''Alpine Landscape''. This work contains a signature lower right "Antony Ayrton". The Ayrton family originated in Yorkshire, though Tony descended from a branch long-resident in
Cheshire Cheshire ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Merseyside to the north-west, Greater Manchester to the north-east, Derbyshire to the east, Staffordshire to the south-east, and Shrop ...
. His forebear
Edward Ayrton Edward Russell Ayrton (17 December 1882 – 18 May 1914) was an English Egyptologist and archaeologist. Early life Ayrton was the son of William Scrope Ayrton (1849-1904), a British consular official in China, and his wife Ellen Louisa McClatc ...
was mayor of
Ripon Ripon () is a cathedral city and civil parish in North Yorkshire, England. The city is located at the confluence of two tributaries of the River Ure, the Laver and Skell. Within the boundaries of the historic West Riding of Yorkshire, the ...
in 1760, and laid the foundations for the family's subsequent prominence.


War service

Ayrton was gazetted an officer in the
Royal Engineers The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the ''Sappers'', is the engineering arm of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces ...
, on 3 December 1939. He was responsible for forming No. 85 South African Camouflage Company, and in early 1941 he was one of only five fully trained camouflage officers in the whole of the British middle east. The Director of Camouflage for Middle East Command,
Geoffrey Barkas Geoffrey Barkas (born Geoffrey de Gruchy Barkas, 27 August 1896 – 3 September 1979) was an English filmmaker active between the World War I and World War II. Barkas led the British Middle East Command Camouflage Directorate in the Second Worl ...
, quickly had him seconded to his team, followed by the whole of No. 85 Camouflage Company. On 17 July 1942, Barkas made Ayrton his deputy, replacing the brilliant camoufleur Steven Sykes, who was exhausted and ill. Still short of camouflage officers, Barkas heard of a private soldier, Brian Robb, who was known to be skilful at drawing, and finding him enthusiastic and likeable, quickly brought him to General Headquarters in Cairo and had him promoted to Staff Lieutenant.


Deception for El Alamein

Charles Richardson was tasked by Freddie de Guingand,
Bernard Montgomery Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (; 17 November 1887 – 24 March 1976), nicknamed "Monty", was a senior British Army officer who served in the First World War, the Irish War of Independence and the ...
's chief of staff, to plan the
deception Deception is the act of convincing of one or many recipients of untrue information. The person creating the deception knows it to be false while the receiver of the information does not. It is often done for personal gain or advantage. Tort of ...
operation for
El Alamein El Alamein (, ) is a town in the northern Matrouh Governorate of Egypt. Located on the Mediterranean Sea, it lies west of Alexandria and northwest of Cairo. The town is located on the site of the ancient city Antiphrai which was built by th ...
, named
Operation Bertram Operation Bertram was a Second World War military deception, deception operation practised by the Allied forces in Egypt led by Bernard Montgomery, in the months before the Second Battle of El Alamein in 1942. Bertram was devised by Dudley Clark ...
. Richardson was happy to be able to rely on the "highly developed" system of camouflage and deception which Barkas had created. Richardson was a member of the
Royal Engineers The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the ''Sappers'', is the engineering arm of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces ...
and had worked on deception operations in
Dudley Clarke Brigadier Dudley Wrangel Clarke, ( – ) was an officer in the British Army, known as a pioneer of military deception operations during the Second World War. His ideas for combining fictional orders of battle, visual deception and doubl ...
's secret 'A' Force. On 17 September 1941, Barkas and Ayrton were called to Eighth Army headquarters, out in the desert near Borg el Arab, between Alexandria and El Alamein. They listened in astonishment as Richardson explained the size of the deception that he was planning. He wanted
Rommel Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel (; 15 November 1891 – 14 October 1944), popularly known as The Desert Fox (, ), was a German ''Generalfeldmarschall'' (field marshal) during World War II. He served in the ''Wehrmacht'' (armed forces) of N ...
to believe that Montgomery would attack in the south, not along the obvious coast road route; and that the attack would not be ready on the night of the full moon, 23 October. This was to be achieved despite the lack of cover in the desert, and the 700 tanks and 400 guns that were to be used in the attack. On 27 September 1942, 28 days before the planned start of battle, Barkas instructed Ayrton and Robb to organise the camouflage and dummies representing the whole of Eighth Army's armoured force and artillery. Ayrton planned and supervised the building of the "Diamond" dummy pipeline, which ran southwards to help give Rommel the impression that an Armoured Corps was massing in the south. Ayrton convinced Richardson that Camouflage could implement this despite the shortage of time and materials. Ayrton's plan was to flatten and join thousands of the non-returnable 4-gallon petrol cans to make 5 miles of dummy pipe, which was laid in a trench and left for one day. The next night, the trench was filled in, and the pipe laid in a trench 5 miles further south. The trench remained about 10 miles short of its destination - the southern part of the British front line - on 23 September, showing Rommel that the pipeline and the attack were not ready. To give the pipeline realism, Ayrton planned dummy overhead storage tanks, pumphouses, and filling stations complete with dummy men and trucks. This activity was reinforced by a large dummy dump named Brian for Ayrton's cheerful assistant, Brian Robb. All went well, until one night a powerful desert dust storm tore many of the dummy trucks to pieces. Ayrton worked all that night and the next day to restore the "scene" to a semblance of reality. Richardson noted with relief that "German Tac
ical Calendar is a personal calendar app made by Apple Inc. for its macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS and visionOS operating systems. It offers online cloud backup of calendars using Apple's iCloud service, or can synchronize with other calendar service ...
R connaissancenoticed nothing new. Every morning I received the intercepted
Luftwaffe The Luftwaffe () was the aerial warfare, aerial-warfare branch of the before and during World War II. German Empire, Germany's military air arms during World War I, the of the Imperial German Army, Imperial Army and the of the Imperial Ge ...
's report of the previous day. 'Nothing to report' was the phlegmatic message on about D-7." Unknown to Ayrton or Richardson, Ultra showed that the Royal Air Force had ensured that no German aircraft flew over the Eighth Army preparations between 18 and 23 October. As well as working on the dummy army in the south, Ayrton led the work to hide the real army in the north, devising the methods used to hide the army's fuel, food, and ammunition. The petrol, held in fragile and leaky 4-gallon cans, was stacked in existing slit trenches. These were revetted with masonry, casting sharp shadows. A single wall of petrol cans against the real wall was undetectable from the air. With the real stores invisible in the north, and the dummy stores very visible in the south, Ayrton had made Eighth Army seem to be far to the south of where it actually was. By 22 October 1942, the whole of Eighth Army's armour was assembled in its "Martello" concentration area, the enemy having suspected nothing. Barkas wrote that "all the other schemes mounted by Ayrton, Robb, and the other Eighth Army camouflage men were also ready. The job was done." The attack in the north at El Alamein on the night of 23 October 1942 came, as Winston Churchill reported to parliament, as a "complete tactical surprise". Richardson wrote "Thanks to the unfailing support of the corps commanders, the discipline of every unit in the Army, the devoted work of Ayrton and Robb, and of many other camouflage specialists, and the magnificent performance of the Desert Air Force's fighter pilots, the deception plan succeeded."


Death

Ayrton died on active service, on 4 April 1943, of meningitis. He is buried in
Tunisia Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisia also shares m ...
, in the Medjez-el-Bab Commonwealth War Cemetery. For his war-service, Major Ayrton was posthumously awarded a
Mention in Despatches To be mentioned in dispatches (or despatches) describes a member of the armed forces whose name appears in an official report written by a superior officer and sent to the high command, in which their gallant or meritorious action in the face of t ...
.


Bibliography

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References


External links

* Richard Stokes, —discussing that it was Ayrton, not
Jasper Maskelyne Jasper Maskelyne (29 September 1902 – 15 March 1973) was a British stage magician in the 1930s and 1940s. He was one of an established family of stage magicians, the son of Nevil Maskelyne and a grandson of John Nevil Maskelyne. He is most re ...
, that played a key role with Barkas in Operation Bertram. {{DEFAULTSORT:Ayrton, Tony 1909 births 1943 deaths Camoufleurs Military personnel from the London Borough of Camden 20th-century English painters English male painters Royal Engineers officers British Army personnel killed in World War II Deaths from meningitis Infectious disease deaths in Egypt Neurological disease deaths in Egypt 20th-century English male artists People from Hampstead