7 Jan /15

Smoke screen

The smoke screen found its way into the English language 100 years ago. It was first used in a discussion about the pros and cons of balloons and aircraft in aerial combat. Almost as an aside, in his book Aeroplanes and dirigibles of war (published in 1915) Talbot writes, that the smoke screen is “an accepted and extensively practised ruse in naval strategy” which has found its way into aerial warfare.

The smoke screen has long been a standard part of military tactics. For example, in the Second World War, the smoke was used to hide towns, ships or factories against enemy bombing. One of the most successful uses was at Bizerte in North Africa when in 1943, 3,000 German bombs completely missed the Allied ships which had been gathered at the port.

The idea of the smoke screen as a distraction, of camouflage in a non-military sense came in the 1920s. It was used by the novelist Rose Macaulay, who could talk from experience as early career positions were in the British Propaganda Department and the War Office. In her 1926 novel, Crewe Train, she writes, “The winds, doubtless, were a smoke-screen put up to conceal an advance into some more pithy topic.” From this time on, smoke screen was a common expression from deliberate efforts to mislead.