The English illusionist Jasper Maskelyne it was famous in England in the 1930s. In 1939, at the outbreak of the Second World War, he decided to volunteer for the army to make his skills available to the English troops. camouflage and camouflage skills: according to some sources, thanks to him major war misdirections were carried out, such as hide the port of Alexandria to the German bombers and surprise Rommel’s army from behind in the battle of El Alamein. Other scholars instead argue that Maskelyne was a simple member of the army responsible for creating war camouflage objects for the soldiers prisoners of the adversaries and for the entertainment of the troops. The descendant of a famous family of illusionists, he died in Kenya in the early 1970s, and his exploits remain shrouded in mystery and curiosity.
The first years of activity, between theater and magic shows
Jasper Maskelyne was born in London in 1902 in a family of artists: Both his father and grandfather were famous illusionists, and young Jasper trained as an artist, actor, and magician in the English theaters. In the 1930s he took part in several theatrical performances, directed his family’s historical theater and also acted in the film The Famous Illusionist in 1937, where he brought to the big screen a famous trick where he swallowed razor blades. In 1936 he also published the book Maskelyne’s Book of Magicin which he shared in great detail some of his “tricks“, including card and sleight of hand tricks, rope illusions and mind-reading techniques.
To be able to successfully design and implement his tricks, Maskelyne had to be a great expert in opticsmechanics, electronics as well as pictorial and forgery art.
Entry into the army and “the Magic Gang”
By 1939, Maskelyne was a famous and well-regarded magician and, at the very height of his career, he decided to leave the stage to volunteer to joinarmywith the aim of putting its own ability as a magician and illusionist at the service of the armed forces and English intelligence to mislead adversaries. According to some sources, he managed to attract the attention of Professor Frederick Alexander Lindemann, friend and scientific advisor to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who took his ideas into consideration and entrusted him with a working group – nicknamed “Magic Gang” or “Band of Miracles” – formed by artists, painters, carpenters, ceramists and other craftsmen who lent their skills to the war camouflage techniques created by Maskelyne.
He attended training at Camouflage Development and Training Centre and, in January 1941, he set sail from England headed first to Cairo and then head of the Experimental camouflage section to Abbassia: according to sources favorable to his real involvement as “War Wizard”, it was here that Maskelyne achieved the feats of camouflage for which he became famous.
He also served in theMI9section of the English intelligence that dealt with assistance to captured soldiers, for which the wizard he invented tools to ask for help or escape in case of capture, such as blades inside combs, maps hidden in small objects, tools disguised inside cricket bats, and so on. According to some sources, this was his only certain contribution to the English armed forces during the world conflict.
Maskelyne’s camouflage tricks
The “War Wizard” and his “Band” probably gave life to one of the most successful masking operations in the history of warfare: they “hid” the port of Alexandria in Egyptpreventing the Italian-German bombers from razing it to the ground. The Magic Gang, in fact, recreated a fake port 10 miles away in wood, metal, straw and mud and, with a play of mirrors and lights, dazzled enemy planes to hide the real one.
After the success of this operation, in 1942, Maskelyne and his Gang set up a mock armored division with tanks, soldier dummies and war instruments that were advanced against the German troops led by Erwin Rommel, known as “The Desert Fox”. The real army attacked the German division by surprise during the Battle of El Alamein, thus preventing the Germans from taking control of the Suez Canal. The Band probably disbanded after this episode: as evidence of the fact that Maskelyne probably actually lent his services as a wizard to the army, it seems that his name was inserted in a list in the Gestapocomplete with a bounty on his head.
In 1944, Maskelyne then repeated this “trick” to divert the Germans’ attention from the Normandy landings, making them believe that it would take place in Calais. According to sources who do not recognize Jasper Maskelyne’s involvement in these operations, the magician was initially involved, but was then simply entrusted to him the entertainment of the soldiers during their moments of rest.
Jasper Maskelyne’s exploits during the war – whether true or disguised as the truth – are collected in several books: the historical novel “The Crow Girl” by Cristina Brambilla released in 2023 with Mondadori, “Magic: Top Secret” released in 1949 by Maskelyne himself and “The war magician: the true story of Jasper Maskelyne”written in 1985 by David Fisher.
The move to Kenya and the last years
After the war, at the beginning of the 1950s, Maskelyne moved to Kenya: For a time he was director of the National Theater in Nairobi, as a leading member of the British expatriate community. In the following years, there were numerous uprisings by the local Mau Mau population in Kenya for independence, and Maskelyne served to block the subversions. In the 1960s, he definitively abandoned magic: he opened a driving school, and died in Nairobi in 1973.
His fame, today, is still partly shrouded in mystery, which could be revealed thanks to war documents from the Second World War which Britain recently desegregated.
