The Dummy Drome

The Dummy Drome is a well-researched story about an aerodrome that wasn’t really there - this was RAF Wick’s decoy airfield near Sarclet, by Thrumster in Caithness. The featureless landscape was grazed by sheep finding what sustenance they could and there were no people or structures in sight. Even the ‘solid ground’ was only an illusion: a wide expanse of heather covered a great depth of peat bog that couldn’t be ploughed for fear machinery and animals would sink. This deception was exactly what was needed - an illusion dreamed up by military strategists and cinema-set designers in faraway offices. For a brief period it was busy, active and vital, full of people and buildings with three broad and very obvious tracks with lights and noise. It was very much on the map, specifically designed to draw attention to itself. The Air Ministry cartographers who made it look larger than it really was transposed the design of a real aerodrome onto a blank area on the map of northern Scotland. The planners added standard building designs in the right places. Huge quantities of raw materials were brought to the site and construction workers created runways that a plane could not land on. Artists and craftsmen made planes that couldn’t fly and even painted them onto canvas. Men and women from all over the country came here to work at a place that was not a working airfield, although their very presence as they moved about was an essential part of its apparent function. The Dummy Drome tells the story of how it became a part of the lives of the people who built it, worked there or lived nearby. These hitherto untold stories reveal the experiences and recollections of the ordinary people who knew it and who were sworn to secrecy. This was only one of over 200 similar decoy sites, and it is possible to piece together what’s left of it on the ground some 80 years later, since it is clearly visible from the air.