Jasper Maskelyne

Jasper Maskelyne
Born	September 29, 1902 London, UK
Died	March 15, 1973 (age 70) Nairobi, Kenia
Categories	Books by Jasper Maskelyne

Jasper Maskelyne (b.1902–d.1973) was a British stage magician in the 1930s and 1940s.

Biography

He was one of an established family of stage magicians, the son of Nevil Maskelyne and a grandson of John Nevil Maskelyne. He could also trace his ancestry to the royal astronomer Nevil Maskelyne. He is most remembered, however, for the accounts of his work for British military intelligence during the Second World War, creating large-scale ruses, deception, and camouflage. Very little verifiable evidence of Maskelyne's work during this period is documented, leading some researchers to believe that Maskelyne's claims are exaggerated or fabricated.

Wartime Trickery

According to the autobiographical "Magic: Top Secret" and David Fisher's biography "The War Magician", Maskelyne's wartime career was as follows.

Maskelyne joined the Royal Engineers when the Second World War broke out, thinking that his skills could be used in camouflage. He convinced sceptical officers by creating the illusion of a German warship on the Thames using mirrors and a model. He was eventually deployed to the African theater in the Western Desert, although he spent most of his time entertaining the troops.

In January 1941, General Archibald Wavell created A Force for subterfuge and counterintelligence. Maskelyne was assigned to serve in it and gathered a group of 14 assistants, including an architect, art restorer, carpenter, chemist, electrical engineer, electrician, painter, and stage-set builder. It was nicknamed the Magic Gang.

The Magic Gang built a number of tricks. They used painted canvas and plywood to make jeeps look like tanks — with fake tank tracks — and tanks look like trucks. They created illusions of armies and battleships.

His largest trick was to conceal Alexandria and the Suez Canal to misdirect German bombers. He built a mockup of the night-lights of Alexandria in a bay three miles away with fake buildings, lighthouse, and anti-aircraft batteries. To mask the Suez Canal he built a revolving cone of mirrors that created a wheel of spinning light nine miles wide, meant to dazzle and disorient enemy pilots so that their bombs would fall off-target.

In 1942 he worked in Operation Bertram, before the battle of El Alamein. His task was to make German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel think that the attack was coming from the south when British General Bernard Montgomery planned to attack from the north. In the north, 1,000 tanks were disguised as trucks. On the south, the Magic Gang created 2,000 fake tanks with convincing pyrotechnics. There was a fake railway line, fake radio conversations, and fake sounds of construction. They also built a fake water pipeline and made it look as if it would never be ready before attack.

The Magic Gang was disbanded after the battle and, although Winston Churchill praised his efforts, Maskelyne did not receive the appreciation he desired. Maskelyne tried to resume his stage career after the war without much success. He moved to Kenya and founded a driving school.

A report in The Guardian of June 28, 2002, was more blunt: "Maskelyne received no official recognition. For a vain man this was intolerable and he died an embittered drunk. It gives his story a poignancy without which it would be mere chest-beating."

Jasper Maskelyne died in 1973.

Doubts

The standard Maskelyne account has been critically analysed by the military historian and magician Richard Stokes. In a 21-article series originally written in 1993-95 for the Australian magic magazine Geniis Magic Journal, Stokes documents many chronological inaccuracies and unsubstantiated events, concluding that Maskelyne's wartime exploits have been heavily fictionalised, particularly via the ghost-written Magic: Top Secret.

Stokes also points out the existence of two Maskelyne genealogies, casting doubt that the line of magicians was descended from the astronomer Nevil Maskelyne.

Fictional?

Maskelyne and Naval intelligence officer Ian Fleming or Ian's older brother Peter Fleming, allegedly conceived a plan to trick Rudolf Hess into attempting to contact a fake cell of anti-Churchill Englishmen in Britain, but this plan was not used because Hess had flown to Scotland in an attempt to broker peace behind Hitler's back. Anthony Masters's book "The Man Who Was M: The Life of Charles Henry Maxwell Knight" asserts Fleming conceived the plan that lured Hess into flying to Scotland, in May 1941, to negotiate Anglo–German peace with Churchill, which resulted in Hess's capture.

Siblings

• Noel Maskelyne
• Clive Maskelyne
• Mary Maskelyne
• John Nevil Maskelyne (known as Jack)

Books

• White Magic (1936) — Maskelyne family history
• Magic: Top Secret (1949) — ghost-written account of his WW2 exploits

Further reading

• Fisher, David. The War Magician (1983, reprinted 2004). A novelised biography.
• Latimer, Jon, Deception in War, London: John Murray, 2001. A factual account of 'A' Force and its development.
• Salisse, John & Davenport, Anne. A Candid View of Maskelyne's 1916-1917 (1995).
• Salisse, John & Davenport, Anne. St. George's Hall (2002).

References

This page incorporated content from Jasper Maskelyne, a page hosted on Wikipedia. Please consult the history of the original page to see a list of its authors. Therefor, this article is also available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

• The Linking Ring, Vol. 34, No. 7, September 1954, Maskelyne Moves To Africa, by John Booth, page 23
• The Linking Ring, Vol. 49, No. 9, September 1969, Memoirs Of A Magician's Ghost, by John Booth, CHAPTER 31, page 45
• Genii Magazine, Vol. 37, No. 2, February 1073, Obituaries, Jasper Maskelyne, by Peter Warlock, page 80
• The Magic Circular, Vol. 65, No. 742, May 1973, Obituaries, Jasper Maskelyne, by Peter Warlock, page 192
• The Linking Ring, Vol. 65, No. 2, February 1985, Memoirs Of A Magician's Ghost, by John Booth, CHAPTER 190 - THE MYSTERY OF "THE WAR MAGICIAN", page 46
• Magicana, Vol. 58, No. 351, October-November 2011, The War Magician, by Alistair Maskelyne, page 30
• Bio-bibliographisches Lexikon der Zauberkünstler Edition Volker Huber, April 2002, Maskelyne, Jasper engl. Zauberkünstler (*29.09.1902 London; †15.03.1973), page 226
• http://www.maskelynemagic.com/
• Fisher, David. The War Magician (1983, reprinted 2004). A novelised biography.
• Latimer, Jon, Deception in War, London: John Murray, 2001. A factual account of 'A' Force and its development.
• Salisse, John & Davenport, Anne. A Candid View of Maskelyne's 1916-1917 (1995).
• Salisse, John & Davenport, Anne. St. George's Hall (2002).
• Magic at War; UK Channel 4 microsite about Maskelyne
• Jasper Maskelyne, Master of Make-Believe: Richard Stokes articles online