Kingsbury Lighting and Fire Bombing Decoy Site
A lighting and fire bombing decoy site from the Second World War designed to confuse the enemy into dropping their bombs in the wrong place. Documentary evidence places it 600m southwest of Kingsbury Wood.
1 Kingsbury bombing decoy site which was part of the QL and QF programmes for Birmingham. The QL site was set up to simulate the lights of a marshalling yard (parallel railway sidings) and so distract the bombers from the northeastern area of Birmingham. The FQ site at the same location was like a Starfish site only smaller. Fires were created to counterfeit the effects of incendiary and other bombs. Lighting decoys were a cheap and effective way of confusing the enemy, and their deployment dates from july 1941. Every site differed with a lighting display that would mimic some local vulnerable point. An associated shelter would have been built to house the generator/s and other equipment.
- For the sources of these notes, see the
- Timetrail record
- produced by the Historic Environment Record.
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