Not a silly question at all! The best example that popped into my head was the Japanese balloon bombs of World War II. The idea was that dropping incendiary bombs over the forests of the Pacific North West would ignite massive forest fires, thus aiding in the Japanese war fight against the U.S.
A lot of interesting info on these weapons floated across the Pacific from Japan found on this site:
In a nutshell, a close look at the sand recovered from sand-bags used as ballast revealed their source to be from a particular region in Japan.
This area was subsequently bombed, bringing an end to this ingenious form of attack on our soil.
“The work of the MGU conclusively identified northeastern coastal Japan as the source area for the sand ballast, and the likely point of launching. Once these locations were revealed detailed photo reconnaissance were made of the areas in early 1945 and the photo interpreters succeeded in identifying two of the three plants producing hydrogen for the project in vicinity of Ichinomiya. These plants were conclusively destroyed by American B-29 bombers based in the Mariannas Islands in April 1945, putting an end to the vengeance bomb project.”
I wonder about the Scouts: imagine you are a spy, and your higher-ups tell you to collect … sand. Like a kid building sand-Castles. They likely wouldn’t tell you why (Need to know) but it’s still dangerous to sneak into occupied France. Wouldn’t you feel like an idiot risking your life for that? Or would you trust that no matter how stupid an order sounds the higher-ups know the full Picture and one single puzzle Piece often doesn’t make sense?
I wonder if it was customary back then for tourists on Holiday to collect some sand in Little glas bottles as Souvenir, and they could use that as excuse?
During summer, some beach cities on the North and East Sea host sand building competitions, and they truck in tonnes of river sand. Because river sand is (to oversimplify) each grain still a cube, whereas ocean sand is each grain a ball. Stacking cubes is much easier than stacking balls. (You still Need water to “glue” them better together).
That’s also why sand is worldwide a scarce resource: to build concrete buildings (which is still cheapest and easiest, no matter how ugly) river sand in cubes is better than ocean sand - or desert sand (which is also rounded by the wind). So that’s why the rich Arabic states (UEA, Quatar and so on) Import sand to build their Skyscrapers, the desert sand doesn’t work as well. (Ocean sand is badly suited for another reason: it either Needs to be washed with drinking water, or the remaining salt water will cause quick corrosion in contact with the iron inside the concrete, but wasting drinking water to wash sand in water-scarce countries is too expensive).
So countries with the right type of sand suddenly wake up overnight and find that some tonnes of sand from their river or beach have been stolen.
Another Problem are small Island nations, which Need sand because constant Tide Motion washes it away from one side, and then the Island itself gets eaten away (see some places of the British coast). But then an illegal Company Comes along and dregs up the sand a few miles offshore to sell it elsewhere, and the sand offshore lacking changes the Tide and wave motions, eroding their beach much faster.
Since small Island nations are mostly poor, they don’t have the necessary Police and Military to stop this (on top of many of them sinking anyway with climate Change).
So yes, sand is a Million-Dollar cut-throat Business.
There’s a similar scene in a novel I read. During WWII a group of British spies (or maybe they were commandos) in Italy is told to go a particular ruined castle on the coast, scatter some old newspapers and trash, and then leave. They have no idea why they’ve been ordered to do so.
Yep - I recall reading a story about a sand collector who had landed on a beach in Normandy. He took too long collecting a sample and was caught by the turning tide. The inter-tidal area was festooned with hedgehog tank traps loaded with explosives, and he had to hide behind one at the waters edge until the tide came back in and turned again, and he could float back out to the submarine he arrived on.
I believe that’s Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Definitely recommended.
And I could tell you why they did that, but then I’d have to …
[spoiler]put it in a spoiler.
They wanted to make it look like there’d been a long established observation post along the coast there. That way the Germans wouldn’t suspect they’d broken Enigma.[/spoiler]
Yes. To flesh it out a little…[spoiler]The British had broken the Enigma code and knew what supplies were loaded on particular ships leaving Italy for Africa. The Allies wanted to sink the ships with the most valuable supplies, probably fuel for Rommel’s armor divisions. But, if the Allies sank only those ship, or too many of them, the Germans might suspect that Enigma had been broken and come up with a replacement.
The mission was to make it look like there had been an observation post near an Italian port. If the Allies had gotten their information from that, the Germans would have no reason to change their codes.[/spoiler]If I remember right, it isn’t spelled out quite so explicitly in the book, but there’s enough information to figure it out pretty easily.
I’ve read a bit about that. Absolutely fascinating.
There’s a fictionalized version of that in the Cryptonomicon as well. I’ve long wondered if the other thing with the trash was also a fictionalized version of some real operation, but I’ve never heard of one. Possibly Stephenson came across a proposal of something like it that was never implemented and ran with it.
