Tony Ayrton Tony Ayrton ( born Antony Maxwell Ayrton , 1909 - 1943 ) was an artist and camouflage officer . He is best known for his work on the large - scale deception for the decisive second battle of El Alamein , Operation Bertram . Early life . Ayrton was born in 1909 into an artistic family as the son of the architect Maxwell Ayrton . He became a painter . He was gazetted as an officer in the Royal Engineers on 3 December 1939 . He was responsible for forming No . 85 South African Camouflage Company , and in early 1941 he was one of only five fully trained camouflage officers in the whole of the British middle east . The Director of Camouflage for Middle East Command , Geoffrey Barkas , quickly had him seconded to his team , followed by the whole of No . 85 Camouflage Company . On 17 July 1942 , Barkas made Ayrton his deputy , replacing the brilliant camoufleur Steven Sykes , who was exhausted and ill . Still short of camouflage officers , Barkas heard of a private soldier , Brian Robb , who was known to be skilful at drawing , and finding him enthusiastic and likeable , quickly brought him to General Headquarters in Cairo and had him promoted to Staff Lieutenant . Deception for El Alamein . Charles Richardson was tasked by Freddie de Guingand , Bernard Montgomery ' s chief of staff , to plan the deception operation for El Alamein , named Operation Bertram . Richardson was happy to be able to rely on the " highly developed " system of camouflage and deception which Barkas had created . Richardson was a member of the Royal Engineers and had worked on deception operations in Dudley Clarke ' s secret ' A ' Force . On 17 September 1941 , Barkas and Ayrton were called to Eighth Army headquarters , out in the desert near Borg el Arab , between Alexandria and El Alamein . They listened in astonishment as Richardson explained the size of the deception that he was planning . He wanted Rommel to believe that Montgomery would attack in the south , not along the obvious coast road route ; and that the attack would not be ready on the night of the full moon , 23 October . This was to be achieved despite the lack of cover in the desert , and the 700 tanks and 400 guns that were to be used in the attack . On 27 September 1942 , 28 days before the planned start of battle , Barkas instructed Ayrton and Robb to organise the camouflage and dummies representing the whole of Eighth Army ' s armoured force and artillery . Ayrton planned and supervised the building of the " Diamond " dummy pipeline , which ran southwards to help give Rommel the impression that an Armoured Corps was massing in the south . Ayrton convinced Richardson that Camouflage could implement this despite the shortage of time and materials . Ayrton ' s plan was to flatten and join thousands of the non - returnable 4 - gallon petrol cans to make 5 miles of dummy pipe , which was laid in a trench and left for one day . The next night , the trench was filled in , and the pipe laid in a trench 5 miles further south . The trench remained about 10 miles short of its destination - the southern part of the British front line - on 23 September , showing Rommel that the pipeline and the attack were not ready . To give the pipeline realism , Ayrton planned dummy overhead storage tanks , pumphouses , and filling stations complete with dummy men and trucks . This activity was reinforced by a large dummy dump named Brian for Ayrton ' s cheerful assistant , Brian Robb . All went well , until one night a powerful desert dust storm tore many of the dummy trucks to pieces . Ayrton worked all that night and the next day to restore the " scene " to a semblance of reality . Richardson noted with relief that " German Tac [ tical ] R [ econnaissance ] noticed nothing new . Every morning I received the intercepted Luftwaffe ' s report of the previous day . ' Nothing to report ' was the phlegmatic message on about D - 7 . " Unknown to Ayrton or Richardson , Ultra showed that the Royal Air Force had ensured that no German aircraft flew over the Eighth Army preparations between 18 and 23 October . As well as working on the dummy army in the south , Ayrton led the work to hide the real army in the north , devising the methods used to hide the army ' s fuel , food , and ammunition . The petrol , held in fragile and leaky 4 - gallon cans , was stacked in existing slit trenches . These were revetted with masonry , casting sharp shadows . A single wall of petrol cans against the real wall was undetectable from the air . With the real stores invisible in the north , and the dummy stores very visible in the sourth , Ayrton had made Eighth Army seem to be far to the south of where it actually was . By 22 October 1942 , the whole of Eighth Army ' s armour was assembled in its " Martello " concentration area , the enemy having suspected nothing . Barkas wrote that " all the other schemes mounted by Ayrton , Robb , and the other Eighth Army camouflage men were also ready . The job was done . " The attack in the north at El Alamein on the night of 23 October 1942 came , as Winston Churchill reported to parliament , as a " complete tactical surprise " . Richardson wrote " Thanks to the unfailing support of the corps commanders , the discipline of every unit in the Army , the devoted work of Ayrton and Robb , and of many other camouflage specialists , and the magnificent performance of the Desert Air Force ' s fighter pilots , the deception plan succeeded . " Death . Ayrton died of meningitis in 1943 .