Captain A.B. Woodhall watched the dots on the radar in growing desperation, knowing full well that he and his friends would soon be scattered in pieces around several large craters. But then he had an idea. It was a stupid one -- little more than a prank. But it was all they had, and it just ... might ... work.

Woodhall knew the Germans were listening in on their radio, so he grabbed a nearby Canadian pilot whose voice he was sure they'd recognize, threw a microphone in his hand, and started issuing orders as if the pilot was flying his plane. Apparently the Canadian Air Force spend a considerable amount of time in improv training, because the pilot rolled with it and the two struck up a two-way exchange of orders and execution, going through their lines in a wacky bit called "Fully functional Spitfire about to roast some German bomber ass."

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The secret is really selling the "Pew! Pew!"s.

This impromptu action kicked in motion a Rube Goldberg sequence that presumably bought Woodhall a fair few beers at the mess hall later. The German pilots, who were indeed listening in, promptly shat bricks and started yelling Spitfire alarms to each other. This in turn caused two of the German planes to panic so hard that they immediately shot each other down. The remaining Germans were suddenly faced with a nightmare situation: An unseen enemy in a clearly superior plane was stalking them, and two of their friends had already fallen.

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"Did that radio say 'Superman incoming'? Retreat!"

So they backed the hell off. Woodhall and the pilot had deflected their attack and downed two enemy planes with nothing but a few words in the radio.

Although clearly one of the cleverest spur-of-the-moment strategies in the battle for Malta, everyone involved felt that the events were far too silly to actually report as they were. As such, both kills were unceremoniously awarded to one Pilot Officer Humgufery, who did not exist.

The bag he had "accidentally" dropped contained a carefully constructed disinformation bomb, made all the more believable by the plethora of convincing but fabricated personal and professional papers, notes, letters of correspondence, and even money (which was real). There were intricate, heartfelt (and 100-percent bullshit) writings about Meinertzhagen's new baby son. There were convincing but fake military code breakers. And in the middle of it all, the jackpot: A seemingly innocuous draft that heavily implied that the British were planning an attack ... only, Meinertzhagen's papers had the location marked at Gaza.

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"These effects must be real. No one would willingly let poetry this bad fall into enemy hands."

Just as Meinertzhagen had planned, the intricate mass of distraction he had planted in the bag led to the enemy taking it all at face value. They diverted their attention towards Gaza, which would soon make them feel pretty foolish, once the British force attacked Beersheba largely unopposed.

Sadly, history books don't say whether the captured enemy soldiers congratulated Meinertzhagen on his fictional son.

While on its way home with engine problems, Graf Spee found itself up against no fewer than three British cruisers.

Via Desertwar.net
Which weren't exactly swan boats themselves.

After crippling the strongest of the three and seriously ruining the quality of the day for the other two, the Admiral Graf Spee turned to flee -- not because it was losing, but because it was getting kind of worried about its engines. The two British light cruisers chose to pursue -- a ballsy move, as both were by that point keenly aware that the German vessel could sink the shit out of them relatively easily. This didn't stop them from trapping Graf Spee while it made repairs in the mouth of the River Plate. Realizing that they had the timespan of exactly one cruiser repair job to live, the crews of the British cruisers had to think fast. This is what they came up with:

"Why don't we tell them we have a ton of help coming? Maybe they will run away instead of killing us all."

"Sure, whatever. Let's roll."

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Much better than the previous plan of "Get blown to pieces by a floating pile of cannons."

So the British sent a completely fake, deliberately poorly-coded message talking about the huge armada that totally was on its way to destroy the Admiral Graf Spee.

The captain of the German cruiser swallowed the bait hook, line, and sinker. Knowing Germany couldn't afford to let the Brits get their hands on their sweet heavy cruiser tech, he evacuated and scuttled the entire vessel, only to (presumably) have his solemn captainin' moment interrupted by the sounds of high fives and relieved laughter from the British ships.

It was October 1944, and World War II was reaching its crescendo. Lt. William Standish was an American member of the era's popular Allied Troops Against Hitler Club, fighting in Italy against the remnants of a German garrison desperately fighting to keep the country, despite the fact that Italy had already totally switched sides and declared war on Germany.

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Ah, Italy. Because world history needs a fair-weather player.

Unfortunately for Standish and his troops, they found themselves in a not-too-ideal position of staring down the barrel of a German machine gun raining hellfire upon them. Standish and a dozen remaining men had no option but to surrender to the Germans, and their part of the war came to a close.

Or so it seemed.

Unhappy with entering the POW game, Standish began griping to himself about how he wished the Germans were their POWs instead. As luck would have it, a German Sergeant Major happened to speak English and overheard him. This piqued the German's interest. It turns out this particular unit had recently gotten out of the Soviet Front (which was also going pretty badly at the time), and was as sick of this whole war thing as only men who have weathered both Soviet winter and Soviet soldiers can be.

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Pictured: The standard experience of fighting the Soviets in winter.

So the German Sergeant Major skulked up to Standish and inquired about what the Allied forces would theoretically do to German POWs, should some hypothetically turn up from, say, the doomed Italian front. The air around them thick with insinuation, Standish recognized the gift horse for what it was, and he was all set for a rodeo. He started replying to the Sergeant Major's query with a full-blown surrender pitch, basically the era's equivalent of "Oh, it's pretty cozy -- they mostly watch Netflix and drink beer all day."

Via Veteranstoday.com
"Or you can keep at this. Your call."

Eventually, he realized that his silver tongue was working. All 40 Germans promptly surrendered, happy to march off to a POW camp in Africa.

Which we suppose will seem less impressive once you read this ...