How a U.S. Pilot’s “Oil Can Trick” Saved 23 Bombers in One Night

Video Description

Discover the untold World War II story of how a Texas farm boy with a high school education turned six empty oil cans into one of the most audacious tactical deceptions in aviation history, saving twenty-three crippled Lancaster bombers and one hundred sixty-one men from certain death over the North Sea. On the night of March 17, 1944, Captain James “Tex” Harlan of the 422nd Night Fighter Squadron returned to RAF Wittering low on fuel and out of ammunition while German night fighters prepared to massacre damaged bombers limping home from Hamburg. Staring at a discarded oil can in his Mosquito cockpit, Harlan improvised a plan that RAF command would later call “inadvisable but effective”: mount six empty oil cans under his wings, drop them by wire release to generate false radar returns, and trick elite Luftwaffe night fighter aces into diving after phantom “falling bombers” while the real crews escaped. This documentary traces Harlan’s journey from Depression-era Amarillo, where he taught himself to fly from a manual and learned to fix broken machinery with baling wire, through his unconventional rise as a night fighter ace and the creation of the “Oil Can Trick,” used seven times before German intelligence caught on—saving an estimated seventy-three bombers and over five hundred lives. Drawing on postwar analysis, personal testimonies, and the enduring legacy of his battered oil can and Mosquito wing panel preserved in museums, this film reveals how one man’s mechanical ingenuity, refusal to accept “impossible,” and willingness to break the rules under fire turned garbage into a weapon, reshaped air tactics, and created a living legacy carried by thousands of descendants who exist today because six empty cans fooled the Luftwaffe.