Quaker gun

Although resembling an actual cannon, the Quaker gun was simply a wooden log, usually painted black, used to deceive an enemy.

[citation needed] Ordered to leave a regular force of colonial dragoons in the North Carolina theater by Brigadier General Daniel Morgan, Colonel Washington still lacked the proper artillery to dislodge the Loyalists.

Colonel Washington aimed the wooden "cannon" toward the buildings in which the Loyalists had barricaded themselves and threatened to open fire if they did not immediately surrender.

[1] During the Siege of Genoa in 1800, the French forces commander, Andre Massena, placed wooden dummy cannons on the city walls to confuse and divert the besieging Austrian army.

[6] Dummy equipment was also used extensively by the Allies in Operation Fortitude, to persuade the Germans that a non-existent field army was preparing to attack Calais.

However, from 1942 to 1944, she was fitted with wooden guns and stationed in the eastern Mediterranean, to make British naval forces in the area seem stronger than they were.

[citation needed] Fake gun emplacements, quickly constructed from local timber, were widely employed in the Soviet Union to fool and mislead German air reconnaissance.

"Quaker guns" (logs used as ruses to imitate cannons) in former Confederate fortifications at Manassas Junction March 1862
Quaker gun near Centreville, Virginia, in March 1862, after the Confederate withdrawal; a man with a stick is pretending to "fire" it with a linstock
Quaker guns made of pine logs were mounted in a ruse to fool the Union into believing that the Confederates were much better armed at the Siege of Port Hudson , Louisiana in 1863 than they were. Black rings were painted on the end of the logs to make the muzzles look convincing. It worked. After Admiral Farragut 's two vessels passed by Port Hudson, the Union chose never to attack from the river again.
A fake German artillery piece in World War I, created to draw fire.