Silver cloud
2005
Silver Cloud, Aircraft and 100 kilos of wafer paper cut into small strips
Towards the end of the Second World War, my father was seven years old when he saw the Silver Cloud. Later, thousands of silver strips were found scattered across the streets. He learned that these strips had been dropped from aircraft during the Battle of the Scheldt to confuse German radar.
My father’s story about the Silver Cloud is deeply lodged in my memory, along with the astonishment he experienced 60 years earlier. On 10 September 2005, at three o’clock in the afternoon, an aircraft scattered one hundred kilos of glittering strips over the Haarlemmermeer. This time, however, they were not made of aluminum but of edible wafer paper made from potato starch.
