"Much publicity has been given to the good effects of carrots on night vision and some newspapers have even begun to use the vegetable as a nickname for certain ace pilots. Actually, night-fighter pilots don't eat anymore carrots than day fighters do..." —LIFE June 23, 1941
"While carrots are a good source of vitamin A (which is important for healthy eyesight, skin, growth, and resisting infection), eating them won't improve vision.
The purported link between carrots and markedly acute vision is a matter of lore, not of science. And it's lore of the deliberately manufactured type.
"In World War II, Britain's air ministry spread the word that a diet of these vegetables helped pilots see Nazi bombers attacking at night. That was a lie intended to cover the real matter of what was underpinning the Royal Air Force's successes: Airborne Interception Radar, also known as AI. The secret new system pinpointed some enemy bombers before they reached the English Channel.
"British Intelligence didn't want the Germans to find out about the superior new technology helping protect the nation, so they created a rumor to afford a somewhat plausible-sounding explanation for the sudden increase in bombers being shot down. News stories began appearing in the British press about extraordinary personnel manning the defenses, including Flight Lieutenant John Cunningham, an RAF pilot dubbed "Cats Eyes" on the basis of his exceptional night vision that allowed him to spot his prey in the dark. Cunningham's abilities were chalked up to his love of carrots. Further stories claimed RAF pilots were being fed goodly amounts of this root vegetable to foster similar abilities in them...."
That's an interesting form of disinformation. I've been known to employ somewhat similar tactics myself.
The context involved a disagreement with someone else which grew to include a legal action.
Turns out I'd managed to access a significant trove of documents, admissible in court, strongly supporting my side's case.
I was in communication with several entities I suspected were communicating (directly or otherwise) with the opposing side, and while it was useful to communicate that we had significant information, detailing just what it was, or how it was obtained, was somewhat less so.
So the cover story we worked out was that we had deep connections to the black-hat online hacker community who were able to pull all kinds of random information out of the Net. Playing up the whole hacker mistique thing.
One consequence of this was opposing counsel strongly suspecting that the evidence we introduced wasn't admissible. They were rather surprised when it turned out to be very admissible. The fact that the opposing side's witnesses were shown to be markedly less than credible didn't help their side (and may have sabotaged their own case).
It was a vaguely satisfying aspect of an otherwise fairly unpleasant episode.
(Not quite the same, but in a similar vein)