Snaquebite
03-11-2010, 15:26
Hiding The Lockheed Plant During World War II
Lockheed During W.W.II (unbelievable 1940s pictures).
This is a version of special effects during the 1940's.
I have never seen these pictures or knew that we had gone this far to protect ourselves.
During World War II the Army Corps of Engineers needed to hide the Lockheed Burbank Aircraft Plant to protect it from a possible Japanese air attack. They covered it with camouflage netting to make it look like a rural subdivision from the air.
Before:
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After:
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Snaquebite
03-11-2010, 15:27
After: (Cont'd)
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That is attention to detail! American ingenuity.
greenberetTFS
03-11-2010, 18:18
WOW !!!!!!.........:eek::eek::eek:
Big Teddy :munchin
That is attention to detail! American ingenuity.
I imagine that there was a lot of help from Hollywood's set builders. Universal Studios was only a mile or so away.
Pat
Hmmm, it appears more than one person was sleeping during the Tactical Deception class.
Sigh, I guess it's just so old fashion these days.
Besides, try that now and the press will be all over the story to rat out all the details for the other side.
Anybody think they (the Japanese) didn't know where that plant was located since it was next to Burbank's Union Airport and a main rail line?
Probably more of a 'feel good' effort for morale than anything of any real value - lots of those being done at that time.
The following is the story of the project from a 2004 article by the AIA/HO (Historian's Office for the Air Intel Agency), HQs, Lackland AFB, TX.
Must've taken a hell of a lot of work and became obsolete almost as soon as it was accomplished - certainly wouldn't be of value today.
Richard's $.02 :munchin
The disguise of California
Dr. Dennis Casey, Spokesman Magazine, Aug 2004
Part 1 of 2
[I]In the weeks following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese armed forces appeared to be invincible. They maneuvered through the Pacific like a blitzkrieg demolishing any and all who opposed them. When compared to earlier Nazi triumphs in Europe, it was impressive indeed. In just two months the Japanese had conquered tremendous distances in the Pacific theater and had seized Guam, Hong Kong, Manila, Singapore, and numerous other locations. Resistance crumbled as they advanced.
Along the west coast but particularly in California, many feared an imminent Japanese invasion. Many others agonized over America's lack of military preparation to propel such an invasion. One general declared in private that about the only thing the United States had to stop a Japanese invasion of California were a few platoons of Boy Scouts.
Isolationistic and anti-military policies in the 1920s had left an army that was only a shadow of the size it had been at the conclusion of World War I. The successful conclusion of what was called the war to end all wars suggested there was little need for much of a standing army. The bothersome buildup of the fascist powers, Germany, Italy and Japan, during the 1930s did little to jar loose American isolationism.
Those concerned about a Japanese invasion of the west coast could not have known that for years, the Japanese had been planning for a widespread conquest of the Pacific that focused on mass landings between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The Japanese timetable first called for the capture of Midway Island, a tiny spot in the central Pacific held in 1941 by a small contingent of U.S. Marines. From there it was only 1,100 miles in a northeast direction to Hawaii. Japanese plans called for using Pearl Harbor as a base from which an invasion fleet could be directed to California.
In February 1942, U.S. Navy monitors on the west coast tracked a Japanese submarine skulking just outside San Francisco Bay. A few nights later another Japanese submarine surfaced off the Santa Barbara coast and fired a few shells at an oil storage facility. One of the shells exploded on an ocean pier. Suddenly, with these events, the war had come to California.
Panic soon erupted throughout the state and rumors were about pending attacks from the sea by Japan. Newspaper stories and editorials excitedly urged all to be ready for a Japanese invasion. The two submarine reports made it clear to the War Department in Washington that California was vulnerable and steps would have to be taken to ensure its defense.
In the atmosphere of panic and worry throughout California with stories everywhere of Japanese secret agents hiding behind every bush and tree, the War Department ordered Lt. Gen. John L. De Witt, head of the Western Defense Command, to implement passive defense measures for all vital installations along the Pacific Coast.
What did passive defense measures mean? General De Witt had essentially been instructed to disguise California. The weight of this seemingly impossible assignment fell to Col. John F. Ohmer who was stationed at March Field, located about 60 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.
Colonel Ohmer, who commanded a camouflage training center at March Field, was a pioneer in camouflage, deception and misdirection techniques. During the Battle of Britain in late 1940, when the full force of the Luftwaffe was attempting to bring England to her knees, Ohmer visited England and witnessed first-hand how carefully made and positioned camouflage was, which caused the Luftwaffe to waste thousands of tons of bombs on empty fields.
Months prior to Pearl Harbor, Colonel Ohmer decided to risk the displeasure of his superiors by campaigning for the protective cover of primary American targets both at home and in the Pacific. His recounting of British successes at concealing high value assets did not sway superiors in Washington.
One of the plans he presented to the War Department was designed to hide Wheeler Field, a major air base near Pearl Harbor. As Ohmer suspected, his plan was rejected for being too costly, $56,210.
Weeks later when Wheeler and its neatly positioned aircraft were destroyed, this cost did not seem at all out of line.
In 1940, Ohmer's campaign to promote his cause turned to experimentation. Efforts to demonstrate the value of camouflage took place at Maxwell Field, Alabama; Elgin Field, Florida; Langley Field and Fort Eustis, Virginia; and Barksdale Field, Louisiana. On December 7, 1940, Goodyear Tire and Rubber agreed to manufacture rubber decoy aircraft similar to those that had been used by the British for $1,000 a copy.
Goodyear's plans indicated these rubber planes could be produced in significantly high numbers.
The War Department again turned down Ohmer's plans and related requests for funding. He had hoped to scatter the dummy planes around the American air bases in Hawaii. Even a powerful letter from Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short, commander of the Hawaiian Department that asked for camouflage treatment of the airfields received no action. Later, General Short would be singled out along with Admiral Husband E. Kimmel to be the scapegoats for the Pearl Harbor disaster.
With the United States now at war and with the sudden concern from the War Department that California might be vulnerable, Colonel Ohmer set out to disguise the state. To help him in this endeavor were personnel in the engineer camouflage battalion at March Field. The soldiers, however, were not alone.
The movie studios in Hollywood, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Disney Studios, Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount, Universal Pictures and others accepted the challenge and offered scenic designers, painters, art directors, landscape artists, animators, carpenters, lighting experts and prop men. While not experienced in military affairs, this legion of experts from the movies would make Colonel Ohmer's assignment considerably easier and entirely possible.
In the early weeks of 1942, March Field came alive with creative talent. Indeed, some Army observers remarked that it looked like a Hollywood studio back lot. Depending on where you might walk, you could run into a small farm being created complete with animals, a barn, a silo and other buildings. Pastoral settings were under constructions using frames of lumber and large spreads of canvas. When a pastoral setting was used to conceal an ammunition storage area, the whole thing achieved near reality when a neighboring farmer grazed his cows near the phony buildings.
In other sections of March Field, scattered decoy aircraft made of canvas scraps, ration boxes, and burlap on chicken wire as well as flattened tin cans dominated the landscape.
While none of these aircraft looked real from close in, they looked very real on film taken from an appreciable distance. Colonel Ohmer's new Hollywood battalion even became accomplished at creating fake runways by burning grassy strips. From above they looked like the real thing.
With the experimentation phase completed, the colonel and his crews began applying Hollywood techniques to camouflage some 34 air bases to include the planting of fake foliage and structural cover.
Hammer, Mills, and Salinas Fields in California; Salem and Portland Air Bases in Oregon; and McChord and Paine Fields in Washington received the attention of this group of experts.
Concurrently, Ohmer set out to conceal key factories and assembly plants that would be likely targets for a Japanese assault on the Pacific Coast. Walker Construction, a California firm, was called upon to disguise several facilities it had built including Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach, Calif.
In a relatively short period of time the entire area of the factory was camouflaged. The Lockheed-Vega aircraft plant in Burbank, Calif., was fully hidden beneath a complete suburb replete with rubber automobiles and peaceful rural neighborhood scenes painted on canvas. Hundreds of fake trees and shrubs were positioned to give the entire area a three dimensional appearance. The fake trees and shrubs were created from chicken wire that had been treated with an adhesive and then covered with chicken feathers to provide a leafy texture.
The entire tree or plant would then be painted in various shades of green along with spots of brown to show where the vegetation had died. Air ducts disguised as fire hydrants made it possible for the Lockheed-Vega employees to continue working underneath the huge camouflage umbrella designed to conceal their factory.
(cont'd)
The disguise of California
Dr. Dennis Casey, Spokesman Magazine, Aug 2004
Part 2 of 2
Maintaining the illusion of a neighborhood required careful timing and planning. The suburb had to show signs of life and activity. To do this, workers occasionally emerged to relocate automobiles, and through hidden trap doors in the canopy, appeared to take walks on hidden catwalks and pretended to do maintenance work. Some even took washing down from fake clotheslines only to replace items later at scheduled times.
Parked automobiles were frequently moved to indicate drivers were using their cars daily and returning home from work. But would all of these efforts really fool an enemy reconnaissance effort?
Colonel Ohmer made the decision to find out how effective his suburb really was. He latched on to a visiting general officer from the War Department and the two flew out to sea just off the California coast in a light aircraft. On their return to land Ohmer asked the visitor to point out the Lockheed-Vega plant. All the general saw was a peaceful rural community. He had no idea whatsoever that underneath that suburb, a factory employing thousands of workers was producing P-38 "Lightning" fighter planes.
Ohmer's suburb soon brought requests for other camouflage projects. In Seattle, the huge Boeing Aircraft complex that covered nearly 26 acres, ended up being covered by a complete town with municipal buildings, a park, schools and homes.
North American Aviation in EI Segundo, Vultee in Downey, Northrop in Hawthorne, Consolidated in San Diego and Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach were all made to vanish by Ohmer and his army of Hollywood experts and his soldiers.
When thinking in 1942 in Washington feared a Japanese invasion that would send waves of planes overhead to attack America's aviation industry, the disguise of these valuable facilities become a high priority.
The disguise of California ceased to be critical when the United States Navy dealt a smashing defeat to a Japanese carrier task force at Midway Island. The threat of a serious attack against the West Coast thankfully diminished and then vanished.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0QUY/is_2004_August/ai_n6335194/?tag=content;col1
The Japanese timetable first called for the capture of Midway Island, a tiny spot in the central Pacific held in 1941 by a small contingent of U.S. Marines. From there it was only 1,100 miles in a northeast direction to Hawaii.
Personally, I'd go southeast, but maybe he knows a shortcut.
Pat
Personally, I'd go southeast, but maybe he knows a shortcut.
Pat
He might have had Wake Island on his mind. After all, they are both small islands way out in the middle of nowhere.