Happy Thursday Fixers! Yesterday I used Google Earth to find my house and was saddened to see our Internet Overlords have dropped the ball. Not only was my house blurry, but our fence wasn’t even up; meaning Google hadn’t been by in years. For shame. But at least it was there, you know? It’s not like it looked like this:
Really pretty, boring old suburbia right? Not quite. This is actually an aerial photo taken during WWII of the Lockheed Aircraft Plant in Burbank, California. Turns out having the Japanese bomb one of our military installations put the rest of the west coast ill at ease. Lockheed was a large target, so the government enlisted the help of their neighbors at Disney to help design a realistic way to hide in plain sight. What they came up with was nothing short of brilliant. Hand painted tarps were raised to cover 45 buildings spread across 550 acres, giving the illusion nothing here was worth a Japanese fighter pilot’s time. While underneath, THIS was happening:
While the tarps did the job of covering the most noticeable military buildings, other methods were used to make the illusion come together. Chicken wire and feathers dyed green became bushes and trees, factory air ducts were fashioned to look like fire hydrants and workers hung laundry out behind the “cottages” to mimic everyday life.
Information and images courtesy of: Snopes.com and Aviation History
Do you have an idea for a future Historical Thursday article? Send it to me at thereifixedit@gmail.com.
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To think now if someone did that all an enemy would have to do is use thermal imaging. Great a idea for its time though.
Nowadays, all fighters/bombers have thermal cameras installed….
Oh and they have thermal energy proof tarps these days
True, but don’t you think seeing a complete suburban neighbourhood with no heat signatures anywhere would set off warning lights in your head?
don’t you think they could make fake people?
Thermal imaging can also be deceived. During the Kosovo aerial bombing campaign Western aircraft bombed tanks made out of 2×4′s and plastic tarps because a a heater under the tarps simulated engine heat.
Why did they bother with the clothes lines? It’s not as if the planes would circle this one boring spot for days?
Because the recon planes would photograph the scene, then head back to base. Once back at base, intelligence officers would comb over the pictures looking for targets. There is a chance if the scene remained static, someone may notice that, and decide to investigate further. Illusions like this don’t tend to stand up to scrutiny once someone decides, “Hey, this isn’t right…”
The Japanese long suspected the US military was working on SOMETHING important in the area, but they were doing a very good job at keeping it under wraps.
Sorry Dogmeat, but I have to correct you there. The correct syntax is, in fact, “they were doing a very good job at keeping it… *puts on sunglasses* …under wraps.” YEEEEEEEEAAH!
Boeing did basically the same thing. They disguised the factory roof with a suburban scene (see pic in link below). Oddly enough, they didn’t hide the parking lot. It looks a bit odd to see roads that go nowhere, surrounded by a big parking lot.
http://www.taphilo.com/history/WWII/USAAF/Boeing/index.shtml
Nice! Thanks for the cool link!
Yes, thank you Brewski!! Very nice!
Meanwhile, in East LA, several of the seedier neighborhoods were covered with tarps painted to resemble an aircraft manufacturing plant, complete with cardboard “factory” buildings, aluminum foil “planes”, and chicken wire fashioned to look like factory workers on their lunch breaks. Unfortunately, the Japanese bombers never noticed because they, too, tried to avoid those parts of town.
LOL!! Comment win. I’ve been to east LA. Scary!
Once again an excellent Historical Thursday post. This has become my most anticipated RSS feed every week. Thanks!
“Chicken wire and feathers dyed green became bushes and trees”
I can’t help shaking my head in quiet confusion… Wouldn’t it have been much easier and less time-consuming to just BUY some bushes and trees?
Or wait, I just took a second look at the picture. Supposedly they put the “bushes” on the tarp, right? Of course, then they would need lightweight material… Ooooookaaayyyyy.
Looking at the “under” picture is a good clue… it was probably to make them as light as possible. We’re talking tarps on poles, after all.
The funny thing is, you actually CAN see where my house now is in that top photo…
The former site of this Lockheed plant is now a shopping center, built with an aviation theme. Ironically, the big anchor store is a Target.
Hat’s off to you. That was simply priceless.
For realz!
http://www.zelman.com/properties/burbank.php
Excellent!! Irony is the best!
Hey there fellow Burbanker…
I agree, that’s pretty much the most delightful thing I’ve seen on the entire Internet this week.
After all their work to KEEP it from becoming a target…LOL
fffffff.
Thanks SM that was awesome.
“…OUR military installations…” WTF?
And in the under-tarp picture we see one of the most amazing examples of the piston-engine aircraft era, the Lockheed Constellation (I believe in WWII the military designation was C121).
Some B17′s were also built in Burbank under license from Boeing, possibly in that same factory.
You should do one on the Boeing plant– same idea.
Dear Ms. Fix-It:
I really must commend you on your internet sleuthing skills. I thought I was talented in that department — I can’t hold a candle to you.
Also, you’re bringing the Fix-It Peeps some hardcore history!
WIN/WIN!
You should be proud of the work you’ve done here today. If you choose this comment as the favorite, I don’t think any of the regulars would think you were vain….
Sincerely,
~LGB
<3
Second that. I feel enriched.
awesome!
I hope someone was at the very least high fived over this
This was from long before high fives and even “gimme five”s. Back then, it was a handshake, a pat on the back, and an “atta boy!”
I’ve heard (on the trolley tour) that they did the same thing in San Diego to cover wartime construction sites. According to lore, the chicken feathers caused a serious outbreak of some kind of chicken born illness – I can’t find a link, nor recall what it was, but supposedly they should have sterilized the feathers…
Dude, Cheech and Chong totally used this trick, too!
(my bad if the earlier East LA comment was in reference to this)
Supposedly in Britain they painted munitions factory roofs with like duck ponds and stuff. But then both Germany and Britain switched strategy to carpet-bombing the suburbs.
WOW!
Just wow!
I once had a collection of WWII-era photos that included shots of that factory and several others. Can’t find them now, of course. The US/UK built phony airfields, complete with plywood planes, staging areas full of plywood tanks and realistic looking barracks. Several civilian towns too, if I remember correctly were constructed in various out of the way places as “bait” too.
I think “our” camouflage methods looked a lot more convincing that what was used by the German or Japanese materiel manufacturing facilities.
Nonetheless, the WWII photos I saw were quite amazing, regardless of whose “side” did the work. Camouflage is an art form all to itself!
You all would be interested in the book “The War Magician” by David Fisher which was the story of Jasper Maskelyne, an illusionist who did the exact same thing in the African theater during WWII–he made the Suez Canal ‘disappear’ (take that, David Copperfield!) and also did things with mirrors and dummy trucks and tanks to divert bombers away from targets. It was a very interesting read.
Well, during WWII the English actually hired a magician to help with their camouflage efforts. If I recall correctly (which I may not be), he even helped them to camouflage a seaport in north Africa. His name was Jasper Maskelyne and he and Roland Penrose and Frederick Gore did some amazing stuff during the war!
*Proud granddaughter of WWII vets. Paternal Grandfather was flight engineer in B-17s, my maternal Grandfather was a medic in the Pacific.
Now THIS is how you hide from the bill collectors.
That was right in my backyard. Unfortunately, Lockheed is no longer here. My grandpa was in the National Guard and patrolled Lockheed on his motorcycle. I grew up hearing stories about the war.
These historical Thursdays are my favorite thing on the entire Cheezburger network.
After 4 hours of looking at cat pictures with captions, i feel like I actually learned something…I send maybe 2 llinks after checking all 400 websites in the network, but this feature I share with MY social network
this is the sort of stuff that used to be on The Learning Channel before they changed to the Midgets Who Own Cake Shops channel. How interesting and amazing (historical thursdays, not midgets and cake shops)
I LOVE YOU MS. FIXIT
please never cancel this <3 <3
that’s freakin’ brilliant
Gosh, that’s really interesting! Thanks for posting it.
I remember hearing something about a German effort in WWII to make fake airfields to draw fire from their real airfields. These fakes were largely made out of wood. The story goes that a single allied bomber was sent to assault one of the fields that they knew to be fake… with a wooden bomb.
VERY cool, and incredible!!!!!
Nowadays the media would be giving complete coverage of the deception, complete with maps. Then station TV crews around it with commentators saying “And the enemy still hasn’t bombed this disguised war plant in Burbank that is crucial to the war effort.”
They did this in South Seattle at the Boeing plant as well.
and this i why i love about there i fixed it, its community. thanks for the post MS. Fix /o
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its still a target for terrorist attack.