WWII aircraft factories hidden from enemy aerial view

Above An aerial view of the Lockheed-Vega aircraft factory in Burbank CA, during WWII, when the entire facility was hidden beneath a vast simulation of houses, stores and residential neighborhoods.

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CAMOUFLEURS GOT BUSY in Daily News (Perth, Western Australia) August 4, 1945, p. 10—

The US entered World War II with many a war plant that needed careful defense.

Among the most vulnerable were flimsily protected airplane plants along the eastern and western coasts. They were unexpendable and immovable. Their nakedness demanded some sort of wrapping.

So the US Corps of Engineers put to work a motley legion of industrial designers, billboard painters, crack Hollywood illusionists, and serious artists.

By last week, workmen were yanking wire trees and make-believe houses off many camouflaged war plants.

The makeup job had been costly: Fullblown protective concealment of thirty-seven vital plants had cost 22 million dollars. Other money went for simpler tone-down work, or “disruptive painting,” at smaller plants and airfield hosts.

In the heat of its enthusiasm for plenty of camouflage, the Corps of Engineers gave out contracts for disguising fields hundreds of miles inland.

Famed industrial designer Raymond Loewy turned camoufleur to plan the two million dollar “passive protection” of Baltimore’s Glenn Martin bomber factory.

Warner Brothers technicians had to protect the big Douglas plants at Santa Monica against twin risks. Within easy periscope sight from the Pacific, it was vulnerble to shells as well as bombs.

Douglas airfield architects had their camouflage plan ready before Pearl Harbor. They made minatures, then photographed them from simulated bombing altitudes.

Building the dummy airport, phony plants, and a fake residential [neighborhood], complete with washing on clotheslines, took two and a half years, and cost two and a half million dollars.

It was duplicated on the plants when the war came.

Masking the consolidated plant at San Diego called for great nets draped over the Pacific Highway.

At Seattle, the task was difficult.

Boeing’s Flying Fortress plant was sandwiched between busy Boeing Field and a natural landmark, the Duwamish River.

Camoufleurs hid the field so trickily that veteran pilots had to ask the way in.

Atop the Boeing plants went a 26-acre village, made of chicken wire, canvas, lumber and painted chicken featers. The town had fifty-three houses, stores and a gas station.

Some of its streets crossed the field, went up Beacon Hill.

Camoufleurs skipped the river.

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Below The large, concealed underground parking lot at the Lockheed-Vega plant in Burbank.

painted bridge camouflage during both world wars

Above Photograph (c1918) of a World War I-era camouflaged bridge in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, France, fifty miles southeast of Nancy. Note the painted scenic panel that spans the length of the bridge (in imitation of a row of buildings) and conceals the traffic crossing it.

Below is a newspaper account of the removal of bridge camouflage at the end of WWII.

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CAMOUFLAGE REMOVED FROM RIVER BRIDGE in The Valley Times (San Fernando Valley CA)  July 12, 1947—

One of the last objects to be relieved of its wartime coating of camouflage is the Los Angeles River bridge on Victory Boulevard between Glendale and Griffith Park.

I.M. Ridley of Burbank today is directing two crews removing the camouflage that was placed on the bridge about six yers ago to make it appear non-existent to possible enemy bombers. Three days will be required to sandblast the paint off and return the bridge to its former white cement finish.

Most of the bombshelters have been removed from around the county’s war plants. But many buildings that produced war goods still retain camouflage.