Lockheed Plant during WWII

[csnow]

This was sent to me from a friend. I hadn't seen it before and was curious if anyone else has seen this. It is really quite neat!

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. The person I received this from said she got back an interesting story about someone's mother
who worked at Lockheed, and she as a younger child, remembers all this. And to this day, it is
the first pictures of it she's seen. Another person who lived in the area talked about as being a
boy, watching it all be set up like a movie studio production. They had fake houses, trees, etc.
and moved parked cars around so it looked like a residential area from the skies overhead...

Before the camoflauge...

After the camoflauge...

[csnow]

Here are the remaining pictures of Lockheed....

I hope everyone can see them okay....

Chris~

[ambulnick]

Thanks for that Chris - absolutely fascinating photos! They really went to some effort to hide the factory, and the results are incredible. I wonder, how successful were the efforts?

Thanks again for sharing them with us.

[csnow]

I wonder, how successful were the efforts?

Well, the Japanese never seen it, so I guess it worked pretty well, all in all it was worth it!

By the way, I've done some research and there has been question as to wether or not this is really Lockheed. I haven't come to a conclusion yet, but I bet others on here can confirm the truth of the pictures. For the most part, what I've read, these are real and it really happend.


Chris~

[GySgtMJones]

Chris,

Fantastic pictures. Thank you for sharing those!

Leave it to Hollywood to use their experience for a good cause!

They really did a great job hiding that plant.

Great as all of that was, how many Japanese planes really flew over Burbank? But better to be safe than sorry!

Now if they REALLY wanted to scare the hell out of the Japanese aircrews flying overhead (or offshore), they should have placed full sized replicas of the starship Enterprise and the Millennium Falcon parked in the lot. In fact, let’s go ALL the way.. A full sized balloon that looks exactly as the Death Star hovering over the US and pointing straight at Japan! They would have surrendered in 20 minutes!!!!

Having lived in North Hollywood for a while, I came in contact with many in the Industry. Many of the older ones had fascinating stories of how the movie industry did this same camouflage schemes on many installations to confuse the enemy! I wish I knew those other places or had pictures like these of them. Would be fun to see them…….

[ambulnick]

By the way, I've done some research and there has been question as to wether or not this is really Lockheed. I haven't come to a conclusion yet, but I bet others on here can confirm the truth of the pictures. For the most part, what I've read, these are real and it really happend.

The photos are appearing in several other places, and they all seem to say that it's the Lockhead site too: http://thinkorthwim.com/2007/08/19/1034/. As yet, there's been no official statement that I can find.


Gunny,

My time to share with you guys!

There's a book called "Masquerade, The Amazing Camouflage Deceptions of World War II" by Seymour Reit, which I was told about a while ago. It's a bit old now, but you may be able to find a copy in an old book store or online: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0801549310. It seems to be recommended as one of the best resources out there to be honest...

There was also a unit called the 602 Camouflage Engineers. Google soon turns up a variety of sites about them and their work for you.

In the run up to the D-Day operations, Operation Fortitude South was a large-scale operation (as I'm sure you're already aware ) to make the Germans think there was a second, much larger invasion force waiting to attack at Calais. Obviously, there wasn't, so the Allies had to fool German recon aircraft, etc into thinking that there was fields and fields full of tanks, trucks, etc waiting to cross the channel. Instead, inflatable tanks, etc were used. (Interestingly, the US Army still has an M1 Abrams decoy that they can use and which can be carried by an M1 Abrams. A link that you may be interested in is: http://www.military-decoy.com.)

There's some good photos from Op Fortitude at: http://www.strangeharvest.com/mt/archiv ... decept.php

[GySgtMJones]

Nick,

Thanks for that info on “Masquerade, The Amazing Camouflage Deceptions of World War II”. I looked it up on the net and there are a couple of places they can be found, mostly used of course, but they are available.

There's some good photos from Op Fortitude at

Yes, those are cute! I especially like the one about the machine gun emplacement. All I can say is that you Brits take your driving laws VERY serious! Warning everyone, NEVER speed in England, they shoot you for that!

Oh, and the Army headquarters is cute too. The only question I have on that is, if you notice the others, their captions are on the pictures themselves, so you know they are real. The caption on the Army headquarters was typed in under the picture. Makes me wonder if it was put in as a joke against the Army. Probably some disgruntled SAILOR did that to slam the Army!! A Marine would never do that! But if it really IS the Army headquarters, nice camo job! Or was it supposed to be the Army’s headquarters and the Marines used it as a dump also? Now THAT is something the Marines WOULD do to the Army, ha ha ha !!!