Hiding the Lockheed Plant during World War II

Got this email from a Friend and thought it was to cool not to share.



Stories from people who were there.

I took the train down to San Diego from Santa Ana in the 1940s to visit my uncle. The train drove right under the netting. It was an amazing experience. I was probably 13 years old and sat on my suitcase the whole way as the train was packed with servicemen.

Ann


Hidden in Plain View

During WW II - Lockheed (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...

After

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.
image

Note.... I lived in North Long Beach during World War II, I was 13 years old. (1940)
The Long Beach airport was near Lakewood , CA . There was a large Boeing
Plant there. If you would drive down Carson St. going south you could drive
under the camouflage netting. Ed Pollard

I am 85 and had much of my pilot training in Calif. I have been under this net and
have seen it from the air. During preflight training I rode a bus under the net and
was very surprised as I didn't know it was there. It was strong enough to walk on
and they hired people to ride bicycles and move around as if they lived there to
make it look authentic. Warren Holmgreen Jr

Under the Net

Hiding the Lockheed Plant during World War II - wow this is amazing!

That is really cool.

whats funny is somthing like this would NEVER work in today's world. People would be posting pictures and the secrete would be out so fast. It was for sure a different time.

Not to mention everyone's got GPS too.

But don't you just love the "sky is the limit" aditude. And the "Put on the gloves and let's get work done" aditude. Lady's working in the factory's building Mustangs and B-25's and most of the war machine stuff we needed. They got $hit done for sure in thoes days.

Yep. No doubt. Glad you posted this. I went a little further and googled it. A lot of other pics out there too.

^^^Post them up ^^^