Hidden In Plain Sight
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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.
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What the Airport looked like before the camouflage...
And after...
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The lady who sent this said she received an interesting story about someone's mother who worked at Lockheed. She, as a younger child, remembers all this. And to this day, these are the first pictures of it she's seen.
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Another person who lived in the area talked about as 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.
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The view from above the net...
And from below.
I lived in North Long Beach during World War II. I was 13 years old in 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
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I am 85 and had much of my pilot training in California. 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.
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