Camouflage.

This is coolbert:

Thanks in this instance to Pete through Colonel Craig USMC.

Most interesting photographs from the era of the Second World War [WW2]. An American defense plant, an aircraft factory, camouflaged in such a manner to represent a semi-rural or rural sub-division.

Pylons holding aloft camouflage netting. An ENTIRE FACTORY disguised in this manner. Vital wartime installation subject to enemy air attack [??], protected in a way possible ONLY during wartime. The Lockheed plant, Burbank California, vital to the war effort, proper measures being taken to safeguard this facility.

"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 photographs speak for themselves:

Before:

And After:

Very impressive indeed! It must have been a laborious, time-consuming, and expensive process just to camouflage that entire factory to begin with, not to mention continual maintenance?

And this wartime measure was necessary? Such a degree of camouflage to a civilian facility of great importance was warranted?

In particular, at least during the early stages of the war in the Pacific theatre, California and the entire American west coast for that matter was susceptible to Japanese air attack?

I am thinking here of a massed air attack by the Kido Butai. The Mobile Air Arm of the Japanese Navy. The same naval task force that sunk the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor could have acted in a concerted manner against the Lockheed plant and other facilities in California vital to the war effort?

"The Imperial Japanese Navy . . . at the beginning of World War II contained the world's largest carrier fleet. At the centre, was the 1st Air Fleet . . . which was a grouping of naval aircraft and aircraft carriers"

This is debatable! A Japanese naval carrier task force massed off the coast of California during WW2 attacking targets inland was a possibility. At least, during 1942, until the climactic Battle of Midway, a massive and destructive enemy air attack on the west coast of the U.S. could have occurred.

Japanese sea-plane attack was also a maybe. The Japanese did have submarines possessing a capability to launch sea-planes [only one per sub] at discrete targets. Drop a minimum bomb load on vital targets, such as the Panama Canal. Such attacks never did materialize during the war. Whatever damage a single lone attacking aircraft could accomplish would have been minimal at best?

American military planners in the case of the Lockheed plant were obviously thinking possibilities and not intentions. Such a massive effort at camouflage was warranted, at least in the minds of the Pentagon brass!

coolbert.