56 November/December 2020
NORTH AMERICAN:
INGLEWOOD, CALIFORNIA16,447
Including 9,949 P-51 Mustang
fighters, 3,208 B-25 bombers,
and 2,163 AT-6 advanced trainers
Camo: Tone-downLOCKHEED:
BURBANK, CALIFORNIA13,385
Including 9,423 P-38 Lightning
fighters and 2,189 Hudson
patrol bombers Camo: Urban
neighborhood camouflageCONSOLIDATED VULTEE:
DOWNEY, CALIFORNIA11,687
Including 11,537 BT-13 and
BT-15 Valiant basic trainers
Camo: Tone-downCONSOLIDATED VULTEE:
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA9,630
Including 6,725 B-24 Liberator
heavy bombers and 2,833
Navy patrol bombers
Camo: Tone-downDOUGLAS: LONG BEACH,
CALIFORNIA9,439
Including 4,285 C-47 cargo
planes and 3,000 B-17 Flying
Fortress heavy bombers
Camo: Tone-downBOEING: SEATTLE,
WASHINGTON7,340
Including 6,942 B-17 Flying
Fortress heavy bombers Camo:
Urban neighborhood camouflageThe WWII Aircraft
That Camo Protected
Production numbers from Jan.
1940 to Aug. 1945 at the six
largest West Coast factories.THE CROWN JEWEL OF OHMER’S
concealments took place near Seattle,
where the Boeing’s Plant 2 sprawled
over 700,000 square feet of f loor space.
Inside, thousands of men and women
churned out a new B-17 Flying For-
tress heavy bomber roughly every 90
minutes.
Ohmer placed his top movie studio
recruit on the Boeing project, architect
John Detlie. He was pure Hollywood,
married to movie star Veronica Lake.
Before Detlie joined the war effort, he
was an Oscar-nominated art director
and set designer at MGM. In Seattle,
Detlie assembled 13 architects and
draftsmen, eight commercial artists,
seven landscape architects, five engi-
neers, and a soil-management expert.
Thwarting an enemy reconnais-
sance f lier took more than simply
covering the factory building. A sharp-
eyed scout might zero in on the
adjoining airfield, parking lots, or
ramp areas. Making Boeing’s entire
production facility disappear meant
sowing confusion over several square
miles of land.
Disguising the active runways
and taxiways as an innocuous urban
scene called for a two-dimensional
solution to not impede aircraft oper-
ations. Planners envisioned a pattern
of visual noise composed of lawns,
buildings, and roads crisscrossing the
active airfield. First, builders mixed
finely crushed rock into bitumen, an
asphalt-like substance, and applied it
to areas heavily trafficked by aircraft.
The mixture provided a dull texture
that gobbled up ref lections and shine
emanating from the airfield’s large,
f lat concrete surfaces. In non-traffic
spaces, the men added wood chips and
cement to absorb light.
Over the rough texture, workmen
used paint to create an intricate top-
down view of a typical neighborhood,
devised by Detlie’s crew. Its pigment,
developed by Warner Brothers, was
reputed to “resist disclosure of the
camouflage through infra-red pho-
tography.” Oil mixed with the custom
paint helped establish a convincing
cross-hatch of artificial roads. On the
airport’s infield, men constructed six-
inch-high false buildings made from
concrete blocks. From overhead, the
ludicrously small structures cast real-
istic shadows and gave just a small
amount of depth, giving more life to
the scene. The finished deception
looked amazingly impressive from
the “attacker’s-eye-view” at five to ten
thousand feet. Only as a pilot came in
low for landing did the hidden runway
lose its illusion.
To blot out expansive ramps and
automobile parking lots surrounding
the factory, workers installed 90-foot
wooden masts in sturdy concrete foot-
ings before webbing the tall poles with
heavy steel cable.
Boeing never finished covering
their parking areas, but similar proj-
ects utilized hundreds of masts and
more than a million feet of cable.
Builders would stretch acres of cam-
ouf lage netting from the suspended
cables, creating a dazzling pattern
of fields, lawns, and buildings over
parked cars and newly built aircraft.
At another factory, over four million
square feet of string netting spanned
the parking lots. These nets were inter-
woven with burlap strips and blocks of
fabric, then dotted with wads of green-
painted chicken feathers affixed with
tar to look like vegetation. But when
it rained, the paint-infused feathers
smelled awful. And when it was warm,
fuzzy green tar-coated plumes drifted
off and stuck to fresh-from-the-factory
airplanes.
Workers obscured the heart of Boe-
ing’s facility, Plant 2, with 26 acres of
camouf lage netting stretched across
the roof to create the appearance of a
new faux ground level elevated roughly
50 feet above the surrounding land-
scape. The building’s uneven bays and
distinctive saw-tooth profile required
the netting to be supported by wooden
scaffolding or steel cables in low spots.
Reinforced catwalks, sometimes
masquerading as sidewalks, included
wood and wire handrails to keep a
distracted maintenance man from
straying off the supported path and
plunging through the netting.
Detlie’s mock rooftop neighbor-
hood at Boeing called for 53 houses,
a dozen or so garages, greenhouses, a
service station, and a store. The width
and length of the structures stayed
life-size, while the height, barely
perceptible to fast and high-f lying air-
craft, was truncated. For the sake of
Source: Army Air Forces Statistical Digest,
WWII, Men and Equipment (Table 75)