November/December 2020 57speed, cost, and the rarity of wartime
materials, many of the rooftop houses
were only about 6 feet tall.
Beams affixed to the factory roof
penetrated the netting vertically to
become the corner posts of the arti-
ficial structures. Clad in burlap and
plywood, the houses wore dark panels
for windows, and light and earthy exte-
rior paint tones seen in any American
neighborhood of the era. Roofs, which
would be most visible from the skies,
often appeared in white, red, or a dark
gray hue. Two full-height houses on
Boeing’s rooftop were real, providing
the living quarters for Army gun crews
protecting the factory.
Roads and driveways made from
oil-stained burlap overlaid the net-
ting and spanned the rooftop scene.
Dotting the roads, workers built doz-
ens of imitation automobiles from
wooden frames clad in fabric. Unlike
the graceful, rounded cars of the late
1930s and early 1940s, the fake autos
were slab-sided and plain. Plant work-
ers lashed down the artificial cars to
keep the lightweight structures frommoving on windy days.
In the neighborhood’s yards, workers
created artificial vegetation rang-
ing from expansive victory gardens to
12-foot-tall trees. Each of the 300 imi-
tation trees began with a trunk and
main branches hammered together
from lumber. Artists made foliage
for the trees and bushes from chicken
wire and fiberglass f locked in painted
feathers—these all-weather tree con-
struction methods were used a decade
later when Disneyland opened in 1955.
In an attempt to break up the dis-
tinctive shadows created at the edges
of the massive building, workers
camouf laged its outer walls in a mul-
ticolored pattern and constructed
cantilevered wads of artificial foliage
along its perimeter.
The factory’s tallest chimneys disap-
peared inside strategically placed pump
houses and sheds while smaller vents
received a coat of red paint to look like
fire hydrants. The tinderbox setwork
required an actual fire-suppression sys-
tem, too, made up of 100 functioning
fireplugs, 67 sprinkler units, and con-cealed fire-fighting towers equipped
with powerful spray nozzles.
Factory employees accessed the
rooftop site via hatches and patrolled
on the catwalks above the plant.
As they inspected and repaired the
neighborhood they called “Wonder-
land,” they also moved cars around the
scene and even re-arranged laundry
on clotheslines to maintain a lived-in
look. Periodic application of new paint
shades assured that the bogus vegeta-
tion and artificial lawns continued to
look realistic in every season.
As America pushed its forces across
the Pacific, the threat of an attack on
the continental United States became
less and less likely, yet the factory cam-
ouf lage stayed secret until July of 1945.
That month, as Allied forces closed in
on the Japanese home islands, Army
officials felt safe enough to permit
national publications to run with the
story of the strange neighborhoods
made from burlap, plywood, and feath-
ers. Though the Japanese bombers
never materialized in American skies,
readers marveled at the ingenuity and
achievement of one of America’s most
peculiar wartime engineering feats.▲ A fresh B-17 is rolled out of Plant 2. The edge of the rooftop camouflage
was painted and built to match the true ground level.BO
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