Following the Imperial Japanese Navy attack on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor On December 7, 1941, another event occurred that spread panic throughout the American West Coast. On February 23, 1942 the submarine I-17 of the Imperial Japanese Navy, which had participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor, bombarded the American coast causing damage to an oil refinery in Santa Monica (California). Before the army could react, the submarine sank and disappeared. The Japanese had attacked on American soil...
Faced with this new situation, the attack by a foreign force on American soil, John L. De Witt , Commander-in-Chief of Western Defense, ordered Colonel John F. Ohmer protect all vital facilities along the Pacific coast. Ohmer had traveled to Great Britain in 1940 to check the camouflage and deception techniques that the English put into practice in the face of Luftwaffe bombing. Helped by Hollywood movie studios (MGM, Disney, 20th Century Fox, Paramount and Universal) , he organized a team of engineers, set designers, painters, landscapers, carpenters, lighting experts… to camouflage 34 air bases, in addition to the factories and assembly plants that, in theory, would be the Japanese objectives on the Pacific coast. His work began at the aircraft factory Lockheed-Vega in Burbank (California):
Lockheed before
Lockheed after
The aerial view of the aircraft factory appeared like an innocent residential neighborhood. In this new neighborhood, the daily situations of a peaceful rural community were recreated:rubber cars manufactured by Goodyear Tire; fake trees and bushes constructed of wire and covered in feathers painted green to provide leaf texture; air ducts disguised as fire hydrants; buildings, farms and silos that were simple wooden structures… In addition, every day the Lockheed workers went out through hidden hatches and moved the cars to bring the deception to life.
To check the effectiveness of his work, Ohmer invited a member of the War Department, unrelated to Ohmer's mission, to fly over the area to see if he was able to locate the Lockheed-Vega plant... he was unable to do it. Given the success of his work, Ohmer camouflaged other complexes and air plants in California:North American Aviation in El Segundo, Vultee in Downey, Northrop in Hawthorne, Consolidated in San Diego and Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach, and even the huge Boeing complex in Seattle (Washington).
After the Battle of Midway , in June 1942, where the Americans defeated the Japanese navy, possible attacks on American soil were ruled out and camouflages were therefore stopped.