"Camouflage California: The Massive Deception of ..." Topic

….World War II You Have Never Heard of

"In February 1942 the United States Navy Monitors had been tracking a Japanese submarine lurking on the outskirts of San Francisco. Several nights after this, another Japanese sub surfaced near the coast of Santa Barbara and targeted an oil storage facility; firing a few shells. Pearl Harbor, which only happened the last December, is very fresh in the memories of American's and so the threat of the Japanese invading was taken seriously.

Lieutenant General John L. De Witt was drafted in, he was the head of Western Defense Command, and was given orders to put in place ‘passive defense measures' within all installations that are vital which are based along the Pacific coast. Colonel John F. Ohmer was in charge of executing the order. He was stationed 60 miles east of Los Angele's downtown, at March Field. This was the beginning of Operation California…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Very interesting. Never heard of this !!

Nor I ! Wow ! But I do remember hearing an IJN Sub throwing a few shells at a target on the CA coast.

I discover this in June while I was preparing my History Is Luncg presentation. One of my four soldiers, Henry Ogden, was employed by Lockheed Aviation whose California plant was camouflaged in this manner.

Thanks for finding the overarching article.

Jim

If you are from the Seattle Washington area, this is old news. The whole of the Boeing aircraft plant, had it's roofs down up as farms, including a live cow, and had cloth coverings painted up to look like farms covering the parking lots and roads.

A votre service mes amis!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

I had to deal with all those anchors when we demolished the Lockheed Burbank plant in the 90s. Many of the buildings built during the war didn't have rebar in the foundations, just extra cement/concrete. Real fun to demolish.

Thanks.

Amicalement
Armand

I saw those pictures and read the story many years ago. You have to wonder how effective it would have been with the apparent suburban tract of houses directly adjacent to a large airfield :) Fortunately, they were never put to the test.

I think it was shown in a couple of popular histories of WW2 from 50 years ago.