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How to hide an airplane factory (PICS)

eatliver.com — During WWII the Army Corps of Engineers needed to hide the Lockheed Burbank Aircraft Plant to protect it from a Japanese air attack. They covered it with camouflage netting and trompe l'oeil to make it look like a rural subdivision from the air.

Who dugg this? Made popular Sep 7, 2007

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  • tehpwnerofn00bs, on 11/09/2007, -13/+426Couldn't we just do this to the whole country, so that the terrorists couldn't find us?
  • Johnagain, on 11/09/2007, -5/+226"How have I never seen this before?"
    Because it's camouflaged...
  • disabled4diggin, on 10/10/2007, -5/+179Holy *****, thats one of the coolest things I've seen come out of WWII. How have I never seen this before? This is truly amazing but also is one of those things that would work back then but with todays technology would just not be able to be pulled off.
  • MasterThief117, on 10/10/2007, -17/+154Yeah, but wheres Waldo?
  • 3drage, on 10/10/2007, -1/+132Schools might be more successful if they showed students these types of things instead of boring stock photographs and political propaganda.
  • luke123, on 10/10/2007, -5/+90That is unbelievable. Brilliant!
  • chumpsucker, on 10/10/2007, -1/+62Reminds me of the cheech & chong movie where the ganja garden is under a tarp/camo canopy that looks like a swimming pool from the air.
  • BlackJackJester, on 10/10/2007, -6/+45they should have made it a picuture of like, the Mecca or something. "Oh *****, we flew the wrong direction"
  • inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+39Mirror at http://pic.bestpicever.com/piles/?s=airplanefactory
  • AnteChronos, on 10/10/2007, -0/+36He eloped with Carmen Sandiego.
  • TheSaladMan, on 10/10/2007, -3/+33Why the hell do I keep seeing "Torrents are for sweaty people" comments?
  • oderdigg, on 10/10/2007, -7/+36Well if Iran / Iraq had removed their names from the Globe I bet the US would have never attacked. I mean, you can't attack what you can't find.

    http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/05/02/geog.test/

    http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/may2006/030506map.htm
  • merreborn, on 10/10/2007, -0/+24This sort of deception was used frequently in WWII. A fake invasion force was constructed in Kent to distract the Germans from the D-Day invasion:

    http://www.theotherside.co.uk/tm-heritage/background/fortitudes.htm
  • imdickie, on 10/10/2007, -2/+25My Grandfather worked at the McDonnell Douglas plant as an Engineer and my Father's entire family lived in Tarzana just underneath the net. During the height of the war my Grandfather would climb on top of the roof of the assembly plant with others in farmers clothes to watch the air patrols fly over head. He said you could hear the anti-aircraft guns go off every night. The US was sure the Japanese were going to attack CA and in fact they did...sort of. Two Japanese bomb balloons landed in Northern California and a single sub shelled an oil refinery near Santa Barbara by a rouge sub captain with a grudge.
  • pixelbasic, on 10/10/2007, -7/+27Sadly you could never pull off this kind of cooperation today. Can you imagine all the bureaucratic ***** that would happen? What would all the special interests groups demand? Holy Jesus! Just imagine if a salamander lived there!
  • sgtbutterscotch, on 10/10/2007, -0/+20My history teacher told us about inflatable tanks the Allies used before D-Day to throw the Nazi's off.
  • IphtashuFitz, on 10/10/2007, -0/+20If you want to read about more things like this that occurred during WWII then go find a copy of the book "The War Magician". It's about a British magician by the name of Jasper Maskelyne who did similar things for the British army. Some of the things he helped them do included concealing the Suez Canal from German bombers and making 1000 tanks appear to be trucks while creating 2000 phony tanks appear in another location. Pretty amazing stuff.
  • jessecrouch, on 10/10/2007, -0/+17FYI

    Trompe-l'œil is an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects really exist, instead of being mere, two-dimensional paintings:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trompe_l'oeil

    Like the sidewalk paintings you see so much on Digg
  • JRootabega, on 10/10/2007, -0/+16Cool story! I like how they had fake farmers, too. I went looking for some more about this after I read this and found:
    http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/flying/the_disguise_of_california.htm

    About how the movie industry helped camouflage places like that. Fake farmers, cows, and everything. Interesting how something that at first seems like The Three Amigos has a place in a real war.
  • ironrex, on 10/10/2007, -3/+19Nuke the whales
  • sharkhy, on 10/10/2007, -2/+17dude, thats not cool. those Islamic fundamentalist Japanese pilots had enough problems as it is!
  • brjndr, on 10/10/2007, -1/+16I don't know now, but I used to know every weekday from 3:30-4 during 5th grade.
  • inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+14During the cold war Universal Studios, which was right across the street from this plant, panted a HUGE arrow on the roof of their building. They were afraid the Russian bombers would mistake their building for the Lockheed building...lol

    I saw it in 1971....don't know if it's still there.
  • oderdigg, on 10/10/2007, -1/+14The government governs education. Remember the "No child left behind" plan from the US gov? They couldn't teach kids but they could change the rules so it's 'looks' like they are doing better. They in fact are not learning more, they are just taking easier exams.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Child_Left_Behind
  • scrag10, on 10/10/2007, -1/+14Yeah, but where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?
  • swizzcheez, on 10/10/2007, -0/+12Considering how little difference that would have made to a nuke, Lockheed should have started the "I'm with stupid" campaign in retalliation.
  • BlackJackJester, on 10/10/2007, -2/+13Seriously. If I were a history teacher, I'd try to dig up as much awesome stuff as I could. Books are so boring.
  • inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+13Ahh....the good ol' days.
  • dbalaski, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11Lots of cool tech out of WWII
    The Grand Slam Bomb (aka Earth Quake bomb)
    The Atomic bomb
    The Cavity magnetron tube (miniaturized RADAR)
    The Jet Engine
    Mass Production of Penicillin --(side note: we didn't know how to mass produce penicillin -- only small batches -- until the war had proved a massive need, the Allied governments put a plea out to industry to help -- Pfizer figured it out -- and donated it to the war effort.)
    I can go on
  • awhiteflame, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10You know, The Mecca, The Iraq, South Africa..
  • grumpyrain, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9Hide factory under a tarp? Brilliant.
  • synaesthesia, on 10/10/2007, -1/+10They invaded in 1949 and made it halfway across the country before the US could push them back. Didnt you pay attention in History?
  • spyrochaete, on 10/10/2007, -2/+10Gotta nuke something!
  • nytel, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8Next to Osama, haven't you see the new tape?
  • RichStradler, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8Life before FLIR and space based cameras...

    Aerial Camo... now as obsolete as suits of armor... there is nowhere to hide (except for some unknown cave in Pakistan evidently)
  • Koldkompress, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6***** your right to say that! To the gas chamber with you!
  • AnteChronos, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7@oderdigg
    He used "your" correctly. "***** your right to say that" has a completely different meaning than "*****! You're right to say that!" He meant the former. Back to remedial English with you, wannabe Grammar Nazi!
  • Rukaribe, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Necessity is the mother of invention. War is the mother of necessity.
  • inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Navaho FTW!
  • inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8Government schools fail again!!!
  • amnesiac096, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7hide and go seek with airplanes
  • Blandyman, on 10/10/2007, -3/+9superpotential:

    Because you're on digg, you ***** idiot.
  • Fracture98, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Your attempts to hide from your English teacher seem to be going well enough.
  • endlessoul, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Then he starts "swimming" on top of the ladder while the helicopter flies overhead. Ha! Good times.
  • oderdigg, on 10/10/2007, -2/+7And the people fail to hold their government accountable by demanding better education.
  • Heaiser, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6Then the humorless diggers come and generate a stupid response.
  • neferiousrich, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6Guiness commercial?
  • kbull, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Bad ass!
  • twinklyJesus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Cold war ... uhhhhh....
  • xnike2livx, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5This comment seriously made me laugh out loud. It is probably the comment of my life; I have no idea why.
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