How the US built fake cities in an idealistic race

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Quite unusual cities appeared in the United States during the Second World War. Looking at the black and white photographs where the townspeople are quietly walking, the girls on the lawn chatting sweetly, you will not immediately guess that this is the most dummy, and such settlements have never existed. So what prompted the country, which was thousands of kilometers from hostilities, to take such a radical step, let's try to understand our today's material.

The well-known truth that "in times of war, secrecy and ingenuity are the basis of survival" has already been confirmed many times by inventive commanders. It was she who was adopted by the American authorities when, after a surprise attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor, the country lost the Central Base of the Pacific Fleet of the US Navy. A Japanese submarine, which fired at an oil refinery in the suburbs of Los Angeles, also added fuel to the fire.

These two cases brought the military to a real psychosis, and after when in the clear sky someone saw Japanese bombers and they opened a massive barrage of fire, which led to human casualties, the country's leadership decided to "take drastic measures."

Historical fact:Pearl Harbor is a harbor on the island of Oahu in the Pacific Ocean, where the central base of the US Navy was located. In December 1941, Japan launched a massive surprise attack on this strategically important military facility, which resulted in the United States suffering huge losses, including not only ships, destroyers, cruisers and aircraft, but many casualties. It was this attack that prompted the United States to enter World War II.

Considering that the main production lines of the aviation giants Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, Douglas Aircraft and Boeing were located on the West Coast, therefore it was with them that they decided to start the operation, dubbed Camouflage. For these purposes, the best … decorators of the "Dream Factory" were invited, who worked for several years to visually "wipe out" the main military forces of the country, creating a completely different picture over these strategically important objects.

All projects were created in close cooperation with military engineers and builders, who developed special tunnels, ventilation shafts, all kinds of passages and entrances to support the life of the enterprises themselves and tens of thousands of people who worked around the clock at these factories.

As a rule, they created the same ground image, looking at which no enemy aircraft pilot could understand that this was a solid props. First of all, the airfield and aircraft parking was masked, which became invariably green and planted with trees and ordinary crops, so that it seemed that it was farmland.

A complex system of decorations was created on the roofs of the main hangars and workshops of enterprises, some areas were covered with camouflage nets, continuing to artificially create fields with vegetables and wheat, and on others, trees were "planted" made of wire mesh and plume.

Fake small towns with "real" streets, plywood houses and even cars were built, and some fake structures in the form of a hydrant or an ordinary well simply covered ventilation pipes or anti-aircraft points. Of course, walking along the fake houses, it becomes clear that these are simple decorations, but from the sky it looked like an ordinary suburb with its measured quiet life.

According to Novate. Ru, a specially created team within the camouflage camouflage operation managed to build more than 30 such settlements in two years, but the most famous was the town designed by film designer John Stewart Detlinad over the Boeing production building in Seattle, where they released monthly 300 famous bombers B-17.

It is hard to imagine, but under a beautiful provincial sham town, 30 thousand people worked daily, creating a powerful weapon. And above their heads, specially hired actors during the daytime actively portrayed the idyll of peaceful American life so that the enemy could not determine where the main buildings of the aviation giant were hidden.

Rumor has it that even the commander of this unusual Lockheed operation, Colonel John Omer, together with the checking generals, flying around the territory and knowing that this is where the plant is located, could not determine exactly where it was. And flying over another town, which in Santa Barbara the famous film company Warner pos hid the production buildings of Douglas Aircraft, the pilots on the mission could not find an airfield to land the plane.

Fortunately, none of these towns came in handy, Japan did not dare to go deep into the continental part of the United States, so the unique fake buildings were dismantled, remaining captured only in photographs and newsreels. But, nevertheless, they are considered one of the largest and most successful buildings in the history of military technology, because a group of specialists ranging from engineers to ordinary decorators, managed to demonstrate real talent and excellent ingenuity to reliably hide entire industrial giants.