Filed in archive
As We See Things
, Aviation
, Photographs
by Philip Powell on June 27, 2008

This blog, friends, has little to do with automobiles but I think you'll enjoy it. During WW2 the Lockheed Burbank plant was turning out thousands of planes, among them the Hudson bomber/trainer, the Lockheed Harpoon, and the magnificent P-38 Lightning twin-engine fighter. Military authorities believed it might be vulnerable to attacks by Japanese aircraft although no enemy carriers had been sighted anywhere near California. And so, in one of the most incredible acts of camouflage ever created, the roof of the giant factory was rebuilt by the Army Corps of Engineers to look like a typical residential suburb. Homes, streets, shrubbery, even cars were put in place. The Japanese attack technicians would have been completely fooled. Or would they? In wartime, spies existed on both sides. Who's to doubt that someone might not have tipped off the enemy? In a delightful twist of irony, Subaru's Indiana plant landscape is a "designated backyard wildlife habitat." Deer, coyotes, beavers, rabbits, blue herons and other water fowl live in peaceful coexistence with cars, not warplanes.
Tags:
Lockheed
Burbank
Subaru
Indiana
P38
Lightning
Hudson
classic
vintage
antique
collector
old
car
cars
Trackback: http://publish.creative-weblogging.com/publish/mt-tb.pl/127082
Mr Wong
Vote for A Roof for War, a Landscape for Peace, Lockheed to Subaru:
|
Rating: 9.00 out of 3 vote(s) cast.
|
Subscribe
Use the search to look for other interesting posts
| RSS | See all blog subscribe options |
|
What is RSS? | |
| Yahoo! |
|
| Addthis |
|
| Bloglines |
|
| Newsletter | |
| Follow us on Twitter! |





