The Hollywood Burbank Airport is often considered one of Los Angeles County’s best-kept secrets: with smaller crowds and less traffic, it’s been ranked the top airport in the country (while LAX sits in dead last).
But once upon a time…the Burbank Airport was really a secret. As Evan Lovett tells us on “LA In A Minute,” the entire airport was hidden by camouflage during World War II.
In the 1940s, the airport was known as Lockheed Air Terminal. The defense giant had a manufacturing plant next door with an assembly line to crank out warplanes.
Military officials moved quickly to protect the facility from surveillance or attack in the days after Pearl Harbor by disguising it as a suburb.
Col. John F. Ohmer, an engineer and amateur magician who had studied how the British concealed their military facilities from the Nazis, was authorized to camouflage the Lockheed plant by whatever means necessary.
He recruited a bevy of Hollywood set designers for the job. The crew stretched a layer of heavy-duty netting and canvas over the terminal and hangars, then constructed an elaborate replica of a regular SoCal neighborhood on top, complete with fake houses, inflatable cars, and trees made out of wire and spray-painted chicken feathers.
As an added touch to throw off surveillance attempts, workers brought the illusion to life by periodically hanging up laundry on clotheslines and moving the inflatable cars around the fake neighborhood.
Everything looked perfectly lifelike, save for one small detail: most of the buildings were less than six feet tall. From above, it was impossible to tell that the structures weren’t as tall as they appeared.
Ohmer tested the camouflage by taking a War Department general on a reconnaissance flight and asking him to point out the Lockheed plant. All the general saw were suburbs.
For more on the Burbank Airport’s secret history, listen to the full audio above, and follow LA In A Minute on Instagram and Tiktok.
Follow KNX News 97.1 FM
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | TikTok
Related
Related
