September 15, 2011 Boeing Plant Camouflaged

[infinite monkey]

'Secrecy of Boeing Plant 2 was so crucial during World War II that Boeing built houses of plywood and fabric and installed fake streets to camouflage the roof. The idea was to blend the facility into the surrounding neighborhood across the river’

http://www.howtobearetronaut.com/201...oeing-plant-2/

[infinite monkey]

More:

[glatt]

Very cool. It blends right in.

[BigV]

yes, especially the GIANT BOULEVARD just to the top of the picture with the ... what could those be? Airplanes? In the burbs? It can't be. We must be lost or something, check the map again.

heh...

super cool IotD, thanks!!

[infinite monkey]

Nobody ever said Seattle-ites were all that smart.

Here is more information on it...I don't know if this explains those planes or not. Very intriguing.

The Germans went to elaborate lengths to hide factories with netting and smoke screens - even so far as to build dummy oil refineries with similar reference points to fool bombardiers trying to hit it instead of the real factory a few mile further on - it actually known to have worked once.

However, asides from that rare case, hiding a factory would ONLY work if no aerial - or any type of images - of the factory was in possession by the enemy before the pre-mission photo-recon picture had been taken. Hiding a SINGLE item this big never worked - the bridges, rivers, prominent intersections etc would all still be there to allow a proper bomb drop on the factory. You have to hide everything around it within a mile so that the person toggling the bombs could not be sure exactly where it is. Off by 10 seconds means you miss the whole target. Thus you need to fake the scale in the camouflage or shift it over by 1/2 mile by making a new complete factory along with roads, intersections etc to match the original.

http://www.taphilo.com/history/WWII/...ng/index.shtml

[footfootfoot]

[infinite monkey]

What? It's fake?

[ogwen69]

Pretty sure we've had this before - can't find it in the history though....

Still pretty cool that it can be done!

[infinite monkey]

I did a search for Boeing and didn't find anything, but I suspected it might have been posted before.

I thought it was fascinating. The rest of the site (from the first link) is pretty cool too.

[mrputter]

Originally Posted by BigV

GIANT BOULEVARD just to the top of the picture with

While I realize / expect you were just kidding, the same thought occurred to me at first.

Then I appreciated that the intent wasn't to hide the entire airfield; that wouldn't have been remotely feasible. Instead they were just trying to divert attacks away from the most important and/or vulnerable parts. With the camouflage in place, bombers (at least if in possession with less-than-perfect maps of the site) would look down, see the runway but not see the real plant, rather would be fooled into thinking that the uncamouflaged and (presumably) lower-priority warehouses, or whatever they are, just to the right were their intended target. Thus those buildings would be bombed instead. Still annoying, to be sure, but nowhere near as devastating as if the important stuff were destroyed.

It may even be that the latter buildings were an explicit part of the ruse, and were left entirely empty?

Anyway, that's my take on it. This approach would also help mitigate the issues cited by the taphilo.com article quoted by infinite monkey...

[Bullitt]

Camouflage also isn't just to make things invisible. It is also to break up the recognizable shapes of objects so they can hide in plain sight. Distorting or blurring the outlines can work just as well because then the observer can't tell what he's looking at, or find exactly what he's looking for.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Bullitt

Camouflage also isn't just to make things invisible. It is also to break up the recognizable shapes of objects so they can hide in plain sight. Distorting or blurring the outlines can work just as well because then the observer can't tell what he's looking at, or find exactly what he's looking for.

See, for example the cat in the tree stand that Digger just posted.

[SteveB2580]

cause that was cleaver