Images of Old Hawaiʻi

by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Bull Pen

Betty Jean O’Hara was “born in Chicago, Illinois in 1913, the year preceding the 1st World War. The early years of (her) life were happy and normal. Being the only child of a physician, (she) was given the best schooling in preparation for a career.”

“(Her) parents were Catholic, and were strict in the regimentation of (her) life. (She) was permitted however to attend parties and movies with other children (her) age.”

At about the age of 16, she met a girl and her boyfriend at a party. The girl was covered in fine jewelry and nice clothes. Young, and easily led, she “agreed to their sordid plans and went into the business of the ‘oldest profession.’” A month later, she left home and headed to San Francisco. (O’Hara)

“Jean O’Hara was a pretty girl who became a handsome woman. She was ‘black Irish,’ fair-skinned with a clear complexion which set off her dark eyes, raven hair, and even her features. She stood about 5’4” and at 120 pounds was slender by that era’s standards. Her good looks and classy bearing would serve her well.” (Bailey & Farber)

“(O’Hara) got used to the fast money.”

“(She) started working in one of the better class houses, and (she) became definitely committed to the practice of prostitution. (Her) father and mother tried every means available to frighten (her) into going home …”

“… but being headstrong, and enticed by the seemingly fabulous earnings (she) resisted their every attempt. Although (she) actually loathed the life, (her) sense of shame and sin aroused in (her) a perverse independence.” (O’Hara)

In mid-1938, O’Hara arrived in Honolulu from San Francisco.

There was an unofficial system of regulated prostitution in the Islands, with the also unofficial sanction of the military. Army military police and the Navy shore patrol helped monitor it.

All girls had to live in the houses where they worked; no white girls were allowed on the other side of River Street. The Army, Navy, and civilian police picketed any house violating the rules, and no man could enter it. According to the agreement, the civil police regulated prostitution “with full cooperation by the Army and Navy.” (Greer)

“The business of procuring girls to work in the brothels, or “factories”, before the war (WWII,) was usually handled by the same … “procurer.” He handled nothing but the transportation of the girls. … The fee for procuring a girl from the mainland rage(d) from $500 to $1,000 depending on the looks and the capability of the girl.” (O’Hara)

A detective would meet the ships coming in and the girls were taken to the ‘receiving station.’ (In O’Hara’s case, that was the Blaisdell Hotel on Fort Street.) The girls were explained the rules – in no uncertain terms, the girls were told that any violation of the rules meant banishment from the Territory.

All of the girls have a Territorial tax book and a Territorial license (they were licensed as ‘entertainers,’) which cost each $1 per year. In addition, every month the Vice Squad would collect an unofficial tax of $30 per girl from the brothels.

The girls paid Federal income taxes, as well as state taxes. “It has been said that (the) girls and Madames are the heaviest tax payers in Honolulu. … Each girl in Honolulu can average from $4,000 per month to $5,000 per month. … Taxes are collected by the Madame of the house, who also files the returns for them.” (O’Hara)

Before WWII, the girls usually started to work around 1 pm, and ended around 5 am. The ‘blackout’ during the war meant they worked from 8 am to noon.

“Very few girls made under a $100 a day, some of these double that and some of them made over $300 a day. It all depends upon the girl. She can make as much as she wants.”

“The price charged is $3.00 per date. Of this, the Madame gets one dollar. Out of the remaining two dollars, the girl must pay the Madame for her room and board and laundry.” (O’Hara)

The Madames were women from the mainland. Although prostitution was not legal, they needed permission from the local Police before operating.

When WWII broke out, and martial law was in effect, the military called the shots (1941-1943.) A “substantial number” of prostitutes were brought to Honolulu from the mainland under military priorities – a common rumor – and that under military government prostitution “flourished.” (Greer)

Most brothels required girls to see at least 100 men a day and to work at least 20 days per month.

To speed things along, O’Hara is credited with inventing the ‘bull pen’ system where a single prostitute would work three rooms in rotation (including maid service.)

In one room a man would be undressing, in a second room the prostitute would be having sex, and in the third room the man would be dressing. (The guy had three minutes to achieve release, after which she said ‘aloha’ and was off to the next room while he washed up and got dressed.) (McNeill)

After a few months’ work in a Hotel Street brothel, she had amassed a sizable bankroll. She leased a house near Waikiki Beach with a friend.

“The life of a prostitute is not an easy one, and the stringent rules of the Honolulu Police Department, headed by Chief of Police Gabrielson, left her no more freedom that a prisoner.”

O’Hara broke the rules (often) and ended up getting the regular attention of the Police, including Gabrielson. She was fined, imprisoned and beat black and blue, with two broken ribs.

O’Hara filed a $100,000 lawsuit in 1941 against the Police department for her two broken ribs and black eyes. The lawsuit was dropped, but conflicts with the Police continued.

O’Hara later married a ‘local boy’ and quit the business. She was a prostitute for 13-years, and temporarily was a Madame. She had homes in Waikiki and Pacific Heights.

After leaving the brothels, “(her) only desire (was) to live a useful family life, and help others to live and let live, as one resurrected from the sordid flesh mines of humanity.”

In 1944, she wrote a booklet, ‘My Life as a Honolulu Prostitute.’ She died in 1973. (Lots of information here is from that booklet.)

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by Peter T Young 9 Comments

Kalihi Air Crash

The European coast from Norway to northern Spain was defended by a series of concrete constructions armed with machineguns, barbed wires and minefields: the Atlantic Wall.

On April 10, 1944, the allied naval officers received confirmation of a landing at Normandy in the North of France; the operation was to be supervised by the commander in chief of the allied fleet: Admiral Bertram Ramsay.

After a bombardment during the night (carried out by the allied aviation) and a naval bombardment (carried out by the fleet) against the Atlantic Wall, at dawn, Tuesday, June 6, 1944, D-Day began.

By 8 am, all the first assault waves had landed on 5 Normandy beaches (codenamed Utah Beach and Omaha Beach (where the Americans land,) Gold Beach, Juno Beach and Sword Beach (where the English, Canadians and Free France soldiers land.))

The Allies landed around 156,000 troops in Normandy. The American forces landed numbered 73,000; in the British and Canadian sector, 83,115 troops were landed and 7,900 airborne troops. (Allied casualties were at least 10,000.)

On June 8, the Americans at Omaha Beach and British at Gold Beach linked up. Reinforced by the 2nd Infantry Division, at Omaha, and the 90th Infantry Division at Utah, US forces launched new offensives deeper inland.

That was in Europe … in the Islands, the then greatest number of fatalities from a single fire occurred in Kalihi on June 8, 1944.

Fires have from time to time burned down large sections of Honolulu, but loss of life had been light. Three of the largest fires – the Esplanade fire of 1877 and Chinatown fires of 1886 and 1900 – caused significant property damage, but no one was killed.

However, on that fateful day in 1944, two Army medium B-25 bombers collided in midair and plunged into a congested residential area, setting fire to 11 or 12 dwellings. Ten women and children perished in the burning buildings. All four crewmen died in the crash (including Lt James L Pauley and John H Davis.) (Schmitt)

“The women and children were trapped and fatally burned when their homes were ignited by the flaming wreckage of one bomber that crashed in the middle of an arterial route to Pearl Harbor. One other child was critically burned.”

“Witnesses said the planes collided about 1,000-feet in the air, coming together at right angles. The left wing was broken off one and the tail sheared off the other.”

“The wingless bomber plummeted to Dillingham Boulevard, its flaming wreckage setting fire to houses on both sides of the street. The tailless plane fell on a small open spot in an area of small homes.”

“All the city’s fire fighting equipment was called out. The fires blocked traffic for nearly four hours.” (Galveston Daily News Texas June 10, 1944)

Members of the Chun family were in the list of the casualties. The mother, Ester, and two children Marilyn (age 4) and Donald (age 2) died that day.

The husband and father, Kam, a 1938 graduate of President William McKinley High School, worked at Pearl Harbor shipyard in his 20s as a boiler maker (he was witness to the attack by the Japanese on December 7, 1941.)

After the death of his wife and two eldest children, he applied for a job as a police officer and served for sixteen years at the Honolulu Police Department.

He later got into acting and was a familiar face and regular on Hawaiʻi Five-O; we knew his as Kam Fong (Kam Fong Chun) who played Chin Ho Kelly. (He remarried (1949) and later died of lung cancer October 18, 2002, at the age of 84.)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

D-Day

June 6, 1944 was the beginning of the end of WWII in Europe; France at the time was occupied by the armies of Nazi Germany and the combined land, air, and sea forces of the allied armies led to the liberation of France and the later defeat of the Germans.

While we focus on the coast of France, we sometimes overlook events on the other side of the world. That same day, June 6, 1944, a huge attack force cleared Pearl Harbor on its way to invade Japanese positions in the Mariana Islands. (NPR)

The WWII began when Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 15, 1939, following Germany’s invasion of Poland. Then in May 1940, Germany invaded France, Belgium, Holland, Norway and Denmark. A year later, Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, leading the US top declare war on Japan.  Germany, in turn, declared war on the US, bringing America into the war in Europe.  WWII was being fought in the Pacific and Atlantic.

For years, Allied leaders and military planners had debated about when, where, and how to land troops in northern Europe. Although plans for such an action had been in the works for years, it was not until December 1943, when General Dwight D Eisenhower was appointed Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, that preparations for the future operation, code named Overlord, intensified.

Although the invasion was delayed with no definite timeline, American troops began arriving in Great Britain in record numbers in 1943. By the end of May 1944, there were more than 1.5 million US Army personnel in the United Kingdom to either participate in or support the cross-Channel action.  

For several months prior to the invasion, several thousand Allied bombers and fighters attacked targets from the Pas de Calais to the north to the French port of Cherbourg to the west and more than a hundred miles inland to isolate the Normandy area of operations and hamper the ability of German commanders to reinforce their forces in Normandy once the invasion began.

German High Command had bought into the deceptions of the operation, and fully expected a landing at the Pas de Calais. Planners instead had selected a 50-mile stretch of coastline in Normandy.

The Normandy beaches were chosen by planners because they lay within range of air cover and were less heavily defended than the obvious objective of the Pas de Calais, the shortest distance between Great Britain and the Continent.

The action was planned in two parts.  Neptune, the naval component and assault phase, involved moving tens of thousands of Allied troops across the Channel and landing them on the beaches while providing gunfire support.  Overlord was pivotal point of the plan – the invasion and the subsequent Battle of Normandy.

Approximately 160,000 Allied soldiers were to land across five beaches code named Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha, and Utah, while British and American paratroop and glider forces landed inland.  Forces landing at each beach would eventually link up, establishing a beachhead from which to further push inland into France.

After numerous delays and major planning changes, D-Day was set for June 5. However, on June 4, as paratroopers prepared to board their aircraft to carry them behind enemy lines, weather conditions deteriorated.

The decision was made to delay 24 hours, requiring part of the naval force bound for Utah beach to return to port. With a small window of opportunity in the weather, Eisenhower made the decision to go – D-Day would be June 6, 1944.

In issuing the Order of the Day, Eisenhower stated, “Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark on the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months.”

“The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.”

“Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely. …”

“The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory! I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory! Good luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.”

Total Allied troops who landed in Normandy: 156,115 (including 23,400 Allied airborne troops); Soldiers’ home nations: United States, Britain, Canada, Belgium, Norway, Poland, Luxembourg, Greece, Czechoslovakia, New Zealand and Australia (+177 French commandos).

Total Allied aircraft that supported landings: 11,590; Total naval vessels in Operation Neptune: 6,939 (including Naval combat ships: 1,213; Landing ships / craft: 4,126; Ancillary craft: 736; Merchant vessels: 864 – of the 6,939 ships involved in D-Day, 80 percent were British; 16.5 percent, U.S.; and the rest from France, Holland, Norway and Poland.)

By June 30, over 850,000 men, 148,000 vehicles, and 570,000 tons of supplies had landed on the Normandy shores. Fighting by the brave soldiers, sailors and airmen of the allied forces western front, and Russian forces on the eastern front, led to the defeat of German Nazi forces. On May 7, 1945, German General Alfred Jodl signed an unconditional surrender at Reims, France.

“Many explanations have been given for the meaning of D-Day, June 6, 1944, the day the Allies invaded Normandy from England during World War II. The Army has said that it is ‘simply an alliteration, as in H-Hour.’  Others say the first D in the word also stands for ‘day,’ the term a code designation.”

“The French maintain the D means ‘disembarkation,’ still others say ‘debarkation,’ and the more poetic insist D-Day is short for ‘day of decision.’”

“When someone wrote to General Eisenhower in 1964 asking for an explanation, his executive assistant Brigadier General Robert Schultz answered: ‘General Eisenhower asked me to respond to your letter. Be advised that any amphibious operation has a ‘departed date’; therefore the shortened term ‘D-Day’ is used.”

That response reminds us that the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944 was not the only D-Day of World War II. Every amphibious assault – including those in the Pacific, in North Africa, and in Sicily and Italy – had its own D-Day.

While the focus of D-Day is on the coast of France, we sometimes overlook events on the other side of the world. That same day, June 6, 1944, a huge attack force cleared Pearl Harbor on its way to invade Japanese positions in the Mariana Islands. (NPR)

Since the fall of the Marshall Islands to the Americans a few months earlier, both sides began to prepare for an American onslaught against the Marianas and Saipan in particular. The Americans decided that the best course of action was to invade Saipan first, then Tinian and Guam.  The Battle of Saipan was under the code name Operation Forager.

The force that headed west across the Pacific may have been smaller in numbers than the armada that gathered off the coast of Normandy, but the US 5th Fleet boasted no fewer than 16 aircraft carriers and more than 900 combat aircraft. The attack group carried two divisions of Marines and one of Army infantry and the stakes of both invasions were similar. (NPR)

In June 1944, Admiral Raymond A Spruance’s 500-ship fleet, carrying about 125,000 Marines and Sailors steamed 1,000 miles from the Western Marshall Islands to the South Mariana Islands.   This fleet included most of the Navy’s carriers and battleships, along with many of its transports of the Pacific Fleet.

The Mariana Islands were the last bastion of Japan’s Central Pacific perimeter.  Their capture by American Forces severed the Japanese supply lines with the Caroline Islands territories further south and pushed the defense west to the Philippines while opening the Japanese homelands for aerial assaults.

Spruance’s Task Force 58 launched the first of many pre-invasion air sorties on June 11 on Japanese positions, airplanes, and ships.  Both fast and escort carriers participated in these attacks that lasted until the capture of Guam on August 10.  (Navy)

They set D-day for June 15, when Navy Sailors would deliver Marines and Soldiers to Saipan’s rugged, heavily fortified shores.  The Navy’s involvement bookended the operation: naval vessels and personnel ferried Marines and Soldiers to the beaches and then, after ground combat was over, took leading positions in the administration of the occupation.

Japanese resistance proved far greater than anticipated, not least of all because the latest intelligence reports had underestimated troop levels.

In reality, troop levels, in excess of 31,000 men, were as much as double the estimates. For at least a month, Japanese forces had been fortifying the island and bolstering its forces. Although US submarines had managed to sink most of the transports to Saipan from Manchuria, the majority of these troops survived to supplement a full 13,000 men to the 15,000 or so already on site.

“The [Japanese] are coming after us,” Spruance said, and they were bringing with them 28 destroyers, 5 battleships, 11 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers, and 9 carriers (5 fleet, 4 light) with somewhere near 500 aircraft total.

The resulting engagement – the Battle of the Philippine Sea of June 19-20 – resulted in a decisive US victory that nearly eliminated Japan’s ability to wage war in the air.

By June 30, the 27th Infantry Division had swept through the hills and then down the valley where it finally destroyed the enemy.  Following fighting on the island, the Americans suffered 26,000 casualties (5,000 of which were deaths). Yet the American victory was decisive.

Japan’s National Defense Zone, demarcated by a line that the Japanese had deemed essential to hold in the effort to stave off US invasion, had been blown open. Japan’s access to scarce resources in Southeast Asia was now compromised. 

The cost of this campaign was great: over 16,500 casualties, including almost 3,500 killed.  The Marine units suffered close to 13,000 casualties.

Although the price for victory was high, the seizure of Saipan was a highly significant step forward in the advance on the Japanese home islands.  The island became the first B-29 base in the Pacific.  The war had reached a new turning point.

Some highly-placed Japanese felt that their defeat on Saipan signified the beginning of the end of the Empire. (Marine Corps University) (Lots of information here is from US Army, Navy and Marines, Department of Defense, Eisenhower Library and British Imperial War Museums.)

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by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Memorial Day

On May 5, 1866, the village of Waterloo, New York was decorated with flags at half mast, draped with evergreens and mourning black, and flowers were placed on the graves of those killed in the Civil War. In the following years, the ceremonies were repeated.

Later, Maj. Gen. John A. Logan, Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, declared that “Decoration Day” should be observed on May 30. It is believed that date was chosen because flowers would be in bloom all over the country.

“The 30th day of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.” (General Order 11)

The first large observance was held that year at Arlington National Cemetery, across the Potomac River from Washington, DC.

By the end of the 19th century, Decoration Day ceremonies were being held on May 30 throughout the nation. State legislatures passed proclamations designating the day, and the Army and Navy adopted regulations for proper observance at their facilities.

In May 1966, Congress unanimously passed a resolution and President Lyndon B Johnson signed a Presidential Proclamation recognizing Waterloo as the Birthplace of Decoration Day / Memorial Day.

It was not until after World War I, however, that the day was expanded to honor those who have died in all American wars.

In 1971, Memorial Day was declared a national holiday by an act of Congress, though it is still often called Decoration Day. It was then also placed on the last Monday in May.

The story of America’s quest for freedom is inscribed on her history in the blood of her patriots. (Randy Vader)

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty. (John F. Kennedy)

On thy grave the rain shall fall from the eyes of a mighty nation! (Thomas William Parsons)

Let us not forget.

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Boeing Wonderland

Maj. John F. Ohmer, Jr., of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, an expert in camouflage, found that almost nothing had been done to conceal military installations in the US. (Corps of Engineers)

The art and science of camouflage had infatuated Ohmer for years. After joining the Army in 1938, he combined his love of magic and photography to find inventive ways to fool the eye and the lens.

When Ohmer went overseas to study Britain’s wartime concealment efforts, he marveled as German attackers wasted their bombs in open fields brilliantly attired to appear as vital targets. (Popular Mechanics)

During the Battle of Britain, which lasted from July until October 1940, the Luftwaffe rained thousands of bombs over England. One of Germany’s main goals for the constant bombing was to destroy the Royal Air Force.

The Luftwaffe had a long list of important targets that included aircraft factories and airfields. The British covered their factories, warplanes and tanks with camouflaging materials and paint, and put fake airplanes and tanks in fields far away from civilization. The Luftwaffe bombed hundreds of fake targets, leaving the real targets intact. (Mishpacha)

As commander of the Army’s 604th Engineer Camouflage Battalion, Ohmer campaigned to demonstrate his craft by obscuring Hawai‘i’s Wheeler Field in 1941. His superiors rejected his proposal because of the $56,210 price tag (nearly $900,000 today).

Then on December 7, 1941, Japanese attackers bombed and strafed Oahu’s exposed airfields, along with the naval base at Pearl Harbor. Wheeler alone lost 83 warplanes, each one nearly worth the cost of Ohmer’s proposed cover-up. (Popular Mechanics)

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Ohmer received an urgent call from the US Army. The threat of further attack led Ohmer’s superiors to reassess the value of his vision.

The most visible and vulnerable targets were a dozen or so distinctive, wooden aircraft assembly buildings. Military leaders were concerned that just a few air-dropped incendiary bombs would burn them to the ground. The loss of just one major airplane-producing facility could lengthen the war considerably. (Popular Mechanics)

Ohmer’s assignment … he had to make everything worth bombing, from San Diego to Seattle, disappear. The long list included airfields, oil depots, aircraft warning stations, military camps, and defensive gun batteries.

“He was a Hollywood art director and designer who worked on classic musicals of the late 1930s, ones with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald and Busby Berkeley choreographed extravaganzas, the kind of movies that lit up the theater.”

“He was an art director at Golden Age MGM, and was nominated for an Oscar in 1940. He married one of the screen’s biggest stars – Veronica Lake. John Stewart Detlie was right at the heart of Tinseltown glamour.” (Cascade PBS)

Ohmer created illusions for America’s five largest aircraft manufacturers situated in California and Washington. These manufacturing plants – from Douglas Aircraft Co., Consolidated Vultee (now Convair), North American Aviation, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing – were transformed to look like cities or towns from the air. (CoffeeOrDie)

Ohmer turned to Hollywood to find the most adept civilian workers, raiding movie studios to leverage the skills of set designers, art directors, painters, carpenters, and landscape artists for the urgent task, along with a handful of willing animators, lighting experts, and prop designers.

The crown jewel of Ohmer’s concealments took place near Seattle, where Boeing’s Plant 2 sprawled over 700,000 square feet of floor space. Inside, thousands of men and women churned out a new B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber roughly every 90 minutes.

Ohmer placed his top movie studio recruit on the Boeing project, architect John Detlie. He was pure Hollywood, married to movie star Veronica Lake. Before Detlie joined the war effort, he was an Oscar-nominated art director and set designer at MGM.

In Seattle, Detlie assembled 13 architects and draftsmen, eight commercial artists, seven landscape architects, five engineers, and a soil-management expert.

Thwarting an enemy reconnaissance flier took more than simply covering the factory building. A sharp-eyed scout might zero in on the adjoining airfield, parking lots, or ramp areas. Making Boeing’s entire production facility disappear meant sowing confusion over several square miles of land. (Popular Mechanics)

Located at 7755 East Marginal Way S. in Tukwila on the banks of the Duwamish River, Boeing’s Plant 2 (also known as Air Force Plant 17) was a factory building built in 1936 by The Boeing Company in Seattle, Washington – the factory goal was to build early prototypes of the B-17 Flying Fortress and the Boeing 307 Stratoliners.

By the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the plant had been expanded to 1,776,000 square feet. In total, 6,981 B-17s were produced in Plant 2.

Boeing Plant 2 gave birth to some of the world’s most significant aircraft and a home to ‘Rosie the Riveter’ – women who built thousands of World War II planes.

Plant 2 was so critical that Boeing camouflaged its roof with faux streets and houses of fabric and plywood, making it nearly vanish into nearby neighborhoods. Beneath the plant, tunnels led to cafeterias, restrooms and classrooms, innovations to make life easier for workers and keep them close to their jobs. (Fox)

The idea was to blend the facility into the surrounding neighborhood across the river. This elaborate pretend town was nicknamed the “Boeing Wonderland” by the Seattle Daily Times on July 23, 1945. (RareHistoricalPhotos)

Workers obscured the heart of Boeing’s facility with 26 acres of camouflage netting stretched across the roof to create the appearance of a new faux ground level elevated roughly 50 feet above the surrounding landscape.

The building’s uneven bays and distinctive saw-tooth profile required the netting to be supported by wooden scaffolding or steel cables in low spots.

Reinforced catwalks, sometimes masquerading as sidewalks, included wood and wire handrails to keep a distracted maintenance man from straying off the supported path and plunging through the netting. (Popular Mechanics)

Disguising the active runways and taxiways as an innocuous urban scene called for a two-dimensional solution to not impede aircraft operations. Planners envisioned a pattern of visual noise composed of lawns, buildings, and roads crisscrossing the active airfield.

First, builders mixed finely crushed rock into bitumen, an asphalt-like substance, and applied it to areas heavily trafficked by aircraft. The mixture provided a dull texture to the airfield’s large, flat concrete surfaces. In non-traffic spaces, the men added wood chips and cement to absorb light. (Popular Mechanics)

Over the rough texture, workmen used paint to create an intricate top-down view of a typical neighborhood, devised by Detlie’s crew. Its pigment, developed by Warner Brothers, was reputed to “resist disclosure of the camouflage through infra-red photography.”

Oil mixed with the custom paint helped establish a convincing cross-hatch of artificial roads. On the airport’s infield, men constructed six-inch-high false buildings made from concrete blocks.

From overhead, the small structures cast realistic shadows and gave just a small amount of depth, giving more life to the scene. The finished deception looked amazingly impressive from the “attacker’s-eye-view” at five to ten thousand feet. Only as a pilot came in low for landing did the hidden runway lose its illusion. (Popular Mechanics)

The strange, house-filled neighborhood could be seen in the middle of an industrial area from the air. The “neighborhood” was completed in 1944 and removed a year after the war. (Seattle Times)

Fortunately, the enemy bombers never came. (AirMailNews)

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