Colonel John F. Ohmer's Operation Camouflage California

After the surprise attacks on Pearl Harbor and a sighting of a Japanese submarine off of the San Francisco Bay in 1942, American wartime industries on the West Coast felt exposed to another Japanese air attack. Another attack would result in lost lives, equipment, and potentially entire factories. Thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment, training, and industry: gone in a single action. These factories wanted to protect themselves without compromising work flow. However, hiding single items of large size never worked. The bridges and intersections leading to its location often gave it away. In order to throw off the enemy, everything within a mile had to be hidden, while assuming the enemy had no prewar time reconnaissance of the area. Acres of west coast landscape needed to be camouflaged in order to hide the wartime factories and bases. How could they hide from the enemy and continue production?
The solution came in Operation Camouflage California. The plan was to hide the factories in plain sight by covering the area with a netting to disguise it from enemy air attacks. The responsibility of this task fell Colonel John F Ohmer. An engineer from

The British had concealed their facilities from Axis pilots, covering factories to look like empty fields and putting up dummy tanks in empty landscapes. These tanks could be constructed out of balloons, paper, or other material, all painted to give the illusion of large numbers of land units. This was not the first time someone from either side had used dummy tanks. Dummy tanks have a history dating back to World War 1 and the introduction of tanks in modern warfare. Both sides used them to throw off the enemy’s air attacks, hoping they would waste bombs and ammunition on empty fields. The British were so successful with their fake units that the Germans wasted thousands of tons of bombs on empty