January 25, 2024 • 44 mins
As paranoia increases in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attacks, amateur magician (and storied military official) John Francis Ohmer, Jr. finds Uncle Sam and Hollywood increasingly onboard with his idea of camouflaging entire compounds. In the second part of this two-part series, Ben, Noel and Max explore how the US constructed a fake town atop Boeing's most important facility, weirdly named "Plant 2."
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you as old Ways so
much for tuning in. Shout out to the man, the
myth legend super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Hey, Hey, what was the other one? It was?
Speaker 1 (00:36):
It was rah orrah, hrah, hoorah and huzzah and haza
and a towski.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
That's right. Huzzah's the one where if you're like a
night in something, you know that's your rallying.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Yeah, and you and I both will occasionally throw it
in an email.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
No doubt.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah, I'm part of the culture of how stuff works.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Yeah, I've big bullet. You're an old Brown.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Because a big shout out to how stuff works. Man,
we've been we've been doing us for a while. It's
crazy that we haven't gotten to this story earlier. What's
a good for our folks and playing along at home?
What's a good recap?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah, I mean, first of all, listening to the episode
one that gives you a good This is a really
backstory rich tale here. So I think we did our
due diligence there. Teased a little bit about some of
the incredible interactions between the US Air Force and Hollywood,
Baby Hollywood and some of the most brilliant set designers
(01:30):
and builders and fabricators and you know, just creative minds
of the time to camouflage these crucial airplane manufacturing facilities
to make them look like suburban towns in the hopes
that the Japanese bombers would be confused and they would
bomb other stuff. But then we ended the story of
(01:51):
episode one kind of on the movie studios now being
the only ones not camouflage, and this cluster of these
kind of warehouse ye air plane hangar type facilities, to
which the executives were like, hey, we need this too,
because now we're gonna be seen as the target. We
look a lot like airplane hangers. I think that's that's
where we are, yeah, with Boeing, because that really what
(02:12):
was what we teased this whole series to be about.
I don't know that we've mentioned Boeing specifically quite yet.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
No, we just we gave them a hard time about
the planes and the fact that's right, I almost died one.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
But uh, I don't think we mentioned that part.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
But movie Okay, our hero of the story here is
the Boeing Wonderland. And that's that's what part two of
this series is really focusing on. So, like you said,
everybody's trying to keep up with the Joneses.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Now, camouflage is something you must have because all these
other places are camouflage.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Lockheed's clover Field facility.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Yeah, and so if we travel to Seattle, we'll see
that Boeing's president, Philip Johnson has been paying attention to
his buddies at Douglas Aircraft and he says, look, the
biggest deal for us at Boeing is Plant two. Despite
the name, it is our number one inspired, our number
one asset.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Right.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
So it's uh, December eleventh, four days after Pearl Harbor,
Boeing puts out a press release and they say the
following Plant two has been quote entirely transformed from a
daylight plant to a blackout plant to enable to know
night operations during blackouts.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Okay, it goes on a little braggadociously. This plant is
believed to be one of the first, if not the first,
major defense plant in the country to complete this transformation.
So I talk like a wizard there or something.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
We both we both made some weird choices in our
quotation voices. But this is true. What they're saying essentially
is that now we can operate overnight.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Actually, I think a big thing to say about it
is it now means that if you black out the
city for bombers are coming, they can still keep working
in there.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yes, good point Max with fects.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Oh, there it is there, it is. Oh, it's a
big deal, you know, because they need to be As
we mentioned in episode one, the goal that FDR had
set for the number of bombers that he wanted in
their fleet is that what you call it in the
sky was insane fifty thousand, I believe right. So they
couldn't they didn't have a moment to spare.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
And we also know that the Boeing News Bureau came
out with a report about this and said, well, they
released on April first, nineteen forty two, but it was
not in April day joke. What they were describing to
the public at large was the urgency created by the
Pearl Harbor attack. And they said, look, we're not gonna
(05:09):
waste any time. We are getting everybody together that we
can to help us do this blackout transformation.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
We're gonna have a painting party. We'll have a painting party. Yeah. Yeah.
And when when we say blackout in this situation, we
are referring literally to blacking out the building, right, like
painting it as dark a color as humanly possible. I
don't think they had that, like the blackest paint ever
to exist at that point, but just you know, regular
old black paint would probably do the trick. And then
(05:37):
that you know, created a shroud around which they could
build the thing that was you know, meant to catch
the eye exactly.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
And again, these enemy bombers will be hunting with their
own eye sight, that's right. So so it makes sense
to black everything out and reduce the amount of light
the factory is emitting.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Funny though, to think about it today, with like advances
in GPS technology and imaging, stuff like this wouldn't really work,
would it. You'd be able to kind of see the
shape or kind of know what you were looking at
a little better if you had certain types of radar
technology or like satellite you know imagery. But I mean
even that, there are obviously ways that the military does
their best to you know, camouflage their stuff. To those
(06:18):
kinds of things, it would have been be a different
type of job though, right.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so Boeing is already blacked out
as a factory, you know, the windows are painted, et cetera.
But they needed to do more and so in May
of nineteen forty two, the core of Engineers takes takes
on this project. They say, we're going to camouflage this
factory in addition to having it blacked out. And again
shout out to Bill Bill Why who wrote some fantastic
(06:46):
research on this. So to accomplish this camouflage our top
talent in the world of military camouflage. The amateur magician
over sends one of his boys from Hollywood, a guy
named John Stewart, art director. He sends this guy over
to the Boeing plant. He had pulled him from MGM
(07:07):
from the experiments they were doing back on the loss.
I just want to add one little thing before we
get into the actual full camouflage, the blackout situation with
the paint where they was at all hands on deck.
Apparently they required about four miles of air hose in
order to allow for the operation of spray guns. So
we don't have this exact you know, square footage or
(07:28):
the number of windows that they painted over. But if
that's any indication, this is a huge job and a
massive feat to accomplish in a couple of days. So
now we're on to you know, the business at hand,
like to really make this building look like something else. Yeah, absolutely,
that's that's the idea, right, And so Deadly is living
(07:51):
this Hollywood dream. He's got a cool job that everybody wants.
He has, you know, that degree in architecture. He is
working as a set design. He even gets nominated for
an Oscar back in the day for his work on
a film called Bitter Sweet, which I have not seen.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Nor have I And a lot of the Oscar wins
you know of of this era of Hollywood are gonna
be a little bit deep, deeper cuts than he might think. Yeah,
you know, unless they're like the big classics that get remembered.
Not all Oscar winners do stand the test of time.
But I am interested to see this this guy's work.
By checking out Bitter Sweet.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
I feel like I won't pay attention to the story.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
I'll just be watching. I know we do too much. Yeah,
we've ruined it for ourselves in the stars of that.
I'm also particularly familiar with Jeanete MacDonald and Nelson Eddie
Nelson Eddie, I don't know Nelson, Okay, I don't either.
I just thought if I said it enough, I was
almost there. But in nineteen forty, Dutley is only thirty
two years old, and he actually, like you said, live
(08:52):
in that Hollywood dream. Mary's at Angenoux by the name
of Constance Ackelman Love. It is a great old, cool
Hollywood name, and they were quite a power couple in Hollywood,
very sought after, both for their own set of skills,
with Constance, you know, being a up and coming kind
(09:13):
of starlet, and of course deathly being a very sought
after art director.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Question question for both of you, guys, do you think
a thirty two year old man should marry an eighteen
year old noll?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Weird? I don't know what's the formula? Isn't there a formula?
Not as bad as Charlie Chaplin? That's that guy had
a darkness.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
I mean thirty two eighteen, I mean, yeah, this is
a really cringe age plus seven your age plus seven even.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
That I feel is weirdly Oh it is.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
I'm just saying it is a thing people say.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
I was finding a guy not that long ago. Like
a friend of mine, he's he's he's in his mid
twenties and he's on tender. He's looking at like all
these nine year old girls like to like he said, well,
like six years older than him.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Like, yeah, man, like I don't know a teenager. That's
like a lot happens in that six years though.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Yeah, anyway, but you know, I hesitate to pass judgement.
I was just curious on you guys. Take we do
know that regardless of an age difference. Uh, they had
a good union, right, they seem to get along famously,
very much in love. Constant changes her name to Veronica Lake.
She becomes a pin up girl wow for World War Two.
(10:25):
Quite a looker, that's right.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
She was sort of like that what was at the
Shawshank Redemption the poster Benny Davis. I think this is
of that same kind of you know, I I guess
of you know, massively sex symboly type star. People are
painting her on plane. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
So her husband reports for duty and Seattle around this time.
He gets pulled by Omer away from Hollywood, and when
he gets to Seattle, everybody's very concerned about the Japanese
occupation of those Alaskan islands we mentioned earlier, and they said, look,
it's only a matter of time before we get attacked
(11:03):
here in Seattle. We need you to get this plant,
this Boeing plant camouflage quick fast and in a hurry.
We need you to camouflage the entirety of twenty six acres.
Detle's cruise did this with the help of the Seattle
(11:26):
District of the Army Corps of Engineers, and that was
helpful because this particular structure was a different kind of
roof situation than they'd been used to at some of
the other airplane facilities as well as the Hollywood studios.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
You could picture those right flat roof kind of regularly
shaped rectangles, right.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah, they have to deal with what's called a saw
toothed roof. I think kind of like stepped down like
a cigarette. It's an uneven surface varies as much as
thirty five feet. So to build this you got to
put in other platforms. You have scaffolding. You also have
to have a sprinkler system over the entirety of the
(12:08):
twenty six acres. Overall, this structure is going to weigh
in with five hundred and fifty five tons of steel
and half a million feet of wires just support just
like support wires to make the houses look real.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
That's a really good point, Ben, and I do just
want to mention that, you know, as brilliant of an
idea as camouflaging these places as you know, suburban or
like civilian areas are. It's not like war totally precludes
the bombing of civilian areas. So there could well have
been some collateral, you know, damage to these places despite
(12:45):
maybe they weren't targeting it, but maybe something fell nearby
and there could have still been a fire, you know,
in some of these roofing elaborate roofing situations. So that's
what they had to have.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
That Sprinkquiss and so travel with us to what was
increasingly being called Wonderland. And because of the variation in
the height of those structures that they were building on
top of, there were a lot of very steep hills
in the area. It's kind of like San Francisco. So
there were three major streets, major fake streets, There were alleys,
(13:16):
there were driveways. This was immersive. The even named the streets.
Why did they name them, I guess it's just for
morale a bomber pilot's not going to be able to
read this stuff. But they had names like synthetic Street
and burlap Boulevard.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Wow, it's a little bit of a nod, yeah, to
the craft right of building these things. You know. It
reminds me a lot of so again, early kind of
practical effects in movies, like the idea of a matte painting,
which is like, you know, not incredibly detailed, but it
has a massive scope to it, so it'll be like
(13:51):
the background of like a massive space scene. Then they
super imposed the ships in front of it, or it
could be like a city scape. If you ever see
one of those in person and you look up close,
there will be little signs that have like text on them,
but if you look up clothes, they're just kind of blurs,
you know. So this is all about creating the illusion
from afar, right, Yes, very much is.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
And and they make a bunch of artificial trees too.
It reminds me of you know what it is. It's
a life size version of those little towns you build
around toy trains exactly right. Yeah, it reminds me of
it reminds me of that scene in Beetle Juice where
they shrink down.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
It's really cool. Yeah. Beetlejuice, man, Oh, it's good. I
hope the sequels good because Tim Burton really hasn't had
a banger in sometimes.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
You know. The first sequel idea was Beetlejuice at the Beach. Interesting,
it's definitely a choice.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yeah, he does have the street you know, when I
think of his outfit, does kind of remind me of
the stripey short pants that like you'd see beach goers wearing,
like in the twenties or whatever. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
But in any case, there's a lot of set building
kind of you know, methods and that come into play
to create the illusion from Afar that we're talking about
something called tar and feather feathering, I guess, which is
(15:08):
something that was used to make the texture of like
trees for example. You know where again from Afar you
would never be able to tell the difference because it
has that look and quality, but up close you would
definitely be able to tell her this. It's the same
with stage stuff. You know, if you ever examine stage
sets up close, there's a lot of rough edges. There's
a lot of things that wouldn't really read if you
(15:28):
were up close, but from the audience it looks great. Yeah,
and in this case, the audience is five thousand feet
up in the air, right.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
They're thousands of feet away. They're playing big, right, just
like stage acting. And a lot of these things, these homes,
these garages, these greenhouses, and even the gas station, a
lot of them are only about four foot high at
the eaves and so there. So, like you said, up close,
(15:57):
it doesn't make sense. If you go inside, you're going
to see that they just have that sprinkler system.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Yeah, exactly, big buildings all over again, you know, except
this infrastructure is literally designed to protect the fake building exactly.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
And so at least two of these homes were going
to be occupied by real people sort of.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Because kind of stand ins, I guess.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Yeah, yeah, Well they had guys who ran anti aircraft
guns and they were stationed in little fake houses on
the rooftop.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Armed stand ins. Yes, yeah, yeah yeah, armed. Yeah. No,
that's cool. So they had to have all these elaborate
catwalk systems that would allow people to kind of move
between the different spaces for various reasons, for maintenance, et cetera. Man,
that is so cool. The people occupying it that doesn't
make sense. You would need some anti aircraft support, you know,
(16:51):
in the event that your little subterfuge didn't quite work. Yeah,
you don't want to just leave it all up to
them being fooled, you know, you got to have some
back up personnel in place.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
And that feels like a cool job, doesn't I've got
to wake up and go to my fake house exactly,
and I might have to shoot something.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Super secret spy stuff, right.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
And they also realized you can't just make a town.
It has to have ye all them trappings of life
can't look abandoned, you know.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
They have to make cars on the road parked, accurate
looking that would read. So they built some of these cars,
parked them made out of rubber. And because they had
to kind of again with the rough edge approach and
the boxiness of making these fake cars out of wood
and rubber, they started looking more again. Bill points this out.
(17:40):
Bill why again? Yeah? Why interchangeably there points out that
they really kind of looked a little more like the
cars of the seventies. Yeah, those kind of boxy station
wagony type cars or like a Gremlin I think maybe
mm hmm, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
And then there was even this legend or tall tail
that said they let a cow loose to roam around
on the rooftop, which is clever because that does look like,
I guess, like an active town. But also, when's the
last time you were on a city street and you
just saw a random cow? Well?
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Yeah, because I'm picturing the scale of this and it
isn't smaller scale. It's got these are like built to scale,
so everything would be roughly the size of the real thing.
So like a cow roaming around, it would be able
to roam around the streets, but it would be a
little odd. Why'd they do that, Ben, when'd they do that?
That never happened?
Speaker 1 (18:32):
I actually didn't, okay, which it was sinse Yeah, people
just I think the stories that just kind of spread. Also,
I think that's too too realistic. And I want to
point this out because we're an audio podcast. There was
a moment where I asked you about seeing a cow
in the street and paused, and for a second I
thought you were going to be like December thirteenth, twenty fourteen, Augusta, Georgia.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yeah, that'd be cool, now, not a cow. I've seen
random horses. Yeah, Oh, and crap dude, So I meant
to mention this. I was just in Boston for Funzies
and my buddy Frank, Big friend of the show, went
to a movie theater in near Harvard and were running
around Harvard campus and guess what we were nearly accosted
(19:17):
by turkeys. Yes, yeah, told man, they suck. I did
not realize that. And you know, I believe in the past,
on one show or the other, we've talked about like
turkey attacks in the Boston area because there are these
wild turkeys that just roam free. If this part of
the country had a reputation for free roaming cows, that
(19:38):
might have been a smart move. But outside of that,
probably would have given away the game a little bit.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
As a friend to all animals, even unto the naked
mole rat folks, I assure you turkeys are terrible or scary.
If turkeys were people, they would be criminals. I agree,
And they gang up on you. They show weakness.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
I googled it when I got back to the Airbnb,
and I found a story from very recently about a Cambridge,
US postal worker who was attacked by a gang of
turkeys with such ferocity that he fell over and broke
his hip and had to have a hip replacement. They'll
also just fall out of trees at you, and they
get mad at whomever is around at you, dude. You know,
(20:17):
you know that would be my waking nightmare.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Yeah, you feel the way you feel about turkeys is
the way the US feels about Japanese invasions.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
That's fair. You're like that at every moment, the other
shoe is gonna drop.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Bro.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
If I was standing on that beach waiting for that
shoe to drop, looking for something coming at me on
the horizon, my like the traveler moment in Ghostbusters, where
I'm picturing, you know, whatever the thing is it comes
for me. It would be turkeys. But yeah, the goal
would be not to picture anything, but what it would
come into my head that would terrify me would be
a giant Turkey's.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Just absolute pieces of trash. So wow, that's a hot take.
I didn't see coming today. They actually did a lot
more work than just than just what we've described, which
is already a big deal. The folks who built and
maintained this project at plant too. They also stayed acted
doing other stuff during the war, and there is a
(21:13):
monograph like a piece of short writing by Leroy Leroy
Robert Hanson Leroy, but I like Leroy.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
But the way it's spelled though is L lowercase E
capitol roy, So I don't know.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
It might be Leroy Leroy sounds more intriguing than.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Le le Roy. Robert Hanson. He was the chief of
the agronomy section and also involves in the Boeing projects.
And I believe you mentioned the monograph right nineteen forty three.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Yeah, it's got a super sexy title. Everybody's settle in
and be comfortable. The use of grasses and lagoons were
camouflage and dust control on air fields with a Seattle
date line.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
What I know, right, just the tension. But the funny
thing about that too is the idea of grasses and
legumes and using different material. That's another thing that you
can kind of see in the fabrication of like Disney World,
you know, and like the fake mosses and things to
achieve texture, like in the Avatar ride queue. That all
(22:15):
this stuff that goes hand in hand. That's so fascinating
to me. The intersection between entertainment and warfare, you know.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Absolutely, and we know that they had to surmount a
couple of different challenges. One of the big things was
camouflage paint. They had to get a texture that paint
would adhere to, but that would also not interfere with
air traffic, and so eventually going to the point that
things looking kind of rough up close, they eventually they said,
(22:46):
we're going to use a crushed rock surface and we're
going to roll it with an adhesive material. For paved areas,
we'll use wood chips with cement for non traffic areas.
And then for the parts of the complex they're between
or past the runways, the houses get increasingly less realistic, right,
they turn into like this concrete slab. Yeah, yeah, because
(23:11):
you can't have a plane hit it.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
And again, you know, keeping with our whole, like this
is meant for an audience of five thousand feet. The
things that would be farther away from you know, what
would be perceived would be less important, sort of like
some of the you know, details on those matte paintings.
I was talking exactly.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Yeah, yeah, And you know, speaking of matte painting, I've
got to just shout this out. I rewatched a film
that captivated me for a long time from Dustill Dawn
sure not the not the Japanese crime bar vampire that
I hang out with, Yeah, yeah, or that I hang
out at Yeah. Dustill Down has this great mate painting
(23:49):
at the very end. Do you remember this moment where
they spoilers by the way, three to one spoilers. It's dawn,
they're leaving the bar. Presumably the film begins at dusk.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Yeah, well you remember the film.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
Now, I'm just saying the movie is now its yeah,
and uh the bar is named Teddy Twister, And so
as they're pulling away, that's so cool.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
The camera pans out and it's that big matte painting
and you see the bar is just the top of
an ancient Meso American temple.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
That's right, that's so good. Okay, now you got me
one to watch that again. Sequels I think probably paying
less dividends. First time. I've only seen clips, but they
don't look very good. But the first one is schlocky
by design and a hell of a lot of fun. Agreed.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
And uh, And we're bringing that up because you if
you see Matt paintings like you're saying in film, then
you'll notice if you look closely that the detail does
decrease the further into the quote unquote background you get,
and that's kind of what they're doing here with Boeing Wonderland.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
But to the title of that, the absolutely the captivating
title of that monograph. We talked about they would decorate
these quote unquote lawn areas and vacant lots with actual
grasses and weeds designed by the members of le Roy
Hanson's agronomy team.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yeah, we're following into it. We're calling them le Roy No, yeah,
we have to. It's it's like the Roy Oh yeah,
it's like.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
You know, the Rob Roy so Debtly and his team
are really knocking out of the park with this camouflage.
This Bill Why describes it as passive defense, which I
think that's smart because it is not. You know. I mean,
there's the there are the gunners there in case of
(25:44):
an emergency, but this is pure subterfuge, you know. And
it seems like it's they're putting so much thought into it,
how could it fail. There were other initiatives in place
planning active defense, such as the execution of fire and
air raid drills and the installation of some air raid shelters,
(26:06):
and that was handled by a guy by the name
of Glen V. Dearst, among other commanders that were in
charge of these other kind of aspects of the whole deal.
Another news release from the Boeing News Bureau that came
out in nineteen forty three said that all of the
plant personnel would be able to reach those sheltering spots,
(26:27):
those bunkers in less than twelve minutes, so you know,
the safety of the employees, it would appear, was also
pretty paramount. Yeah, let's not have any illusions. That was
all for humanitarian reasons.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
They need the workers to get the job done well,
because they also wanted to build war machines.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Yeah, fifty thousand something.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
And it's strange because Seattle was, as we established, a
unique problem for a couple of different reasons. If you
have ever looked at the ground from an airplane, you
notice that it's very easy to identify things through seeing
the shape of the shore, like where land and water meet.
(27:07):
So New York and San Francisco are very easy to
recognize because of their shorelines. Des Moines or Topeka is
different because their appearance is defined by rivers and bays,
and Seattle is between Lake Washington and the Puget sound.
So it's very easy to find landmarks if you know
(27:29):
what you're looking for. And for this reason, our buddy
deadly says, we're gonna have to do some more stuff
with this Boeing project. We're gonna camouflage the employee parking lots.
They're just too big and too obvious. We're also gonna
cover sections of other adjacent land and we might need
(27:49):
to make a fake river.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Yeah, to your point, you know, this is a feature
that would be necessary to sell the illusion. You know,
I mean, not necessarily. The Japanese years were intimately familiar
with the geography of the United States. But you know,
to make it ring true, you know, to make it
read as a successful illusion. You know, the way that
stuff's laid out is really really important.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Yeah, agreed, right, they and again lives are on the
line here. The future of the world actually depends on
this camouflage plan, even if it sounds silly. So he
has this plan, He's going to reroot the Duwamish River.
They never actually do this because here's here's the pickle,
and Max we were all talking about this off air too, man,
(28:36):
here's the pickle. There were not any further camouflage projects
after nineteen forty three, because by the time they built
this stuff out, the course of the war had shifted.
Speaker 5 (28:49):
Yeah, it's kind of like when you are it's like
a magic We both love cooking projects.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Imagine cooking something really evolved that takes hours and right
is your ribs. Right as you're about to pull those
beautiful slow cooked ribs out of the oven, your partners
or your friends show up and they brought takeout.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yeah, KFC. Right in Japan, I tried. Right. Well, that's
the thing though, too, where we almost don't have any
way of knowing exactly how effective this stuff was at
because it yeah, because of exactly what you say. When
we say the wars shifted, does that mean it became
more of a ground offensive or it just the what
happened now? Obviously not and I wouldn't say that, what right,
(29:37):
But what was that about the tactics to change?
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Well, by that point, Japanese forces have been driven from
those Aleutian islands and they were increasingly on their heels,
so they were much less likely to take an offensive
posture or to be able to do so.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
Right, and check my days, Guadalcanal was like forty three, correct.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
I believe that's correct.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Yeah, that was the first really big offensive because by
this point of the war, Japanese weren't really bringing the
fight to the United States.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
The United States were bringing the fight to them because.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
Right the islands hopping and stuff. So the fear, the
overwhelming paranoia of nineteen forty two starts to fade. People
are feeling a little now, they're just safer, is nervous.
But then eventually that fades too, and they say, Okay,
that was a.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Crazy couple of years. Huh.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
And they go to the Japanese American population of the
US and they say, sorry, we laughed up and they're
like it's not cool. They're like, are bad.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Well, it's like, you know, I recently watched the Aviator
for the first time, and you know, during the height
of these wars, when production was so important and innovation
was so important, you didn't you kind of spent the
money and asked the questions later, despite what we said
about having to convinced, you know, the brass that these
camouflage ideas were good. You know, a lot of times
(31:05):
just happened. They'd make tons of planes, or they'd do
a project, and then things would end or change, and
you would basically have spent all this money for nothing.
But that's just part of the nature of you know,
being prepared, like the boy Scout Code of Ethics. Right.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Yeah, it's like Henry Kissinger would later go on to say,
just get it done and then we'll make it right later.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
You know.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Also he is sort of like if a turkey was
a person.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
So how do you really feel about.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yes, we can finally say that that's true, that's true.
I've got a lot of text messages about that one.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
You know, I was a little freaked out.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
I was like, I don't know if I want you
congratulating me on my phone, guys. But but yes, So
now that we walked down the street to take an
unprompted shot at a dead man, we do have to
tell you the these rooftop camouflage fake town things. Like
(32:04):
you said, there was secrecy involved, but it's tough to
keep that stuff secret. Like if you lived in the town,
you would know something weird was up. It looked like
somebody's built a mini golf course or a putt putt
course on top of the airplane plan.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Well, and to our earlier point. You know, this stuff
at the time would have been completely off limits to
any civilians, highly guarded you know, classify. Wouldn't have been
any chatter about it on the you know, the radios
or what have you, and any communication that wasn't encrypted.
But now the were left with these sort of weird
kind of tourist attractions that are built on top of
(32:42):
these you know, these these airplane manufacturing facilities that are
making these weapons of war. And like you said, people
that lived near there, they know what's going on. You
see the stuff being built, you know, So how do
they do They kind of spin it as like a
like a public like an active good will to the public, right, yeah, yeah,
(33:02):
Hey guys, we were thinking.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
Of you.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
Psych just for your kids.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Exactly on July seventeenth, about a month before, around a
month before the Japanese government officially announces unconditional surrender, the
Army Corps of Engineers says, look, we've already sent out
some contracts to private entities. They're going to dismantle these
fake towns. We're not going to keep these around two
(33:30):
too long. They are no longer relevant. So, for instance,
like a company out of la called LB Cotton Company.
They got paid a little less than two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars to take apart the Boeing Wonderland within
one hundred and fifty days. So all told, we're looking
(33:50):
at a cost of two million dollars, right, two to
three million dollars.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Did we mention that like setting foot on these fake
roof you know, top attractions prior to this would have
been a serious crime. Oh we didn't. Yeah, sure, yeah,
I mean, you know, again because of the levels of
classification and the secrecy around it, and you know, the
fact that you could accidentally get yourself probably blown up
by a you know, a gunner. Yeah, this would have
(34:17):
been a big deal. And then within the course of
a couple of months that the tide turned and now
it's like this almost tourist attraction and it goes from
that to being the very little memory of it, you know,
ever having existed. Were you able to find any photos
from this brief period of a photo op time?
Speaker 1 (34:34):
We have just a few if you go to and
we mentioned this part one, if you go to Rare
Historical Photos.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
That's right, I remember that all Chestnut.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Yeah, I mean, we went we went long. We went
deep on this one. But if you go to Rare
Historical Photos and shout out to Max for finding this,
you'll see a couple of different still photographs where you
can kind of see the edge over roof with the
fake trees and the planes beneath. And then you can
see one guy walking around this uncanny valley tower.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Trees look weird. The trees look like they're made of
polygons or something like a bad nineties sim game. This
is like a Sega Saturn version of a town. But
again from a distance. From a distance, these would have
looked like trees, you know. I mean they knew what
they were doing. Man, this is super interesting stuff. The
grass looks like grass. The snosberries taste like Stosberry's, you know.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
And then you really, folks to get a sense of this,
both the size of it and the weird scale of
the buildings, check out this article. You can see you
could see a couple standing next to the plywood paneled
house and a little scale kind of yees see how
short the houses are. You can see those hills we
(35:53):
talk about because of the uneven sawtoothed roof.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Okay, so I had said something earlier about how everything
was kind of scale and I think maybe we buried
the lead on this. I'm sure we mentioned it, but yeah,
they're like squat looking, you know, because again, from from
a height could you wouldn't be able to tell as
long as they were wide enough, you wouldn't be able
to tell how tall the houses were because all you're
(36:16):
seeing is the flat parts or the parts that are
you know, peaked. So it's brilliant. As long as the
scale of the width and the length were right, the
height didn't really matter. So that these funny little kind
of dwarf houses exactly like Chick fil a. Oh man,
that was a cool thing.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
So here's the photo that I saw that I actually
I did not even think about this until right now,
but I'll stroll through the photos and it's the people
walking outside of a building going to another building, and
above them is still the town because of course you
have to have the town going over all of it.
I'm like, it's like it's not just like one big building,
it's a giant campus.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
One thing.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
I you know, I was in Seattle late last year
and my buddy and I we kind of did like
a loop and went as merce Island and stuff like that,
and came down and we came up, like you know,
through the south side of like Lake Washington, and that's
where a lot of the you know, aviation stuff in
Seattle was built and where it is still today.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
And I was going there, I'm like, this is like
we didn't have enough time.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
It was very like short trip there, but I'm like, man,
next time we're here, I want to go check out
all the bowing stuff here.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Sure, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
And this is also, uh, this is where we see
a really strange and neat thing. So it's an open secret.
People aren't allowed around these mystery towns. But now that
they are irrelevant and people have worked so hard on it,
we get the sense that a lot of people said, well,
we should at least let people no, we did something,
(37:44):
that's right, guys. We worked so hard on our art project.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Who knows there might be another World war coming right
down the line where we need to do this again.
We need to sort of patent our idea at the
very least in the court of public opinion.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
So boeing As and Douglas Aircraft are like, Okay, we're
gonna at least do some photos. Guys, we built out
these elaborate sets. So they got a bunch of female
employees and said, get to the rooftop, stroll around. Yeah,
just what we're looking at, right, Yeah, just act like
you're in a regular American suburb. And then these get
(38:21):
these pictures get published in Boeing News and Douglas Airview
and Boeing Magazine, and they get published right as yeah,
right as this stuff is being torn down, and within
a few months, it's back to a regular rooftop. Also,
by the way, John Stewart Dettley, the creator of Boeing Wonderland.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
He is Hollywood big wig art director, husband to the stars.
He's starting to have a tough time, right Yeah. The
star in question Veronica Lake, Sex symbol Icon movie star.
There were relationship began to disintegrate and it actually ended
three months after she had an unfortunately terminated pregnancy. She actually,
(39:10):
I believe, took a tumble and you know, while filming,
and that led to a miscarriage and Debtly, you know,
he kind of had peaked. It would seem he was
never able to kind of re establish himself in the
film industry and didn't go back to California for twenty years.
And then he married another woman named Virginia Crowell. And
(39:34):
you know, let's not forget he did have a background
in architecture after all. So he did become a pretty
well regarded architect in Seattle.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
And eventually, unfortunately he loses a second young child. Their
three year old passes away. They leave Seattle. After that point,
they spend time in Hawaii and Baltimore before settling in
southern California. This is happening. The blackout paint is being
stripped from the factories all up and down the coast.
(40:07):
And even John Francis Omer, the magician and camouflage enthusiast.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Has retired. This end of an era.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
End of an era indeed, and you can find people
who still study this, like Billion Yena. You can also
find folks like Mike Lombardi, who has an amazing job.
I can't remember who I was. I was talking with
my one of my sketch comedy buddies, Simon about this.
A lot of big companies have a corporate historian, and
(40:39):
your job is just to be the nerd who knows
about stuff.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
I would love.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
That job depends on the company, though, right, Yeah, Like
a candy factory, a walk a thing. That'd be nice.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
Unless the background involves, you know, the appropriation and abuse
of indigenous people. Yeah, did you read the original book,
the rold All Books. It's a little problematic the way addressed. Yeah,
because they're like basically like Pigmy, like Zack African, you know,
indigenous people.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Also, if you want to learn more about Rule Dahl's
Dark Side, I highly recommend this book, George's Marvelous Medicine.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
Yeah, I have read that one. It's a shorter one.
It's it's a quick read, but it's pretty dark. Yeah.
He has a handful of a sort of more young
adult kind of ones.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
It's it's a book where just so you know, folks,
if you want to if you want to be like
the cool parent or the cool like uncle or aunt
or something when the kids old enough, introduce them to
stuff like Edward Gory and uh, George's Marvelous Medicine. This
kid his parents leave to go shopping or something, and
(41:44):
he decides that he's going to kill his grandmother.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
Okay, you need to say no more. Also, I remember
one that probably did not age well is called The Twits.
Oh gosh, I forgot. That's a pretty rough one in
terms of it's uh, let's just say lampooning of what
today would be considered mental health concerns. Yes, yeah, absolutely,
(42:09):
But we also have an episode about Roll Dahl and
his time as a fighter pilot himself and how it
is entirely possible that his good friend Ian Fleming based
a lot of the aspects of the James Bond character
on Roll Dahll.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Yeah, and our corporate historian for Boeing, Mike Lombardi, he
remains amazed in interviews. He's saying, look, we've got almost
a century's worth making great airplanes. You would think that
most people asking us about the history of Boeing would
ask about things like the B seventeen or the seven
(42:46):
forty seven, but nope, the most popular subject is the
neighborhood on top of Plant two. Everybody still is captivated
by this, as are we, and I think we've got
a lot of directions in this series, and we appreciate
you as always folks for tuning in. We love weird
(43:07):
obscure World War two history, as you can tell from
our past episodes. Shout out to our super producer research
associate for this, Max Williams, throwing some semaphore out there
helping us land the plane hollah.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Orrah and Husky. Yes, indeed, and thanks to Nathan Toski
for keeping our marketing ducks in a row.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Yes, podcasts Yes, And thanks to Jonathan Strickland a k a. L. Quizz,
Thanks to aj Jacobs aka the Puzzler.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
And thanks to Let's see who else who else? Oh,
Alex Williams. Alex Williams composed our name Chris Frostiotos and
his wizard Beard He's Jeff Coats, both of them here
in spirit. And thanks to you, Ben for allowing us
to be each other's wingman. And also, can I be
the Iceman? I thought you wanted to be the bag man?
Well spent in our in our top gun kind of Okay,
(44:02):
I've never seen top gun. I don't know either. I
just know there's a character named the Iceman character. You're
You're always my hunckle Beart is such a cruel life
pie not thin. I think we uh, I think we
got them. I think we do. We'll see you next time, folks.
(44:25):
For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you as old Ways so
much for tuning in. Shout out to the man, the
myth legend super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Hey, Hey, what was the other one? It was?
Speaker 1 (00:36):
It was rah orrah, hrah, hoorah and huzzah and haza
and a towski.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
That's right. Huzzah's the one where if you're like a
night in something, you know that's your rallying.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Yeah, and you and I both will occasionally throw it
in an email.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
No doubt.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah, I'm part of the culture of how stuff works.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Yeah, I've big bullet. You're an old Brown.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Because a big shout out to how stuff works. Man,
we've been we've been doing us for a while. It's
crazy that we haven't gotten to this story earlier. What's
a good for our folks and playing along at home?
What's a good recap?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah, I mean, first of all, listening to the episode
one that gives you a good This is a really
backstory rich tale here. So I think we did our
due diligence there. Teased a little bit about some of
the incredible interactions between the US Air Force and Hollywood,
Baby Hollywood and some of the most brilliant set designers
(01:30):
and builders and fabricators and you know, just creative minds
of the time to camouflage these crucial airplane manufacturing facilities
to make them look like suburban towns in the hopes
that the Japanese bombers would be confused and they would
bomb other stuff. But then we ended the story of
(01:51):
episode one kind of on the movie studios now being
the only ones not camouflage, and this cluster of these
kind of warehouse ye air plane hangar type facilities, to
which the executives were like, hey, we need this too,
because now we're gonna be seen as the target. We
look a lot like airplane hangers. I think that's that's
where we are, yeah, with Boeing, because that really what
(02:12):
was what we teased this whole series to be about.
I don't know that we've mentioned Boeing specifically quite yet.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
No, we just we gave them a hard time about
the planes and the fact that's right, I almost died one.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
But uh, I don't think we mentioned that part.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
But movie Okay, our hero of the story here is
the Boeing Wonderland. And that's that's what part two of
this series is really focusing on. So, like you said,
everybody's trying to keep up with the Joneses.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Now, camouflage is something you must have because all these
other places are camouflage.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Lockheed's clover Field facility.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Yeah, and so if we travel to Seattle, we'll see
that Boeing's president, Philip Johnson has been paying attention to
his buddies at Douglas Aircraft and he says, look, the
biggest deal for us at Boeing is Plant two. Despite
the name, it is our number one inspired, our number
one asset.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Right.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
So it's uh, December eleventh, four days after Pearl Harbor,
Boeing puts out a press release and they say the
following Plant two has been quote entirely transformed from a
daylight plant to a blackout plant to enable to know
night operations during blackouts.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Okay, it goes on a little braggadociously. This plant is
believed to be one of the first, if not the first,
major defense plant in the country to complete this transformation.
So I talk like a wizard there or something.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
We both we both made some weird choices in our
quotation voices. But this is true. What they're saying essentially
is that now we can operate overnight.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Actually, I think a big thing to say about it
is it now means that if you black out the
city for bombers are coming, they can still keep working
in there.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yes, good point Max with fects.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Oh, there it is there, it is. Oh, it's a
big deal, you know, because they need to be As
we mentioned in episode one, the goal that FDR had
set for the number of bombers that he wanted in
their fleet is that what you call it in the
sky was insane fifty thousand, I believe right. So they
couldn't they didn't have a moment to spare.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
And we also know that the Boeing News Bureau came
out with a report about this and said, well, they
released on April first, nineteen forty two, but it was
not in April day joke. What they were describing to
the public at large was the urgency created by the
Pearl Harbor attack. And they said, look, we're not gonna
(05:09):
waste any time. We are getting everybody together that we
can to help us do this blackout transformation.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
We're gonna have a painting party. We'll have a painting party. Yeah. Yeah.
And when when we say blackout in this situation, we
are referring literally to blacking out the building, right, like
painting it as dark a color as humanly possible. I
don't think they had that, like the blackest paint ever
to exist at that point, but just you know, regular
old black paint would probably do the trick. And then
(05:37):
that you know, created a shroud around which they could
build the thing that was you know, meant to catch
the eye exactly.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
And again, these enemy bombers will be hunting with their
own eye sight, that's right. So so it makes sense
to black everything out and reduce the amount of light
the factory is emitting.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Funny though, to think about it today, with like advances
in GPS technology and imaging, stuff like this wouldn't really work,
would it. You'd be able to kind of see the
shape or kind of know what you were looking at
a little better if you had certain types of radar
technology or like satellite you know imagery. But I mean
even that, there are obviously ways that the military does
their best to you know, camouflage their stuff. To those
(06:18):
kinds of things, it would have been be a different
type of job though, right.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so Boeing is already blacked out
as a factory, you know, the windows are painted, et cetera.
But they needed to do more and so in May
of nineteen forty two, the core of Engineers takes takes
on this project. They say, we're going to camouflage this
factory in addition to having it blacked out. And again
shout out to Bill Bill Why who wrote some fantastic
(06:46):
research on this. So to accomplish this camouflage our top
talent in the world of military camouflage. The amateur magician
over sends one of his boys from Hollywood, a guy
named John Stewart, art director. He sends this guy over
to the Boeing plant. He had pulled him from MGM
(07:07):
from the experiments they were doing back on the loss.
I just want to add one little thing before we
get into the actual full camouflage, the blackout situation with
the paint where they was at all hands on deck.
Apparently they required about four miles of air hose in
order to allow for the operation of spray guns. So
we don't have this exact you know, square footage or
(07:28):
the number of windows that they painted over. But if
that's any indication, this is a huge job and a
massive feat to accomplish in a couple of days. So
now we're on to you know, the business at hand,
like to really make this building look like something else. Yeah, absolutely,
that's that's the idea, right, And so Deadly is living
(07:51):
this Hollywood dream. He's got a cool job that everybody wants.
He has, you know, that degree in architecture. He is
working as a set design. He even gets nominated for
an Oscar back in the day for his work on
a film called Bitter Sweet, which I have not seen.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Nor have I And a lot of the Oscar wins
you know of of this era of Hollywood are gonna
be a little bit deep, deeper cuts than he might think. Yeah,
you know, unless they're like the big classics that get remembered.
Not all Oscar winners do stand the test of time.
But I am interested to see this this guy's work.
By checking out Bitter Sweet.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
I feel like I won't pay attention to the story.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
I'll just be watching. I know we do too much. Yeah,
we've ruined it for ourselves in the stars of that.
I'm also particularly familiar with Jeanete MacDonald and Nelson Eddie
Nelson Eddie, I don't know Nelson, Okay, I don't either.
I just thought if I said it enough, I was
almost there. But in nineteen forty, Dutley is only thirty
two years old, and he actually, like you said, live
(08:52):
in that Hollywood dream. Mary's at Angenoux by the name
of Constance Ackelman Love. It is a great old, cool
Hollywood name, and they were quite a power couple in Hollywood,
very sought after, both for their own set of skills,
with Constance, you know, being a up and coming kind
(09:13):
of starlet, and of course deathly being a very sought
after art director.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Question question for both of you, guys, do you think
a thirty two year old man should marry an eighteen
year old noll?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Weird? I don't know what's the formula? Isn't there a formula?
Not as bad as Charlie Chaplin? That's that guy had
a darkness.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
I mean thirty two eighteen, I mean, yeah, this is
a really cringe age plus seven your age plus seven even.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
That I feel is weirdly Oh it is.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
I'm just saying it is a thing people say.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
I was finding a guy not that long ago. Like
a friend of mine, he's he's he's in his mid
twenties and he's on tender. He's looking at like all
these nine year old girls like to like he said, well,
like six years older than him.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Like, yeah, man, like I don't know a teenager. That's
like a lot happens in that six years though.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Yeah, anyway, but you know, I hesitate to pass judgement.
I was just curious on you guys. Take we do
know that regardless of an age difference. Uh, they had
a good union, right, they seem to get along famously,
very much in love. Constant changes her name to Veronica Lake.
She becomes a pin up girl wow for World War Two.
(10:25):
Quite a looker, that's right.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
She was sort of like that what was at the
Shawshank Redemption the poster Benny Davis. I think this is
of that same kind of you know, I I guess
of you know, massively sex symboly type star. People are
painting her on plane. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
So her husband reports for duty and Seattle around this time.
He gets pulled by Omer away from Hollywood, and when
he gets to Seattle, everybody's very concerned about the Japanese
occupation of those Alaskan islands we mentioned earlier, and they said, look,
it's only a matter of time before we get attacked
(11:03):
here in Seattle. We need you to get this plant,
this Boeing plant camouflage quick fast and in a hurry.
We need you to camouflage the entirety of twenty six acres.
Detle's cruise did this with the help of the Seattle
(11:26):
District of the Army Corps of Engineers, and that was
helpful because this particular structure was a different kind of
roof situation than they'd been used to at some of
the other airplane facilities as well as the Hollywood studios.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
You could picture those right flat roof kind of regularly
shaped rectangles, right.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah, they have to deal with what's called a saw
toothed roof. I think kind of like stepped down like
a cigarette. It's an uneven surface varies as much as
thirty five feet. So to build this you got to
put in other platforms. You have scaffolding. You also have
to have a sprinkler system over the entirety of the
(12:08):
twenty six acres. Overall, this structure is going to weigh
in with five hundred and fifty five tons of steel
and half a million feet of wires just support just
like support wires to make the houses look real.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
That's a really good point, Ben, and I do just
want to mention that, you know, as brilliant of an
idea as camouflaging these places as you know, suburban or
like civilian areas are. It's not like war totally precludes
the bombing of civilian areas. So there could well have
been some collateral, you know, damage to these places despite
(12:45):
maybe they weren't targeting it, but maybe something fell nearby
and there could have still been a fire, you know,
in some of these roofing elaborate roofing situations. So that's
what they had to have.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
That Sprinkquiss and so travel with us to what was
increasingly being called Wonderland. And because of the variation in
the height of those structures that they were building on
top of, there were a lot of very steep hills
in the area. It's kind of like San Francisco. So
there were three major streets, major fake streets, There were alleys,
(13:16):
there were driveways. This was immersive. The even named the streets.
Why did they name them, I guess it's just for
morale a bomber pilot's not going to be able to
read this stuff. But they had names like synthetic Street
and burlap Boulevard.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Wow, it's a little bit of a nod, yeah, to
the craft right of building these things. You know. It
reminds me a lot of so again, early kind of
practical effects in movies, like the idea of a matte painting,
which is like, you know, not incredibly detailed, but it
has a massive scope to it, so it'll be like
(13:51):
the background of like a massive space scene. Then they
super imposed the ships in front of it, or it
could be like a city scape. If you ever see
one of those in person and you look up close,
there will be little signs that have like text on them,
but if you look up clothes, they're just kind of blurs,
you know. So this is all about creating the illusion
from afar, right, Yes, very much is.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
And and they make a bunch of artificial trees too.
It reminds me of you know what it is. It's
a life size version of those little towns you build
around toy trains exactly right. Yeah, it reminds me of
it reminds me of that scene in Beetle Juice where
they shrink down.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
It's really cool. Yeah. Beetlejuice, man, Oh, it's good. I
hope the sequels good because Tim Burton really hasn't had
a banger in sometimes.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
You know. The first sequel idea was Beetlejuice at the Beach. Interesting,
it's definitely a choice.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yeah, he does have the street you know, when I
think of his outfit, does kind of remind me of
the stripey short pants that like you'd see beach goers wearing,
like in the twenties or whatever. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
But in any case, there's a lot of set building
kind of you know, methods and that come into play
to create the illusion from Afar that we're talking about
something called tar and feather feathering, I guess, which is
(15:08):
something that was used to make the texture of like
trees for example. You know where again from Afar you
would never be able to tell the difference because it
has that look and quality, but up close you would
definitely be able to tell her this. It's the same
with stage stuff. You know, if you ever examine stage
sets up close, there's a lot of rough edges. There's
a lot of things that wouldn't really read if you
(15:28):
were up close, but from the audience it looks great. Yeah,
and in this case, the audience is five thousand feet
up in the air, right.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
They're thousands of feet away. They're playing big, right, just
like stage acting. And a lot of these things, these homes,
these garages, these greenhouses, and even the gas station, a
lot of them are only about four foot high at
the eaves and so there. So, like you said, up close,
(15:57):
it doesn't make sense. If you go inside, you're going
to see that they just have that sprinkler system.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Yeah, exactly, big buildings all over again, you know, except
this infrastructure is literally designed to protect the fake building exactly.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
And so at least two of these homes were going
to be occupied by real people sort of.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Because kind of stand ins, I guess.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Yeah, yeah, Well they had guys who ran anti aircraft
guns and they were stationed in little fake houses on
the rooftop.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Armed stand ins. Yes, yeah, yeah yeah, armed. Yeah. No,
that's cool. So they had to have all these elaborate
catwalk systems that would allow people to kind of move
between the different spaces for various reasons, for maintenance, et cetera. Man,
that is so cool. The people occupying it that doesn't
make sense. You would need some anti aircraft support, you know,
(16:51):
in the event that your little subterfuge didn't quite work. Yeah,
you don't want to just leave it all up to
them being fooled, you know, you got to have some
back up personnel in place.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
And that feels like a cool job, doesn't I've got
to wake up and go to my fake house exactly,
and I might have to shoot something.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Super secret spy stuff, right.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
And they also realized you can't just make a town.
It has to have ye all them trappings of life
can't look abandoned, you know.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
They have to make cars on the road parked, accurate
looking that would read. So they built some of these cars,
parked them made out of rubber. And because they had
to kind of again with the rough edge approach and
the boxiness of making these fake cars out of wood
and rubber, they started looking more again. Bill points this out.
(17:40):
Bill why again? Yeah? Why interchangeably there points out that
they really kind of looked a little more like the
cars of the seventies. Yeah, those kind of boxy station
wagony type cars or like a Gremlin I think maybe
mm hmm, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
And then there was even this legend or tall tail
that said they let a cow loose to roam around
on the rooftop, which is clever because that does look like,
I guess, like an active town. But also, when's the
last time you were on a city street and you
just saw a random cow? Well?
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Yeah, because I'm picturing the scale of this and it
isn't smaller scale. It's got these are like built to scale,
so everything would be roughly the size of the real thing.
So like a cow roaming around, it would be able
to roam around the streets, but it would be a
little odd. Why'd they do that, Ben, when'd they do that?
That never happened?
Speaker 1 (18:32):
I actually didn't, okay, which it was sinse Yeah, people
just I think the stories that just kind of spread. Also,
I think that's too too realistic. And I want to
point this out because we're an audio podcast. There was
a moment where I asked you about seeing a cow
in the street and paused, and for a second I
thought you were going to be like December thirteenth, twenty fourteen, Augusta, Georgia.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yeah, that'd be cool, now, not a cow. I've seen
random horses. Yeah, Oh, and crap dude, So I meant
to mention this. I was just in Boston for Funzies
and my buddy Frank, Big friend of the show, went
to a movie theater in near Harvard and were running
around Harvard campus and guess what we were nearly accosted
(19:17):
by turkeys. Yes, yeah, told man, they suck. I did
not realize that. And you know, I believe in the past,
on one show or the other, we've talked about like
turkey attacks in the Boston area because there are these
wild turkeys that just roam free. If this part of
the country had a reputation for free roaming cows, that
(19:38):
might have been a smart move. But outside of that,
probably would have given away the game a little bit.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
As a friend to all animals, even unto the naked
mole rat folks, I assure you turkeys are terrible or scary.
If turkeys were people, they would be criminals. I agree,
And they gang up on you. They show weakness.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
I googled it when I got back to the Airbnb,
and I found a story from very recently about a Cambridge,
US postal worker who was attacked by a gang of
turkeys with such ferocity that he fell over and broke
his hip and had to have a hip replacement. They'll
also just fall out of trees at you, and they
get mad at whomever is around at you, dude. You know,
(20:17):
you know that would be my waking nightmare.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Yeah, you feel the way you feel about turkeys is
the way the US feels about Japanese invasions.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
That's fair. You're like that at every moment, the other
shoe is gonna drop.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Bro.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
If I was standing on that beach waiting for that
shoe to drop, looking for something coming at me on
the horizon, my like the traveler moment in Ghostbusters, where
I'm picturing, you know, whatever the thing is it comes
for me. It would be turkeys. But yeah, the goal
would be not to picture anything, but what it would
come into my head that would terrify me would be
a giant Turkey's.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Just absolute pieces of trash. So wow, that's a hot take.
I didn't see coming today. They actually did a lot
more work than just than just what we've described, which
is already a big deal. The folks who built and
maintained this project at plant too. They also stayed acted
doing other stuff during the war, and there is a
(21:13):
monograph like a piece of short writing by Leroy Leroy
Robert Hanson Leroy, but I like Leroy.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
But the way it's spelled though is L lowercase E
capitol roy, So I don't know.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
It might be Leroy Leroy sounds more intriguing than.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Le le Roy. Robert Hanson. He was the chief of
the agronomy section and also involves in the Boeing projects.
And I believe you mentioned the monograph right nineteen forty three.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Yeah, it's got a super sexy title. Everybody's settle in
and be comfortable. The use of grasses and lagoons were
camouflage and dust control on air fields with a Seattle
date line.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
What I know, right, just the tension. But the funny
thing about that too is the idea of grasses and
legumes and using different material. That's another thing that you
can kind of see in the fabrication of like Disney World,
you know, and like the fake mosses and things to
achieve texture, like in the Avatar ride queue. That all
(22:15):
this stuff that goes hand in hand. That's so fascinating
to me. The intersection between entertainment and warfare, you know.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Absolutely, and we know that they had to surmount a
couple of different challenges. One of the big things was
camouflage paint. They had to get a texture that paint
would adhere to, but that would also not interfere with
air traffic, and so eventually going to the point that
things looking kind of rough up close, they eventually they said,
(22:46):
we're going to use a crushed rock surface and we're
going to roll it with an adhesive material. For paved areas,
we'll use wood chips with cement for non traffic areas.
And then for the parts of the complex they're between
or past the runways, the houses get increasingly less realistic, right,
they turn into like this concrete slab. Yeah, yeah, because
(23:11):
you can't have a plane hit it.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
And again, you know, keeping with our whole, like this
is meant for an audience of five thousand feet. The
things that would be farther away from you know, what
would be perceived would be less important, sort of like
some of the you know, details on those matte paintings.
I was talking exactly.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Yeah, yeah, And you know, speaking of matte painting, I've
got to just shout this out. I rewatched a film
that captivated me for a long time from Dustill Dawn
sure not the not the Japanese crime bar vampire that
I hang out with, Yeah, yeah, or that I hang
out at Yeah. Dustill Down has this great mate painting
(23:49):
at the very end. Do you remember this moment where
they spoilers by the way, three to one spoilers. It's dawn,
they're leaving the bar. Presumably the film begins at dusk.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Yeah, well you remember the film.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
Now, I'm just saying the movie is now its yeah,
and uh the bar is named Teddy Twister, And so
as they're pulling away, that's so cool.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
The camera pans out and it's that big matte painting
and you see the bar is just the top of
an ancient Meso American temple.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
That's right, that's so good. Okay, now you got me
one to watch that again. Sequels I think probably paying
less dividends. First time. I've only seen clips, but they
don't look very good. But the first one is schlocky
by design and a hell of a lot of fun. Agreed.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
And uh, And we're bringing that up because you if
you see Matt paintings like you're saying in film, then
you'll notice if you look closely that the detail does
decrease the further into the quote unquote background you get,
and that's kind of what they're doing here with Boeing Wonderland.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
But to the title of that, the absolutely the captivating
title of that monograph. We talked about they would decorate
these quote unquote lawn areas and vacant lots with actual
grasses and weeds designed by the members of le Roy
Hanson's agronomy team.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yeah, we're following into it. We're calling them le Roy No, yeah,
we have to. It's it's like the Roy Oh yeah,
it's like.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
You know, the Rob Roy so Debtly and his team
are really knocking out of the park with this camouflage.
This Bill Why describes it as passive defense, which I
think that's smart because it is not. You know. I mean,
there's the there are the gunners there in case of
(25:44):
an emergency, but this is pure subterfuge, you know. And
it seems like it's they're putting so much thought into it,
how could it fail. There were other initiatives in place
planning active defense, such as the execution of fire and
air raid drills and the installation of some air raid shelters,
(26:06):
and that was handled by a guy by the name
of Glen V. Dearst, among other commanders that were in
charge of these other kind of aspects of the whole deal.
Another news release from the Boeing News Bureau that came
out in nineteen forty three said that all of the
plant personnel would be able to reach those sheltering spots,
(26:27):
those bunkers in less than twelve minutes, so you know,
the safety of the employees, it would appear, was also
pretty paramount. Yeah, let's not have any illusions. That was
all for humanitarian reasons.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
They need the workers to get the job done well,
because they also wanted to build war machines.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Yeah, fifty thousand something.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
And it's strange because Seattle was, as we established, a
unique problem for a couple of different reasons. If you
have ever looked at the ground from an airplane, you
notice that it's very easy to identify things through seeing
the shape of the shore, like where land and water meet.
(27:07):
So New York and San Francisco are very easy to
recognize because of their shorelines. Des Moines or Topeka is
different because their appearance is defined by rivers and bays,
and Seattle is between Lake Washington and the Puget sound.
So it's very easy to find landmarks if you know
(27:29):
what you're looking for. And for this reason, our buddy
deadly says, we're gonna have to do some more stuff
with this Boeing project. We're gonna camouflage the employee parking lots.
They're just too big and too obvious. We're also gonna
cover sections of other adjacent land and we might need
(27:49):
to make a fake river.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Yeah, to your point, you know, this is a feature
that would be necessary to sell the illusion. You know,
I mean, not necessarily. The Japanese years were intimately familiar
with the geography of the United States. But you know,
to make it ring true, you know, to make it
read as a successful illusion. You know, the way that
stuff's laid out is really really important.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Yeah, agreed, right, they and again lives are on the
line here. The future of the world actually depends on
this camouflage plan, even if it sounds silly. So he
has this plan, He's going to reroot the Duwamish River.
They never actually do this because here's here's the pickle,
and Max we were all talking about this off air too, man,
(28:36):
here's the pickle. There were not any further camouflage projects
after nineteen forty three, because by the time they built
this stuff out, the course of the war had shifted.
Speaker 5 (28:49):
Yeah, it's kind of like when you are it's like
a magic We both love cooking projects.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Imagine cooking something really evolved that takes hours and right
is your ribs. Right as you're about to pull those
beautiful slow cooked ribs out of the oven, your partners
or your friends show up and they brought takeout.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yeah, KFC. Right in Japan, I tried. Right. Well, that's
the thing though, too, where we almost don't have any
way of knowing exactly how effective this stuff was at
because it yeah, because of exactly what you say. When
we say the wars shifted, does that mean it became
more of a ground offensive or it just the what
happened now? Obviously not and I wouldn't say that, what right,
(29:37):
But what was that about the tactics to change?
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Well, by that point, Japanese forces have been driven from
those Aleutian islands and they were increasingly on their heels,
so they were much less likely to take an offensive
posture or to be able to do so.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
Right, and check my days, Guadalcanal was like forty three, correct.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
I believe that's correct.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Yeah, that was the first really big offensive because by
this point of the war, Japanese weren't really bringing the
fight to the United States.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
The United States were bringing the fight to them because.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
Right the islands hopping and stuff. So the fear, the
overwhelming paranoia of nineteen forty two starts to fade. People
are feeling a little now, they're just safer, is nervous.
But then eventually that fades too, and they say, Okay,
that was a.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Crazy couple of years. Huh.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
And they go to the Japanese American population of the
US and they say, sorry, we laughed up and they're
like it's not cool. They're like, are bad.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Well, it's like, you know, I recently watched the Aviator
for the first time, and you know, during the height
of these wars, when production was so important and innovation
was so important, you didn't you kind of spent the
money and asked the questions later, despite what we said
about having to convinced, you know, the brass that these
camouflage ideas were good. You know, a lot of times
(31:05):
just happened. They'd make tons of planes, or they'd do
a project, and then things would end or change, and
you would basically have spent all this money for nothing.
But that's just part of the nature of you know,
being prepared, like the boy Scout Code of Ethics. Right.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Yeah, it's like Henry Kissinger would later go on to say,
just get it done and then we'll make it right later.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
You know.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Also he is sort of like if a turkey was
a person.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
So how do you really feel about.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yes, we can finally say that that's true, that's true.
I've got a lot of text messages about that one.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
You know, I was a little freaked out.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
I was like, I don't know if I want you
congratulating me on my phone, guys. But but yes, So
now that we walked down the street to take an
unprompted shot at a dead man, we do have to
tell you the these rooftop camouflage fake town things. Like
(32:04):
you said, there was secrecy involved, but it's tough to
keep that stuff secret. Like if you lived in the town,
you would know something weird was up. It looked like
somebody's built a mini golf course or a putt putt
course on top of the airplane plan.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Well, and to our earlier point. You know, this stuff
at the time would have been completely off limits to
any civilians, highly guarded you know, classify. Wouldn't have been
any chatter about it on the you know, the radios
or what have you, and any communication that wasn't encrypted.
But now the were left with these sort of weird
kind of tourist attractions that are built on top of
(32:42):
these you know, these these airplane manufacturing facilities that are
making these weapons of war. And like you said, people
that lived near there, they know what's going on. You
see the stuff being built, you know, So how do
they do They kind of spin it as like a
like a public like an active good will to the public, right, yeah, yeah,
(33:02):
Hey guys, we were thinking.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
Of you.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
Psych just for your kids.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Exactly on July seventeenth, about a month before, around a
month before the Japanese government officially announces unconditional surrender, the
Army Corps of Engineers says, look, we've already sent out
some contracts to private entities. They're going to dismantle these
fake towns. We're not going to keep these around two
(33:30):
too long. They are no longer relevant. So, for instance,
like a company out of la called LB Cotton Company.
They got paid a little less than two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars to take apart the Boeing Wonderland within
one hundred and fifty days. So all told, we're looking
(33:50):
at a cost of two million dollars, right, two to
three million dollars.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Did we mention that like setting foot on these fake
roof you know, top attractions prior to this would have
been a serious crime. Oh we didn't. Yeah, sure, yeah,
I mean, you know, again because of the levels of
classification and the secrecy around it, and you know, the
fact that you could accidentally get yourself probably blown up
by a you know, a gunner. Yeah, this would have
(34:17):
been a big deal. And then within the course of
a couple of months that the tide turned and now
it's like this almost tourist attraction and it goes from
that to being the very little memory of it, you know,
ever having existed. Were you able to find any photos
from this brief period of a photo op time?
Speaker 1 (34:34):
We have just a few if you go to and
we mentioned this part one, if you go to Rare
Historical Photos.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
That's right, I remember that all Chestnut.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Yeah, I mean, we went we went long. We went
deep on this one. But if you go to Rare
Historical Photos and shout out to Max for finding this,
you'll see a couple of different still photographs where you
can kind of see the edge over roof with the
fake trees and the planes beneath. And then you can
see one guy walking around this uncanny valley tower.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Trees look weird. The trees look like they're made of
polygons or something like a bad nineties sim game. This
is like a Sega Saturn version of a town. But
again from a distance. From a distance, these would have
looked like trees, you know. I mean they knew what
they were doing. Man, this is super interesting stuff. The
grass looks like grass. The snosberries taste like Stosberry's, you know.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
And then you really, folks to get a sense of this,
both the size of it and the weird scale of
the buildings, check out this article. You can see you
could see a couple standing next to the plywood paneled
house and a little scale kind of yees see how
short the houses are. You can see those hills we
(35:53):
talk about because of the uneven sawtoothed roof.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Okay, so I had said something earlier about how everything
was kind of scale and I think maybe we buried
the lead on this. I'm sure we mentioned it, but yeah,
they're like squat looking, you know, because again, from from
a height could you wouldn't be able to tell as
long as they were wide enough, you wouldn't be able
to tell how tall the houses were because all you're
(36:16):
seeing is the flat parts or the parts that are
you know, peaked. So it's brilliant. As long as the
scale of the width and the length were right, the
height didn't really matter. So that these funny little kind
of dwarf houses exactly like Chick fil a. Oh man,
that was a cool thing.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
So here's the photo that I saw that I actually
I did not even think about this until right now,
but I'll stroll through the photos and it's the people
walking outside of a building going to another building, and
above them is still the town because of course you
have to have the town going over all of it.
I'm like, it's like it's not just like one big building,
it's a giant campus.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
One thing.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
I you know, I was in Seattle late last year
and my buddy and I we kind of did like
a loop and went as merce Island and stuff like that,
and came down and we came up, like you know,
through the south side of like Lake Washington, and that's
where a lot of the you know, aviation stuff in
Seattle was built and where it is still today.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
And I was going there, I'm like, this is like
we didn't have enough time.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
It was very like short trip there, but I'm like, man,
next time we're here, I want to go check out
all the bowing stuff here.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Sure, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
And this is also, uh, this is where we see
a really strange and neat thing. So it's an open secret.
People aren't allowed around these mystery towns. But now that
they are irrelevant and people have worked so hard on it,
we get the sense that a lot of people said, well,
we should at least let people no, we did something,
(37:44):
that's right, guys. We worked so hard on our art project.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Who knows there might be another World war coming right
down the line where we need to do this again.
We need to sort of patent our idea at the
very least in the court of public opinion.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
So boeing As and Douglas Aircraft are like, Okay, we're
gonna at least do some photos. Guys, we built out
these elaborate sets. So they got a bunch of female
employees and said, get to the rooftop, stroll around. Yeah,
just what we're looking at, right, Yeah, just act like
you're in a regular American suburb. And then these get
(38:21):
these pictures get published in Boeing News and Douglas Airview
and Boeing Magazine, and they get published right as yeah,
right as this stuff is being torn down, and within
a few months, it's back to a regular rooftop. Also,
by the way, John Stewart Dettley, the creator of Boeing Wonderland.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
He is Hollywood big wig art director, husband to the stars.
He's starting to have a tough time, right Yeah. The
star in question Veronica Lake, Sex symbol Icon movie star.
There were relationship began to disintegrate and it actually ended
three months after she had an unfortunately terminated pregnancy. She actually,
(39:10):
I believe, took a tumble and you know, while filming,
and that led to a miscarriage and Debtly, you know,
he kind of had peaked. It would seem he was
never able to kind of re establish himself in the
film industry and didn't go back to California for twenty years.
And then he married another woman named Virginia Crowell. And
(39:34):
you know, let's not forget he did have a background
in architecture after all. So he did become a pretty
well regarded architect in Seattle.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
And eventually, unfortunately he loses a second young child. Their
three year old passes away. They leave Seattle. After that point,
they spend time in Hawaii and Baltimore before settling in
southern California. This is happening. The blackout paint is being
stripped from the factories all up and down the coast.
(40:07):
And even John Francis Omer, the magician and camouflage enthusiast.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Has retired. This end of an era.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
End of an era indeed, and you can find people
who still study this, like Billion Yena. You can also
find folks like Mike Lombardi, who has an amazing job.
I can't remember who I was. I was talking with
my one of my sketch comedy buddies, Simon about this.
A lot of big companies have a corporate historian, and
(40:39):
your job is just to be the nerd who knows
about stuff.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
I would love.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
That job depends on the company, though, right, Yeah, Like
a candy factory, a walk a thing. That'd be nice.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
Unless the background involves, you know, the appropriation and abuse
of indigenous people. Yeah, did you read the original book,
the rold All Books. It's a little problematic the way addressed. Yeah,
because they're like basically like Pigmy, like Zack African, you know,
indigenous people.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Also, if you want to learn more about Rule Dahl's
Dark Side, I highly recommend this book, George's Marvelous Medicine.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
Yeah, I have read that one. It's a shorter one.
It's it's a quick read, but it's pretty dark. Yeah.
He has a handful of a sort of more young
adult kind of ones.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
It's it's a book where just so you know, folks,
if you want to if you want to be like
the cool parent or the cool like uncle or aunt
or something when the kids old enough, introduce them to
stuff like Edward Gory and uh, George's Marvelous Medicine. This
kid his parents leave to go shopping or something, and
(41:44):
he decides that he's going to kill his grandmother.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
Okay, you need to say no more. Also, I remember
one that probably did not age well is called The Twits.
Oh gosh, I forgot. That's a pretty rough one in
terms of it's uh, let's just say lampooning of what
today would be considered mental health concerns. Yes, yeah, absolutely,
(42:09):
But we also have an episode about Roll Dahl and
his time as a fighter pilot himself and how it
is entirely possible that his good friend Ian Fleming based
a lot of the aspects of the James Bond character
on Roll Dahll.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Yeah, and our corporate historian for Boeing, Mike Lombardi, he
remains amazed in interviews. He's saying, look, we've got almost
a century's worth making great airplanes. You would think that
most people asking us about the history of Boeing would
ask about things like the B seventeen or the seven
(42:46):
forty seven, but nope, the most popular subject is the
neighborhood on top of Plant two. Everybody still is captivated
by this, as are we, and I think we've got
a lot of directions in this series, and we appreciate
you as always folks for tuning in. We love weird
(43:07):
obscure World War two history, as you can tell from
our past episodes. Shout out to our super producer research
associate for this, Max Williams, throwing some semaphore out there
helping us land the plane hollah.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Orrah and Husky. Yes, indeed, and thanks to Nathan Toski
for keeping our marketing ducks in a row.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Yes, podcasts Yes, And thanks to Jonathan Strickland a k a. L. Quizz,
Thanks to aj Jacobs aka the Puzzler.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
And thanks to Let's see who else who else? Oh,
Alex Williams. Alex Williams composed our name Chris Frostiotos and
his wizard Beard He's Jeff Coats, both of them here
in spirit. And thanks to you, Ben for allowing us
to be each other's wingman. And also, can I be
the Iceman? I thought you wanted to be the bag man?
Well spent in our in our top gun kind of Okay,
(44:02):
I've never seen top gun. I don't know either. I
just know there's a character named the Iceman character. You're
You're always my hunckle Beart is such a cruel life
pie not thin. I think we uh, I think we
got them. I think we do. We'll see you next time, folks.
(44:25):
For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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