Of Disguises and Legends

CurbedLA has recollects when the Lockheed Air Terminal in Burbank (now Bob Hope Airport) was camouflaged as a rural neighborhood during World War II to avoid enemy bombing. However they also repeat the age old urban legend that Jack Warner - then head of the Warner Brothers Studios down the street was terrified the Japanese would mistake his sound stages for Lockheed that he painted an arrow on the roof of one of them that said "LOCKHEED - THAT WAY."

Not only is the item not true in fact part of the ruse was to mask the studio as Lockheed so the Japanese would not get suspicious. For many years after one of the sound stages bore the leftover letters "HEED AIRCRAFT COMPANY," obviously the remanants of a fake Lockheed sign. By the way Douglas Aircraft Company in Santa Monica - now Santa Monica Airport - was similarly disguised.