Defending America's Coasts,
The increased range of military airplanes, aided by the aircraft carrier, influenced the Army to
undertake a passive defense program for the concealment of military installations and ammunition and
assembly plants in the United States. In the summer of 1940, the Corps of Engineers, which had been
responsible for camouflage operations in the American Expeditionary Force during World War I,
received the passive defense mission in the United States and overseas. It conducted research,
established a camouflage school at Fort Belvoir, and trained other Army personnel in its Districts.
Army Engineers devised various methods to conceal coastal batteries, including using camouflage
nets and paint, planting trees and shrubs around the emplacements or erecting fake ones, and
constructing dummy emplacements and houses. Immediately
Pearl Harbor, such activity was
intense but, as the attack and invasion hysteria subsided, the program
Corps of Engineers construction at coast defense sites diversified during World War II.The Corps
built numerous antiaircraft emplacements at various installations. Then, in 1941, the Engineers took
over the Army Quartermaster construction duties, including erecting and maintaining barracks,
quarters, and administration buildings at the
Camouflage Battery Jasper, Fort Moultrie, Charleston, South Carolina, in World War II.
Fort Sumter National Monument
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