#Color photo dazzle paint series

The colours mostly in use were black, white, blue and green. method to produce an effect by paint in such a way that all accepted forms of a ship are broken up by masses of strongly contrasted colour, consequently making it a matter of difficulty for a submarine to decide on the exact course of the vessel to be attacked. In a 'Letter to the Editor' ('Camouflage of Ships at War') in Nature (19 June 1919), Wilkinson explains his dazzle approach, saying that the whole point of this sort of camouflage was not necessarily 'obliterative' as in biological camouflage, but rather was intended to 'upset a submariner commander's estimate of a vessel's course, when carrying out an attack with torpedo', and stating further that it was not intended for 'ships of the line' or to help deceive topside gunnery from another ship, especially at greater distances where the paint would simply not come into play. This must have been an extraordinary experience, seeing these things for the first time by military commanders, who not but a few years earlier were sending troops into combat with white gloves and red pantaloons. Basically, dazzle camouflage made it difficult to produce a trajectory for the ship.

When the prolific maritime painter Norman Wilkinson (1878-1971) came to this realization for disguising the intentions of ships (around 1917) he instantly recognized its applicability in anti-submarine warfare: not only would it be difficult to distinguish bow/stern properties of a ship, but also how long it was, and whether it was coming or going, and how big it was-all major factors in determining the launch of a torpedo. The effect of using the geometrical shapes on the whole of a 600'-long vessel was to make the speed and direction of the ship more difficult for offensive pursuit vessels like submarines to figure out and calculate so that the point-to-target launch of their torpedo would be far more complicated. Nor was it similar to the camouflage schemes used by the air corps, with different and usually sky/ground-blended colors used for the top and bottom of SPADS and Nieuports and Albatrosses.

Nor was it really like thermoregulation, or sexual or warning signals (again drawing from the bio world)-it was simpler than that, though are there many relational examples in the biological world as well. It wasn't like biological camouflage where all sorts of bits come into play to make an animal blend into its surrounding environment to protect it from predators, or conversely to make it a better predator by allowing the animal to stay completely hidden until their prey could do nothing but become their prize. In the history of defensive warfare it was a revolutionary idea thatВ painting the entirety of large ocean-going ship in sharp geometric shapes and in dazzling colors would make the ship in essence-disappear, a sort of camouflage-without -camouflage (sorry Flannery O'Connor).

#Color photo dazzle paint series

JF Ptak Science Books (Fixing an earlier post from 2011) Part of a series on the History of Blank, Empty and Missing Things.