When you think of camouflage what usually comes to mind is a sniper in a gilly suit covered with twigs and leaves and what not. That’s all fair enough when you are trying to camouflage yourself and become ‘ part of the environment’. But how do you camouflage bigger things, like ships.
During the first world war the German U boats were hounding Allied war ships all across the seas. In these desperate times the Allied commanders looked towards the art galleries of Europe for inspiration. Thus the warrior and the artistic spirits came together to give rise to dazzle camouflage.
At first site this looks like a horrible paint scheme if you want to make ships difficult to spot. I mean just look at it, the ship would stick out like a sore thumb. But this camouflage did not work in the conventional sense. When a U boat would target a ship it would be pretty far away. Since the ship would not be a stationary target the U boat commander would have to aim somewhere in front of the target vessel. This naturally involved making an estimate about the speed and bearing of the ship. Thus anything that could disguise the speed and direction of the
ship would prove of great value in order to save the ships. If the estimate was incorrect the torpedo would miss.
The range finders of the time relied on the operator adjusting the system till two half images of the target lined up to form a complete image. The dazzle scheme made that job difficult for the operator since the contrasting and intersecting pattern made the aligned halves look abnormal. Thousands of ships were painted in this scheme.
The dazzle camouflage was of no use against aerial attacks. Furthermore with advancements in rangefinder technology and the increased use of radars, dazzle became less useful. the British naval commanders were not too fond of it either since they considered it a bit un-military (something to do with the graceof the ship, whatever that means). The Americans were a bit more enthusiastic about it though and reintorduced it in the pacific campaign after the Japanese aerial power had largely been neutralised. Still as radar and sonar technologies advanced and it became unnecessary for submarines to visually track the target in order to attack it dazzle became altogether obsolete. Gradually it was phased out and with that one of the biggest art exhibitions in history came to an end.
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