dazzle camouflage
What is dazzle camouflage?
Who is credited with bringing dazzle camouflage to the Royal Navy?
How was dazzle camouflage applied to ships?
How effective was dazzle camouflage during World War I?
dazzle camouflage, strategy of disguising military ships by painting them with geometric patterns, using bold swaths of pairs of contrasting colors, such as black and white or orange and blue. Dazzle camouflage was deployed by British and American forces during World War I and World War II, and its intent was to make it difficult for the enemy to identify the vessel’s size, shape, distance, and speed with precision. In World War I more than 4,000 British ships and 1,000 American ships were dazzled.
Origins
Submarine warfare proved especially problematic for the Allied powers in World War I. The British lost many hundreds of ships to German U-boat attacks in 1917 alone, and with an average of 13 ships being sunk daily in the spring, the question of how to better protect ships was an important one. Camouflage became a crucial strategy. Most important, camouflage needed to function well at different times of day, in varied lighting and changing weather conditions. The concept of dazzle camouflage as a potential solution brought together research on vision, color theory, and weaponry and military strategy.
Norman Wilkinson, an officer in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and a classically trained artist, is credited with bringing dazzle camouflage to the Royal Navy in 1917. Wilkinson was not the first to suggest the idea, however. Among others, scientist John Graham Kerr claimed credit and later challenged Wilkinson in Admiralty court. The court ruled in favor of Wilkinson.
Wilkinson served on submarine patrols during the Gallipoli Campaign, a disastrous experience for the Allies during World War I. British ships, painted gray, were easy targets for U-boats. Wilkinson realized that he didn’t need to render British ships undetectable; he just needed to introduce an optical distortion that would confuse enemy sailors. For example, geometric wave patterns could trick the eye into seeing curves where there were none, which made it hard to guess a ship’s length. Patterns could also obscure the difference between the bow and stern, making it hard to tell which direction the vessel was traveling. Stripes could create an optical illusion of size, and mixing objects of different sizes could change the perception of speed. Dazzle camouflage was an experiment of textures and patterns.
In 1917 U-boats carried about a dozen torpedoes. The gunner responsible for launching torpedoes had only seconds to choose the exact moment at which to fire. Wilkinson calculated that most gunners took aim when they were between about 6,200 and 1,000 feet (1,900 and 300 meters) from targets. His premise was that camouflage would help obscure the target; specifically, he theorized that forcing a gunner to be 10 degrees off target would be enough to send the torpedo past the ship. And if the torpedo did make impact, it would likely not be a direct hit.
How ships were dazzled
The process of dazzling a ship involved creating a unique pattern for each ship. Wilkinson and his crew of mostly female art students from the Royal Academy of Arts worked in a studio. Wilkinson carved exact models of ships to test patterns. After they were painted, the models were viewed through periscopes in different lighting conditions. Approved designs, referred to as measures, were painted to scale on the ships themselves using the plans created in the studio.
In 1917 Wilkinson also traveled to the United States for the formation of the American Camouflage Corps. In America dazzle camouflage was called “razzle dazzle.”
Reactions and effectiveness
At the dawn of the era of modern art, dazzled ships drew derision from the public and the press, with one news reporter calling them a “flock of sea-going Easter Eggs.” The designs looked like works of abstract art, with Pablo Picasso at one point claiming credit for dazzle camouflage as a Cubist invention. They also had cultural influence, including on fashion. But these designs were not art for art’s sake. The ships’ camouflage consisted of carefully planned geometric studies intended to cause maximum sight-line disruption. Designs were standardized within fleets but with enough variance from each other to keep the enemy stymied and not cause associations of a certain pattern with a certain type or class of ship.
Dazzle camouflage was most effective in World War I, when most sailors were using basic periscopes and optical range finders to find their targets. During World War II dazzle camouflage continued to be used—along with more conventional forms of camouflage, made up of drab colors and indistinct patterns intended to blend into an environment—but its usefulness decreased as military technology became more sophisticated. Radar was able to calculate vessels’ positions regardless of their paint jobs or the gunner’s perception. In addition, the very detailed paint jobs were costly and time-consuming to maintain. By the end of World War II, dazzle camouflage had fallen out of use.
The Royal Navy found that dazzled ships provided sailors a source of morale and increased confidence, but the actual effectiveness of dazzle camouflage in confounding attacks proved inconclusive. Reports in England indicated that dazzled ships were slightly less likely to be sunk when hit. The U.S. Navy, however, reported a much higher success rate, with less than 1 percent sunk, though that may be attributable to the different conditions encountered by the American fleet.
Legacy
Today, dazzle camouflage persists not as a tool for warfare but, primarily, as an expression of art and design. During the first half of the 20th century, marine artist John Everett completed hundreds of paintings of dazzled ships, which are a notable collection in London’s National Maritime Museum. In the 21st century dazzle camouflage on ships experienced a resurgence as an art form, with ferries sporting dazzled paint jobs sailing in New York Harbor and in the River Mersey at Liverpool, England. Automakers, however, continue to use forms of dazzle camouflage to disguise prototype automobiles from other manufacturers and the media during testing.