"Plaster The Ship With Paint – Dazzle & Deception in War" Topic

Of possible interest?

link

Hope you enjoy!

Amicalement
Armand

Thanks Tango! I finally understand this paint scheme they were using. I never understood it. The design made the back of the ship look like the front and the front to look like the back at a distance. How cleaver! I wonder how many U-boats fired their torpedoes, leading the ship only to find that they had shot… leading the rear instead of the front!

A votre service mon ami!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

The background of dazzle camouflage is quite interesting – one of those infrequent moments when the artist community stepped up and rendered important service in war.

As I understand fro my readings, the intent of "dazzle camouflage was to mislead and hinder an attacker's estimate of the ship's inclination (i.e., relative heading), which was a very important component of a torpedo firing solution.

B

I had a leaf through that book recently at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. It's expensive, but well put together on good quality paper, and the illustrations are very well reproduced.

As I understand it, the solution to dazzle was just a coloured filter over the periscope lens!

The Japanese experiments in dazzle in WW2 were quite fun too. Aside from the relatively obvious wheeze of painting villages (for when tied up) and cruisers on the flight deck, the prize for sheer inventiveness has to go to whoever thought up painting an aircraft carrier on the deck of an aircraft carrier, but angled about 20 degrees off true. The idea I guess was for dive bomber pilots to aim just ahead of the fake bows, so that the bombs would miss to that aide.

I don't suppose it worked but it's a lot more interesting to paint than haze grey…

Thanks!

Amicalement
Armand