Dazzle paint…

Posted on by July 22, 2017

Haven’t done one of these in a while, but I went down a rathole doing some research, so you get a post with pictures… LOL

Determining the range, size, heading, and speed of a ship at sea, before radar was invented depended on visual sightings, or radio signal direction finding.  In WWI, when they started shooting at each other at longer ranges, sound ranging of artillery shots (with an early version of sonar, was added to RDF, but they depended on visual sightings to confirm their accuracy, so navies began experimenting with camouflage designs intended to misdirect observers.

The U.S. Navy Bureau of Construction and Repair began testing ship camouflage, colloquially referred to as “dazzle paint,” during World War I.  The technique relied on reducing the contrast of the ship when viewed from the surface or the air from its surroundings as well as the contrast of one section of the ship from another.

The effect was intended to cause observers to misjudge the course, speed, and size of the ship.  The designs included a moderate range of colors (hues), though post-war experiments would demonstrate that brightness contrasts were more important than color varieties.

Each side of the ship was painted with a different design, to add more confusion…

Port side-

Starboard side, SAME ship… with inserts for the upper works.These next three are all starboard sides of different size/types of ships. The first is a ‘smaller’ cargo ship.Starboard side, fuel/oil tanker. 

Starboard side, large bulk carrier.And the Brits were also doing the same thing…

Ultimately, this was OBE with the advent of radar, but it is still an interesting use of trompe l’oeil. And it wasn’t limited to just merchant ships. Warships in WWI, especially the Brits, also used the technique to confuse their opponents.

Comments

Dazzle paint… — 15 Comments

  2. That’s one of the times when being color blind might be an advantage. Like some types of “woodland camouflage”, those ships stand out like roaches on a white countertop.

    I’ve sometimes wondered if the dazzle paint’s effect was mainly to spoil the aim of German observers who were laughing too hard to call out targeting information…

    Given their normal habitat was the North Atlantic, painting the bottoms dishwater gray and the tops fog gray would make them practically invisible to me.

  4. The Navy experiments with camo. Like the new work uniforms that are blue camo so that when you fall overboard, nobody can see you.

    Nothing is more absurd than a blue camo Navy uniform.

    That rant will continue until somebody important in the Navy decides to return to blue dungarees and khaki.

  5. Look at the ships of WWII, they were painted with the dazzle design but more in straight lines. I agree with LL on the work uniform. I think the gave it to the sailors to make them feel bad-ass like the Army and Marines. To what end, I don’t know. Their bas-ass will show in the bars in port no matter the uniform.

  6. Reminds me of the visual image that sometimes occurred during SAR when flying along at a few hundred feet and a ship is beyond the horizon.

  7. I thought about painting my little pickup like that for grins and giggles. After a few minutes planning the design, I remembered WHY they painted them like that. Dropped that idea quick.

  8. Ed- Yep, just gives me a headache… sigh

    TRX- Good point, and it apparently DID cause problems with direction if one couldn’t see the wake.

    WSF- I think there were some studies, but I can’t find them.

    LL/CP- AGREED! Dammit…

    Bob- Yep, optical delusions… LOL

    STx- LOL, that would have been ‘interesting’…

  9. And just why do zebras have all those black and white stripes? Because can’t see individual zebras in a herd that is running in all directions. Given the convoy discipline of merchant mariners… (Putting on my nomex now.)

    I recall that some aircraft were dazzle painted too, remember seeing a photo or painting (loooong time ago!) of a Brewster Buffalo painted with splashes of orange and blue.

    There’s also a photo out there of a (Japanese?) aircraft carrier with a cruiser’s bow and forward gun turret painted on the deck. IIRC, it was taken from the back seat of a Dauntless…

    • “Because LIONS can’s see…”
      I remember typing it, so I now declare that the internet is responsible for any errors of fact or controversial opinions in that post.

  10. I thought KM Bismarck’s approach was cool: Bright white false wakes at bow and stern to make her look like she was churning 28kts: http://www.kbismarck.com/bism40.g
    Also note the darkened grey bow and stern with a lightened false bow and stern which happened to be roughly the same length as her escort the KM Prinz Eugen, and the dark tops of the gun houses made to mimic where the barrels of the Eugen would be. Just making it harder to pick out which was which while they ran together, which might buy one salvo and reload cycle’s worth of time lost to optical confusion.
    Also, high contrast borders (the black and white stripes) cause increased retinal activity, generating extra neural input which distracts from other brain tasks. (This is why when a person is asked a hard question, he or she will roll the eyes toward an area of neutral color, typically a blank ceiling or out the window to a large patch of sky – “less visually complex stuff; I’m trying to THINK here…”) They even put that b/w stripe on sub conning towers, not to hide them but, like the dazzle effect, to confuse the observer about what exactly is being seen.

  12. Drang- LOL, understood!

    GLL- Good point, I didn’t go ‘that’ far down the rat hole, but you’re right, everybody was doing it!

  13. Hey Old NFO;

    Reminiscing about your first cruise in the “war to end all wars”? LOL. Seriously though, I didn’t know that the WWI used “dazzle paint” but I knew that the Navy did use the dazzle paint in WWII and I remembered the pattern used in 1943/1944 carriers. Interesting article….you paint a car that way, you can really mess up someone on the road.