Dazzle wartime camouflage

[mrs quoad]

*cough*

I just thought I'd bump this rather excellent thread, given its seeming contemporary relevance.

And the far better pictures included in the OP

 

[Crispy]

merged

 

[mrs quoad]

merged

Excellent thinking, Moderator Crispy

 

[rich!]

the other thing about this stuff was they tested it with sub commanders, who couldn't work out which direction the ship was going in (which is the real purpose of this kind of thing...)

 

[fogbat]

Some of those dazzle camo designs would make pretty tatts... *ponders*

 

[mrs quoad]

Some of those dazzle camo designs would make pretty tatts... *ponders*

[amusing comment about bogfat's difficulties with wayward torpedoes, but I can't quite think how to phrase it]

 

[longdog]

Almost as epic as the US Navy office at Pearl Harbour who, on being informed by one of his radar operators that a large number of blips had just appeared on the radar screen replied:

'Never mind, I'm sure they're nothing to worry about.'

"They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist....."

 

[fogbat]

[amusing comment about bogfat's difficulties with wayward torpedoes, but I can't quite think how to phrase it]

When you said torpedoes, you meant cocks, didn't you?

 

[dylans]

Paint the boat to look like an island then.

paint it to look like the sea

 

[pinkmonkey]

Send that up the waterways of Birmingham. Invisible. Absolutely invisible.

<gets ideas>

 

[cybertect]

It's interesting stuff. I remember reading about it a while back. Linked to this lot:

The Vorticists

Yep. Edward Wadsworth was apparently responsible for a few dazzle designs and took some of it back into his art:

Dazzle-ships in Drydock at Liverpool 1919

FWIW, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's fourth album was called Dazzle Ships (I suspect the Liverpool link in the painting above helped seal the idea).

 

[Roadkill]

The Royal Navy painted up two ships like that and carried out sea trials. They collided.

Which ships?

 

[paolo]

Yep. Edward Wadsworth was apparently responsible for a few dazzle designs and took some of it back into his art:

Dazzle-ships in Drydock at Liverpool 1919

FWIW, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's fourth album was called Dazzle Ships (I suspect the Liverpool link in the painting above helped seal the idea).

'Dazzle Ships' - what a wonderful term.

Urban is like QI at times

 

[Spion]

It's a lovely design. I wanted to paint a wooden fireplace in that style in a flat I once lived in. The idea was vetoed by my then partner. Most unreasonable

 

[paolo]

It's a lovely design. I wanted to paint a wooden fireplace in that style in a flat I once lived in. The idea was vetoed by my then partner. Most unreasonable

It's not exactly restful.

 

[fogbat]

And you'd keep bumping into it

 

[Fuchs66]

No one mentioned the Berlin brigade camouflage pattern yet?

In 1982, the officer commanding the 4/7 Royal Dragoon Guards tank squadron in Berlin felt that the normal Deep Bronze Green paint scheme of the British Army was incompatible with its urban environment. The green/black camouflage was a poor alternative when viewed against the contemporary urban backdrop of post-WWII Berlin. Straight lines are hard to find in nature and the standard patterns of black and green are equally unnatural amid the masonry, brickwork, timber and steel window frames of a city.
One influence in developing a solution was the paint scheme used by the Royal Navy in WWI, also known as the "dazzle" scheme. It was intended not only to merge and conceal, but also to mislead. Ships were painted with bold, bright and confusing shapes, which recognised the disruption created by wave structures in order to make it difficult to identify not only the class of ship but also it's direction, speed and range.

http://www.emlra.org/articles/berlin_brigade.htm

 

[ViolentPanda]

Which kinda shows they worked as camo by confusion.

There was a camoflage exhibition at the IWM a few years ago which had a bit about camo through the ages, including the razzle dazzle stuff. It was very cool. They even had a bespoke camouflage, stilleto shoe. Very cool.

Camo is my favourite colour. Arf! I'm even wearing a camo hoody as I type this!

It's a pattern, not a colour!

 

[rasputin]

The sneaky Germans used the same technique:

 

[Lancman]

Which ships?

Can't really name the ships, nobody saw them leave harbour and nobody saw them collide.

 

[mrs quoad]

One of the first / pilot aircraft carriers, decked out in dazzle camouflage:

Previous attempts at landing on battleships'd proved difficult. Superstructures caused turbulence for planes coming in to land. And the first person to successfully land on a moving ship, was also the first person (2 tries later) to die in a landing attempt on a moving ship.

SO they fitted an entire wooden runway over a normal ship. And experimented with it.

e2a: on a different note,

An idea tested but never taken to completion was the "flexible deck". In the early jet age it was seen that by eliminating the landing gear for carrier borne aircraft the inflight performance/range would be improved. This led to the concept of a deck that would absorb the energy of landing, the risk of damaging propellers no longer being an issue though take off would require some sort of launching cradle.[12] Tests were carried out with a Sea Vampire flown by test pilot Eric "Winkle" Brown onto the rubber deck fitted to HMS Warrior, and Supermarine designed their Type 508 for rubber deck landing, and the flexible deck idea was found to be technically feasible but was nevertheless abandoned. The Supermarine Type 508 was subsequently developed into a 'normal' carrier aircraft, the Scimitar.

Geeeeez.

 

[Pingu]

US pacific fleet demonstrating modern camoflage techniquies

 

[sim667]

Which kinda shows they worked as camo by confusion.

There was a camoflage exhibition at the IWM a few years ago which had a bit about camo through the ages, including the razzle dazzle stuff. It was very cool. They even had a bespoke camouflage, stilleto shoe. Very cool.

Camo is my favourite colour. Arf! I'm even wearing a camo hoody as I type this!

I missed that camo thing at the IWM, i still regret missing that, as cam is too my favourite colour....

Im wearing camo trousers lol.

 

[1927]

SS War Penguin is fab!
Thanks Mrs Quoad


GS(v)

Looks like Clarice Cliff's contribution to the war effort!

 

[likesfish]

The americans have some truly bonkers camoflauge ideas they came out with some scientific researched paint scheme for tanks complete with color by number charts unfortunatly US soldiers find color by numbers on a tank does'nt really work
then their was chop chip desert perfect for the mojave desert not much cop in the middle east .
plus the truly loony blue US navy camoflauge

 

[Idris2002]

.

 

[Bakunin]

Camouflage didn't help Royal Marine Eric Walderman, but his Kevlar helmet successfuly stopped four headshots in the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. If Carlsberg made lucky bastards then Marine Walderman would be their poster boy:

 

[creak]

Camouflage didn't help Royal Marine Eric Walderman, but his Kevlar helmet successfuly stopped four headshots in the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. If Carlsberg made lucky bastards then Marine Walderman would be their poster boy:

This was actually faked

 

[longdog]

You should see my bright yellow 'camouflage' troozers. If I ever get in to a gun battle in a custard factory they'll prove a wise investment.

 

[likesfish]

helmet was on his backpack when shot. Marines jokingly tell journalist prints it facepalms all round:
americans are working on a bulletproof helmet only problem with that is the energy from the bullet is going to go somewhere and the force will probably snap your neck and the helmet is extra heavy