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Dazzle wartime camouflage

*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 :)
 
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...)
 
Bakunin said:
:D

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.'

:facepalm:
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"They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist....." :facepalm::facepalm::facepalm:
 
Diamond said:
It's interesting stuff. I remember reading about it a while back. Linked to this lot:

The Vorticists
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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

475px-Dazzle-ships_in_Drydock_at_Liverpool.jpg


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).
 
cybertect said:
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

475px-Dazzle-ships_in_Drydock_at_Liverpool.jpg


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).
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'Dazzle Ships' - what a wonderful term.

Urban is like QI at times :cool:
 
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
 
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.
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http://www.emlra.org/articles/berlin_brigade.htm

attachment.php
 
pootle said:
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!
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It's a pattern, not a colour! :)
 
One of the first / pilot aircraft carriers, decked out in dazzle camouflage:

HMS_Argus_%281917%29.jpg


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.
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Geeeeez.
 
pootle said:
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!
Click to expand...

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.
 
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
 
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:

eric.walderman.helmet.jpg
 
Bakunin said:
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:

eric.walderman.helmet.jpg
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This was actually faked
 
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.
 
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:(
 
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