Razzle-Dazzle: Geometrical Camouflage at Sea, 1918.

JF Ptak Science Books       Post 1679    Part of a series on the History of Blank, Empty and Missing Things.

I found this photograph of the "Womens Camouflage Corps of New York City", the photo lingering away in a collection of News Photo Service WWI images.  After a bit of looking, I've found nothing about the WCCNYC, though women were employed to this work in America and Britain in 1917 and 1918--it just seems as though there aren't images available online showing these workers working.

But: were their painting the entirety of large ocean-going transport ships in sharp geometric shapes and in dazzling colors to make the ship disappear, like, well, it was "camouflaged"?  No.  It wasn't like biological camouflage where all sorts of bits come into play to make an animal blend into its surrounding environment to protect it from predators, or conversely to make it a better predator by allowing the animal to stay completely hidden until their prey could do nothing but become their prize.  Nor was it really like thermoregulation, or sexual or warning signals (again drawing from the bio world)--it was simpler than that, though are there many relational examples in the biological world as well. Nor was it similar to the camouflage schemes used by the air corps, with different and usually sky/ground-blended colors used for the top and bottom of SPADS and Nieuports and Albatrosses.

[The full image from which the detail was taken. The original is available for purchase from our blog bookstore, here.]

The effect of using the geometrical shapes on the whole of a 600'-long vessel was to make it's speed and direction  more difficult for submarines to figure out and calculate so that the point-to-target launch of their torpedo would be far more complicated.  When the prolific maritime painter Norman Wilkinson figured out this approach for disguising the intentions of ships (around 1917) he instantly recognized its applicability in anti-submarine warfare:  not only would it be difficult to distinguish bow/stern properties of a ship, but also how long it was, and whether it was coming or going, and how big it was--all major factors in determining the launch of a torpedo.  Basically, dazzle camo made it difficult to produce a trajectory for the ship.

This must have been an extraordinary experience, seeing these things for the first time by military commanders, who not but a few years earlier were sending troops into combat with white gloves and red pantaloons. 

[The text accompanying the photo above, intended for use for whatever magazine or newspaper reprinted the work.]

An image of work completed:

And, it must be admitted, the coloring scheme is confusing--more so if you can image looking at it from periscope depth.

[Sir Norman Wilkinson, for all intents and purposes the discoverer of the dazzle effect in naval  warfare.]

In a Letter to the Editor ("Camouflage of Ships at War") in Nature (19 June 1919), Wilkinson explains his dazzle approach, saying that the whole point of this sort of camouflage was not necessarily "obliterative" as in biological camouflage, but rather was intended to "upset a submariner commander's estimate of a vessel's course, when carrying out an attack with torpedo", and stating further that it was not intended for "ships of the line" or to help deceive topside gunnery from another ship, especially at greater distances where the paint would simply not come into play.   [An often-used but never-cited quote from a Wilkinson "lecture"  runs as follows:  "The primary object of this scheme was not so much to cause the enemy to miss his shot when actually in firing position, but to mislead him, when the ship was first sighted, as to the correct position to take up. [Dazzle was a] method to produce an effect by paint in such a way that all accepted forms of a ship are broken up by masses of strongly contrasted colour, consequently making it a matter of difficulty for a submarine to decide on the exact course of the vessel to be attacked.... The colours mostly in use were black, white, blue and green.... When making a design for a vessel, vertical lines were largely avoided. Sloping lines, curves and stripes are by far the best and give greater distortion."]

 

[ RMS Empress of Russia]

The technology is still used, with more advanced applications, and appears on one of the world's stealthiest ships, Sweden's Visby Corvette.  Apart from having an exceptionally low magnetic signature, it also has geometric low-radar reflective gray dazzle paint. (It also has applications for land warfare use in the camouflage of armored vehicles against RPGs; see INSTITUTE OF PHYSICS; Steps towards warship invisibility
Obesity, Fitness & Wellness Week, March 15, 2008 and also the Economist, 6/11/2011, Vol. 399 Issue 8737, p83-83, ".) 2/3p "The Old Razzle Dazzle".)

RMW Mauretanis:

HMS Argus:

Edward Wadsworth, Painting of Dazzle-ships in Drydock, 1919.  There are well-known stories of great artists--like Villard and the questionable Picasso--who made contributions in this effort, from making designs to doing the actual painting.  But it was the estimable Wilkinson who made the major contribution and invention of dazzle-at-sea.  (Intereting work was also done by the United States in utlizing electric light placement at night for confusing teh ship's silhouetet against a starry sky, but that will have to wait for another post.)

 

Comments

[Www]

Great post, I recently posted on Abbott Thayer...artist, naturalist and "father of camouflage."

http://www.jcwebbstudios.com/2011/12/hark.html

While living in Virginia years ago, stopping by your shop when visiting my sister in Georgetown was such a treat and adventure. Prints I purchased there still hang in my studio/office

Enjoying your blog, happy to have discovered it

[John F. Ptak]

Thanks very much for the rememberance and for the link to Thayer. I was thinking about him for the post but then it got away a bit; also he was a little outside the razzle part of what I was interested in, though there are of course examples of razzle camo in the natural world as well.

[D]

The photo you have on this blog page was taken in Union Square in New York City on July 11-12, 1918. It shows members of the Women’s Reserve Camouflage Corps, in the process of applying a brightly-colored “dazzle camouflage” scheme (which they designed) to the outer surface of the USS Recruit. This was not a functioning ship; it was a wooden recruiting station in the shape of a battleship. As described by Bessie Rowland James in For God, For Country, For Home (NY: G.P Putnam’s Sons, 1920), this proved to be an effective way of recruiting: “Tanks, ambulances, and trucks were camouflaged at the request of different branches of the Government to encourage recruiting, for wherever the [women] camoufleurs went in their uniforms, spreading their bright paints, a crowd was sure to gather.” James’ eyewitness description of this camouflage unit for women, along with other photographs and news reports, are included in a new anthology of writings about WWI ship camouflage, titled SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook, due out in early 2012.

[John F. Ptak]

Thanks very much for this piece of information-I hadn't any idea they were working on the Recuit. As a matter of fact I made a short post here about the Recruit about two years ago: http://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2009/03/a-battleship-in-union-square-the-uss-recruit-1917-the-invention-of-the-word-landship.html
IF you look closely at the bottom picture you can see the work on the razzle beginning... AGAIN, THANKS so much for this assistance.