Dazzle camouflage was a camouflage paint scheme used on ships, mainly during World War I. It consisted of a complex pattern of geometric shapes in contrasting colours, interrupting and intersecting each other. At first glance it seems like an unlikely form of camouflage, drawing attention to the ship rather than hiding it. Dazzle camouflage had a very specific purpose, however, which was to disrupt the performance of the visual rangefinders used for gunnery at the time.
Such rangefinders worked used optics, mechanics and a human being to compute the range. The operator's job was to adjust the mechanism until the two half-images of the target displayed in the optics lined up into a complete picture. Dazzle camouflage was intended to make it hard to do this job because the clashing patterns wouldn't look "right" even when the two halves were correctly aligned.
The invention of dazzle camouflage is credited to artist Norman Wilkinson , who was on Royal Navy patrol duty in the English Channel. Dazzle camouflage was first implemented on the merchant ship SS Industry, and HMS Alsation became the first dazzle painted Navy ship in August 1917. The US Navy adopted the technique the next year.
Dazzle camouflage's effectiveness is not entirely certain. The British Admiralty came to the conclusion that the scheme had no material effect on submarine attacks, but proved to be a morale boost for crews. American naval leadership expressed the dissenting opinion that dazzle camouflage was effective. Dazzle camouflage continued to be used until World War II.
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