During WWI and WWII, the US and UK navies used the appropriately-named dazzle camouflage to confuse their enemy, rather than hide.
At the outset of World War I, the British Royal Navy had a problem: their ships kept being targeted and destroyed by Germany's fleet of submarines, also known as U-boats.
Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve officer and artist Norman Wilkinson wanted to change that.
He knew the Royal Navy couldn't use traditional camouflage to their advantage. These giant ships with large amounts of smoke coming from their stacks would be difficult to conceal.
So, a different type of camouflage was used - meant not to conceal, but to confuse.
Winston Churchill Was Skeptical Of Dazzle Camouflage
Wikimedia CommonsThe SS Bremen covered in dazzle camouflage during the first years of World War II.
Wilkinson was not the first person to propose a unique form of camouflage to the Royal Navy. Both an American artist and a British zoologist independently attempted to convince Winston Churchill to paint stripes on all Royal Navy ships before Wilkinson entered the picture.
Churchill, then Great Britain's First Lord of the Admiralty, rejected the idea. He shot the zebra stripes down as "freak methods," and ones which the Admiralty considered to be "of academic interest but not of practical advantage," according to author Peter Forbes.
But Wilkinson, who was a painter and newspaper illustrator outside of his position at the Royal Navy, then piggybacked on these ideas and refined them. Reportedly, he came up with an idea during a fishing trip and came to his commanding officer with it as soon as he got back.
Wilkinson aimed for this camouflage to make it difficult to gage a ship's size, speed, and distance, therefore increasing the chances a soldier does not accurately aim the torpedo and misses the ship.
Wikimedia CommonsA diagram illustrating Wilkinson's theory regarding dazzle camouflage.
Essentially, Wilkinson wanted to exploit the fact that German soldiers aimed torpedoes using periscopes that would poke through the water, which only allowed them to view the ship in a very limited amount of time.
Normally, after getting a quick glance at the ship, a German soldier would have to make many quick decisions and calculation on how to aim the torpedo. Wilkinson hoped that by painting the ships with outrageous patterns, that the soldiers would get confused and mess up the launch of the torpedo.
Roy R. Behrens, professor of art at the University of Northern Iowa, called Wilkinson's method "counterintuitive".
"For Wilkinson to come up with the ideas of redefining camouflage as high visibility, as opposed to low visibility, was pretty astonishing," Behrens praised.
There is some support of Wilkinson's idea within nature. There are many examples of different plants and animals that exhibit bright colors as a survival tactic.
For example, research suggests that zebras' stripes make it more difficult for lions and other predators to ambush a herd because they create a field of dizzying and chaotic lines.
The Royal Navy Adopts The Strange Technique
With the Royal Navy continuing to lose ships due to German U-boats, Wilkinson was given a chance to propose his idea. He was authorized to start a camouflage unit at the Royal Academy and recruited other artists to begin prototyping his design.
Wilkinson and his team painted model ships in a stark, black and white stripe design and placed them on a revolving table. Then, to mimic what a German soldier would do in the situation, viewed the ships through a periscope.
Wikimedia CommonsAn artist tests the effectiveness dazzle camouflage on model boats.
He would also use various lights and backgrounds to test the effectiveness of the method at different times of day.
Wilkinson impressed King George V with his design when the King looked through a periscope and stated the striped model ship was travelling south-by-west, when it was actually traveling east-by-southeast.
In 1917, the Royal Navy officially adopted this so-called "dazzle camouflage" technique. All merchant ships began to be painted in similar zebra-esque patterns.
One year later, Wilkinson would sail across the Atlantic to meet with Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt to help begin a camouflage unit in the United States.
The Effectiveness Of Dazzle Camouflage Is Still Debated
Wikimedia CommonsIn 2021, the HMS Tamar was covered in dazzle camouflage, making it the first Royal Navy ship since World War II with the style.
By the end of the war, over 2,300 British ships had been painted in the dazzle camouflage style.
Whether or not the dazzle camouflage scheme was successful is debated, with its effectiveness varying wildly. Of the ships that were sunk by torpedoes during World War I, 43% had dazzle camouflage and 54% were uncamouflaged. This suggests there is a little bit of merit to support Wilkinson's claim that these ships confused the enemy.
According to Forbes, after the U.S. decided to start practicing the technique, there is some level of statistical evidence to support its success.
In the period between March 1, 1918 and November 11, 1918, 96 merchant ships of the 1,256 total American dazzle camouflaged ships had been sunk.
"None of the camouflaged fighting ships were sunk," Forbes stated in his book.
Wikimedia CommonsArtists work on developing dazzle camouflage model's for the U.S. navy.
However, dazzle camouflage wasn't the only tactic ships were using to avoid U-boats. It was the use of a combination of tactics that allowed for ships to avoid the wrath of German U-boats.
"It was used in combination with tactics such as zig-zagging and traveling in convoys, in which the most vulnerable ships were kept in the center of the formation, surrounded by faster, more dangerous ships capable of destroying submarines," Behrens explained.
Even still, it's hard to gage how much of that success is thanks to dazzle camouflage. Historians say that governments put too many variations into use to accurately gauge the potency of the technique.
The practice continued during World War II. Even the Germans adopted the camouflage style.
The tactic wouldn't survive for much longer, however. As radar, rangefinders, and aircraft became more advanced, the success rate of dazzle camouflage suffered, and its use dwindled.
Dazzle Camouflage Can Still Be Found Today
Wikimedia CommonsThe painting Dazzle Ships In Drydock At Liverpool by British artist Edward Wadsworth depicts ships dazzle camouflage.
Even with it's military use retired, dazzle camouflage has found its way to other fields. The style naturally found its way into the art world, with the creation of many works and instillations featuring the technique.
It's also been used in the world of motorsport. In 2015, the Red Bull Formula 1 team covered the outside of their car in a dazzle camouflage pattern to make it difficult for rival teams to analyze the car's aerodynamics during testing.
Wikimedia CommonsThe Formula 1 team Red Bull used dazzle camouflage on a test car in 2015.
References to it have been seen in other sports as well, including the Manchester United English soccer team, who's jersey for the 2020 season resembled the unique camouflage.
Dazzle camouflage is even still being used on ships. Starting in 2009, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has used it on their ships to make them more visible.
The gallery above features some of the most eye-popping examples of dazzle camouflage, primarily from the World War I-era, when the method saw the most widespread use.
Intrigued by this look at dazzle camouflage? Next, see how some of Earth's most fascinating creatures conceal themselves with these photos of animal camouflage in action. Then, step into the trenches with these powerful World War I photos.
