Cool article about a tech breakthrough that suddenly made camouflage necessary.
By the way, I've always loved dazzle painting on warships, but never understood why they did it. Now I know.
Why No One Used Camouflage Until WWI
The general idea behind visual camouflage, which is to make distinctive, recognizable shapes difficult to pick out against a background, was nothing new in 1914. The point of camouflage isn’t necessarily to make oneself totally invisible, which isn’t practical for a large army.
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I didn't know there was such a thing as "dazzle painting", though I totally see the benefit during the daytime…
It was mostly a WWI thing, though there might have been some early days of WWII.
The TL:DR version of the article is ‘Human eyes recognise patterns. Camo gear breaks up the pattern’. Its not just about blending in – this is how much of natures camo works.
Dazzle (like zebras) actually confuses the eye, it makes it more difficult to work out the heading and the speed- it wasn’t about hiding. Ships at sea are easy to spot in WW1 – they are all coal fires, so LOTS of black smoke. The range finder still works on things like the mast, which is hard to camo – it’s thin, and ideal for this ofset/focus method – it’s thin.
A zebra’s stripes gives off confusing signals in the lion’s brain – it can’t quite be sure of direction and speed of its prey. Think of a spinning wheel that appears to be going the wrong way, or trying to count line without pointing at the line as you do so. Same with ships. A naval shell takes some 20 seconds to reach it’s target. In that time a ship can travel 100 to 200 meters (approx 5m sec per 10 knots). You also need some idea of angle of travel – its no good getting the lead right, if you stick it over or under. This is why ships zig-zagged, to keep changing the position they would be in 20 seconds. Dazzel makes it difficult to work out what angle the ship is to you.
@LH – Good notes on the question of angles with dazzle (makes a tremendous amount of sense), as well as the lag for long range fire.