Were camoflauge measures on large warships really effective during WW2?..there is well-documented attempts by every country with a navy of any size to camo their ships from sea and air observation: from monotone schmes, to dazzle patterns, to false bow waves, to painting aircaraft carriers to look like cruisers when viewed from above, etc…
BUT, is there any evidence that the millions of gallons of paint and effort actually worked as intended???
Probably so, they were mostly designed to confuse optical range finders. With radar, these measures were redundant. That’s why they are no longer in use today, US Navy ships are painted with lo-viz mainly to confuse missiles. They like contrast. I know of no evidence that they were effective, but then I don’t know a whole lot anyway. I would have liked to have seen it in person so I could make my own opinion.
As my dad said,it was a pain in the a… and he thought it did no good,Digger.
Read Alan Raven’s monograph at shipcamouflage.com
http://www.shipcamouflage.com/development_of_naval_camouflage.htm
Read the whole article, but pay particular attention to chapter 6
From my readings, the ‘sea blue’ and ‘deck blue’ camoflages used in the Pacific were particularly good against aircraft, and the various ‘mist gray’ and ‘sea gray’ schemes used in the North Atlantic worked pretty well too (especially on hazy days, and/or mist and fog). The various ‘dazzle’ schmes were mostly designed to deal with submarines, so that it was difficult to figure out what direction/angle the ship was moving when viewed through a periscope at fairly close range (5,000 yards). That’s all well and good, but I don’t think it helped much against aircraft, or long-range shellfire (where you couldn’t really see the dazzle paintjob at all)
Indeed, we see in late 1944, after the kamikaze’s started appearing, a crash program by the Navy to paint out the dazzle schemes.
http://www.researcheratlarge.com/Ships/S19-7/ComServPacDispatch030229.html
http://www.researcheratlarge.com/Ships/S19-7/SpdLtr_04229.html
http://www.researcheratlarge.com/Ships/S19-7/SpdLtr_04254.html
Those are just some of the documents I’ve seen; haven’t posted them all.
I remember a story once where a battleship painted in a dazzle scheme snuck through a channel once, even though the folks on shore were told beforehand that the ship would be passing through—and no one saw it…wish I remember the details—I believe it was pre-WW2 in the Northeast somewhere…
do you mean pre-pearl harbour or pre-poland for pre-ww2?
I think it was actually in the '20’s or 30’s…
Did it confuse subs?
The main purpose of “dazzle” was not to make the ship less visible, but to confuse optical range finders. These operate with a horizontal “split image” which is lined up to give the range. The idea was that clashing patterns looked abnormal even when the two halves were aligned. As an additional feature, the dazzle pattern usually included a false bow wave to make estimation of the ship’s speed difficult.
The British Admiralty concluded it had no effect on submarine attacks, but proved to be a morale boost for crews. American naval leadership thought dazzle effective.
Rick
…wish I could find that story again…