![]() ![]() Public reception for the carnivalesque fleets, however, was mixed. by artist Abbott Handerson Thayer in his 1909 book Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom. Theories about disruptive coloration as camouflage had already been introduced in the U.S. Covert relates Wilkinson’s development of “dazzle” in Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, writing that after receiving Royal Navy permission to paint a ship, he “ found space for a Dazzle Department at the Royal Academy of Art in London.” There other artists got involved, including Edward Wadsworth, an outport officer and Vorticist artist (Vorticism being a British modernist art movement inspired by Cubism), who “supervised the painting of over 2,000 ships within one year.”ĭid dazzle camo actually work? It’s unclear.ĭazzle was soon adopted by the American Navy, with over 1,000 “razzle dazzle” plans for ships, and artists like Everett Warner and Thomas Hart Benton working on designs. The element of surprise was also a factor, literally dazzling viewers into confusion as to purpose of the strange vessel cruising past. ![]() The frenetic paint job could baffle a U-Boat gunner, who wouldn’t be able to tell the direction or shape of the ship through his periscope. ![]() Witnessing the carnage, artist and British naval officer Norman Wilkinson had an epiphany: “I suddenly got the idea that since it was impossible to paint a ship so that she could not be seen by a submarine, the extreme opposite was the answer - in other words to paint her, not for low visibility, but in such a way as to break up her form and thus confuse a submarine officer as to the course on which she was heading.” Thus “dazzle” camouflage - bold stripes, curves, and zig-zags in colors like black, white, blue, fuchsia, and green - was born. And unlike the U-Boats which could lurk beneath the waves, there was no hiding a ship with its smoke stacks and distinct silhouette, the changing light and colors of the sky and sea making camouflage futile. The campaign of submarine warfare torpedoed hundreds of vessels. In 1917, German U-Boat attacks on British ships seemed unstoppable. ![]()
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