Most camouflage is designed to conceal, to hide the person or object. However, there is another principle of camouflage that most people don’t know, some camo is designed to confuse. With such a flamboyant name, Dazzle Camo sounds like it would be designed to confuse the subject’s sexual preference, when it actually is a very cool military concept.
Back in World War I, the optics used by submarines involved aligning two images (one in each eye) until the two pictures came together. Once the images were aligned the sub could fire deadly torpedoes the ship with deadly accuracy. With Dazzle Camo, the enemy couldn’t gauge the size, distance or direction of the vessel because aligning the images was almost impossible because it broke up the outline of the ship.
The pattern itself is made up of brightly colored, geometric shapes painted in all sorts of odd angles. The original colors used were bold: black, white, purple, yellow and red were all used. The result is a stunning sight, hence the name, “Razzle-Dazzle.”
There are no existing color photographs of these ships. However, some very cool images are available at Twisted Sifter. Some color plans and drawings can be found at the Rhode Island School of Design site. (The designer featured by RISD is Maurice L. Freedman, the man who would later design the board game Battleship.)
After WWI RADAR was developed, and the improvement in technology made this from of camo obsolete. Which is too bad, in my opinion. Wouldn’t it be cool to see the USS George H.W. Bush tricked out with this kind of paint job?
Images from this post (and some other cool examples of Dazzle Camo) can be found at Wikipedia Commons.
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