Fooling the Iron Fish: the Inside Story of Marine Camouflage

fooling the iron fish Everett L. Warner (1919) 185 SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook MARINE CAMOUFLAGE would never have proved such an enigma to the public had it not been for an ingrained conviction that it Originally published as “Fooling was similar to the art of concealment as the Iron Fish: The Inside Story of Marine Camouflage” in Everybody’s practiced on land. The two have almost Magazine. November 1919, pp. nothing in common. Imitation plays an 102-109. important part on land, but it never enjoyed anything but a minor role in the work upon the ships. Even today there are a large number of people who persist in thinking that the conspicuous patterns, which look to the uninitiated like a cubist’s dream, are intended to simulate clouds or waves when seen at a suitable distance, and so render the ship invisible. The name “dazzle painting,” as the ultimate type of marine camouflage was christened in England, in order to distinguish it from painting aimed to reduce visibility, only served to add to the existing confusion, and many persons conceived the idea that its purpose was to dazzle the eye and make vision difficult. On the contrary, the purpose of this type of Above The title page of Warner’s article as it appeared originally in Everybody’s Magazine. The camoufleurs in the photo include (left to right) Everett L. Warner, Frederick Waugh, John Gregory, painting was primarily to deceive the subma- Gordon Stevenson, Manley K. Nash, and M. O’Connell. On the wall above Warner’s head, there is a sign rine commander as to the actual course that a that reads “Keep It Simple.”—Ed. vessel was steering and so cause him either to 186 SHIP SHAPE miss his shot or to learn that he had taken up design. A very large proportion of the communications were concerned a wrong position from which to make it. This with imitation of natural effects, and there was quite a school of inland “I was in New York a few days deception was secured either by concealing camoufleurs who persisted in trying to show an analogy between birds or ago, and saw the Leviathan— the important structural features of the ship animals and an 8,800-ton steel ship, and they were not easily persuaded once the Vaterland, and the so thoroughly that it was difficult to make any that the protective coloration suitable for a partridge squatting motionless greatest ship afloat… estimate of her course whatever or by a in the brush could hardly be made applicable to a moving ship seen against But she did not look like the skillfully designed pattern to give the impres- an ever-changing sky. Vaterland. sion of an apparent course considerably at She was camouflaged. variance with the true course. She was painted after a cubist 187 To attain either of these results it is obvious fashion in great patches of SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook blue and white and neutral that the delicate colors employed in attempts color so that at a distance she at low visibility must be discarded in favor of did not look like a ship…” strong contrast. This was a daring innovation William Eleazar Barton, Blue Stars and in its application to ships, but the basic Gold. Reilly and Britton Company, 1918, principle, which is to alter form rather than to p. 50. conceal it, is not altogether unfamiliar. It has long been practiced in the realm of feminine • Throughout WWI, in American wearing apparel, and some of our most magazines and newspapers, there successful camoufleurs have been among the were countless references—nearly all ladies.• When a woman appears on the street of them derisive—to women’s dressed in vertical stripes, she is certainly not make-up and clothing styles in relation to ship camouflage. For an trying to be invisible, but it is a safe guess that especially vivid example of this, see she is trying to give the impression of a figure Above This huge American troop carrier, appropriately called the USS Leviathan, had initially been a elsewhere in this book Alon Bement’s more slender than she actually possesses, and German ship, the Vaterland. Following its confiscation, it became one of the first American ships to be camouflaged. According to one source, its magnificent disruptive plan was designed by the master article called “‘Camouflage for Fat she is usually quite successful. In the later and originator of dazzle-painting, British camoufleur Norman Wilkinson. But a biography of American Figures and Faulty Faces.” Perhaps British “zebra” period this identical device was this was fueled in part by resentment artist Frederick Waugh attributes its design to him. Who knows what to believe, but it’s possible that employed on ships—vertical lines to raise the of the Women’s Suffrage Movement, both are right. Prior to the war, Waugh had spent a number of years painting in England, and surely he which, with the passage of the 19th apparent height of certain parts and horizon- knew Wilkinson, since both were prominent marine artists. Perhaps they designed it together.—Ed. Amendment in 1919, enabled tal lines elsewhere to give the opposite effect. American women (at last) to vote and A very prominent authority on land camouflage submitted to the Depart- An examination of the file where suggestions run for office.—Ed. ment two models, in one of which invisibility was assured by swathing the forwarded to the Navy Department are kept entire ship in a net, and in the other by a huge spread of canvas painted to •• It appears that Warner is talking sheds a good deal of light on the public imitate a cloud.•• The idea of the USS Leviathan floating away unseen on about proposals by Abbott H. Thayer, attitude toward camouflage and clearly the horizon disguised as a billowy evening cloud is a very poetic thought—if who believed that white ships are the demonstrates that few people understood least visible on cloudy days. The huge you have never seen the Leviathan. exactly what we were doing, or, if they did canvas was a shade for use on brightly This pleasing concept of a cumulus three-stacker must take a second place sunlit days. For more about this, see grasp the general purpose, they thought that beside the suggestion from another source, which was for nothing less than Thayer’s essay on “For Low Visibility the patterns were applied in a haphazard a veritable floating island. A rocky island with pine trees and a lighthouse the Best Color is White.”—Ed. fashion without any underlying principle of 188 SHIP SHAPE moving majestically along the Atlantic steamer lanes was well calculated to startle the U-boat commander, and it needed only an ingenious arrangement for sending the vessel’s smoke out through the lighthouse keeper’s chimney in order to mystify the Hun completely and bring him to the surface to “shoot the sun” for his bearings. More than one person, with a fine disregard for the taxpayer and a desire to win the war 189 SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook at any cost, recommended that ships be nickel-plated, and the suggestion that Above Secretary [of the US Navy vessels be entirely covered with mirrors Josephus] Daniels at the periscope of came from quite a number of different the testing theatre where the little sources. It was claimed that such a surface model ships were studied as if from a villainous submarine, except that here would reflect the surrounding sea and sky, the “sub” commander could point his and, altering with every changing effect of victims where he pleased and change the day or night, create absolute invisibility. conditions of light and backgrounds The advocate of this scheme had at least of sky and water at will.—ELW. grasped one of the fundamental difficulties of low visibility painting—its lack of adapt- Above (top) These two models, one with camouflage, the other without, seem to be going in the same “…any New Yorker who ability to changing effects, but they under- direction, seen from the level of the submarine’s periscope. (bottom) But they aren’t—when you look down wants to inspect its [the stood the problem better than they did the on them. The arrangement of little blocks cast the spell, and the pattern they form, if painted on a real ship, US Navy’s camouflage] would likewise fool the periscope.—ELW. experiments for himself solution. has only to take a ferry Passing over the practical difficulties of One inspector brought forward the proposition to equip a vessel on each boat trip across the harbor side with “a camera with a searchlight attachment” arranged to “throw and on almost any bright loading steel rails or pig iron into a ship shadows on the outsides of the ship that will represent the ocean waves, day. There he will see at completely covered with mirrors, there still anchor, or coming in, or remains the fatal objection that mirrors do while the outline of the entire ship is kept in darkness.” going out, numerous ships not work in the way this plan required, and, Others recommended the painting of vessels to imitate whales or icebergs, whose painted sides reveal instead of reflecting the sea and sky behind and a particularly large number of suggestions were received involving such wild extravagances of form and color as make the vessel, they would have reflected an some variations on the scheme of a destroyer painted on a steamer’s side.

Load more