Warship camouflage. Dazzling disguise. "International Women's Day"

Cubism on armor

The "knight's era" of the war at sea, when brightly painted sailing ships converged at a distance of a pistol shot and smashed each other from cannons point-blank, has sunk into oblivion along with the advent of battleships and contact fuses. Progress has once again ruined romance, if one can speak of it at all in relation to war. Increasing the combat range from a few tens or hundreds of meters to miles and tens of miles immediately revealed the problem of visual detection of an enemy ship during aiming. In turn, the "target" had to merge as much as possible with the constantly changing surface of the sea.

At the end of the era of armadillos (the first years of the 20th century), a uniform spherical coloring completely coped with this task. When heavy-duty guns of battleships rumbled over the ocean expanses, and corsairs of the new time - submarines - flew underwater - the task became many times more complicated. To solve new problem, opticians, artists and ... zoologists came to the aid of the sailors. The British naval officer (and, at the same time, a good painter) Norman Wilkinson became a pioneer in this matter, who, collaborating with the zoologist John Graham Kerr, created the first "crushing" type naval camouflage. Now the sides of the ships began to be painted in patterns of broken stripes. For the uninitiated, they looked ridiculous, but for the periscope of a submarine and the sights of naval artillery, a new war paint turned out to be a “tough nut” - the target literally “fell apart”, making it difficult not only to aim, but simply to determine the direction of its movement.

When, at the beginning of the 20th century, avant-garde artists Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso shocked the public with a new direction in painting - cubism, they did not imagine that in less than ten years they would have numerous followers in ... naval departments. And the steel sides of warships will be used as a canvas.

The French light cruiser “Gloire” is either a zebra or a patched vest…

As long as the distance of a naval battle did not exceed the range of a pistol shot, there was no point in camouflage painting of ships. On the contrary, the abundance of gilding and bright colors created an important psychological mood among the fighting crews, especially if they were facing a boarding battle. Therefore, until the end of the 19th century, cruisers and battleships looked elegant and solemn: a black or white hull with gold decorations, white superstructures, yellow pipes ... As an experiment, a less noticeable gray color was also used from time to time, but for a long time it was considered inappropriate. For example, according to the British Admiral Earl of Cork-y-Orery, in the fleet of the "Lady of the Seas" dark gray was considered mourning. It was first painted on the English battleship Monarch when it was given a mission in 1869 to deliver the body of the deceased Anglo-American philanthropist Peabody to New York. Only at the beginning of the 20th century did the gray or gray-green color of ships begin to gain popularity. The first to completely abandon the pompous black-white-yellow colors were the fleets of Austria-Hungary and Japan. In September 1903, the Russian Pacific Squadron, located in Port Arthur, was also repainted in “grey-olive” (close to modern khaki). The experience of the Russo-Japanese War showed that the real range of artillery combat at sea is much higher than the admirals expected, and camouflage painting, which makes it difficult to aim, is now becoming very relevant. Almost all countries repaint their warships in different shades of gray.

English battleship "Victoria", painted in the so-called "Victorian" colors, lithograph by the artist William Mitchell. Both the ship and its coloring were named in honor of Queen Victoria - it was under her that the British fleet reached the pinnacle of its power.

It is curious that during the Russo-Japanese War, the Russian destroyers of the Vladivostok detachment received a spotted color "to match the coast." Who the author of this idea is unknown. But the fact remains that for the first time the classic camouflage, which makes the ship inconspicuous against the background of the coast and at the same time distorts its silhouette, was used in the Russian fleet.

Experiments with "patronizing" coloring of ships until the outbreak of the First World War were carried out in many countries, but sailors were usually skeptical about them. Which is not surprising: the conditions of visibility at sea are constantly changing, and it is simply impossible to create a universal coloration that would be effective in different weather both day and night. Against the background of the horizon, the ship, and even smoking, is always a contrasting target, and the color in which it is painted does not affect its detection in any way.

However, with the outbreak of the First World War, admirals, primarily British, faced a problem that they clearly underestimated. We are talking about German submarines, which inflicted very tangible losses on the Entente fleets. And it was here that the idea arose to apply coloring to the ships, which would make it difficult to carry out a torpedo attack. The fact is that a torpedo, unlike an artillery shell, moves rather slowly, and the commander of a submarine attacking a moving ship has to shoot ahead of time, at a point far ahead. In professional terms, the commander has to calculate the "torpedo triangle". And here it is very important to correctly determine the speed of the target and its course. Therefore, now the coloring of the ship should not reduce its visibility, but distort it appearance, making it difficult to determine the parameters of its movement.

The first to suggest painting ships “like a zebra” was the English professor of zoology Graham Kerr. In a letter sent to Winston Churchill (then First Lord of the Admiralty) in September 1914, Kerr wrote: “The solid uniform coloration makes the object conspicuous. The application of sharply contrasting spots of color creates the impression of a break in the surface. The idea seemed too extravagant, and it was simply brushed aside. They remembered the unusual offer only six months later - ever-increasing losses british navy the Kaiser's submarines were required to accept emergency measures. In the spring of 1915, the Admiralty ordered to begin experiments with a "distorting" color, which received official name Dazzle camouflage.

Soon, the artist Norman Wilkinson joined the work, proposing and theoretically substantiating his own camouflage scheme based on the then fashionable trend in painting - cubism. Like his colleagues, avant-garde artists, he tried to “split” a real object (in this case, a ship) into conditional planes, faces and separate geometric shapes. The combination of bright stripes, polygons and smooth curves made a battleship, destroyer or transport look like an abstract painting and looked extremely unusual. However, having moved away from the first shock, the sailors of the “Mistress of the Seas” were forced to admit that it was not easy to determine the heading angle and even the class of a sophisticatedly painted ship. "Distorting" camouflage was given a start in life, and Wilkinson got the laurels of its inventor.

Sir Norman Wilkinson (Norman L. Wilkinson, 1878-1971) - English artist, considered in the West as the "father" of naval camouflage. During the First World War, he served on the ships of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve), participated in patrols and combat minesweeping, received the rank of lieutenant. Theoretically substantiated the principle of a distorting carriage. Later he became the owner of numerous titles and awards.

In fairness, it should be noted that in the same spring of 1915, regardless of the British, a very similar color for ships was proposed by the Sevastopol artist Yuri Shpazhinsky. He also created it under the influence of cubism - on the sides, superstructures and pipes of ships, triangles of white, blue, dark and light gray were applied in a certain sequence, together forming broken stripes. The Black Sea battleship Sinop was the first to be painted according to this scheme, followed by the destroyers Happy and Loud. Shpazhinsky called the coloring he invented "illusory" - in fact it was a synonym for the word "distorting".

In the summer of 1915, the "illusory" coloration was also tested in the Baltic. Shpazhinsky improved his scheme, and the cruiser of the border guards "Condor" allocated for the experiment was covered broken lines"heavenly" and "water" colors. In addition, the artist tried another of his inventions - special fittings on masts and pipes, designed to distort the silhouette of the ship. Unfortunately, at the official tests, which took place on June 29, 1915, this whole idea did not bring the expected effect. "Condor" and devoid of camouflage of the same type "Berkut" were equally visible, and rangefinders at distances from 55 to 65 cables in both cases gave accurate results. As a result, on the recommendation of the commission that conducted the tests, work on the “illusory” coloring was curtailed.

And yet it must be admitted that the talented artist Yuri Ippolitovich Shpazhinsky (by the way, one of his paintings is in the Tretyakov Gallery) was the first in the field of marine distorting coloring, and in the invention of silhouette-deforming fittings - the latter appeared in England no earlier than a year later. It's a shame that his name is almost forgotten, and all the innovations he invented are now attributed to his foreign colleagues.

The world's first classic aircraft carrier - the British "Argus" in camouflage, 1918

An example of unusual World War I camouflage is the American battleship Nebraska.

Distorting camouflage coloration began to be massively used in the navy in 1917-1918, and its "second coming" falls on the period of World War II. The variety of colors and patterns applied on the sides of ships of various classes is amazing. Chess checkerboards and wavy lines, triangles and squares, shapeless spots, shading, unthinkable patterns of all colors of the rainbow ... Surprisingly, a theoretical basis was laid under all this "apotheosis of abstractionism". For example, in the US Navy there was a regulated, albeit rather overloaded, classification of all camouflage schemes. The nature of the color (solid or camouflage) was determined by the base type (measure), which was assigned its own number - 1, 5, 11, 12, etc. Next came the design number, which standardized the camouflage pattern. The last letter in the designation corresponded to the class of the ship, the painting scheme belonged to it (for example, for aircraft carriers it was the letter A, for battleships - B). Thus, the camouflage coloration of, say, the aircraft carrier CV-12 Hornet was designated Measure 33 design 3A. But that is not all. Each shade used was also standardized, had its own name and number - for example, “ocean gray” (ocean gray) 5-0, “foggy gray” (haze gray) 5-H, “navy blue” (navy blue) 5 -N... The founding artists of cubism could not even imagine that they would be engaged in the development of drawings and colors of abstract paintings scientific institutes, and studies of their perception by the human eye will form the basis of closed dissertations!

As already mentioned, camouflage and distorting (dazzle) paint schemes were originally their opposites. But for individual theaters of military operations, it was possible to come up with camouflage designs that, under certain conditions, performed both functions at once. Thus, the Italians often used a gray-green color scheme to paint their ships: in the open sea, such camouflage was distorting, and against the background of the Mediterranean coast, it was camouflage. The relevance of combining these functions was strongly influenced by the development of aviation. During the Second World War, the decks of ships were often covered with chaotically arranged lines and geometric shapes. During the stay in the base, such coloring made it difficult to identify the ship and at the same time disguised it as port facilities. On the high seas, "anti-aircraft" camouflage was not of particular importance, since the ship was detected from the aircraft primarily by the wake.

One of the favorite "chips" of marine camouflage - the image of fake white breakers at the stem and in the stern of the hull - thus creating the illusion that the ship was moving at a much higher speed than it actually was. The hull ends were often painted in colors that contrasted with the central part - this was how the length of the ship was hidden and it was difficult to determine the heading angle. Sometimes contrasting silhouettes of one or two small ships, usually sailing in opposite side- under certain lighting conditions, such a pattern could confuse a submariner observing through the periscope.

During the Great Patriotic War camouflage coloration was widely used in our fleet. The paint schemes were mostly similar to those used by the Allies, but there were some differences. So, in the Black Sea Fleet, along with conventional oil paints, “silver” was used - paint based on aluminum powder. It is able to reflect the color of the water, and the areas covered with it change color depending on the weather, making the camouflage more versatile. In addition, several Black Sea ships received a rather complex camouflage pattern with "shading" - a smooth transition from a dark tone to a light one. Similar paint schemes were also used abroad (for example, in 1943 on the French battleship Richelieu), but very rarely.

The destroyer of the Black Sea Fleet “Savvy” is one of the few owners of a “gradient” color scheme, in which dark tones smoothly turned into light ones.

How effective was the distorting "body art" of the ships? Unfortunately, no one has been able to get a clear answer to this question. In the literature, individual cases are sometimes cited as a benefit from camouflage - for example, an attempt by a German submarine to sink the Black Sea patrol vessel Storm, when, despite ideal attack conditions, all torpedoes missed. "Storm" had a complex camouflage with smooth transitions between colors, and it is believed that this is what caused the mistake in determining the Germans' course angle. However, the reasons for a miss when firing torpedoes could be completely different ...

During the Second World War, the Allies already made extensive use of color film. The picture shows the Canadian destroyer "Restigouche" in all its "distorting" beauty...

"Lined" French cruiser "Gloire" - the owner of a very unusual camouflage color

One way or another, but with the development of radar, visual target detection is far from being the main one, and at the same time, distorting camouflage also loses its relevance. After the Second World War, warships everywhere become the same gray, only slightly different shades. Only in the last one and a half to two decades in a number of countries (Finland, Sweden, Chile and some others) boats and ships in spotted colors reappear, but this is more of a tribute to fashion, a consequence of the popularity of the military style and camouflage uniforms. Distorting coloration in modern fleets is no longer used for tactical reasons, but solely "for beauty".

An example of modern naval camouflage is the painting of the Samum hovercraft missile ship (above) and the Finnish missile boat Hanko

FURFUR magazine wrote about the imminent return of camouflage to the streets at the beginning of last summer. The camouflage pattern turned out to be a fairly universal pattern, which many brands in the rank from Carhartt and Herschel to Prada, as well as ordinary street dandies, managed to miss.

Since then, the passion for camouflage has only grown stronger, clothing designers have become more inventive, and, on the one hand, completely wild, on the other hand, original designs began to appear, like the camouflage made up of marijuana inflorescences by the Japanese brand Nitraid or the ironic pattern with daisies by Mark McNairy . FURFUR will pay more attention to this topic and write about the most interesting examples from the history of camouflage. The series of such materials opens with one of the earliest camouflage patterns in history - the cubist-inspired Dazzle.

What is Dazzle

The pattern called Dazzle, which can rightfully be called a pioneer among camouflage patterns, was designed not to disguise the object itself, on which it will be applied, but so that the enemy could not determine the size, shape, direction and speed of moving vehicles by eye. Most often, "sparkling camouflage", as it is sometimes called, was applied to ships and aircraft, using contrasting colors intertwined with each other. Its other name - Razzle Dazzle - is translated from English as "turmoil" and quite clearly describes the effect it produces.

History of Dazzle Camo

1. Advertising poster for the Cunard Line shipping company, 1918. 2. American battleship USS California, 1944. 3. Battleship design concept. 4. Painting "Dazzle-ships in Drydock at Liverpool" by the English artist Edward Wadsworth, 1919

Dazzle as a type of camouflage pattern only made sense in those days when the military did not yet have powerful radars that made it easy to determine the size, speed and distance to the object under study. This special coloring, which caused only confusion, could confuse the vigilant gunner. You can compare such tactics with the false eyes of some species of fish or butterflies - with such a pattern, and even from a distance to determine where the bow of the ship is and where the feed is, it was not such an easy task for the enemy.

The inventor of this camouflage (as well as its name) is the English artist and illustrator Norman Wilkinson, who served on one of the Royal Navy submarines during the First World War. Then the German submarines managed to destroy British cruisers too easily - the main combat unit turned out to be practically unarmed against submarines. It got to the point that in one day the Germans could sink up to eight British ships. Thinking about how to hide a huge ship from the view of the periscope, Wilkinson came to the idea that it is not necessary to hide the object itself, when you can simply confuse the enemy preparing to strike.

It is worth noting that it was during that period of the First World War that camouflage began to take on a massive turn and began to be used by the troops of all sides involved in the war. So, the Germans painted the steel helmets of their infantry with stains, and the Russian troops decorated armored vehicles with multi-colored amoebas.

For your information

The zebra's camouflage pattern works on the same principle as the dazzle - it confuses the predator by masking the direction of movement. Several of these animals, gathered in a group, cause the effect of erratic movement, even when they are practically motionless.

The result of the developments of Wilkinson and his team of artists was the ocean liner HMS Alsatian, which in August 1917 was repainted in Dazzle after testing this type of camouflage on mock-ups. The experiment was successful, and the British troops began to introduce this coloring almost everywhere to camouflage large ocean liners. Wilkinson, in turn, began working with the US Army, and after the end of World War I became president of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colors.

Ocean liner HMS Alsatian in Dazzle camouflage
Another famous British liner painted in Dazzle during the First World War - RMS Epmpress of Russia

In World War II, Dazzle was used more and more by American and German troops, but at the same time this moment is considered the time of death of the "sparkling disguise". By this time, special binoculars, radars and other equipment were already becoming popular, which made it possible to easily determine the distance to an object, its size and trajectory of movement. In the British Army in 1942, the Admiralty Intermediate Disruptive Pattern was adopted, which was a Dazzle modified by the artist Peter Scott - it had more rounded shapes of the elements and included more colors, for example, shades of blue.

Single-seat American P-51 Mustang fighter, painted in Dazzle disguise. Used during World War II

Today, Dazzle is practically not used, and the most common example of its use is the Austrian traffic cameras, which record the speed of cars: no reckless driver at high speed will be able to notice the camera painted in this way. In addition, this drawing was on the cover of the fourth studio album Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark- Dazzle Ships.

FIVE FAMOUS BOOKS TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE HISTORY OF DAZZLE CAMO

Dazzle camouflage as an element of clothing of modern brands

Due to its uniqueness, interesting history and the unusual Dazzle effect returns as a print from time to time casual wear- more often among brands inspired by military aesthetics. Such a drawing is especially appreciated by the famous admirer and collector Hardy Blechman, the founder and ideologist of the Maharishi brand. In 2008, he released a joint line of outerwear with the Americans Penfield (which also included a sleeping bag to the heap), and in the spring of last year, Maharishi, together with the English brand London Undercover, released classic cane umbrellas with a similar print. The list of other things inspired by this pattern also includes Adidas sneakers, their own collaboration with the Freshness Mag blog, Supra sneakers and even a Summit Sport snowmobile.

“Many well-known types of camouflage can easily make one highly visible object appear as two, two objects as three, and so on.”

Photo 8.

The development of technology put an end to this type of camouflage. Or rather, on its military use: it was no longer possible to deceive optical instruments in this way. On the other hand, the Razzle Dazzle was instantly picked up by the post-war generation - this type of camouflage is still relevant and is often used in the creation of youth clothing lines.

And here is one of the paintings of Norman Wilkinson himself. As you can see, the artist was not a Cubist at all, preferring to work in more traditional styles. This painting, created in 1915, is called "Beach on the Dardanelles with soldiers unloading medicines."

Photo 9.

The best artists of their time were called to develop the design. Each ship had its own individual painting, which was worked on by Abbot Thayer, Maximilian Toch, Edward Wadsworth, Everett Warner and many others. Actually, most of the surviving ships could be safely sent to the Museum of Modern Art.

Photo 10.

Photo 11.

Cruiser "Gloire" (Gloire), which became part of the French Navy in 1937.

Dizzying, isn't it? This way of painting the ship may seem strange, if not deadly for the ship and crew. But this is only at first glance.

At one time, the good old Dazzle camouflage literally drove German submarine commanders crazy. Try in the vastness of the ocean, with a good distance, through the imperfect optics of those times, to identify the target, the direction and speed of its movement, draft, and other data necessary for a successful torpedo attack. This is where the difficulty arose.

The result of the attack depends directly on the assessment of the situation, but if the commander sometimes could not determine in which direction he was moving, and where his bow and stern were, the effectiveness of such an attack was practically zero.

The inventor of this type of camouflage was the British artist and illustrator Norman Wilkinson, who served during the First World War in the submarine fleet. His idea was not to hide the huge ship from view through the optics, but to confuse the enemy preparing a torpedo attack.

The main purpose of this camouflage was not so much to completely hide the object from the enemy - boiler and turbine installations were easily unmasked by smoke from the chimneys, but to complicate the hit.

Since the rangefinders were optical, everything was based on the initial data (length, width of the ship, which are more or less known) and angles (thousandths of a distance). This camouflage was designed to distort this data.

The idea came from the avant-garde offshoot of Cubism, Vorticism, which was then fashionable.

Adept vorticism - Wyndham Lewis, and his work "Workshop".

The pioneer in 1917 was the liner HMS Alsatian, on which, after repeated tests on mock-ups, a new type of camouflage was tested, and then it was adopted not only in Britain, but also in the USA, France, and Russia.

Destroyer "Happy". Russian empire, WWI, Black Sea.

Camouflage was used both on merchant ships and warships.

And not only black and white: color options ranged from green to orange. One of the journalists, having witnessed the movement of the convoy, called it "a flock of Easter eggs leaving the sea."

They complemented the color of the fake bow wave under the stem, which creates the effect of increasing the speed of the ship, accurate data on which are necessary when calculating the movement of the torpedo. A false head wave was applied under the stern, causing the boat commanders to have an optical illusion of the removal of the vessel, which in reality is approaching.

By the way, the coloring of zebras works on the same principle, and their group causes the effect of erratic movement, even when they are practically motionless. Naval veterans traditionally treated this coloring with disdain, comparing it with the appearance of port ladies, but the sailors quickly appreciated its advantages - after all, attacks by German submariners were increasingly futile.

With the outbreak of World War II, he also found a use, including in the Air Force.

Fighter P-51 "Mustang".

True, with the beginning of the active use of radar means of detecting targets, he began to gradually lose relevance, and the ships were painted in the usual foggy gray ball color. But even today, Dazzle again finds a use for itself. It is perfectly combined with the high-tech systems of the "stealth ships".