USS Yorktown

One particularly cool exhibit on the USS Yorktown was a wall full of aircraft carrier photos, documenting dozens of ships commissioned into service during the 1st and 2nd World Wars. I noticed that many of the ships were painted in wild, blocky, patterns, and I remembered hearing about dazzle camouflage. Apparently, creative methods were employed to gain advantage in warfare:

Dazzle did not conceal the ship but made it difficult for the enemy to estimate its speed and heading. The idea was to disrupt the visual rangefinders used for naval artillery. Its purpose was confusion rather than concealment. An observer would find it difficult to know exactly whether the stern or the bow is in view; and it would be equally difficult to estimate whether the observed vessel is moving towards or away from the observer’s position. The rangefinders were based on the co-incidence principle with an optical mechanism, operated by a human to compute the range. The operator adjusted the mechanism until two half-images of the target lined up in a complete picture. Dazzle was intended to make that hard because clashing patterns looked abnormal even when the two halves were aligned.

It’s unclear how effective this was, but it must have been quite a sight to see in person.

This post on Dark Roasted Blend has a pretty exhaustive collection of amazing images of ships painted in this style. Check it out.

Some colorful interpretations can be purchased here.