Friday, December 26, 2025

Camouflaged Trench Digger in the War Zone / WWI

Above
A World War I-era cover illustration for Scientific American by Howard Vachel Brown (1878-1945), titled "Camouflaged Trench Digger at Work in the War Zone." 

We've blogged about Howard V. Brown before, in part because he created an especially wonderful cover for Scientific American (March 1919) that shows a camouflage artist assessing the effectiveness of a ship model, painted in a dazzle camouflage scheme. Of additional interest is that Brown was a student of New York ship camouflage designer William Andrew Mackay, in the development of camouflage for the US Shipping Board, so he was well acquainted with testing devices like the one shown on that cover.