Quasi-Camouflage | Hypothetical Dazzle Designs

Hypothetical Dazzle © Roy R. Behrens (2018)

Above Hypothetical ship camouflage designs of the sort that could have been used during World War I, as contrived by Roy R. Behrens. These are not actual examples of "dazzle-painting" from that era, but were created only recently by "finding" disruptive details in public domain photographs.

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Unsigned, NATIONAL ART GALLERY. Notable New Pictures. Register (Adelaide, South Australia), May 30, 1919, pp. 7-8—

…at the National Art Gallery in Adelaide on Thursday night, the President of the Board of Governors (Sir William Sowden) gave "A Traveler's Chat on Art," in the presence of a record audience for such an occasion…

The speaker…dealt first with the camouflage of ships during the war, and explained the subject. Referring to the San Francisco Exhibition Gallery, he said it was in parts the greatest chamber of pictorial horrors he had ever seen, but it was a temporary collection…

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Unsigned, DAY BY DAY. SMARTER SHIPS. Bright Colors Replace Drab Gray. The Mercury (Hobart, Tasmania) (Brisbane, Queensland, Australia), June 1, 1946, p. 3—

How great a difference a few coats of paint make in smartening a ship is illustrated by the changed appearances of the wharves in Tasmania's chief ports since the war ended. When a number of vessels are in port their funnels and upper works of various colors enhance the picturesqueness of the wharves. The change is a pleasant one, after the drab gray of the war days. The sense of surprise in seeing some familiar ship, after long years of war service, in her peacetime colors has not yet worn off. In the first World War, many steamers adopted camouflage, that is, they were painted in dazzling, zigzag hues of black, gray and white, but evidently experience taught this was of little purpose [sic]. At the beginning of the Second World War, a few ships went back to these stripe effects, but after a few months all adopted the uniform gray. So far Tasmania has seen only cargo vessels since the war. Let us hope that soon the larger interstate and oversea liners will be back again.

Still in Print