Sunday, January 11, 2026

artist, designers, architects in World War II camouflage

Above
World War II US Army public relations photograph of a course in ground camouflage at Mitchel Field on Long Island NY. The photograph was issued to news vendors in December 1943. The caption read in part as follows—

At "camouflage college" at Mitchel Field, aviation engineers learn everything that is known about the art of camouflage. There is camouflage for every land and clime and in a global war such as this, the camouflage wardrobe is as extensive as that of any lady of fashion.

•••

Philip Gerard, Secret soldiers: how a troupe of American artists, designers, and sonic wizards won World War II's battles of deception against the Germans. NYC: Plume, 2003, pp. 7-8—

America has a habit of forgetting the lessons of war during peacetime. Though the US Army had fielded a talented camouflage corps in World War I and learned critical lessons from its British and French counterparts about the practical value of deception on the battlefield, by the time the United States declared war on Germany and Japan, it had all but forgotten them. The whole theory of deception had to be reinvented, and a new generation of men trained to put it into effect in a cataclysmic war.