camouflaged armored car devised in Massachusetts

Capt Renwick with camouflaged armored car (1917)

FORMER BAY STATE OFFICER OFFERS US ARMY NEW TYPE OF ARMORED CAR: Invention of Capt William G. Renwick Given Tryout by Officers of Northeastern Department in The Boston Globe, September 2, 1917—

The Department of the Northeast has been offered for inspection and adoption an armored car designed by and manufactured under the inspection of a New England officer, Captain William G. Renwick, formerly of the 8th Massachusetts Regiment.…

A striking feature of the car as it stood on the avenue this morning was the fact that it is painted in “camouflage,” which at a distance renders it practically invisible. Those who did not understand this fact, expressed their opinion that the car “looked as if it had been through hard service and he ought to paint it over again.” The car is covered with a mixture of gray, green and pink coloring irregularly placed and is not as attractive as it is efficient. Entrance to the car is at the top though a manhole in the protective covering. The occupants are completely hidden from sight, with only openings in the armor for the machine guns.…” 

RELATED LINKS

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work? /  Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

camouflaged autos are the latest bane of speed cops

disruptive shadows cast on jeeps

THAT AUTO HARD TO SEE? MAYBE IT’S CAMOUFLEUR’S WORK. The Toledo News-Bee (Toledo OH), October 19, 1917—

Camoufleur!

It sounds like a cuss word. But the motor patrolman who draws up alongside your auto, and calls you that [a camoufleur] is [being] polite, if sarcastic.

Camouflaged autos are the latest bane of the speed police.

The auto owner who covers his car with a yellow or neutral colored top, paints the body any one of a half dozen colors that blend with the road and sets the whole thing on wire wheels, invisible at a distance, is copying trench methods of making things “look like what they ain’t,” charge the road guardians.

So far no Toledo autoist has attempted to color his machine with patches of paint to represent trees and landscape, but many are trying colors that make for “low visibility” when approaching speed trappers.

disruptive coloration used not to conceal, to advertise

Above An Ambulance Used Effectively in a Wartime Campaign, Decorated Camouflage-Fashion for the Purpose of Attracting Attention. Popular Mechanics (c1919).

CAMOUFLAGE AMBULANCE ADVERTISES “DRIVE” / A striking feature of a wartime “drive” recently conducted in Chicago was an ambulance that had been elaborately decorated camouflage-fashion. Thousands of persons looking down into the city streets saw this truck with its top painted in mottled hues and at once their curiosity was aroused. If the vehicle’s appearance was not strictly in accord with army regulations, it nevertheless served as an excellent advertisement for a good cause.

RELATED VIDEO SERIES

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?

 Nature, Art, and Camouflage

 Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage

 Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage

 Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage

camouflage application / women's limited capabilities

Above This an oddity, to be sure. I'm uncertain where I found it, but I do know that the original photograph (grayscale only, but misleadingly AI-colorized here) was published in The American Machinest (c1918), with the photo caption of "The finished product—American made gun and tractor—Detroit, Mich." The original image is an elongated horizontal, but, in order to show it in detail here, I have sliced it into three parts and stacked the sections. The article which it illustrates describes the process by which the camouflage design was applied to the tractor, which had been driven into a "camouflage room," where it was initially assumed that only men (not women) would be capable of painting the pattern. The article goes on to say—

Here a process never before used was applied. Paint guns had been used for the two coats of olive drab, but it did not stop at that point. One man marked off the camouflage design with chalk and marked each recess with the numbers 1, 2 or 3, number 1 being green, number 2 buff, and number 3 yellow. Each painter was given a number—1, 2 or 3.  Number 1, using green paint, painted every place on the tractor that was marked 1, while number 2, using buff, filled in every place marked 2, and 3 proceeded in like manner. After the first few tractors had been run through in this manner, it was found that women could do this work as well as men, and women were hired, relieving the men for heavier work. The black striping was done by a man at the end of the paint line. The total time required for assembling armor, tool box and camouflaging was one hour.

to camouflage the inside—so I don't know where I am

Roland Davies

Above Roland Davies, WWII British Short Sunderland Flying Boat.

•••

James Thrall Soby, “Genesis of a Collection” in Art In America, Vol 49 No 1, 1961, p. 79—

[Abstract Expressionist artist] Matta [Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren] was born in Chile and therefore presumably exempt from American military service. Nevertheless, he worried about being drafted, and came to me in the Museum [of Modern Art]  to ask whether he could be assigned to camouflaging tanks if he were called up. I explained that this sort of camouflage was less commonly used in the Second World War than in the First because of improvements in aerial reconnaissance. “You don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t want to camouflage the outside of a tank so the enemy can’t find it. I want to camouflage the inside, so I won’t know where I am.”

RELATED LINKS

 Cubism and Camouflage

Cook: The Man Who Taught Gertrude Stein to Drive

Art, Design and Gestalt Theory: The Film Version

new camouflage method devised by french lieutenant

Above French camouflaged auto cannon (Peugeot 1915), c1916. Wikimedia Commons.

•••

Below I have no idea what this cryptic news article is talking about. It sounds fascinating—if it were only true.

NEW CAMOUFLAGE INVENTED in Greensburg Daily Tribune (Greensburg IN), April 13, 1932—

PARIS (UP)—A French lieutenant who served through the World War [WWI] has just demonstrated the advantages of his new camouflage invention whereby in a short time, a pedestrian or soldier can be transformed into a shock of grain, heap of leaves, a bunch of newspapers, tree stump or what not while walking. His names is George [probably Georges] Félix, and his invention consists of a kind of net that weighs less than a pound, and when not used for camouflage purposes can be employed in numerous other ways.

lowly looking car made quite snappy by paint & brush

AUTO GOSSIP in The Times (Munster IN), February 2, 1920, p. 6—

Old Man Snodgrass, of the Auto Customs Shop, is the adeptest camouflage artist you ever saw. Not boasting at all, but says Art: “People have the doggonest time telling my work from new cars, but the difference is so little few people can tell.” What do you charge, Mr. Snodgrass, for painting a 1914 Lizzie that’s only “went” 211,999 miles? Will she look like new when you get through?

•••

Anon, CAMOUFLAGE USED ON CAR: Lowly Looking Car Made Quite Snappy By Use of Paint and Brush: Wartime Treatment of Shipping Used to Improve Motor’s Appearance, in The Daily Colorist, June 1929—

Does your car look too fat, too tall, too short, or just generally antique?

Cheer up. Just study a few good camouflage methods and you can with paint endow it with the lines of the finest racer. The dress principle that makes stout ladies look thin through vertical-lined clothes works for cars, too.

Camouflag[ing] autos to make them look larger, lower, more luxurious is the job of Captain H. Ledyard Towle, alumnus of Adelphi Academy and Pratt Institute of Brooklyn.

Before the war nothing was known of Captain Towle’s new kind of art. Now he has applied the principles of camouflage…to the painting of automobiles.

“Tommyrot,” the auto manufacturers told him when he first submitted his ideas. “A car is a car. You can’t improve its engine or even its appearance through camouflage.”

But they gave him a chance. He went quietly to work and repainted one model. Its sales increased with astounding rapidity. Now he supervises the painting of millions of them.

He got his ideas during the war. Before that he was a portrait painter. Previous to the age of thirty he had done the portraits of Captain Eddie Rickenbacker and other distinguished persons. Then during the war he acquired a more humble idea of art.

He learned that love of beauty and symmetry is not confined to the upper crust. The ordinary run of soldiers, the small farmer, the street cleaner, everyone, in fact, knows when something beautiful has been set before him.…

One of his experiments affecting the neatness of a car’s appearance consisted of taking a dark-colored car and painting a light strip along its entire length on a level with the top of the radiator.

real camouflage would not be visible in a photograph

Emmett Watson (c1932)

Above Cover of Railroad Stories magazine, January 1932, supposedly showing the camouflage of an Allied railroad engine during World War I. The illustration is by Emmett Watson (1893-1955), whose work was widely published in popular newsstand magazines between the World Wars.

•••

Robert K. Tomlin, American engineers behind the battle lines in France. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1918—

It is obvious that this subject [wartime camouflage] cannot be written about in detail. The familiar illustrations often published in magazines and newspapers are the obvious and theatrical ones, seldom used. The real camouflage would not make an interesting picture, because no one would see it in a photograph.

car dealers are the finest lot of camouflage experts

WWI camouflaged truck, source unknown

AUTO CAMOUFLAGE IS USED CAR DEALERS’ ART; NOT AN ARTIST in Omaha Daily Bee, November 4, 1917, p. 35—

When it becomes necessary, as shortly it will, to secure the services of expert camouflage operators, remarks The Commentator in the current issue of American Motorist, I hope the government will not overlook the finest lot of camouflagers in the world. Talk about our French disguisers, who can make a 10-ton gun look like a bologna sausage and thus protect it from German destruction, they are not in it with our American disguisers. Give any dealer in second-hand cars a chance and he’ll put it over any camouflagers that ever camouflaged a camer. What these second-hand distributors don’t know about making something look like something it is not, no foreigner that ever lived can teach them. There is a whole lot about this new war game we’ve go to be taught by those abroad, but when it comes to camouflage, so long as we have our second-hand automobile experts with us, we won’t have to get our educators in the disguising line from any place but home, sweet home.

Alice in Wonderland meets the Wizard of Oz in 1918

WWI US government photograph (AI colorized)

Edwin Carty Ranck, SERVICE OF SUPPLY IN FRANCE AND WHAT IT MEANS TO SAMMY WHO IS BATTLING “OVER THERE” in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (New York), June 30, 1918, p. 2—

At the camouflage camp, which is, by the way, one of the most interesting spots in France, I was shown around by one of the youngest majors in the American Army… One could easily spend a week there, so fascinating is this work.…

I saw many camouflage mounds and hills that would deceive the naked eye at a distance of even twenty-five feet. And there was a weirdly camouflaged automobile that excited the laughter of the men who had camouflaged it, because it was so outrageously absurd. They were trying it as an experiment to see if it wouldn’t be a good vehicle for use at the front.

“Doesn’t it look like it might serve as a crazy wagon for Fred Stone to ride during a performance of The Wizard of Oz or some other fantastic show?” asked my guide.

“Yes, it makes me think of Alice in Wonderland,” I replied. And everything around me made me think of Alice in Wonderland. It was a bizarre, artificial world that lay around me…

Illustration that accompanied article (1918)

hidden moonshine | teddy bear stomachs suspected

Camouflaged intoxicants

CAMOUFLAGE LIQUOR TO SOLDIERS AROUSES JUDGE in Boston Globe (April 14, 1918), p. 16—

NEW YORK—Discovery of camouflage in the disposal of liquor to soldiers and sailors in uniform led to the announcement by United States Judge Hand today that imprisonment and not fines would be the punishment hereafter of persons convicted of violating the Federal law forbidding the sale of intoxicants to Army and Navy men.

Stomachs of Teddy Bears, paper bags left on mailboxes, taxicab rides around the block at $1.50 a ride, and cigar boxes passed over the counter at cigar stores are some of the methods through which servicemen here have been served with liquor recently, according to testimony in the Federal court at the arraignment of more than 300 persons, many of whom are now in prison.

The Bystander | Disguised to look like nothing at all

Above Rawley [or Hawley] Morgan, "Our Involuntary Disguises" cartoon in The Bystander, March 20, 1918, p. 613.

•••

Anon, Hello Buddy: Sad and Sunny Side of War (1920)—

Of late the scene painter's art—technically known as camouflage—has raised the concealment of batteries and their observation posts to the realm of the uncanny…you can now disguise anybody as anything. For instance, you can make up a battery of six-inch guns to look [like] a flock of sheep, and herd them into action browsing. Or you can dispatch a scouting party across No Man's Land dressed up as pillboxes, so that the deluded Hun, instead of opening fire with a machine gun, will merely post letters in them—valuable letters, containing military secrets. Lastly, and more important still, you can disguise yourself to look like nothing at all, and in these days of intensified artillery fire it is very seldom that nothing at all is hit.

Camouflage artists turn Velie automobile into a fig tree

WWI military vehicle (not a Velie automobile)

ARTIST TURNS AUTO INTO A FIG TREE: Camouflage to save American lives, in The Los Angeles Times, September 2, 1917—

When the American boys get on the firing line in France they will be able, with the assistance of artists, to show the French and British soldiers that they have been studying the war game from many angles. For instance, they have lately taken up the subject of camouflage, and artists employed by Edwin H. Flagg Scenic Company have become so expert at disguising various kinds of equipment, including automobiles, that at a hundred yards or so it is impossible to distinguish a machine from a fig tree. [A] Velie [brand automobile was recently] “transformed into a fig tree,” and the work was done so well that at a short distance, if placed in a fig orchard, it could not be told from the trees. “Camouflage is the simplest sort of work, and stories of its use on the battlefronts show that it has already been the means of saving thousands of human lives,” said Arthur Hurtt, a local artist, yesterday. “The experiments conducted in Los Angeles have proved beyond a doubt that almost any object may be so completely hidden behind a coat of paint that it cannot be discerned from a distance of 100 or 200 yards, and an enemy might pass much closer than that without noticing it. It was shown in a most graphic way how an officers’ touring car, for instance, could be ‘erased’ by this process when the Velie was driven to a point on Long Beach Boulevard and in less than one hour so completely ‘camouflaged’ that it could not easily be discerned at a short distance, and was completely invisible at a distance equalling the width of ‘no man’s land.’”

Tom Mix stands tall | fearless, he is every inch a man

Cowboy film star Tom Mix \ he was every inch a man!

Surely, no one appreciates reader responses more than we do. But admittedly we were surprised by the number of followers who objected to our most recent post, in which we appeared to make light of the diminished stature of American artist Charles Lasar, who was fondly known as "Shorty Lasar."  To make amends, we are now posting a WWI-era Hollywood film advertisement for the famous cowboy actor Tom Mix (1880-1940). He stands heroically on his horse, keeping a look-out for outlaws. The caption reads:

Every Inch a Man! There is no camouflage about him!—no doubles to do his difficult stunts!—no actor on the face of the earth who can do what he does! TOM MIX: the man who never fakes…he is the reincarnation of fearlessness —a dare-devil who flirts with death.

In his personal life, he may have flirted otherwise too, since he was married five times. His thirst for adventure extended to cars. He died in 1940, at age sixty, when his speeding 1937 Cord 812 Phaeton swerved to avoid a highway flood detour and overturned in a desert wash near Florence AZ. The crash site is now known as the "Tom Mix Wash."

Reproduced below is another full-page ad with the same theme: Tom Mix Doesn't Camouflage, from the September-October 1918 issue of Motion Picture News.

Let it be known that we have equally high regard for Charles Lasar, however diminutive. In our opinion, he too was every inch a man.

Tom Mix doesn't camouflage

Huge phonograph is camouflaged delivery car

NEW METHOD FOR DELIVERY Novel Delivery Car Is Built Like Phonograph By R.W. Whiteside in San Bernardino News Vol 45 No 77, April 1, 1918, p. 5—

When a red buzz wagon carrying a huge “phonograph” on the rear end drew up in front of the home of a certain well-known citizen today, said citizen nearly died of heart failure. Also, he locked his checkbook in the safe before he dashed wildly to the door.

“Say,” he shouted to R.W. Whiteside, the driver, “that isn’t the phonograph I bought from you. What do you think I am, a millionaire?”

“Be calm, ladies and gentlemen,” whispered the music man; whereupon he gently unlocked a concealed door in the “phonograph” and drew forth from the open portals a “regular” machine.

“I just deliver them in this other one,” he said.

The camouflage idea was evolved by Whiteside as an advertising stunt. A huge imitation phonograph has been constructed on the rear end of the machine and is used as a delivery compartment for phonographs sold by the Whiteside Music Company on Fourth Street.

Brokerage proclivities applied to auto camouflage

Ambulance camouflage in New York (1918)

Harry K. Taylor was a college-age, self-assured scion from Hartford CT, who described himself as “a man with brokerage proclivities and tobacco-raising tendencies.” Having volunteered for service in World War I, a lengthy ordeal was required before it was determined in which capacity he should serve (he eventually ended up at a wartime secretary for the YMCA). He reported this in disdainful detail in three Sunday installments in the Hartford Courant, the first one on July 14, 1918, titled ON THE FIRING LINE WITH A HARTFORD YMCA SECRETARY. Here is a brief excerpt that describes his short-lived lame attempt at vehicle camouflage—

Then someone thought up a simple job, that of camouflaging a Ford. I had no overalls but applied and was accepted. Camouflage is so perfectly ridiculous and the paint is applied in such a haphazard fashion that even a college professor or a minister can do that. I turned my attenuated uniform inside out and tackled the car with teeth gritted. Some days later I encountered this car in Tours, not on tour, and felt so ashamed of its appearance that I wanted to hide behind a cathedral. It would have mortified a Cubist or Futurist.

Edmund Gale Camouflage Cartoon

Uses Car Camouflage to Hoodwink Pancho Villa

Ad for the Paige Lakewood 6-66

Unsigned, ANCIENT PAIGE LEADS FAST LIFE. Eighty-Year-Old Owner Camouflaged Car With Mica Dust to Outwit [Pancho] Villa. Nashville Tennessean (Nashville TN) May 29, 1921—

It was back in 1917 that the Paige ceased to manufacture the Fairfield model. These hardy ancestors of the current Paige Lakewood seem to have a way of keeping in the spotlight. The latest to claim attention is one from El Paso, Texas, and the story they tell about it makes one feel that romance is still to be found in the Southwest, even if the broncho and the pack mule have been supplanted in many instances by the lean picturesque motor car.

Working out of El Paso is a frisky young miner and prospector named H.W. Pontius, who is only a little better than 80 years old. But in spite of his tender years, Mr. Pontius is hitting the trail and conducting an extensive business that carries him over a vast stretch of territory, including portions of Mexico, New Mexico and Texas.

His is a rather hazardous calling, for he is obliged to traverse vasty stretches of desert and bad lands and climb many lonely mountain trails. A brush with a bandit or a merry race with a gang of cutthroats is a commonplace adventure for Mr. Pontius; and in the days when [Pancho] Villa was Mexico’s most troublesome citizen the prospector from El Paso constantly kept a weather eye open for that distinguished gentleman of the road, with whom he had several skirmishes.

Pancho Villa with Indian motorcycle

Buying a Fairfield when that model was the pride of the Paige line, Mr. Pontius has been using the car ever since and as nearly as he can reckon he has driven it something like 200,000 miles.

Alertness and speed are not all that are necessary if one is to keep ones skin whole in the territory Mr. Pontius roams. One must be an expert in the game of hide and seek and know how to disappear amongst the sage brush at opportune times. Consequently, Mr. Pontius developed certain ideas in “dolling” up his car that would arouse the keenest interest in our best camouflage artists.

He covered the body and chasis with small particles of mica blown into a wet varnish, in order to make the car as nearly invisible as possible. This accomplished his purpose admirably, for one could hardly make out the outlines of the car at a couple of hundred yards in the desert, and more than once when he was hard pressed the ruse has served him. Several bullet marks in the body of the car—one just back of the driver’s seat—are mute evidence that danger is very real when Mr. Pontius hits the trail.

The Fairfield shows other marks of service besides the bullet holes. The body is held together in a manner by wire, bolts and screws, but Mr. Pontius is still able to haul ore, mining machinery or whatever his business requires. The boys in El Paso have had him out in the “6-60” Paige model [shown above], but while he admits it is a fine car, he allows that his old Fairfield is still good enough for a few more games of hide and seek with the bad men of the Southwest.

WWI Camouflaged Observation Car

Above Camouflaged World War I US Army staff observation car (c1918). Based on an Ordnance Department photograph now in the collection of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). 165-WW-296A-019. Extracted from original black and white photograph and digitally colorized.

•••

Anon, ‘Soul Study’ Photos for Ugly Folk: Camera Decreases Years and Removes Double Chins for Patrons (reprinted from the New York Sun) in Abel’s Photographic Weekly. Vol 30 No 774, October 21, 1922, pp. 460-462.

I’m satisfied with photography that shows people as they are. I think that’s what it’s for. I never could see that it was any compliment to a photograph to say that it looked like an oil painting.

It isn’t a photograph’s business to be like an oil painting, and a thing that imitates something else is just a joke, with no sincerity or usefulness in it. All that foggy, smokey, posey camouflage that they’ve dragged into photography to make it look like art doesn’t make any impression on me at all. I want a picture of myself as I am or none at all, but if you want one that makes you look like a dying duck in a thunderstorm you’d better go and get it without consulting me. 

Mud to Mufti | Oleo in Camouflage

Camouflaged armored car (c1918)

Above Disruptively-painted WWI Rolls-Royce armored car (with turret machine gun removed), mired in mud, on the French battlefield (c1918). See comparable Rolls-Royce below, minus camouflage.

•••

Anon, from  OLEO PAINTERS SUED in The Stars and Stripes, July 19, 1918—

Over-artistic oleomargarine producers have been sued by the [US] Government for coloring oleo in lifelike imitation of the best creamery butter.

•••

Anon, MORE JOY TAKEN OUT OF LIFE: THERE WILL BE NO KICK LEFT IN PATENT MEDICINES JULY 1 in Rock Island Argus (Rock Island IL), May 26, 1919, p. 2—

Another function of the laboratory [newly established at the Bureau of Internal Revenue] is to protect the unknowing housewife from the sale of adulterated butter…

On oleomargarine camouflaged to resemble butter, there is a tax of 10 cents a pound, and on uncolored oleomargarine a tax of a quarter of a cent a pound, substantial evidence of the government’s purpose to see that the public gets what it pays for. Hotel proprietors or boarding house keepers who color oleomargarine and serve it to their guests are subject to the same penalties of fine and imprisonment as are visited on the manufacturer and retailer. “Butter is butter and oleo is oleo, and never the twain shall be confused,” is the maxim of the government.

WWI Armored Rolls-Royce c1919), Wikipedia.