Aerial Photography and WWI Camouflage

The following text is a news article issued by the US Signal Corps, published as "War News" in American Photography Vol 12 (1918)—

Plans have been completed for the great enlargement of facilities for training and equipping the aerial photographic force for photographing the German trenches from the skies and keeping up to the last minute the large composite picture of the whole German front…

The bulk of the training [of the aerial photographic staff] will be for the developing and printing work which must be done on a standardized plan under process specially developed during the war, often in great haste on special motor lorries close to the front and to the staff. After a month's course, the men will be given a short advanced training and immediately sent overseas for operation in the American sector.

Aerial photography has greatly developed during the war. During the single month of September, British official reports state that 15,837 aerial photographs wee taken by the British alone. No new trench can be dug, no new communication system opened up, no new batteries placed but the ever-present and infallible camera above records it for the examination of the staff below. So piercing has been this work that camouflage has been developed as a protection, thus forcing aerial photography to even greater ingenuity.

Every sector of the front is divided into plots about half a mile square, each one numbered and entrusted to a squad of photographer who become fully familiar with it. As fast as the photographs are made, they are developed, printed, reduced or enlarged to a standard scale, and then fitted into their proper place on the large composite photograph of the sector. This work requires a large force of experts in developing, printing and enlarging, as well as in map reading interpretation.

Cases are on record where only twenty minutes have elapsed from the time a photographer snapped his camera over the German trenches until his batteries were playing upon the spot shown. In that time the airman had returned to his lines, the photograph had been developed and printed, the discovery made, and the batteries given the range and ordered to fire.

Camouflage Artist | Manley Dewitt Barber

Charles & Anna Drain House, Drain OR

Above Charles and Anna Drain House (1893-1895) in Drain OR, designed by George F. Barber, brother of Manley D. Barber. Wikimedia.

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Anon, CAMOUFLAGE IN WAR BY DEKALB COUNTY BOY: Sergeant Manley D. Barber Of American Camouflage Section Describes Some of Strange Operations Employed to Deceive the Germans in the True Republican (Sycamore IL), March 8, 1919—

Camouflage, which has from the beginning of the World War been an important feature of the operations, is something entirely new as carried on in this war, and of more importance than ever before in warfare. Special troops have devoted all their energies to it, and the work of the American Camouflage Section both in the Navy and along the battle lines has excited wonder and admiration. A member of the American Camouflage Section, 40th Engineers, was Sergeant Manley D. Barber, former DeKalb boy and well-known in Sycamore being a relative of the pioneer David West and Love families of Sycamore. He describes some of his regiment’s camouflage operations in a clear and interesting manner in the Knoxville Journal, published at Knoxville TN, where he now makes his home.

After giving an account of the statement of his comrade Private Cooper the paper states: Sergeant Barber was with Private Cooper until February of 1918. He left Dijon and went to Nancy for training with the French. This training was similar to that which we received at home, only more practical and illustrated with frequent trips to the front, said Sergeant Barber. We had frequent air raids during the time I was at Nancy. After the training there, we were sent immediately to the Front. I was in the Toul sector. That was in the time of the old trench warfare, when the line was practically fixed and there was no rapid charging as in the Argonne-Meuse drive. Camouflage is really more effective in defensive than in offensive fighting for the reason that heavy camouflage material cannot be moved easily enough to keep up with a rapidly advancing army. We had to camouflage pill boxes, concrete protections for machine guns. These were sometimes below the surface, but often six feet above ground. We had to cover these with camouflage sheets in stair-steps; that is, there were a series of sheets, each smaller than the other and about five feet apart. This arrangement was made so that the shadow of the upper layers would be absorbed in the outlines of the lower ones, and no distance shadow would be cast by the whole. Sergeant Barber was in the Chateau Thierry drive and contracted trench fever. He was sent to a hospital behind the lines and reported missing for several weeks .

During the Argonne-Meuse drive there was one instance when camouflage men had to make a forest move, he said. A position was taken just behind a low hill, covered with a young forest, east of Fleiville. The guns were placed on the edge of the forest. The problem was to camouflage the guns and yet make no change in the outline of the woods as it might appear on the enemy's aerial photograph. The only thing to do was to move the forest back far enough to cover the guns and about 100 men in that particular unit, which was 20 or 30 feet. Trees were cut from the grove and stuck up in the mud thickly enough to make it look natural. The guns were covered with underbrush (real material being used wherever possible instead of manufactured camouflage) and the change in the whole when seen from an enemy plane would not have been noticeable. As a result, our guns there were never fired on. Camouflage in the winter is about as easy as in the summer. Of course the foliage on the trees helped to a certain extent in the summer, but then in the open the snow covering the nets stretched across the trenches or artillery centers aided quite as much. One of the greatest helps in the study of camouflage was the aerial photograph. That was what we had to deal with in regard to the enemy. In practicing the use of the different kinds of camouflage our own men made pictures of our work and let us see the real effect on an aerial picture. The pictures were usually made at a distance of about a mile and a half. Enemy planes hardly ever dared come any nearer than this because of the anti-aircraft guns.

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There is online information about WWI camoufleur Manley Dewitt Barber at the 2007 Knox Heritage George Barber Homes Trolley Tour.  Manley Barber was the brother of George Franklin Barber, a prominent residential architect first in DeKalb IL, and then in Knoxville TN from 1888 until his death in 1915. By the end of the 19th century, George Barber’s architectural firm was the largest in the state. Thirty-five of his elaborate Victorian houses are still standing in Knoxville, with hundreds of others across the country, and in Canada, Japan, China and the Philippines. The Manley Dewitt Barber House (designed in 1905 by George Barber for his brother) is at 1620 Washington Avenue in Knoxville.

According to the online source—

After moving to Knoxville in 1903, Manley worked with George in the architectural firm of Barber and Klintz, and also spent time as a contractor and builder. Manley was best known as a collector of shells and fossils. He found many new specimens which he sent to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC to be named; three specimens were named after him and his collection is said to have been the largest in the United States in 1928. 

Everett L. Warner Aerial View of NYC

Everett L. Warner, New York From a Sea Plane (c1919)

Above Everett Longley Warner, New York From a Sea Plane (c1919). Pastel on paper, 14 x 11 inches. As of this posting, this artwork is available for purchase at MME Fine Art in New York.

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About the Warner pastel sketch above, we were surprised and delighted to find it online. We'd seen it reproduced before, but had never seen it framed. When I showed the frame to William Adair at Gold Leaf Studios in Washington DC, he replied that it is typical of a Boston-area "Murphy-style frame," so-named because of the work of American artist and frame designer Hermann Dudley Murphy (1867-1945). As a painter, Murphy was primarily known for his portraits and landscapes, but he also did some wonderful floral still lifes. His papers are in the Archives of American Art.

When I saw Murphy's name, I realized I had heard it before, and that he was somehow connected to wartime camouflage. Indeed, that seems to be the case. In an online biographical note at the National Academy Museum website, it states that "during World War I he worked as inspector of camouflage for the US Shipping Board." During the war, ships in the Boston Navy Yard were being painted with various camouflage schemes by artists and others. Artist Philip Little from Salem MA (whom we've posted on before) was prominent in that group and was surely well-acquainted with Murphy. Little (and probably Murphy as well) was in direct contact with Everett Longley Warner, who was serving in Washington DC at time, as head of the US Navy's team of artists who designed the camouflage patterns required of all merchant ships, as regulated by the US Shipping Board.

Now back to the wonderful Warner pastel on this blog page. Here's what Helen K. Fusscas wrote in an exhibition catalog titled A World Observed: The Art of Everett Longley Warner 1877-1963. Old Lyme CT: Florence Griswold Museum, 1992—

In June 1919, although the war was over and his skills in camouflage were no longer needed, Warner had still not been discharged. He conceived a scheme whereby his last few weeks in the service would be helpful to him as an artist…As a result Warner spent three or four weeks being flown daily in US Navy seaplanes over New York City and the Eastern seaboard painting small sketches in oils from the air to be enlarged later in his studio…He completed several dozen fairly complete sketches, perhaps the first paintings ever done during actual flight.

Warner was soon discharged from the service. His first thought as a civilian was to enlarge enough pictures of flight to make an exhibition.…In a burst of enthusiasm he quickly completed three large paintings from the sketches…New York From a Sea Plane [is] the only one of this series known to have survived even as a sketch…

Warner exhibited his aerial paintings frequently, but the excitement that he had hoped to stir up never materialized. He discovered that few people new or cared what the land looked like from the air. Totally discouraged by the indifference with which his excursions into this new field were received, Warner gave up the idea of painting aerial views…[He] finally painted two out and burned the other.

Grant Wood / camouflage, aerial views, photography

Above Grant Wood, Plaid Sweater (1931). Stanley Museum of Art, University of Iowa.

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Jason Weems, Barnstorming the Prairies: How Aerial Vision Shaped the Midwest. University of Minnesota Press, 2015, p. 149—

Given his aspirations, [American artist Grant] Wood certainly could not have missed the many overlaps between camouflage and art. In fact, his assignment to camouflage was not coincidental, as the military sought out those with artistic training especially for such service. Wood also could not have overlooked the challenge to conventional practices of artistic representation posed by camouflage techniques: practices derived from the regimes of aerial vision and photography that necessitated them. The obfuscation and manipulation of observed reality demanded by camouflage diverged from the ideals of naturalism and mimesis that had long guided artists. The development of systems of looking and compositional techniques that indulged falsehood rather than truth threatened to lay bare the fundamental artifice of representation and to deconstruct the very purpose of depicting the world. Artists had always understood that representation involved invention and composition, but camouflage went further by making dissimulation an explicit goal. Camouflage's challenge to naturalism embraced and even surpassed the practices of philosophical and artistic abstraction that infused American and European art during the first decades of the century.

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Below RMS Mauretania, WWI-era camouflage-patterned British Cunard ocean liner, c1918. Digital coloring.

FALSE COLORS: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage

CAMOUPEDIA: A Compendium of Research in Art, Architecture and Camouflage

SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook

Lowest price / three book bundle with free shipping 

French Women Employed Making Camouflage Nets

MAKING CAMOUFLAGE SCREENS. French Women are Employed in Making Nets for Disguising Gun Positions, in The Watchman and Southron (Sumter SC). October 16, 1918—

Behind American lines somewhere in France. Seven hundred French women are employed in the American Camouflage station here making nets to screen from observation American batteries and machine gun sections. There was a burst of patriotic song as the Associated Press correspondent entered the large building where they work, for many of them sing as they sew.

The screening of artillery is the most imporant work of camouflage, as it is the main reliance in deceiving the aerial observer and camera and in preventing the enemy from locating our batteries.

For this purpose huge camouflage nets are provided of wire and fish-net, which cover the guns like a great horizontal tent. In the netting are tied bunches of green burlap, of the same color as the surrounding grass or foliage. And thus viewed from above, the overhanging green net merges the battery into the landscape of trees and turf.

Hundreds of these nets were being made by the women workers. The 75 millimeter takes an overhanging net, 30 feet square, the 165 millimeter gun has a 37 foot net, and the American machine gun gets an 18 foot net. The nets are graded inten colors of green and earth-brown, so that the shield may have the exact tint of the surrounding trees. The nets are shipped to the front in huge bundles, one for each gun.

It has been a problem to get the 700 women required for this deft work on the nets, and one of the chief means of drawing them is a Red Cross home for the babies of the married women, and a YMCA kitchen which gives them a good meal for 60 centimes (12 cents). Camouflage garlands are also made by the women. These garlands of green burlap are strung between the trees, in order to break up lines and diffuse edges so that the location of a convoy or battery will not show on an aerial photograph.

In the carpenter shop huge frames for green umbrellas were being made. The umbrellas open like an ordinary sun-shade, and camouflage a machine gun. In the blacksmith shop the men were turning out steel "cabins" which are sunk below the ground, for an observer. They have a front of bulletproof steel and are about as strong as a small safe. In one of these an observer is safe in the midst of a shower of shrapnel.

Laying on paint much as a scrub-woman wields a mop, an artist was walking about on a gigantic camouflage screen for an airplane hangar. The great piece of painting was spread on a field and covered an area of 1000 square yards. The artist was using a brush as big as a broom.

“Camouflage is making a constant battle against the aerial camera,” said the escort, "for with photographs made from airplanes the enemy gets a complete view of our positions unless they are obscured by some device of camouflage.” 

RELATED LINKS

Film of scene described above

The role of American women in WWI camouflage

Chicanery and Conspicuousness: Social Repercussions of  WWI Ship Camouflage

a disconcerting confusion of colors and shapes in WWI

Tank on display in Detroit (1918). Restored / colorized.

Austin C. Lescarboura, SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION OF THE CAMOUFLAGE ART: Expert Writes of the Real Reasons for the Weird Things Being Done on Land and Sea in These Days with the Intent to Deceive—Why a Steamship Is Queerly Striped and Why She Is Difficult to Locate When Thus Painted, in The Tampa Sunday Tribune Magazine Section (Tampa FL), September 15, 1918, p. 1—

The practice of deception, concealment, make-up or whatever you please to call it, gained rapidly with both sides in the present conflict. It was at about the same time of the battle of the Somme, during the summer of 1916, that this art assumed gigantic proportions and the term "camouflage," borrowed from the French, became a universal expression. The British and French armies, and most likely the German, Austrian and other enemy armies, set aside a certain number of men for the practice of camouflage. Artists, scene painters, carpenters and mechanics were impressed into the camouflage service and in short order became expert "camoufleurs." Since then wonders have been accomplished in this direction; but, as in the case of so many other phases of this war, must remain a deep secret until the struggle comes to be written in its entirety—and without the censor.

Nothing has been of greater assistance to the all-powerful artillery than the airplane. Queer combination this. to be sure; the steel monster, belching fire and hurling thousands of pounds of steel and high explosive, works hand in hand with the frail wood and Iinen airplane which goes about its work in the most graceful of manners. Yet, carrying the observer over enemy territory, the airplane enables the aiming of long-range artillery with a remarkable degree of accuracy. By means of wireless telegraphy, the aerial observer can signal back to his artillery chief the exact position of the target; and as the shells come over and strike he can signal back whether they are falling too long or too short, and how far to either side, until after a number of rounds the shells register on the target.

It is the eagle-eyed air scout against whom lofty perch everything is open to him, just as to a visitor at an exposition every detail of a model landscape is sharply delineated. The landscape below appears in the form of a relief map, with variegated patches indicating different kinds of terrain such as marshes, fields, woods, lakes and hills. Trenches plainly show as dark or light, while roads appear as ribbons of gray or yellow.

But camouflage foils the airman. Batteries are covered with branches and with reed screens until they take on the appearance of the surrounding fields or woods. Ammunition dumps are covered with canvas painted to simulate brown soil or the green of the field. Tents when used are painted with a patchwork design which breaks up the outlines so that they blend with the surrounding landscape. Trenches are provided with light screens so as to eliminate sharp shadows, and in some cases are covered over with reeds and foliage. Roads are spanned by reed or canvas screens which prevent the airman from observing traffic. All these things and a thousand more are done to fool the airman, until he has at last accepted the creed of the multitude. "You never can tell!"

In order to make trenches less conspicuous particular attention is paid to shadows. What makes aerial observation so effective is the oblique lighting of sunrise or sunset, for then the sun's rays cast long and sharp shadows which accentuate all objects which, with overhead lighting, would hardly show. Oblique lighting makes for high relief, and consequently more effective observation. To this end it is now common practice to make use of screens for eliminating shadows. These screens generally consist of narrow strips of cheesecloth supported on wooden stakes in front of the trenches, so that the direct rays of the sun cannot fall on the trenches and throw a sharp shadow. Instead. only a diffused, shadowless light strikes the earthwork. The cheesecloth screen, in turn, is of such color and size as to be unnoticeable.

Buildings may have to be guarded against shadows. What would be excellent camouflage at sunrise is totally ineffective at noon and at sunset, so that camouflage is a sunrise to sunset proposition. Generally, unless the camouflaged object is of paramount importance and is receiving undue attention on the part of the enemy, a happy medium is decided upon and the camouflage is an average one for the entire day. Such steps as lightening dark sides of buildings and darkening light sides, in order to average up or distribute more or less evenly the light on all sides [called countershading], is a common feature of camouflage.

The use of reeds and foliage is perhaps the most common form of battlefield make-up. Almost everything can be protected by a layer of well arranged reeds or foliage or sod, and the majority of guns are protected in this manner so that they can fire from their retreats without betraying their location. Thousands of shells are left in the open behind the lines. A bomb dropped by an airman would cause them to blow up in one terrific explosion; but a suitable covering of reeds or foliage or painted canvas prevents the airman from discovering the ammunition dump.

Spotted camouflage is quite effective in breaking up the outlines of any object. For instance, in the case of large guns mounted on railroad carriages, the usual camouflage consists of a leopard-like coat of paint. Variegated splotches of paint break up the stern lines of the gun so that at a distance it melts into the surrounding landscape, or at least appears as a mystifying, shapeless mass. The spotted form of camouflage is mostly employed where other means are unavailable, and simple as it may seem it is quite effective, according to reports.

If it were not for the aerial camera, camouflage would be a simple matter in so far as the airman is concerned. But by degrees the airman has perfected his photographic apparatus to a point where it tells him many things which would escape his notice if he depended solely on his eyes.

Aerial cameras now make perfect photographs of the ground below them even when flying at altitudes of 5,000 feet and more. The photographs, when developed and printed, are carefully studied by "photographic readers" at headquarters, and there is very little, indeed, that escapes the notice of these highly trained specialists. A little spot which would pass unnoticed through the hands of the average man is detected by the "reader" and made out as a new pill-box or small blockhouse. A slight shadow in front of a section of trench indicates a cylinder of gas for a contemplated poison-cloud attack, no doubt. A dark splotch to one side of the picture indicates that the enemy has been digging, for freshly turned soil is of a different shade from other soil; and note is made of this fact so that the "heavies," or large guns, can send a few shells in that direction.

Now camouflage is, or rather was, generally made in natural colors, so as to deceive the eye of the airman. But the camera has a totally different "eye" and responds to a different range of colors. So natural colors camouflage does not deceive the camera to any great extent. Furthermore, both sides today make use of panchromatic plates and yellow filters, which permit the camera still further to differentiate between camouflage greens and natural greens, or between false and genuine verdure, since the color screens and color plates can pick out shades with great precision. Again, certain cameras, particularly those of the enemy, are of the stereoscopic variety: that is to say. they have two lenses and operate on the same principle as the human eyes. The reason why we see everything in lifelike form as compared to the flat appearance of ordinary photographs is that we see everything through two eyes. Each eye, obviously, sees the common object from a slightly different angle, and the two in combination give the stereoscopic or relief effect. By means of such cameras the airmen are obtaining pictures in high relief. Fake trenches, only a foot or two in depth, plainly show as forgeries on the stereoscopic plates, and guns, pillboxes, listening posts and other works stand out clearly.

It is the camera which represents the main obstacle of the camoufleurs. But by clever grouping of photographic and visual camouflage a happy medium is struck. It will ever be a contest between the skill of the camoufleur on the one hand and the wits of the "picture reader" on the other. Fortunately for the former, anti-aircraft gunners prevent the airman from approaching closer than several thousand feet from the camouflaged objects. And this distance is the salvation of the art.

It is by no means to be assumed that the airman is the only one for whom camouflage is intended. The enemy on the ground and in observation balloons must also be deceived, bewildered and prevented from seeing all he wants to see. For that reason camouflage is also applied in the horizontal plane to foil the eyes of those in the trenches across the way. Listening posts are disguised in a thousand and one ways, and snipers' stations are effectively masked so as not to reveal their occupants engaged In shooting human game. Trench periscopes are made in the form of sandbags, and there are thousands of ways in which the enemy is fooled. Tanks, when going up to the attack, are bedecked in a coat of war paint, which would have brought hilarious joy to the most taciturn Indian warrior—reds, greens, blues, yellows, pinks. All these hues appear as in a mist on the steel sides of the tanks for camouflage purposes. Gaudy as the camouflage is, at a distance it blends into an indistinct neutral gray, and the outlines of the ugly monster are such that one cannot tell where they begin and where they leave off. How, then, can the German gunners spot their guns?

Camouflage is the very salvation of the machine gun. This weapon is the most deadly of all the terrible machinery of modern warfare; it is the lurking rattlesnake with leaden venom; it exacts a tremendous toll among the soldiers, so great, in fact, that it is the most dreaded of all. Soldiers who nonchalantly face the roar of heavy artillery and the drone of murderous airplanes pale at the rat-tat-tat of a solitary machine gun pound's somewhere in the dim distance.

It has therefore come to pass that an army will only attack after all the machine guns in front of it have been accounted for. It a single machine gun is known to be in working order, every cannon within range is turned in its direction in order to destroy it. In truth, a commander today does not hesitate to turn his twelve-inch guns on a solitary machine gun post in order to blast it from the face of the earth. So the machine gun, which forms the backbone of any defense, must be protected, and since steel and concrete are of little avail, its only protection lies in camouflage. Some of the cleverest camouflage is to be found in the concealment of machine guns.

Camouflage has a two-fold function: first. and as already discussed, to protect certain military works through concealment; second, to fool the enemy and draw his fire to take targets. In the latter case the enemy is made to waste his ammunition and at the same time the real targets near by are untouched. The most spectacular feats of camouflage have been those in the fake target class. Every army, at some time or another, has dug fake trenches and has constructed entire batteries of fake guns so as to draw enemy fire. At a height of 5,000 or more feet the air scout can be readily deceived; a barrel, a pair of discarded wagon wheels, a few pieces of wood and a few charges of black powder will make the most realistic howitzer; and a trench two feet in depth, manned with dummies, will convince the airmen above that an attack is forming. Thousands of shells are rained on such targets by enemy gunners—thousands of wasted rounds—while the real targets are untouched. It would be very interesting to know just how much ammunition has been wasted in this manner since the beginning of the war, but that is another fact which must forever remain behind the self-pride of all belligerents. At any rate, the aerial camera and the clever "picture reader" are making this form of camouflage increasingly difficult.

Camouflage is not a land war art exclusively; it has its application to marine warfare. As in the case of military camouflage, the naval branch has two broad objects: first, to decrease visibility; second, to confuse or fool the enemy.

By way of decreasing the visibility of vessels numerous schemes have been tried, but as yet the art is in its infancy. Indeed, in American ports there are to be seen large numbers of transatlantic steamships no two of which have the same kind of camouflage.

One system Intended to lower the visibility contemplates the use of the primary colors in varied proportions, areas and shapes of areas. This arrangement makes for a gray at a distance; a gray, it is said, that is far more effective than the flat war gray formerly employed on battleships. Another system contemplates the reduction or elimination of lights and shadows so that the darkest parts of the ship are lightened and the lightest parts are darkened, so as to produce a better blend with the sky and water. Still another system calls for a wave like painting of green, blue and white. so that the outlines of the hull will be lost in those of the surrounding water.

All of these systems have been tried, and since they continue to be employed it is safe to say they all have merit. But since, through the use of proper color screens or ray filters, the U-boat observers might hit upon a plan that would make the camouflaged ships stand out more prominently than if they were not so decorated, playing right into their hands, as it were. It is obvious that any specific details given out at this time are only apt to furnish the desired information to the ingenious Hun and in this way increase the toll which he is exacting.

There is no doubt that much can be done to lower the visibility of any ship by limiting its superstructure, particularly the masts and funnels. It would seem that the ideal ship, at present would one without masts and funnels, and making use of anthracite coal and forced draught while in the danger zone. Such a vessel would be invisible to the lurking U-boat even a few miles away, and it is quite conceivable that the U-boat would have to come across the inconspicuous steamers more or less through accident.

The submarine freighter idea has repeatedly come up in considering ways and means of combating the U-boat, and beyond doubt, despite some mechanical obstacles, this type of transport would prove most efficacious. In truth, the British are employing submerged barges which are towed by small oceangoing tugs, with excellent results, and, after all, these are nothing more than the submarine freighter idea.

Fooling the U-boat commander is accomplished by all manner of weird designs. One scheme is to confuse the U-boat's range finder by scrolls and curves in bright colors. A range finder functions best when trained on an object presenting a solid mass, and the disconcerting effect of a nightmare of color and shapes can be imagined by even the lay mind. Certain color schemes tend to give the ship a shortened appearance, while others cause a funnel to disappear so that the identity of the vessel is hidden. In still other instances, a vessel is painted so that a destroyer or U-boat appears to be alongside.

Then there is the matter of determining a vessel's speed. In order to aim a torpedo the U-boat commander must know the approximate speed of his victim and its direction of travel, so that he can aim his torpedo some distance ahead and cause it to arrive at a predetermined point at the same time as the target. Fake bow waves give the slow moving freighter the earmarks of an ocean greyhound.

Captain Fritz of the U-368, through the "eye" of his slippery craft, estimates the speed of [unnamed ship] to be about eighteen knots because of the high bow wave; whereas the tub is ploughing along at twelve knots. The result is that his torpedo misses.

Marine camouflage depends entirely keeping the U-boats beneath the waves. Just as long as the allied submarine chasers and torpedo boat destroyers roam the sea in large numbers and as long as the merchantmen are armed the U-boat must needs seek the shelter of the waves and shoot at its intended victim by the aim of its periscope. And it is far easier to fool the periscope than it is the human eye at the present stage of the campaign.

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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 /  

camouflage, infrared photography, aerial surveillance

Above Page 2 of the Color Feature Section of the Boston Sunday Post, December 27, 1936. It discusses wartime camouflage in relation to infrared photography, and credits the achievements of Albert William Stevens (1886-1949), US Army Air Corps, a balloonist and aerial photographer. 

In a Wikipedia biography, it is noted that (in 1930) Captain Stevens “took the first photograph of the Earth in a way that the horizon’s curvature is visible,” and that, two years later, he “took the first photograph of the Moon’s shadow projected onto the Earth during a solar eclipse…”

Aerial Views, Camouflage & Crazy Quilts

Prior to World War I, in part in response to the Armory Show (1913), there was a flood of comparisons (in cartoons in particular) of cubism and futurism with less exalted forms of "art," such as the "crazy quilts" (made of leftover quilting fragments) created unassumingly by America's grandmothers. Above is an especially funny cartoon of grandma and her cubist quilt. Drawn by Clare Briggs and titled THE ORIGINAL CUBIST, it was published in the New York Evening Sun, on Tuesday, April 1, 1913.

After World War I began, camouflage was widely adopted, and inevitably there were comparisons of camouflage and cubism, and, in turn, of camouflage and crazy quilts. More serious, and far more interesting as well, were the various many comparisons of cubism, camouflage, crazy quilts and views of the earth from an airplane (a novelty then). Here's what Ernest Hemingway said in "A Paris-to-Strasbourg Flight" in the Toronto Daily Star on September 9, 1922—

The plane began to move along the ground, bumping like a motorcycle, and then slowly rose into the air. We headed almost straight east of Paris, rising in the air as through we were sitting inside a boat that was being lifted by some giant, and the ground to flatten out beneath us. It looked cut into brown squares, yellow squares, green squares and big flat blotches of green where there was a forest. I began to understand Cubist painting.

Of course Hemingway wasn't the only one to make such comparisons. Journalists and the general public saw it too. Below are two aerial photographs of the French landscape from the same time period. The second view, which appeared initially in Collier's Weekly in 1918, was captioned with a text that read—

NO WONDER CUBISM STARTED IN FRANCE! No one need wonder any longer where the cubists got their inspiration. They must have gone up in an airplane and had a good look at France! This airplane view of an observation balloon floating over a French village is as good a bit of cubist art as anything that Marcel Duchamp ever turned out.

landscape camouflage as flat pattern abstract design

Above Collier’s: The National Weekly. January 10, 1914. Artist unknown. This cover design and illustration do not pertain directly to Louis B. Siegriest or military camouflage. But the jacket the person is wearing, with its “flat pattern” abstract design, seems entirely consistent.

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Louis Siegriest in Louis Bassi Siegriest Reminiscences: Oral History Transcript. Interview conducted by V.L. Gilb. California: Bancroft Library, 1954—

 [At the time that the US entered World War II in 1941]…I knew a man [in San Francisco] who had been in the First World War as a camoufleur. He called me up and asked me if I would like to come down and join the camouflage outfit. So I thought that would be a thing I would want to do, and I went down and joined the camouflage outfit.

…This was with the US Engineers [Army Corps of Engineers]. That was I think the third day after the war [was declared]…

…they were looking for camoufleurs at that time, and they were very hard to get because very few people had experience, which I myself didn’t have, but this man, he was in the First World War [in France], and he was with [Homer] St. Gaudens and Abe Rattner, the painter.

…So he sort of took charge of the training of the men to be camoufleurs because the men who were head[ing] the department knew nothing of it. They had to read all this time while this fellow took over and trained us to do this type of work.

…His name was Stanley Long [1892-1972]. He is an artist, himself. He has a show at the present time [1954] at the Maxwell Gallery of cowboys and horses. He’s pretty good at it, too, Western type of painting…

…I stayed with them [the camouflage unit] until practically the end of the war…

[Question: How did your work at a WWII camoufleur contribute to your eventual work as an abstract painter?]

…Well, all this time we were working on the drawings of camouflage installations, [and] it had to be worked out in flat pattern. And they all worked into sort of abstract patterns, and that sort of interested me because I had never worked that way. But I had a feeling all the time that that was something I would like to do. So it sort of changed my painting, after working in this camouflage work. I saw things with a different view than I had before. And I still don’t paint as an abstract [artist], but I use an abstract pattern as a base in practically everything I do. I mean I start that way, in more or less flat pattern. And then I work my realistic [components] into the pattern. I found that it works out better than the way I used to work, just straight painting and trying to pull it all together. This way I start out with a pattern, and I worked into it that way.

•••

In a later interview, conducted in 1978 for the Archives of American Art by Terry St. John and Paul Karlstrom, Siegriest gave a slightly different account of the same experiences:

Question: …Some time in 1941 you went to work for the United States Army Corps of Engineers. What did you do for them?



 LS: I went into camouflage at that time. There was that cowboy artist by the name of Danny Long [sic, Stanley Long], whom I knew.  He was a friend of [Maurice] Logan’s. I met him over in San Francisco on the second day of the war, I think. He said they had just called him back. He did camouflage during the First World War, and he said they called him back to teach the younger fellows camouflage. He said, “Why don’t you join up?” I said I would love to. It took me a couple of days to go through the process, but I finally went in and it was easy for me. You were assigned to a job and you made these designs and then they were handed out to different companies to do the work.

Q: Now you did a design like a flat abstract pattern. Would it be an aerial view?



LS: An aerial view.  

Q: And then your design would be sent out to...

LS: Different companies. They would do the painting, nets or whatever. 

Q: What was it like over at Fort Cronkite and around there? Didn’t they use different colored plants and things like that to create patterns?

LS: Yes, but I did the Benicia thing up there, Benicia arsenals. That was designed mostly in there and I wouldn’t have a great deal to do. I’d look at how it looked and then I would fly it. 

Q: They’d put you in an airplane?



LS: Yes, I’d go to Hamilton Field, get a plane and go up there. At 6,000 feet I’d look at it. 

Q: How did it look?



LS: It was okay, sometimes I’d change the design.

Q: What did it look like at 10,000 feet?

LS: It looked like an abstract design. The way I did it was to go up there first and see what the land looked like on the outside. Then I’d bring the land in to the buildings; if there was a green patch over there I’d bring the green patch into the buildings. If there was brown, or dark, I’d bring it all in. So I’d go up and look down and see if that was right. And then there were other ways of doing it. I went up to Klamath, which was a radar station, and bought an old barn and moved it down (the barn) over the top of the radar station. We were on the coast.

Q: How did it look?

LS: Oh, it looked like a ranch, I’d build fences all around.  

Q: What was your experience as an artist?… Did this turn you on to any ideas for your later paintings?



LS: Well, more or less, I guess it did. At that time I painted. I even took my paints along.

Q: What kind of paintings did you do?

LS: I’d do things along the coast, you know.

Q: More straightforward kind of landscapes?

LS: More straightforward landscapes.

Q: Previously when you were doing landscapes you were looking straight ahead at them, and that’s a very abstract way of looking at landscape, like looking down.

LS: I even painted some of the installations.  I got into a lot of trouble by doing it because the Army thought I was giving secrets away. They took all the paintings from me and locked them up. I got them back. Well, that was good, working for the camouflage. And then, during that time, Life and Time had war artists.…

Postscript It may also be of interest that Louis Siegriest's second wife, artist Edna Stoddart (1888-1966), née Edna Lehnhardt, was the niece of Josephine Earp, the common-law wife of Wyatt Earp.

WWII aircraft factories hidden from enemy aerial view

Above An aerial view of the Lockheed-Vega aircraft factory in Burbank CA, during WWII, when the entire facility was hidden beneath a vast simulation of houses, stores and residential neighborhoods.

•••

CAMOUFLEURS GOT BUSY in Daily News (Perth, Western Australia) August 4, 1945, p. 10—

The US entered World War II with many a war plant that needed careful defense.

Among the most vulnerable were flimsily protected airplane plants along the eastern and western coasts. They were unexpendable and immovable. Their nakedness demanded some sort of wrapping.

So the US Corps of Engineers put to work a motley legion of industrial designers, billboard painters, crack Hollywood illusionists, and serious artists.

By last week, workmen were yanking wire trees and make-believe houses off many camouflaged war plants.

The makeup job had been costly: Fullblown protective concealment of thirty-seven vital plants had cost 22 million dollars. Other money went for simpler tone-down work, or “disruptive painting,” at smaller plants and airfield hosts.

In the heat of its enthusiasm for plenty of camouflage, the Corps of Engineers gave out contracts for disguising fields hundreds of miles inland.

Famed industrial designer Raymond Loewy turned camoufleur to plan the two million dollar “passive protection” of Baltimore’s Glenn Martin bomber factory.

Warner Brothers technicians had to protect the big Douglas plants at Santa Monica against twin risks. Within easy periscope sight from the Pacific, it was vulnerble to shells as well as bombs.

Douglas airfield architects had their camouflage plan ready before Pearl Harbor. They made minatures, then photographed them from simulated bombing altitudes.

Building the dummy airport, phony plants, and a fake residential [neighborhood], complete with washing on clotheslines, took two and a half years, and cost two and a half million dollars.

It was duplicated on the plants when the war came.

Masking the consolidated plant at San Diego called for great nets draped over the Pacific Highway.

At Seattle, the task was difficult.

Boeing’s Flying Fortress plant was sandwiched between busy Boeing Field and a natural landmark, the Duwamish River.

Camoufleurs hid the field so trickily that veteran pilots had to ask the way in.

Atop the Boeing plants went a 26-acre village, made of chicken wire, canvas, lumber and painted chicken featers. The town had fifty-three houses, stores and a gas station.

Some of its streets crossed the field, went up Beacon Hill.

Camoufleurs skipped the river.

•••

Below The large, concealed underground parking lot at the Lockheed-Vega plant in Burbank.

1918 bird's eye / no wonder cubist art started in France

aerial view of village in France (1918)

Above An aerial photograph from Collier's Weekly, June 22, 1918, p. 10, which included the following caption—

NO WONDER CUBISM STARTED IN FRANCE! No one need wonder any longer where the cubists got their inspiration. They must have gone up in an airplane and had a good look at France! This airplane view of an observation balloon floating over a French village is as good a bit of cubist art as anything that Marcel Duchamp ever turned out.

•••

Henry G. Wales, Correspondent of the International News Service with the AEF, HOW THE LINES LOOK FROM A FRENCH AIRPLANE: Trip Across No Man's Land Has Its Thrills Even at a Height of 6,500 Feet—American Batteries' Havoc in The Stars and Stripes (France), May 3, 1918, p. 7—

I have been two miles inside the German lines—at a height of 6,500 feet. I flew over the American lines on the Toul front, crossed No Man's Land, and penetrated as far as the enemy second line defense. I saw some of the destruction inflicted by bursts of gunfire from American batteries, and even while over the German positions I saw American shells drop there and silently explode, spouting a dusty upheaval of brown dirt mixed with smoke.

I made the flight, which is the first taken over the actual fighting lines by a civilian, war correspondent or otherwise, since the war began, in one of the British two-seater Sopwith observation biplanes used by American observers in regulating American artillery fire, and piloted by a French sub-lieutenant who usually takes up with him an American observer. The only difference was that the twin machine guns were not put in place for my trip, as they are when the combination observer-machine gunner goes up.

It was just after four o'clock sun-time and excellently clear for observation. A group of mechanicians strapped me to the bucket seat deep down in the fuselage, so that only my head showed and I looked squarely at the pilot's cranium, just showing in front of me.

Mile a Minute on the Ground
We raced down the field and picked up a mile a minute gait, then rose so softly that before I realized we were off the ground the hangars and buildings seemed to be dropping below. We circled over the field a while, banking steeply on the turns to make our height, as the fields are near the front, and an airplane must fly high to cross the lines, otherwise it is dangerous business.

Mounting to 6,000 feet, we started toward the front, traversing roads and villages I knew well from passing through them daily in an automobile. As we gained height, with our speed exceeding two miles a minute and the wind pressure becoming greater, it seemed though we were standing stock still.

As I gazed through the floor glass of the plane, objects below made it seem as if we were barely creeping along, just making headway against some raging gale, though in reality there was scarcely any breeze. But gradually we passed landmark after landmark that I knew, and I realized we were really moving fast.

Then, far to the right, I saw another French machine at about the same level, also apparently stationary, although in reality moving as fast as we were. We were so far above the earth's surface that one lost all sense of movement save that the air rushing past and filling the lungs with great gasps of oxygen.

War Zone Creeps In
Scrutinizing the landscape below I passed the rearmost American Army zone, out of danger except for long-range guns, then gradually the war zone crept in almost imperceptibly. I first noticed the telltale shadows invariably cast by the most skillful camouflage. Then I saw how mere manmade camouflage cannot mimic nature exactly, no matter how hard he is trying to copy the landscape.

Soon we saw the beginning of the communication trenches. Sinuous, winding, irregular, they toiled devious ways like moles' tunnels seen on a moist morning at home. Then, instead of villages, I could see merely clumps of ruined, shell-torn stone houses, and out from the clumps stretched the wonderful French highways—clear, clean-cut and ribbon-like under the eye, so that I could tell exactly where I was by their configuration from the pilot's map I carried.

It was the roads that told us first that we were approaching the actual fighting zone—that stretch close up to the front line trenches which ie dally and nightly ploughed up by shells. There the highways widened, lost perceptibly, and vanished like a ribbon fraying in tiny strands at the ends.

Where the Road Ends
The thoroughfares gradually lost themselves in the yellowish-brown strip marking No Man's Land. Through powerful binoculars I looked down upon the maze of American trenches, inter-winding, interlocking, seaming the earth to a considerable depth behind a tiny hairlike line trench marking the advanced fire trench. All this area was so shell-pitted that it resembled nothing so much as the footprints of thousands of dogs on the seaside sands, at some places blurred and blended into millions of tiny undulations where the rain had washed down the softened shell crater marks.

The lane of No Man's Land, as far as the eye could see, was a baren, empty sit torn up, yet still with certain marks left, such as a shell-battered stone farmhouse which the gunners of neither side had so far seen fit to raze, and an old cow stable whose walls were still standing at a feeble height. These places are favorite rendezvous for night patrols in attempting to gain pos- session of the machine guns of their opponents, who try to enter.

Then I passed the advanced German line. It looked exactly like the American line, with the same endless scroll of trenches burrowing wormily every which way and extending back to great depth.

We veered left and saw the spot where the American bombardment had prepared the way for the raid of the previous morning. The effects of the rain of shells were plainly visible, the new craters bowing up bolder and deeper than others which had been made a long time before.

Roads Begin Out of Nothing
Passing over the Germans' first network of trenches, I noticed the stream-like communicating positions leading back towards the second organized position. There, too I saw clumsily camouflaged gun pits, and glancing at the map found them accurately noted there for our gunners' information.

The villages behind the enemy's line were crumbling and shot torn exactly the same as those behind ours, and the roads began again from nothing, gradually assuming shape in the fine highways a little way further on.

No puffs of white smoke, indicating shrapnel, nor of black smoke, indicating high explosive, molested us. We continued onward, not straight ahead, but obliquely, so that we could veer off and double back if a hostile fighting plane appeared. We saw a couple of German two-seater observation machines regulating artillery fire at about our own level, but they minded their own business and we paid no attention to them.

Gazing earthward, I saw shells coughed up from the from the throats of American guns far behind plump into the enemy's positions and burst, throwing up cloudlets of black-brown dirty smoke.

Once, when we were farthest within the enemy's lines, I looked back toward the German front line and saw several flashes which I afterwards learned were trench mortars throwing flying pigs over toward the American lines.

Not a Human Being in Sight
In all that journey I had not seen a single moving human being, through my glasses, despite the fact that the subterranean positions beneath teemed with fighting men. In all the advanced positions on both sides I did not see a single moving vehicle, although far off to the rear of the German lines I could discern dust clouds rising from convoys on the move.

We turned slightly, tilting steeply on our wing, and soared homeward. The pilot signaled to me to look down, and, staring through the floor-glass, I saw another French machine much lower. Almost at the same instant a dull thud penetrated the terrific noise of the whirling motor. The pilot motioned again, and I saw a fluffy white cloudlet of anti-aircraft shrapnel—enemy gunners trying to lay the range on the comrade beneath us.

Then came a dozen more almost inaudible thuds, and I saw a string of these fluffy white cloudlets hanging in the air along the path which the French machine below had been taking. But he was far away—he wing slipped, turned, and escaped entirely. Although we were less than 10,000 feet up, enemy anti-aircrafters did not choose us for a target.

Passing again the American battery positions, I saw ominous flashes from the breeches, but heard no shot fired or shell whistling through the air. We passed over an American observation balloon and reached the field, alighting like thistledown at 80 miles an hour.

I looked at my watch. We had been gone 35 minutes, but it had seemed ages because of the persistent idea that we had been battling continually against a head-on gale.

"Did you see that Boche single-seater above us just before we turned back?" asked the sub-lieutenant pilot, hopping from his seat. "I think he spotted us without a machine gun and thought us easy prey, as he was on his way home, then turned and chased us a little way. Otherwise, I would have taken you over and shown you the German positions there, with big guns mounted, and their observation positions."

WWI aerial photography

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 / 

FALSE COLORS: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage

CAMOUPEDIA: A Compendium of Research

on Art, Architecture and Camouflage

SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook

a bowl of grapenuts made to taste just like a steak

Above World War I camouflaged lorry at Langley Field VA. School of Aerial Photography, c1918. Public domain.

•••

As Oscar Wilde famously said, “All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.” It has yet to be determined what inspires bad camouflage music and lyrics —

WE ARE THE CAMOUFLEURS.
Words and Music by Arthur M. Fournier. Los Angeles, c1918.

This great big fight of nations, has pressed the wits of men.
The way they spring sensations, gets thrilling now and then.
So architects and stagehands, with artists started in.
At the game of camouflaging, hear their battle cry to win. For—

CHORUS
We are the camoufleurs with our pots and pails of paint,
We are boys so bold who make things what they ain’t.
We pull the wool right o’er their eyes.
Our middle name is disguise.
We are the Camoufleurs, the canny, cammy Camoufleurs.
We are the Camoufleurs.

Now orders came from Hoover—a hurry call to fake.
To make a wad of grapenuts, looks like a juicy steak.
Put cream into the milk cans, make hardtack into cake.
Ev’ry time they sprung a new one, they would sing for Wilhelm’s sake. For—

CHORUS
We are the camoufleurs with our pots and pails of paint,
We are boys so bold who make things what they ain’t.
We pull the wool right o’er their eyes.
Our middle name is disguise.
We are the Camoufleurs, the canny, cammy Camoufleurs.
We are the Camoufleurs.

Now way back there in our town, sit Tom and Al and Bill.
Those same old phoney soldiers, they’re playing poker still.
They’re passing round the pasteboards, and looking mighty wise.
But we’ve got that bunch a-guessing, us camouflaging guys. For—

CHORUS
We are the camoufleurs with our pots and pails of paint,
We are boys so bold who make things what they ain’t.
We pull the wool right o’er their eyes.
Our middle name is disguise.
We are the Camoufleurs, the canny, cammy Camoufleurs.
We are the Camoufleurs.

•••

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