Battleships are very large, belch smoke and move pretty slowly. If you were tasked with hiding one out on the open water, how would you go about doing it?

This has been a long-standing challenge and the military’s best attempts were all pretty average. Low visibility grey was their answer. Not a great answer, but an answer.

In April 1917, German U-boats were sinking 8 battleships a day! Grey battleships were not cutting it.

The person who came forward with a solution was no less than an artist from the British Army, Norman Wilkinson. His brilliant idea? It’s impossible to camouflage ships, so let’s do the total opposite.

Wilkinson’s aim was not to conceal the battleships but to confuse the enemy. He developed a radical camouflage scheme that used bold shapes and violent contrasts of colour and coined it dazzle camouflage.

These ships look like floating cubist paintings. They are entirely ridiculous. You can probably guess the army’s reaction. For an institution that prided itself on being sneaky and subtle, this was far too radical and bright.

During a demonstration of dazzle, it’s said that a confused U.S. admiral went off, yelling, “How the hell do you expect me to estimate the course of a God-damn thing all painted up like that?”. 

Wilkinson was subsequently asked to help set up an American dazzle department under the Navy’s Bureau of Construction and Repair.

But it turns out that the history of dazzle camouflage is not such a simple story.

Wilkinson claimed the idea. But, aside from nature having perfected dazzle camouflage over millennia (hello zebras on the savanna), quite a few other chaps came up with pretty much the exact same strategy.

While it’s entertaining to try and untangle who deserves the ultimate dazzle crown, there’s another question that really needs answering: did dazzle camouflage actually work?

Sources:

• Norman Wilkinson (artist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Wilkinson_(artist)
• Norman Wilkinson https://artuk.org/discover/artists/wilkinson-norman-18781971
• Norman Wilkinson CBE RI https://darnleyfineart.com/artist/norman-wilkinson/
• WW1: How did an artist help Britain fight the war at sea? https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/how-did-an-artist-help-britain-fight-the-war-at-sea/zmkx8xs
• Toy Boat Camouflage http://camoupedia.blogspot.com/2012/07/toy-boat-camouflage.html
• Camoufleuse: The Dazzling of Women at War https://modernismmodernity.org/articles/camoufleuse
• Dazzle camouflage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage
• Women Camouflage Artists http://camoupedia.blogspot.com/2010/03/women-camouflage-artists.html 
• How the Absurd "Dazzle" Camouflage Strategy Ended WWI Carnage https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/how-the-absurd-dazzle-camouflage-strategy-ended-wwi-carnage
• When the British Wanted to Camouflage Their Warships, They Made Them Dazzle https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-british-wanted-camouflage-their-warships-they-made-them-dazzle-180958657/
• http://camoupedia.blogspot.com/2010/10/william-andrew-mackay-and-optical.html