THE MOST familiar kinds of camouflage make one thing appear to be two, two things one, and so on. Camouflage artists (called camoufleurs) make it an arduous challenge to see a figure on a ground (called blending), or to distinguish one category of object from another (mimicry). Less familiar but potentially far more effective is disruptive or dazzle camouflage in which a single thing appears to be a hodgepodge of unrelated components.
PICTURED HERE [right] is a World War I American troop ship called the USS Leviathan (captured from the Germans, it had formerly been the Vaterland), dressed in a wonderful camouflage scheme that was designed by an American seascape painter named Frederic Waugh, a member of a naval camouflage team headed by Iowa-born artist Everett Warner (shown above applying camouflage patterns to a wooden ship model). Other views of the Leviathan are below on this page, while the original plans (which differ somewhat from the final result) are also reproduced at right.
British and American ship camoufleurs faced the problem during WWI of having to invent hundreds of new dazzle ship painting schemes. Initially, they not only wanted to make a unique pattern on each dazzle-painted ship, they also preferred that each side of any ship be one-of-a-kind. They couldn't do it, and they settled instead for a "template" approach, in which certain patterns became standard and were adapted for use on comparable ships.
Both Warner and Waugh were traditionally trained academic artists, and the former was discouraged when US journalists likened dazzle camouflage to Cubism. His efforts at camouflage, Warner later explained, had in no way been irresponsible, carefree or spontaneous, and indeed, "it was precisely when our work was most firmly grounded on the book of Euclid that the uninitiated were the most positive that the ships were being painted haphazard by a group of crazy Cubists."
US Government photographs above show the its naval camouflage team (c1918) in the process of making ship models, then applying dazzle patterns, for subsequent testing purposes. In the top photograph, Frederic Waugh is seated second from the right, painting ship models with other members of the camouflage team. In the lower photograph, the person on the left is apparently not Everett Warner (earlier, I mistakenly said that it was). Reproduced at right is a photograph of a dazzle-painted ship model on the left, as compared with a monochrome gray model.
• • •
WANT THE full story of artists’ contributions to military camouflage? Order this book (including international orders) at lowest available
discount price
As discussed in detail on this website, an American artist named Everett Longley Warner (1877-1963) was one of the chief contributors to US ship camouflage during both World Wars. Through the courtesy of his son, Thomas Warner, we are now able to post photographs of his wooden ship models that have survived. Most were destroyed in 1972 in a fire at Warner’s painting studio.
[A dazzle-painted ship] was like an enormous cubist painting with great sheets of ultramarine blue, black, and green, sometimes parallel but more often with sharp corners cleaving into one another, and although you don’t quite make it out, you can divine a reason, a plan, a guiding principle, a scheme.
—Rene Gimpel Diary of an Art Dealer
Everett
Warner
Frederic Waugh
John Gregory
Gordon
Stevenson
M. O’Connell
M. Nash
Everett
Warner
Frederic Waugh
Above WWI-era caricature of a dazzle painted foot soldier, by Bruce Bairnsfather (1917).
That this kind of Cubist painting on a colossal scale should have proved useful in the World War is only one more example of the fact—that you can never tell!
—Charles DeKay
In this photograph [above] of Warner’s team of camouflage artists, the identity of each person is indicated. At far right on this page is a detail from another photograph of Warner (possibly taken the same day). More dazzle painted ship models are shown at right, courtesy of Thomas Warner.
Everett
Warner
Frederic Waugh
The British called it dazzle painting, but this name, which we [the US Navy] also used, was itself a source of confusion. There was an effort to find a more descriptive name, and to differentiate the American system from its British prototype. Suggestions were invited. One man suggested the name jazz painting, and I’ve always thought that this name accurately summed up the popular idea.
—Everett Warner [paraphrased from his lecture notes]
Some of you may remember a cartoon which appeared during World War I, a drawing showing an inquisitive stranger talking with the gateman at a railway crossing. The gate was painted with the usual black and white stripes, and lying on the river beyond the tracks was a steamer painted with similar markings. The stranger asked, “Why do they paint the stripes on the gate?” And the gateman answered, “Oh, that’s to make them more visible.” And then the stranger asked, “Well, why do they paint the stripes on the vessel out there?” And the gateman replied, “Oh, that’s to make the ship less visible.”
—Everett Warner [paraphrased from his lecture notes]
Below A group photograph of the Camouflage Section staff members of the US Bureau of Construction and Repair, c1918. It is easy enough to identify Everett Warner and Frederic Waugh, but it may prove a greater challenge to name the others. During WWI, there were two divisions that made up the US naval camouflage team, a Rochester-based Research component staffed by scientists (headed by Loyd A. Jones), and a Washington-based Design component, staffed by artists (headed by Everett Warner). This photograph would appear to include the staffs from both components. If so, the person standing third from the right (wearing a bow-tie and a scientist’s lab coat) may be Loyd A. Jones.
The explosive diagonal and zig-zag bands [of dazzle camouflage] had a wild, ragtime impact.
—Richard Cork
John Gregory
