Camouflage--American System of Low Visibility and the British Dazzle
System--Americans Worked Out Principles of Color in Light and Color in
Pigment--British Sought Merely to Confuse the Eye--British System
Applied to Some of Our Transports
While our naval vessels, that is to say war-ships, have adhered to the
lead-gray war paint, the Navy Department has not declined to follow the
lead of the merchant marine of this country and Great Britain in
applying the art of camouflage to some of its transports, notably to the
_Leviathan_, which, painted by an English camoufleur, Wilkinson, fairly
revels in color designed to confuse the eyes of those who would attack
her. A great deal has been written about land camouflage, but not so
much about the same art as practised on ships. Originally, the purpose
was the same--concealment and general low visibility--at least it was so
far as the Americans were concerned. The British, on the other hand,
employed camouflage with a view to distorting objects and fatiguing the
eye, thus seriously affecting range-finding. The British system was
known as the "dazzle system," and was opposed to the American idea of so
painting a vessel as to cause it to merge into its background.
The American camouflage is based on scientific principles which embody
so much in the way of chromatic paradox as to warrant setting forth
rather fully, even though at the present time, for good and sufficient
reasons relating to German methods of locating vessels, the Americans
have more or less abandoned their ideas of low visibility and taken up
with the dazzle idea.
A mural painter of New York, William Andrew Mackay, who had long
experimented in the chemistry of color (he is now a member of the staff
of navy camoufleurs), had applied a process of low visibility to naval
vessels long before war broke out in Europe. The basis of his theory of
camouflage was that red, green, and violet, in terms of light, make
gray; they don't in pigment.
The Mackay scheme of invisibility will be easily grasped by the reader
if we take the example of the rainbow. The phenomenon of the rainbow,
then, teaches us that what we know to be white light, or daylight, is
composed of rays of various colors. If an object, say the hull of a
vessel at sea, prevents these rays from coming to the eye, that hull, or
other object, is of course clearly defined, the reason being that the
iron mass shuts out the light-rays behind it. Mr. Mackay discovered that
by applying to the sides of a ship paint representing the three
light-rays shut out by the vessel's hull--red, green, and violet--the
hull is less visible than a similar body painted In solid color.
In a series of experiments made under the supervision of the Navy
Department after we entered the war an oil-tanker ship was so
successfully painted in imitation of the color-rays of light that, at
three miles, the tanker seemed to melt into the horizon. The effect was
noted in the morning, at noon, and in the evening. In the case of
various big liners, more than 500 feet long, no accurate range could be
made for shelling at from three to five miles--the usual shelling
distance--while at eight miles the vessels melted into the ocean-mists.
But the first trials of the system were conducted at Newport, in 1913,
in conjunction with Lieutenant Kenneth Whiting, of the submarine
flotilla. After a period experiments were continued at the Brooklyn Navy
Yard. In 1915 Commander J. O. Fisher, U.S.N., painted the periscope of
his submarine--the K-6--with the colors of the spectrum. Mr. Mackay got
in touch with this officer and explained the work he had done with
Lieutenant Whiting. Fisher, deeply interested, invited the painter to
deliver a series of lectures to the officers of the submarine flotilla
at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
With the aid of a Maxwell disk--a wheel upon which colored cardboard is
placed and then revolved--he demonstrated the difference between paint
and light, as set forth in a book on the chemistry of color by the late
Ogden N. Rood, of Columbia. He showed, for example, that yellow and blue
in light make white, while yellow and blue in pigment make green. The
bird colored blue and yellow will be a dull gray at a distance of 100
feet, and will blend perfectly against the dull gray of a tree-trunk at,
perhaps, a less distance. The parrot of red, green, and violet plumage
turns gray at 100 feet or more, the eye at that distance losing the
ability to separate the three color-sensations.
It is upon this principle, then, that ships painted in several varieties
of tints and shades form combinations under different lights that cause
them to waver and melt into the sea and sky. They _seem_ to melt, to be
more explicit, because the craft so painted is surrounded by tints and
shades that are similar to those employed in painting the craft.
Vessels thus painted, as seen at their docks, present a curious aspect.
At their water-lines, and running upward for perhaps twenty feet, are
green wave-lines, and above, a dappled effect of red, green, and violet,
which involve not only the upper portions of the hull, but the
life-boats, masts, and funnels.
This, then, as said, was the American idea as first applied by Mr.
Mackay, and which would have been greatly amplified had not listening
devices been so perfected as to render it unnecessary for the Germans to
see until their quarry was so near, say a mile or two, that no expedient
in the way of low visibility would serve. It was then that our navy,
which had been following experiments in camouflage, accepted the dazzle
system for some of its transports, while retaining the leaden war-paint
for other transports and for fighting craft.
The dazzle system as applied on the _Leviathan_ and other vessels under
jurisdiction of the navy, has for its idea the disruption of outline and
deception as to the true course a vessel is following. The writer saw
the _Leviathan_ under way shortly after she was camouflaged, and at a
distance of two miles it was utterly impossible to tell whether she was
coming or going; and the observer could not tell whether she had three
funnels or six, or only one. It was noted that as her distance from the
observer became greater the vessel assumed a variety of effects. Once it
seemed as though both bow and stern had dropped off, and finally the big
craft suggested in the morning haze nothing so much as a cathedral set
in the middle of the bay.
Effects of this sort are produced by vertical stripes of black and white
at bow and stern, by long, horizontal lines of black and blue, and by
patches of various hues. One funnel is gray, another blue and white,
another all blue. There can be no question that the sum total of effect
offends the eye and dazes the senses. Submarines have been known to make
errors of eight degrees in delivering torpedoes at dazzle boats even at
close range.
In addition to camouflage experiments on one of our great inland lakes,
the Navy Department also investigated other ideas relating to the
self-protection of craft at sea. Among these was a device by which a
vessel zigzags automatically as she proceeds on her ocean course. The
advantage of such an invention when the war zone is filled with
submarines waiting for a chance for pot shots at craft is obvious.
The Navy Department, in short, has neglected nothing that would tend to
enhance the safety of our ships on the sea, and many valuable schemes
have been applied. But when all is said and done these defensive
elements are and, it seems, must remain subsidiary to the protection as
applied from without, the protection of swift destroyers with their
depth-bombs, their great speed, and their ability quickly to manoeuvre.