Back Dazzle camouflage German Camuflaje disruptivo Spanish استتار دازل Persian Camouflage dazzle French Dazzle camouflage ID Camuffamento Dazzle Italian ダズル迷彩 Japanese Blendingsmaling NB Camuflagem disruptiva Portuguese Ослепляющий камуфляж Russian

Dazzle camouflage

Not to be confused with Motion dazzle.
"Dazzle Ships" redirects here. For the OMD album, see Dazzle Ships (album).

USS West Mahomet in dazzle camouflage, 1918

Dazzle camouflage, also known as razzle dazzle (in the U.S.) or dazzle painting, is a type of ship camouflage that was used extensively in World War I, and to a lesser extent in World War II and afterwards. Credited to the British marine artist Norman Wilkinson, though with a rejected prior claim by the zoologist John Graham Kerr, it consisted of complex patterns of geometric shapes in contrasting colours interrupting and intersecting each other.

Unlike other forms of camouflage, the intention of dazzle is not to conceal but to make it difficult to estimate a target's range, speed, and heading. Norman Wilkinson explained in 1919 that he had intended dazzle primarily to mislead the enemy about a ship's course and so cause them to take up a poor firing position.[a]

Dazzle was adopted by the Admiralty in the UK, and then by the United States Navy. Each ship's dazzle pattern was unique to avoid making classes of ships instantly recognisable to the enemy. The result was that a profusion of dazzle schemes was tried, and the evidence for their success was, at best, mixed. So many factors were involved that it was impossible to determine which were important, and whether any of the colour schemes were effective. Experiments were carried out on aircraft in both World Wars with little success.

Dazzle attracted the notice of artists such as Picasso, who claimed that Cubists like himself had invented it.[3] Edward Wadsworth, who supervised the camouflaging of over 2,000 ships during the First World War, painted a series of canvases of dazzle ships[b][4][5][6][7] after the war, based on his wartime work. Arthur Lismer similarly painted a series of dazzle ship canvases.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Newark74 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Wilkinson, Norman (1969). A Brush with Life. Seeley Service. p. 79.
  3. ^ Campbell-Johnson, Rachel (21 March 2007). "Camouflage at IWM". The Times.[dead link‍]
  4. ^ Marter, Joan M. The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art, Oxford University Press, 2011, vol. 1, p. 401.
  5. ^ Saunders, Nicholas J.; Cornish, Paul. (eds). Contested Objects: Material Memories of the Great War, Routledge, 2014. Jonathan Black: "'A few broad stripes': Perception, Deception, and the 'Dazzle Ship' phenomenon of the First World War", pp. 190–202.
  6. ^ Newbolt, Sir Henry John Newbolt. Submarine and Anti-Submarine, Longmans, Green and Co, 1919. p. 46. "You look long and hard at this dazzle-ship. She doesn't give you any sensation of being dazzled; but she is, in some queer way, all wrong".
  7. ^ Deer, Patrick. Culture in Camouflage: War, Empire, and Modern British Literature. Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 46.


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