September 3, 2014 • 27 mins
British Royal Navy lieutenant and artist Norman Wilkinson is usually credited with the idea of disruptive camouflage. But, another man, naturalist John Graham Kerr, claimed that he had the idea three years earlier. Read the show notes here.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast
by colleague Fry. I'm Tracy, and we're going to deal
a little bit of military history today, world War One specifically,
and this particular little story combines military strategy with art
(00:25):
and even a little bit of a garudge match. You
may have seen photos of World War One ships painted
with what's called dazzle camouflage, and if you haven't, you
are in for such a visual treat because they look amazing.
It's all very geometric and cool. It will often show
up in lists where you know, people are like, look
ten of historical photos that aren't photoshopped and uh, as
(00:46):
sort of a mind boggling why on earth is this
so amazing type of article stamp? But and they are
really fabulous to look at. But most people do not
know that there is a lot more to the story
than meets the I, including some some angryness about who
actually should get attribution. There is a very popular version
(01:06):
of the whole dazzle camouflage story, and that's where we
are going to start. Yeah, in nine British Navy ships
were being sunk by German U boats in nothing sort
of devastating numbers. It was an incredible challenge to conceal
ships on the open seas. Some of this was due
to the weather. Since the weather is constantly changing at sea,
you can't really make one camouflage that's going to effectively
(01:30):
disguise the ship no matter what the conditions are like.
And another problem is that it's not just the ships
of the ship itself that gives its location away. The
ship leaves awake, there are smoke trails, all these other
signals betrayed the ship's positions. So you boats would identify
their targets and then they would plot their predicted courses.
(01:52):
So then after calculating the speed at which they were
traveling and confirming the ship's trajectory, it was torpedo time.
So they would aim their torpedoes into the predicted path
of the ship, and you know, the ship would intersect
with it and be sunk. And the German Navy was
very good at identifying ships and predicting their movements. So,
(02:12):
of course, because it was facing huge losses, the British
Navy wanted nothing more than to figure out a way
to thwart the enemy and save the fleet. From being attacked.
But this was really easier said than done. Even if
they could find effective camouflage for a ship so that
you couldn't physically see it, that really only solved part
of the problem. The wake and the smoke would still
(02:35):
give the Germans away to target the ship. And uh,
it turns out and I love this that you know,
art came to the rescue the man who's normally credited
with brain starring. The solution to this problem was Navy
lieutenant and artist Norman Wilkinson, and he had this idea
that since they couldn't hide the ships, they could maybe
(02:57):
at least to do something to confuse use the enemy.
So his idea was a form of disruptive camouflage, and
that took on the name dazzle camouflage. His idea was
that painting ships with wild geometric patterns would kind of
bewilder the sailors on the U boats as they tried
to look through the periscopes to find the targets. And
(03:18):
of course the ships would still be visible, but their
disruptive geometric paint patterns would confuse the eye so much
that it would be difficult to determine which direction the
ship was facing, what direction it was moving, and at
what speed. Wilkinson was given a ship to paint as
a proof of concept, and before long there were lots
more ships being painted with wild designs as well. There
(03:40):
were hundreds of different geometric schemes that were laid out
for painting ships, and each one was meant to trick
the eye with one or more optical illusions. Yeah. In
some cases, curves along the sides of the ships would
be painted to create sort of false wave patterns that
kind of mirrored the wake that was going in the
opposite direction, and so it was a duplicate, but they
(04:01):
were going in both directions, so it was hard to
know what was actually happening. The smoke stacks were painted
with tilted and asymmetrical bands of color to make it
look like the ship might be going the opposite way
than it actually was. Diagonal lines were often painted in
bright colors at either end of the ship to make
it difficult to discern the four from the aft. Some
(04:22):
of the ships were painted in schemes of stripes that
went in all different directions and used a multitude of colors,
and these basically tried to prevent an observer from getting
his bearings on exactly what he was looking at. I
feel like these were colossally huge magic eye paintings. Yeah,
I mean, it's not dissimilar from that. It really is
just sort of so much information thrown at your your
(04:44):
eyes that you can't really discern kind of what you're
looking at. You stand back and cross your eyes. I'm
so good at magic eyes. That's like my superpower. But
before we get to an alternate version of this story,
do you want to pause for a moment for a
word from our sponsor. So, now back to what was
going on. Actually a few years before Wilkinson. So, Wilkinson
(05:06):
is often credited with the idea of applying dazzle camo
to ships, but the concept had actually been floated several
years prior by a man who was named John Graham Care,
and Care was a naturalist. He actually made his name
in lungfish embryology, so nothing having to do with ships.
But several years before Wilkinson entered the picture as a
(05:27):
proponent of disruptive camouflage, Kre had approached the Admiralty with
the idea because of all his work as a naturalist,
Care had witnessed firsthand the success of naturally occurring disruptive
coloration and animals so many many years before World War One,
when he was traveling on an expedition in South America
in he noted quote obliterative coloring on many of the
(05:52):
animals that he observed, and he made these notes repeatedly
in his field journals. He was clearly really really fascinated
by it, and uh in nineteen o two he became
the Chair of Zoology, although when he initially took the
chair it was called the Chair of Natural History and
then changed the next year at the University of Glasgow,
and throughout his career, even while he was working on
(06:13):
his embryology projects, he continued to study animal coloration sort
of as just a side interest while his day job
was all about zoology. Care was also an avid yachtsman,
and according to maritime historians Hugh Murphy and Martin Bellamy,
while Kerr was visiting the opening of the Kiel Canal
in Germany in and the contrast he noted between the
(06:37):
monochromatic French and German vessels and the multi color British
ships got his mind thinking about how you could apply
obliterative coloring to a ship Even before Care there was
an American artist named Abbot H. Thayer who was also
working on concealing coloration through the use of counter shading,
(06:57):
and he was doing that as early as the Spanish
American War the late eighteen nineties. And what that means
is that darker colors would be painted on the top
of a vessel to counteract the reflection of the sun,
and then lighter colors would be near the bottom and
they would sort of be banded in like a hardline gradient.
Care and they are actually knew each other, and they
(07:17):
talked about their different ideas and points of view on
how to best conceal a large object through the deliberate
use of pink color. And September fourteen was a particularly
devastating time for the British Navy. Uh In the course
of just a few weeks, German U boats sank the
HMS Pathfinder and then on the same day a little
(07:38):
bit later, the HMS Abuquir, the HMS Hogue, and the
HMS Crescy. And on September, after all of these had
taken place, Ka wrote Winston Churchill a letter outlining three
different ideas that he had for camouflaging ships. The first
method involved color matching the habitat, but he also noted
that this was really a lot better for some all
(08:00):
animals than large ships, and the second approach that he
mentioned was more in line with some of the ideas
that Thayer had had, although Care called it compensation shading,
and he basically described a gradient painting technique that involved
coloring the darkest and most shadowed parts of the ship's
bright white, and then the areas that were exposed to
(08:20):
the most light being painted the darkest shades of gray,
effectively creating sort of a monochromatic blob that had no
visible detailing, at least if you were looking at it
through a periscope. The third method, outlined and Cares letter
to Churchill, describes a paint application similar to the dazzle
coloring that Norman Wilkinson is associated with. He described this
(08:41):
idea of party coloring in the following way. It is
essential to break up the regularity of the outline, and
this can easily be affected by strongly contrasting contrasting shades.
The same applies to the surface. Generally, a continuous uniform
shade renders conspicuous. This can be counteract did by breaking
up the surface by violent, violently contrasting pigments. A giraffe
(09:05):
or zebra or jaguar looks extraordinarily conspicuous in a museum,
but in nature, when not moving, is wonderfully difficult to
pick up, especially at twilight. The same principle should be
made use of in painting ships. I had to kind
of chuckle to myself when I was reading that initially
that he only placed animals in museums like, not in
(09:28):
any sort of live viewing enclosure like a zoo. At
the time, it just made me chuckle. That's an aside.
Care very specifically described the need to break up the
continuity of a ship's outline with these high contrasting white shapes,
uh including masts with the irregular banding of white striping.
This letter was actually well received. Kara got a thank
(09:50):
you note and the assurance that this information and ideas
would be shared with the rest of the fleet, and
they were indeed. In fact, the contents of Care's letter
were did verbatim as part of a general order issued
on November tenth of that same year. The order, which
went out with the title Visibility of Ships Method of Diminishing,
went out with the instructions that the use of the
(10:12):
information included was at the discretion of the officers on
their various commands, and several of them did opt to
try these ideas out. It was through a personal connection
that John Graham Care found out his camouflage concepts were
actually being put into use. A former pupil of his
was serving on the HMS Implacable and wrote Care a
(10:33):
letter telling him that everyone on all levels of naval
service agreed that these were good ideas, and that the
student had seen another ship employing the disruptive painting style.
And I would just like to have a side note
that I love that there is a ship called the
HMS Implacable. Pretty charming. Exactly how many ships ended up
adopting this disruptive painting technique that was based on Cares
(10:56):
instructions is really pretty hazy. Since the practice was at
the discretion of individual commands, there really wasn't a system
in place to account for its usage, like nobody had
to report in that they had painted the ship this way.
And additionally, there's evidence that some crews were actually using
very similar techniques on their own prior to the general
(11:16):
order on visibility of ships. As more and more ships
started to adopt the whole party color paint schemes, care
was actually able to see some of them. He wasn't
exactly delighted, though. He really felt that the spirit was there,
but the actual execution was not quite what he had
in mind. So in nineteen fifteen he wrote another letter
to the Admiralty, and this time he suggested that these
(11:39):
new camouflage paint jobs could be even better with a
bit of guidance and advice from him. He got no reply,
so he wrote again and again, only to learn that
Churchill had moved on to a new post. And then
he wrote to Churchill's successor, Arthur Balfour. Yeah, he was
big on writing the letters. I feel like this is
(12:02):
like when the person writes does with like really really
pedantic something, and we answer back and then the person
just keeps writing it again and I'm like, please I stop. Well,
initially he wasn't getting a reply, but he really felt
like they needed to listen to him and let him
help somewhere. Uh, and all of this writing kind of
(12:23):
fell on deaf ears. He finally received a polite thanks
but no thanks style letter informing him that there had
actually been a decision made that they were going to
go back to painting all of the ships a uniform
gray and stop all this crazy color variations. I have
a feeling this just disturbed him immensely, which it's probably
carried out by the fact that then he redoubled his efforts.
(12:44):
He wrote some multiple office officers of the military, He
wrote to his friends in academia, to anybody he knew
who had any connection to the Admiralty. So when Abbott
Thayer was visiting from the US, he wrote the Admiralty
again and begged for a meeting so both he and
Thayer could share their information. All of those roads led
to dead ends. Yeah he really didn't. They kind of
(13:08):
uh just went nowhere. He did allegedly have some luck.
He also wrote about someone else about camouflage on airplanes
and got some ground there, but no nothing with the
ships ever. Again, So when the decision was made to
adopt Wilkinson's dazzle coloring in nine, it was much more
(13:29):
organized than previously. So instead of leaving it up to
each individual command to adopt some kind of geometric camouflage,
this time it was a uniform order and in addition
to the order, Wilkinson was actually put in charge of
a new Dazzle department, and as a consequence, while he
was heading that department, approximately four thousand merchant ships and
four hundred navy vessels were painted in this manner to
(13:52):
try to avoid uh U boat attacks. For his part,
care stated publicly that he was happy to see the
camouflage scheme being implemented, but he also enlisted the assistance
of fellow academics to once again contacts the Admiralty and
suggest that he, being the only man who had years
of study of this type of visual disruption, should be
(14:12):
advising them on it. It sound weary because because you
can imagine getting like seventeen letters in the same guy.
That's like, because we do get seventeen letters from the
same life. Yeah, where it's like you're doing it wrong.
You can just you can just contact me the next
time you want to do a podcast on Paraguay and
I will help you out, which is awesome. I mean,
(14:34):
we certainly appreciate when people want to be helpful. It's
the doggedly non letting go of it, yeah, which happens
not just to I mean in life. That happens. It's
like when you have a relative who is like, hey,
you can sow. Will you make me some pants? And
it's like I don't really have time for them. Oh,
we would be great if you'd make me some pants.
You know you need pants. I'll tell you how to
make them, like I've had those. I'm sure you've had similar.
(14:56):
When people know you can sow, there's a point where
you have received the information and and saying it more.
Doesn't I understand he wants some pants. I am not
giving them to you. Similar So Care probably worsened people
down um, but the military really felt, even though Kier
made his case over and over that the designers that
(15:17):
they had put in charge of Dazzle camouflage so they
came from a design background rather than a natural sciences background,
had things well in hand. They felt like they had
it covered and eventually Care gave up on trying to
be involved in the process as an advisor and he
did stop writing. While Care gave up I'm trying to
offer his assistance, he did remain quite irritated that Wilkinson
(15:40):
got all the credit for what he felt like was
his idea from years prior. It became a big issue
between the two men uh yeah. Wilkinson's claim was that
his designs had nothing to do with biology or nature,
and that Care just simply did not understand the visual
principles that his approach employed, that he was working from
(16:00):
a design background. This is not about replicating nature, and
Care's counter argument was that Wilkinson could not have invented
dazzle camouflage because no man could have invented dazzle camouflage
because they were merely replicating what existed in nature already.
I raised my eyebrow. I know, my heart goes out
to him, but I just I had if he were
(16:23):
alive today, he would just be leaving comments all over
the internet. Yes, he would be an Internet comment for sure.
Care even went back to his favorite addressy of corresponds
to the correspondence Winston Churchill to try to convince him
that he should make sure people understood their correspondence of Yeah.
He wanted Churchill to come out and say, oh no,
I did talk to this guy. He had this idea before.
(16:44):
But eventually what happened was that a Committee of Inquiry
was established to investigate the competing claims, and it's unclear
whether Churchill had anything to do with that or not,
or if people were just so tired of getting letters
from Care that they were like, we have to figure
out some way to resolve this um. But the committee,
because Cares to work was based in nature, it seemed
(17:05):
that they really felt that his end goal for the
paint scheme must have been invisibility, because to them, camouflage
and nature is about hiding, even though a lot of
Cares writing on the matter clearly states that he felt
that invisibly invisibility was going to be impossible, whereas they
felt that Wilkinson's approach was geared towards distortion and uh,
(17:28):
the committee basically favored Wilkinson and their findings, and it
was still not over. No, It's never over. Care took
his claim next to the Royal Commission on Awards and Inventors,
and while Care took great pains to assemble an extremely
thorough brief filled with evidence, the Commission found in favor
of Wilkinson again in ninety two, and this decision was
(17:50):
based almost entirely on Wilkinson's testimony that he had no
prior knowledge of ships painted to Care specifications, although Care
and his lawyer continue to assert that this statement was
completely false. Yeah, there was some evidence that Wilkinson had
been in places where ships that were painted with the
designs that care had suggested were and that he would
(18:12):
have been basically blind to have not seen them. Um,
but even so, just by virtue of saying nope, I
never saw those before Wilkinson went out in the end.
But what really sort of makes it all kind of
funny to me in a morose sort of comedy, is
that it really didn't matter who came up with the idea,
(18:32):
because the study of the efficacy of dazzle camouflage that
was conducted in nineteen eighteen determined that it really had
no measurable impact on evading attack, It really didn't help
in terms of military strategy, and that it's greatest benefit
was that it had probably just raised the spirits and
morale of the men, which there's something to be said
for that, But in terms of like claiming it as
(18:54):
an invention, they were fighting over nothing basically well, And
I think part of the reason that he irritates me
so profoundly is that he reminds me of younger me,
who would just doggedly pursue a matter of principle that
did not actually matter. Oh yeah, that much that But
(19:15):
but you are wrong and I am right. Why don't
you understand this? Yeah, And that was the thing. He
didn't really want money out of it. He did have
to make a financial claim in that second committee hearing
like he had to make a claim that he needed
something out of it, but really he didn't want any money.
He just wanted people to acknowledge that it was his idea.
(19:36):
And really there had actually been cases of ships like
I said, that had been painted like that even before him,
some of which kind of happened just accidentally because the
ships were being repainted and he was flaking off, they
had started to kind of accidentally do some of that
and then thought, oh that might be interesting, and they
would continue it. So he was. They were just fighting
(19:56):
over nothing. Yeah. Well, and as we have talked about frequently,
anytime there has been science or invention in the podcast,
almost always progress it developments, build on the things that
happened before them. They don't come out of thin air. Yeah,
there are very few true Eureka moments where someone just
thinks of something no one has ever thought of before. Um.
(20:19):
Earlier this year, German artists to Bias Rehnberger and Venezuelan
artist Carlos Cruise Diaz were actually commissioned by the Liverpool
Biennial Tate Liverpool in the World War One centenary arts
organization called fourteen eighteen Now to recreate dazzle camouflage designs
on several ships, and the work that these artists were
(20:40):
commissioned to do was part of a series of events
marking the hundred year anniversary of the start of the war.
Rend Berger painted the HMS President, which was a two
hundred and sixty five foot Flower class sloop originally named
the HMS Saxifrage and built in nineteen eighteen for anti
sub warfare. The President is permanently up in London and
(21:01):
was painted with that with dazzle camouflage during World War One.
I love that there is such thing as a flower
class loop, and I particularly love that it was named
the Sacks of Rage. Yeah, that's those are both fun
words to associate with ships. Uh Remburger's painting turned the
ship into a really fabulous optical illusion, so that it
(21:21):
looked like piles of almost eschureresque kind of modern pipe works.
Um And he was actually a perfect choice for this
project because he uh in interviews, he commented that he
had discovered or found out about dazzle camouflage like twenty
years ago and it's just been fascinated with it ever since,
so much so that in two thousand nine he actually
(21:42):
when he was commissioned to design this cafe, he based
the entire design on the principles of dazzled design and
visual confusion, which may or may not make for UM
a fun dining experience. If you like visual stimulation, it's
probably super fun. And Liverpool Cruise has worked on the
Edmund Gardener. This one is more basic but still visually
(22:06):
stimulating design, consisting of red, yellow, black and green striping. Yeah,
it's in one of the links in the show notes
that will have it um. They have a time lapse
of the Edmund Gardner being painted and it's kind of
wonderful because it goes from being a flat, kind of
matt gray looking like this really wonderful rasta adventure ship
(22:28):
because of the colors that he chose. And we'll pen
stuff up on our Pinterest so you can see what
these look like. Oh yeah, Pinterest is going to be
a busy place with the dazzle because there's a lot
of good pictures of Dazzle. Right now, it's really busy
in our unearthed board because there's just been a lot
going on in the unearthing in the last few weeks.
There always is, but it's been a really high concentration
(22:49):
of fascinating things being pulled out on which is great. Uh.
And now I will move on to listener mail. I
have a few pieces, and some of which I'm gonna
have to abridge quite bit so. The first one is
from our listener Isabella. Uh. These are all in reference
to our episode on Las Scala, and she mentions that. Um.
She says, since you were wondering about Alexander Pereira's current job.
(23:11):
He used to be the director of Lascala and guess
that he is working in Germany. I thought I should
clarify that he is currently the artistic director of the
Salzburg Festival in Austria, So now we know where he is.
I hope he is enjoying his job. Uh. The second
one is from our listener Aaron, who wrote to us
on Facebook, and he says, I'm a graduate student at
the University of California, Santa Barbara studying classical voice and opera.
(23:34):
It was wonderful to hear the podcast about Lascala. Thank you.
I wanted to write you a message for two reasons. First,
I wanted you to encourage you to enjoy opera without fear.
Operas about being swept away with Bell Kontos singing, and
stories of the human experience. So I want to encourage
you and all of your listeners to enjoy opera no
matter your level of understanding. Secondly, I thought you might
find my experience at Lascala entertaining. I was at the
(23:57):
university group of students, traveling around your up and studying
music over the summer. Of course, a group of opera
students had to visit Lascala while we were and while
we were in one of the main lobbies, my professor
suggested my scene partner and I begin singing the duet
from Labo M that we had been rehearsing. Nervously. We
began singing in the beautiful room and the tourists were
pleasantly surprised. Just as we finished, the theater manager came
(24:21):
over and reprimanded us for singing in the theater because
the director was rehearsing and needed silence. Despite being reprimanded,
I can now say that I have sung in the
world's most famous opera house, just not on the stage yet.
I love that story, even though it's a little CONVERSI
of great story. And you know, there's every possibility that
Aaron will make it there as a featured performer and
(24:43):
not a sneaky lobby singer, so I hope he does. Uh.
And our last one is from our listener, Benjamin, and
he writes us to tell us a story. I won't
read the whole thing, just for time. But he went
to visit La Scala on a trip to Italy, and
he went with his mom and and they they had
booked tickets for a performance at Lascala and it was
(25:04):
kind of pricey, but they figured, you know, went in Milan,
and then it turned out that they were in this
amazing box seat that they had. It was so pricey
because they basically booked some of the best seats in
the house and they got to hob nob with rich
people in the box and try to fit in, which
sounds super awesome. And then when he wraps up his
letter to us, he mentions a couple of cool tips
(25:25):
for anybody who may find themselves in proximity to visit Lascala,
and he says, first, the theater is a museum throughout
the day with many costumes, audio clips, and artifacts from
older performances. Oh my goodness, I would get lost in
the costume displays. Um. He said they were lucky enough
to get to observe rehearsals for The Barber of Seville,
which sounds awesome. And second, he mentions that each seat
(25:46):
there has a small monitor where a translation of what's
being sung follows along with the show, and multiple languages
are available for selection. So if you were debating about
what sorts of things you can do and how you
can enjoy, Lascala got you covered. Thank to Benjamin Uh.
If you would like to write to us and share
your thoughts on opera or dazzle camouflage or anything else,
(26:08):
you can do so at History Podcast at how stuff
works dot com. You can also connect with us at
Facebook dot com slash mist in history, on Twitter at
misst in history at misston history dot tumbler dot com,
and on pinterest dot com slash misst in history, where
we will be penning a lot of dazzle camouflage paintings.
And if you wanted to Uh visit our spreadshirt store
(26:29):
and pick up some mist in History goodies like t shirts,
tope banks, mugs, phone cases, lots of other things. You
can do that at misston history dot spreadshirt dot com.
If you want to learn a little bit more about
what we talked about today, you can go to our
parents site how stuff Works. Type in the word camouflage
in the search bar and you will get an article
called how Military Camouflage Works. It doesn't really talk about
(26:51):
dazzle so much, but uh, just generally how camouflage is
adopted and implemented by the military. Uh. You can also
visit us at our personal a story website which is
missed in history dot com, or we have show notes.
There are lots the blogs do well. Get some photos
to go along with all of these episodes and you
can do that. Or you can research almost anything you
(27:12):
can think of at our parents site, House too works
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Because it how stuff Works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast
by colleague Fry. I'm Tracy, and we're going to deal
a little bit of military history today, world War One specifically,
and this particular little story combines military strategy with art
(00:25):
and even a little bit of a garudge match. You
may have seen photos of World War One ships painted
with what's called dazzle camouflage, and if you haven't, you
are in for such a visual treat because they look amazing.
It's all very geometric and cool. It will often show
up in lists where you know, people are like, look
ten of historical photos that aren't photoshopped and uh, as
(00:46):
sort of a mind boggling why on earth is this
so amazing type of article stamp? But and they are
really fabulous to look at. But most people do not
know that there is a lot more to the story
than meets the I, including some some angryness about who
actually should get attribution. There is a very popular version
(01:06):
of the whole dazzle camouflage story, and that's where we
are going to start. Yeah, in nine British Navy ships
were being sunk by German U boats in nothing sort
of devastating numbers. It was an incredible challenge to conceal
ships on the open seas. Some of this was due
to the weather. Since the weather is constantly changing at sea,
you can't really make one camouflage that's going to effectively
(01:30):
disguise the ship no matter what the conditions are like.
And another problem is that it's not just the ships
of the ship itself that gives its location away. The
ship leaves awake, there are smoke trails, all these other
signals betrayed the ship's positions. So you boats would identify
their targets and then they would plot their predicted courses.
(01:52):
So then after calculating the speed at which they were
traveling and confirming the ship's trajectory, it was torpedo time.
So they would aim their torpedoes into the predicted path
of the ship, and you know, the ship would intersect
with it and be sunk. And the German Navy was
very good at identifying ships and predicting their movements. So,
(02:12):
of course, because it was facing huge losses, the British
Navy wanted nothing more than to figure out a way
to thwart the enemy and save the fleet. From being attacked.
But this was really easier said than done. Even if
they could find effective camouflage for a ship so that
you couldn't physically see it, that really only solved part
of the problem. The wake and the smoke would still
(02:35):
give the Germans away to target the ship. And uh,
it turns out and I love this that you know,
art came to the rescue the man who's normally credited
with brain starring. The solution to this problem was Navy
lieutenant and artist Norman Wilkinson, and he had this idea
that since they couldn't hide the ships, they could maybe
(02:57):
at least to do something to confuse use the enemy.
So his idea was a form of disruptive camouflage, and
that took on the name dazzle camouflage. His idea was
that painting ships with wild geometric patterns would kind of
bewilder the sailors on the U boats as they tried
to look through the periscopes to find the targets. And
(03:18):
of course the ships would still be visible, but their
disruptive geometric paint patterns would confuse the eye so much
that it would be difficult to determine which direction the
ship was facing, what direction it was moving, and at
what speed. Wilkinson was given a ship to paint as
a proof of concept, and before long there were lots
more ships being painted with wild designs as well. There
(03:40):
were hundreds of different geometric schemes that were laid out
for painting ships, and each one was meant to trick
the eye with one or more optical illusions. Yeah. In
some cases, curves along the sides of the ships would
be painted to create sort of false wave patterns that
kind of mirrored the wake that was going in the
opposite direction, and so it was a duplicate, but they
(04:01):
were going in both directions, so it was hard to
know what was actually happening. The smoke stacks were painted
with tilted and asymmetrical bands of color to make it
look like the ship might be going the opposite way
than it actually was. Diagonal lines were often painted in
bright colors at either end of the ship to make
it difficult to discern the four from the aft. Some
(04:22):
of the ships were painted in schemes of stripes that
went in all different directions and used a multitude of colors,
and these basically tried to prevent an observer from getting
his bearings on exactly what he was looking at. I
feel like these were colossally huge magic eye paintings. Yeah,
I mean, it's not dissimilar from that. It really is
just sort of so much information thrown at your your
(04:44):
eyes that you can't really discern kind of what you're
looking at. You stand back and cross your eyes. I'm
so good at magic eyes. That's like my superpower. But
before we get to an alternate version of this story,
do you want to pause for a moment for a
word from our sponsor. So, now back to what was
going on. Actually a few years before Wilkinson. So, Wilkinson
(05:06):
is often credited with the idea of applying dazzle camo
to ships, but the concept had actually been floated several
years prior by a man who was named John Graham Care,
and Care was a naturalist. He actually made his name
in lungfish embryology, so nothing having to do with ships.
But several years before Wilkinson entered the picture as a
(05:27):
proponent of disruptive camouflage, Kre had approached the Admiralty with
the idea because of all his work as a naturalist,
Care had witnessed firsthand the success of naturally occurring disruptive
coloration and animals so many many years before World War One,
when he was traveling on an expedition in South America
in he noted quote obliterative coloring on many of the
(05:52):
animals that he observed, and he made these notes repeatedly
in his field journals. He was clearly really really fascinated
by it, and uh in nineteen o two he became
the Chair of Zoology, although when he initially took the
chair it was called the Chair of Natural History and
then changed the next year at the University of Glasgow,
and throughout his career, even while he was working on
(06:13):
his embryology projects, he continued to study animal coloration sort
of as just a side interest while his day job
was all about zoology. Care was also an avid yachtsman,
and according to maritime historians Hugh Murphy and Martin Bellamy,
while Kerr was visiting the opening of the Kiel Canal
in Germany in and the contrast he noted between the
(06:37):
monochromatic French and German vessels and the multi color British
ships got his mind thinking about how you could apply
obliterative coloring to a ship Even before Care there was
an American artist named Abbot H. Thayer who was also
working on concealing coloration through the use of counter shading,
(06:57):
and he was doing that as early as the Spanish
American War the late eighteen nineties. And what that means
is that darker colors would be painted on the top
of a vessel to counteract the reflection of the sun,
and then lighter colors would be near the bottom and
they would sort of be banded in like a hardline gradient.
Care and they are actually knew each other, and they
(07:17):
talked about their different ideas and points of view on
how to best conceal a large object through the deliberate
use of pink color. And September fourteen was a particularly
devastating time for the British Navy. Uh In the course
of just a few weeks, German U boats sank the
HMS Pathfinder and then on the same day a little
(07:38):
bit later, the HMS Abuquir, the HMS Hogue, and the
HMS Crescy. And on September, after all of these had
taken place, Ka wrote Winston Churchill a letter outlining three
different ideas that he had for camouflaging ships. The first
method involved color matching the habitat, but he also noted
that this was really a lot better for some all
(08:00):
animals than large ships, and the second approach that he
mentioned was more in line with some of the ideas
that Thayer had had, although Care called it compensation shading,
and he basically described a gradient painting technique that involved
coloring the darkest and most shadowed parts of the ship's
bright white, and then the areas that were exposed to
(08:20):
the most light being painted the darkest shades of gray,
effectively creating sort of a monochromatic blob that had no
visible detailing, at least if you were looking at it
through a periscope. The third method, outlined and Cares letter
to Churchill, describes a paint application similar to the dazzle
coloring that Norman Wilkinson is associated with. He described this
(08:41):
idea of party coloring in the following way. It is
essential to break up the regularity of the outline, and
this can easily be affected by strongly contrasting contrasting shades.
The same applies to the surface. Generally, a continuous uniform
shade renders conspicuous. This can be counteract did by breaking
up the surface by violent, violently contrasting pigments. A giraffe
(09:05):
or zebra or jaguar looks extraordinarily conspicuous in a museum,
but in nature, when not moving, is wonderfully difficult to
pick up, especially at twilight. The same principle should be
made use of in painting ships. I had to kind
of chuckle to myself when I was reading that initially
that he only placed animals in museums like, not in
(09:28):
any sort of live viewing enclosure like a zoo. At
the time, it just made me chuckle. That's an aside.
Care very specifically described the need to break up the
continuity of a ship's outline with these high contrasting white shapes,
uh including masts with the irregular banding of white striping.
This letter was actually well received. Kara got a thank
(09:50):
you note and the assurance that this information and ideas
would be shared with the rest of the fleet, and
they were indeed. In fact, the contents of Care's letter
were did verbatim as part of a general order issued
on November tenth of that same year. The order, which
went out with the title Visibility of Ships Method of Diminishing,
went out with the instructions that the use of the
(10:12):
information included was at the discretion of the officers on
their various commands, and several of them did opt to
try these ideas out. It was through a personal connection
that John Graham Care found out his camouflage concepts were
actually being put into use. A former pupil of his
was serving on the HMS Implacable and wrote Care a
(10:33):
letter telling him that everyone on all levels of naval
service agreed that these were good ideas, and that the
student had seen another ship employing the disruptive painting style.
And I would just like to have a side note
that I love that there is a ship called the
HMS Implacable. Pretty charming. Exactly how many ships ended up
adopting this disruptive painting technique that was based on Cares
(10:56):
instructions is really pretty hazy. Since the practice was at
the discretion of individual commands, there really wasn't a system
in place to account for its usage, like nobody had
to report in that they had painted the ship this way.
And additionally, there's evidence that some crews were actually using
very similar techniques on their own prior to the general
(11:16):
order on visibility of ships. As more and more ships
started to adopt the whole party color paint schemes, care
was actually able to see some of them. He wasn't
exactly delighted, though. He really felt that the spirit was there,
but the actual execution was not quite what he had
in mind. So in nineteen fifteen he wrote another letter
to the Admiralty, and this time he suggested that these
(11:39):
new camouflage paint jobs could be even better with a
bit of guidance and advice from him. He got no reply,
so he wrote again and again, only to learn that
Churchill had moved on to a new post. And then
he wrote to Churchill's successor, Arthur Balfour. Yeah, he was
big on writing the letters. I feel like this is
(12:02):
like when the person writes does with like really really
pedantic something, and we answer back and then the person
just keeps writing it again and I'm like, please I stop. Well,
initially he wasn't getting a reply, but he really felt
like they needed to listen to him and let him
help somewhere. Uh, and all of this writing kind of
(12:23):
fell on deaf ears. He finally received a polite thanks
but no thanks style letter informing him that there had
actually been a decision made that they were going to
go back to painting all of the ships a uniform
gray and stop all this crazy color variations. I have
a feeling this just disturbed him immensely, which it's probably
carried out by the fact that then he redoubled his efforts.
(12:44):
He wrote some multiple office officers of the military, He
wrote to his friends in academia, to anybody he knew
who had any connection to the Admiralty. So when Abbott
Thayer was visiting from the US, he wrote the Admiralty
again and begged for a meeting so both he and
Thayer could share their information. All of those roads led
to dead ends. Yeah he really didn't. They kind of
(13:08):
uh just went nowhere. He did allegedly have some luck.
He also wrote about someone else about camouflage on airplanes
and got some ground there, but no nothing with the
ships ever. Again, So when the decision was made to
adopt Wilkinson's dazzle coloring in nine, it was much more
(13:29):
organized than previously. So instead of leaving it up to
each individual command to adopt some kind of geometric camouflage,
this time it was a uniform order and in addition
to the order, Wilkinson was actually put in charge of
a new Dazzle department, and as a consequence, while he
was heading that department, approximately four thousand merchant ships and
four hundred navy vessels were painted in this manner to
(13:52):
try to avoid uh U boat attacks. For his part,
care stated publicly that he was happy to see the
camouflage scheme being implemented, but he also enlisted the assistance
of fellow academics to once again contacts the Admiralty and
suggest that he, being the only man who had years
of study of this type of visual disruption, should be
(14:12):
advising them on it. It sound weary because because you
can imagine getting like seventeen letters in the same guy.
That's like, because we do get seventeen letters from the
same life. Yeah, where it's like you're doing it wrong.
You can just you can just contact me the next
time you want to do a podcast on Paraguay and
I will help you out, which is awesome. I mean,
(14:34):
we certainly appreciate when people want to be helpful. It's
the doggedly non letting go of it, yeah, which happens
not just to I mean in life. That happens. It's
like when you have a relative who is like, hey,
you can sow. Will you make me some pants? And
it's like I don't really have time for them. Oh,
we would be great if you'd make me some pants.
You know you need pants. I'll tell you how to
make them, like I've had those. I'm sure you've had similar.
(14:56):
When people know you can sow, there's a point where
you have received the information and and saying it more.
Doesn't I understand he wants some pants. I am not
giving them to you. Similar So Care probably worsened people
down um, but the military really felt, even though Kier
made his case over and over that the designers that
(15:17):
they had put in charge of Dazzle camouflage so they
came from a design background rather than a natural sciences background,
had things well in hand. They felt like they had
it covered and eventually Care gave up on trying to
be involved in the process as an advisor and he
did stop writing. While Care gave up I'm trying to
offer his assistance, he did remain quite irritated that Wilkinson
(15:40):
got all the credit for what he felt like was
his idea from years prior. It became a big issue
between the two men uh yeah. Wilkinson's claim was that
his designs had nothing to do with biology or nature,
and that Care just simply did not understand the visual
principles that his approach employed, that he was working from
(16:00):
a design background. This is not about replicating nature, and
Care's counter argument was that Wilkinson could not have invented
dazzle camouflage because no man could have invented dazzle camouflage
because they were merely replicating what existed in nature already.
I raised my eyebrow. I know, my heart goes out
to him, but I just I had if he were
(16:23):
alive today, he would just be leaving comments all over
the internet. Yes, he would be an Internet comment for sure.
Care even went back to his favorite addressy of corresponds
to the correspondence Winston Churchill to try to convince him
that he should make sure people understood their correspondence of Yeah.
He wanted Churchill to come out and say, oh no,
I did talk to this guy. He had this idea before.
(16:44):
But eventually what happened was that a Committee of Inquiry
was established to investigate the competing claims, and it's unclear
whether Churchill had anything to do with that or not,
or if people were just so tired of getting letters
from Care that they were like, we have to figure
out some way to resolve this um. But the committee,
because Cares to work was based in nature, it seemed
(17:05):
that they really felt that his end goal for the
paint scheme must have been invisibility, because to them, camouflage
and nature is about hiding, even though a lot of
Cares writing on the matter clearly states that he felt
that invisibly invisibility was going to be impossible, whereas they
felt that Wilkinson's approach was geared towards distortion and uh,
(17:28):
the committee basically favored Wilkinson and their findings, and it
was still not over. No, It's never over. Care took
his claim next to the Royal Commission on Awards and Inventors,
and while Care took great pains to assemble an extremely
thorough brief filled with evidence, the Commission found in favor
of Wilkinson again in ninety two, and this decision was
(17:50):
based almost entirely on Wilkinson's testimony that he had no
prior knowledge of ships painted to Care specifications, although Care
and his lawyer continue to assert that this statement was
completely false. Yeah, there was some evidence that Wilkinson had
been in places where ships that were painted with the
designs that care had suggested were and that he would
(18:12):
have been basically blind to have not seen them. Um,
but even so, just by virtue of saying nope, I
never saw those before Wilkinson went out in the end.
But what really sort of makes it all kind of
funny to me in a morose sort of comedy, is
that it really didn't matter who came up with the idea,
(18:32):
because the study of the efficacy of dazzle camouflage that
was conducted in nineteen eighteen determined that it really had
no measurable impact on evading attack, It really didn't help
in terms of military strategy, and that it's greatest benefit
was that it had probably just raised the spirits and
morale of the men, which there's something to be said
for that, But in terms of like claiming it as
(18:54):
an invention, they were fighting over nothing basically well, And
I think part of the reason that he irritates me
so profoundly is that he reminds me of younger me,
who would just doggedly pursue a matter of principle that
did not actually matter. Oh yeah, that much that But
(19:15):
but you are wrong and I am right. Why don't
you understand this? Yeah, And that was the thing. He
didn't really want money out of it. He did have
to make a financial claim in that second committee hearing
like he had to make a claim that he needed
something out of it, but really he didn't want any money.
He just wanted people to acknowledge that it was his idea.
(19:36):
And really there had actually been cases of ships like
I said, that had been painted like that even before him,
some of which kind of happened just accidentally because the
ships were being repainted and he was flaking off, they
had started to kind of accidentally do some of that
and then thought, oh that might be interesting, and they
would continue it. So he was. They were just fighting
(19:56):
over nothing. Yeah. Well, and as we have talked about frequently,
anytime there has been science or invention in the podcast,
almost always progress it developments, build on the things that
happened before them. They don't come out of thin air. Yeah,
there are very few true Eureka moments where someone just
thinks of something no one has ever thought of before. Um.
(20:19):
Earlier this year, German artists to Bias Rehnberger and Venezuelan
artist Carlos Cruise Diaz were actually commissioned by the Liverpool
Biennial Tate Liverpool in the World War One centenary arts
organization called fourteen eighteen Now to recreate dazzle camouflage designs
on several ships, and the work that these artists were
(20:40):
commissioned to do was part of a series of events
marking the hundred year anniversary of the start of the war.
Rend Berger painted the HMS President, which was a two
hundred and sixty five foot Flower class sloop originally named
the HMS Saxifrage and built in nineteen eighteen for anti
sub warfare. The President is permanently up in London and
(21:01):
was painted with that with dazzle camouflage during World War One.
I love that there is such thing as a flower
class loop, and I particularly love that it was named
the Sacks of Rage. Yeah, that's those are both fun
words to associate with ships. Uh Remburger's painting turned the
ship into a really fabulous optical illusion, so that it
(21:21):
looked like piles of almost eschureresque kind of modern pipe works.
Um And he was actually a perfect choice for this
project because he uh in interviews, he commented that he
had discovered or found out about dazzle camouflage like twenty
years ago and it's just been fascinated with it ever since,
so much so that in two thousand nine he actually
(21:42):
when he was commissioned to design this cafe, he based
the entire design on the principles of dazzled design and
visual confusion, which may or may not make for UM
a fun dining experience. If you like visual stimulation, it's
probably super fun. And Liverpool Cruise has worked on the
Edmund Gardener. This one is more basic but still visually
(22:06):
stimulating design, consisting of red, yellow, black and green striping. Yeah,
it's in one of the links in the show notes
that will have it um. They have a time lapse
of the Edmund Gardner being painted and it's kind of
wonderful because it goes from being a flat, kind of
matt gray looking like this really wonderful rasta adventure ship
(22:28):
because of the colors that he chose. And we'll pen
stuff up on our Pinterest so you can see what
these look like. Oh yeah, Pinterest is going to be
a busy place with the dazzle because there's a lot
of good pictures of Dazzle. Right now, it's really busy
in our unearthed board because there's just been a lot
going on in the unearthing in the last few weeks.
There always is, but it's been a really high concentration
(22:49):
of fascinating things being pulled out on which is great. Uh.
And now I will move on to listener mail. I
have a few pieces, and some of which I'm gonna
have to abridge quite bit so. The first one is
from our listener Isabella. Uh. These are all in reference
to our episode on Las Scala, and she mentions that. Um.
She says, since you were wondering about Alexander Pereira's current job.
(23:11):
He used to be the director of Lascala and guess
that he is working in Germany. I thought I should
clarify that he is currently the artistic director of the
Salzburg Festival in Austria, So now we know where he is.
I hope he is enjoying his job. Uh. The second
one is from our listener Aaron, who wrote to us
on Facebook, and he says, I'm a graduate student at
the University of California, Santa Barbara studying classical voice and opera.
(23:34):
It was wonderful to hear the podcast about Lascala. Thank you.
I wanted to write you a message for two reasons. First,
I wanted you to encourage you to enjoy opera without fear.
Operas about being swept away with Bell Kontos singing, and
stories of the human experience. So I want to encourage
you and all of your listeners to enjoy opera no
matter your level of understanding. Secondly, I thought you might
find my experience at Lascala entertaining. I was at the
(23:57):
university group of students, traveling around your up and studying
music over the summer. Of course, a group of opera
students had to visit Lascala while we were and while
we were in one of the main lobbies, my professor
suggested my scene partner and I begin singing the duet
from Labo M that we had been rehearsing. Nervously. We
began singing in the beautiful room and the tourists were
pleasantly surprised. Just as we finished, the theater manager came
(24:21):
over and reprimanded us for singing in the theater because
the director was rehearsing and needed silence. Despite being reprimanded,
I can now say that I have sung in the
world's most famous opera house, just not on the stage yet.
I love that story, even though it's a little CONVERSI
of great story. And you know, there's every possibility that
Aaron will make it there as a featured performer and
(24:43):
not a sneaky lobby singer, so I hope he does. Uh.
And our last one is from our listener, Benjamin, and
he writes us to tell us a story. I won't
read the whole thing, just for time. But he went
to visit La Scala on a trip to Italy, and
he went with his mom and and they they had
booked tickets for a performance at Lascala and it was
(25:04):
kind of pricey, but they figured, you know, went in Milan,
and then it turned out that they were in this
amazing box seat that they had. It was so pricey
because they basically booked some of the best seats in
the house and they got to hob nob with rich
people in the box and try to fit in, which
sounds super awesome. And then when he wraps up his
letter to us, he mentions a couple of cool tips
(25:25):
for anybody who may find themselves in proximity to visit Lascala,
and he says, first, the theater is a museum throughout
the day with many costumes, audio clips, and artifacts from
older performances. Oh my goodness, I would get lost in
the costume displays. Um. He said they were lucky enough
to get to observe rehearsals for The Barber of Seville,
which sounds awesome. And second, he mentions that each seat
(25:46):
there has a small monitor where a translation of what's
being sung follows along with the show, and multiple languages
are available for selection. So if you were debating about
what sorts of things you can do and how you
can enjoy, Lascala got you covered. Thank to Benjamin Uh.
If you would like to write to us and share
your thoughts on opera or dazzle camouflage or anything else,
(26:08):
you can do so at History Podcast at how stuff
works dot com. You can also connect with us at
Facebook dot com slash mist in history, on Twitter at
misst in history at misston history dot tumbler dot com,
and on pinterest dot com slash misst in history, where
we will be penning a lot of dazzle camouflage paintings.
And if you wanted to Uh visit our spreadshirt store
(26:29):
and pick up some mist in History goodies like t shirts,
tope banks, mugs, phone cases, lots of other things. You
can do that at misston history dot spreadshirt dot com.
If you want to learn a little bit more about
what we talked about today, you can go to our
parents site how stuff Works. Type in the word camouflage
in the search bar and you will get an article
called how Military Camouflage Works. It doesn't really talk about
(26:51):
dazzle so much, but uh, just generally how camouflage is
adopted and implemented by the military. Uh. You can also
visit us at our personal a story website which is
missed in history dot com, or we have show notes.
There are lots the blogs do well. Get some photos
to go along with all of these episodes and you
can do that. Or you can research almost anything you
(27:12):
can think of at our parents site, House too works
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Because it how stuff Works dot com.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club
Welcome to Bookmarked by Reese’s Book Club — the podcast where great stories, bold women, and irresistible conversations collide! Hosted by award-winning journalist Danielle Robay, each week new episodes balance thoughtful literary insight with the fervor of buzzy book trends, pop culture and more. Bookmarked brings together celebrities, tastemakers, influencers and authors from Reese's Book Club and beyond to share stories that transcend the page. Pull up a chair. You’re not just listening — you’re part of the conversation.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.