The purpose of those older camoflages was called dazzle paint, and the purpose of them was that back when submarines fired torpedoes solely on the the visuals through a periscope, the intent was to confuse the shooter enough so that he didn't get an accurate shot. Of course, it was experimental at the time, so no one could be certain what worked, and to what degree.
Cool Pictures 11: If You're Cool And You Know It Clap Your Hands
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It's been like 20 months since I played Dirt Rally, but I'd know that road, specifically that stone wall, anywhere. Monaco.
@trader/warrior @Timsup2nothin the Great White Fleet was a showcase/propaganda paint scheme designed to highlight how awesome and powerful America was by visiting the shores of all kinds of foreign nations and prove via demonstration that we had a strong oceangoing fleet.
@Samson nearly every "experiment" of the day was also used in war because, well, why not? Better than the status quo.
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In WWI and WWII dazzle paint was fairly common on warships and even cargo ships.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage
A friend took this picture of our mountains one evening. Typically, the evening alpen glow is a rosy pink that gives the Sandias their "watermelon" name.This day we got a fabulous gold. The picture was taken from in town on the edge of one of our many arroyos (dry rivers) and you can see the back walls of houses on the other side of it. the picture was taken at about 5,300 feet and the top of the Sandias is 10,678.
Lexicus
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Why's it look like there's an alien colony up at the top? Or at least moisture evaporators?
Exactly, we live in a desert.
Spoiler :
Broken_Erika
Play with me.
Ajidica
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As I understand it, the white and bronze was the peacetime paintjob for the US navy. However, even in wartime the ships would still be painted relatively boldly to make spotting friendly ships easier. The last thing a commander wanted was in the smoke and haze of coal-powered battleships was to mistake a friendly ship for an enemy or to accidentally ram a friendly ship. As optical equipment got better and the shift to dreadnought style "all big gun" battleships the need to disguise the ship began to take precedence over being visible to friendlies.
Nah, dazzle camo actually worked. It broke up the lines of the ships, added things like false bow waves, and made it tricky to determine speed and direction. The harder it was for the U-boat commander to determine the enemies course and speed, the less accurate the torpedo would be. Several British warships with dazzle camo were painted in a way to make them look like smaller warships. While a U-boat might fire a torpedo on a battleship or large cruiser, they wouldn't waste a torpedo on a destroyer - and it would be too dangerous to risk getting to a gun battle with the deck gun; so the warship would be allowed to slip away. Not all ships were painted in dazzle camo, generally only those that were likely to be at risk of U-boat attack.
As I understand it, dazzle camo lost popularity as it was hard to maintain, the threat of air attack grew, and submarine optical equipment and torpedoes got better. There was still some use of dazzle camo in WW2, but on a much reduced level - in terms of number of ships painted and the boldness of the patterns. I believe the Tirpitz was given some basic dazzle camo, such as adding false bow waves and breaking up the ship silhouette.
Timsup2nothin
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Modern submarine warfare makes paint irrelevant. There is no visual targeting.
Ajidica
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Yeah, which is why it isn't used anymore. I could have sworn I mentioned, or at least strongly implied that in my post.
Timsup2nothin
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That was clarification, not correction. You brought us to the later years, when optics got too good to be dazzled. I just carried the ball a little further, to when optics became irrelevant altogether.
Legendary navy paint story (legendary because despite it being retold through the ages it most likely never happened):
Spoiler :
trader/warrior
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Interesting. I was just going off that short wiki blurb that white was explored along with shades of gray for camouflaging them against the horizon. Though I would assume in those cases they would be completely white as were some of the older ships in my earlier warship pics post (other than the chimneys for some reason?).
Edit: And yeah, on second thought, having obsessively been looking at pics of old warships it should have been obvious to me that a large amount of them were decorated with no thought to camouflage at all. I don't think black has any nice properties when it comes to that, and a lot of them were black and bronze.
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Timsup2nothin
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Heat causes discoloration in white paint.
The picture I posted above is a a major US Navy fleet in the Pacific in 1944. So it's pretty heavy use to have 5 Essex class carriers in dazzle.
Black was because coal smoke turned everything black in short order anyways.
trader/warrior
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Well dammit, I guess everything I say here is wrong no matter what.
That may well be right, but like Broken Erica posted (and I earlier):
Spoiler :
I doubt that procession of black hull, then white, then bronze was all about that practicality (I am preparing to be corrected once again here). And this was the British navy, the most advanced at the time.
Edit: I guess the black hull would be the most difficult part to keep clean and give new layers of paint though.... Ugh.. Learning the complexities of ship paint during the turn of the 19th to 20th century is the brain puzzle of the day I guess. Can we just get a 19th century ship designer in here please?
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Ajidica
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Ah, right. When I was on that page the picture wouldn't load right. All I saw was the sky and horizontal black and white lines.
Even the picture adopted dazzle camo!
Paint color was also due to whatever paint held lead the best which was a common anti-fouling element in ship painting.Well dammit, I guess everything I say here is wrong no matter what.
That may well be right, but like Broken Erica posted (and I earlier):
Spoiler :
I doubt that procession of black hull, then white, then bronze was all about that practicality (I am preparing to be corrected once again here). And this was the British navy, the most advanced at the time.
Edit: I guess the black hull would be the most difficult part to keep clean and give new layers of paint though.... Ugh.. Learning the complexities of ship paint during the turn of the 19th to 20th century is the brain puzzle of the day I guess. Can we just get a 19th century ship designer in here please?
trader/warrior
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Well, I just found out that on civilian ships, having black on the hull was common to conceal dirt and wear, and white on the superstructure was common to regulate the temperature on residential areas. Interestingly this can be seen on some of the warships where only the populated bridge areas have a white colour and the rest bronze.
My big wonder is still that bronze colour that seems ubiquitous on the funnels, and often used on larger portions of the upper ship when it comes to warships. Civilian ships used different coloured funnels as a sort of trademarks (like "red funnel" or "blue funnel line"), but warships seem to have stuck for the most part to that one colour. I guess it must have been something like the reasons Ajidica brings up when it comes to durability, heat resistance, or such.
Or it was just seen as sexy ofc. But at this point I can't think it was just that.
My big wonder is still that bronze colour that seems ubiquitous on the funnels, and often used on larger portions of the upper ship when it comes to warships. Civilian ships used different coloured funnels as a sort of trademarks (like "red funnel" or "blue funnel line"), but warships seem to have stuck for the most part to that one colour. I guess it must have been something like the reasons Ajidica brings up when it comes to durability, heat resistance, or such.
Or it was just seen as sexy ofc. But at this point I can't think it was just that.
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Were they made of brass or bronze for a time? A lot of brass was used on ships because it would tarnish, but it wouldn't rust.
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