Dazzle camouflage

Dazzle camouflage, also known as Razzle Dazzle or Dazzle painting, was a camouflageships, mainly during World War I. It consisted of a complex pattern of geometric shapes in contrasting colors, interrupting and intersecting each other. At first glance it seems like an unlikely form of camouflage, drawing attention to the ship rather than hiding it. Dazzle camouflage had a very specific purpose, however, which was to make it difficult to estimate the target ship's speed and heading and so disrupt the performance of the visual rangefinders used for naval artillery at the time. In other words, its purpose was confusion, rather than concealment.

The rangefinders were based on the co-incidence principle with an optical mechanism, operated by a human being to compute the range. The operator adjusted the mechanism until two half-images of the target displayed lined up into a complete picture. Dazzle camouflage was intended to make it hard to do this job because the clashing patterns wouldn't look "right" even when the two halves were correctly aligned. This became even more important when submarineperiscopes were developed which included similar rangefinders. As an additional feature the dazzle pattern usually included a "false bow wave" painted on which was intended to make a true estimation of the ship's speed difficult.

katapliktiko? ksetrelathika me ta trela patterns aytwn twn ploiwn. ti omorfa pou tha htane an yphrxe so much fun (and confusion?) around us!

an thelete kai alla, ksekiniste apo edw!