- I'm Josh Hick, I'm a curator
at the World War II Museum,
and today we're gonna talk about paint.
Fun, exciting paint.
This is a subject that I really got into
when we were doing
restoration work with PT305
at the World War II Museum.
I was doing some other research,
and we just kinda
realized that World War II
is a really heavily black and white war.
I know that from my experience as a kid,
going to a lot of museum ships,
ships are usually gray.
Let's see if we can do a
little screen sharing here.
There is a lot of interpretation in movies
that includes dealing with
just kinda gray ships,
as they are.
Here we go, PowerPoint.
And we are going to talk about
the evolution of camouflage.
So, you've got this great picture here,
this is the U.S.S. Indianapolis.
Haze Gray and Underway,
that's a really common term
you hear in reference to
the Navy and everything.
And while gray is a camouflage color,
it is part of the Navy, it's heavily used,
that's not really a thing during the war.
You've got this ship painted
pre-war Standard Navy Gray,
she's just cruising along.
And this photo is 1939.
Within just a few years,
you've got the same ship
completely done up in a camouflage scheme.
Now this is representative
of what's called
Measure 32, which, we'll
kinda get into the schemes
and measures a little bit
more in a little while.
This is sort of the pinnacle
of color shifting on ships
as a means of camouflage.
Radar ruins the party shortly after this.
But this is sort of the height of it.
And so, really, I want you to realize
that during World War
II, it wasn't just gray.
You've got all kinds of
colors across the spectrum.
Blues, greens, blacks, browns, whites,
all these different versions of coloring
that was used for a whole
bunch of different reasons.
Just to kinda define
what we're talking about
from camouflage.
I know the classic camouflage,
since the beginning of time,
ever since someone cut
a branch off of a tree,
stuck that branch in front of themselves
to break up their shape
and make them disappear.
That's camouflage.
Now, for ships it splits into
two different basic types.
There's painted camouflage,
which is what we're gonna talk about,
and then there's physical camouflage.
Physical camouflage is not
really used on modern ships
of the World War II era
while they're under way
or fighting, it's just not practical.
You can see the below picture
is physical camouflage.
This is the U.S.S New
Orleans after she got
her bow knocked off.
She's in Tulagi, they're
trying to shore up the bow
and get the ship going,
so they took a bunch of native foliage
and nets and draped it over the ship
in an attempt to break up
the shape and everything.
As you can see, something like
this would not be practical
when you're sailing, however
it works very nicely for that.
But that doesn't work
while you're underway.
So you don't really see a
lot of physical camouflaging
on ships during the war.
Another version of that would be
changing the structure,
like adding a second funnel
or smokestack, maybe changing
the shape of the guns
to try and confuse the outline.
And I think one more thing
to definitely consider
as we go through this, on ships
camouflage is not intended
to make it disappear.
Everyone understands it's in camouflage.
It's a give that a ship
sticks out on water.
There's nothing to hide behind,
there's no trees or rocks.
You can't take a whale pelt
and stretch it over your
ship and say, "It's a whale."
You need to come up with different ways
to show different parts of it.
So we're gonna talk about the origins.
Camouflage really kinda
starts at the end of
the age of sail, when
we get to modern ships,
steel-hulled ships, charted
guns, coal in this case.
And this is the U.S.S. Olympia,
and it is rockin' a scheme
called White and Buff.
This is what the great
white fleet looked like
when it sailed around the world.
White and Buff was popular at the time
because it shows that you
have got a clean ship.
A warship, when it's
not engaged in combat,
is a symbol status, a status of the state.
And so, if you've got a ship
that's white and tan like this,
it's difficult to maintain that.
You've got a lot of rust
while ships are underway,
a lot of wear and tear.
But if you are a rich enough nation
or a rich enough navy and
you can come into town
and you've got this brilliant, beautiful,
conspicuous painted
ship, you're showing off.
Now, the extent of
camouflage from this whole
white and buff time
period, during the war,
this is gonna be a photo of the same ship,
the U.S.S. Olympia, during
the Spanish American War,
they just painted them gray.
They figured that this was the best color
for fighting on the gun line.
This really isn't quite reached the point
in naval warfare where
we're doing anything
other than lines of battle.
And so, they figured gray
breaks the silhouette up
on the line of battle.
But in reality, we're burning coal
and we're firing a lot of smoke power,
so it's pretty obvious
where the ship is anyway.
Now the next greatest
evolution and the thing
where we get Dazzle from
is the First World War.
This comes out of Britain.
United States follows suit.
And the whole idea is to follow
what does it look like when
a submarine is attacking you?
And so, you're looking at a
very low angle of observation.
You also need to think about,
when a submarine makes an attack,
it's either on the surface at night,
so there's some obstruction
from light anyway,
or they're making a periscope attack,
in which case they
constantly raise and lower
their periscope.
They don't leave it up,
because it can be spotted,
it leaves a feather,
a splash in the water.
You don't wanna expose yourself.
So think about popping up your periscope,
you see this, and you're
trying to figure out
which direction it's going,
you drop your periscope down
and you're still planning your attack.
If this was colorized, you'd
actually see bright reds,
whites, and blacks.
A lot of different colors.
And really the idea is to
just absolutely confuse you.
Now, the interwar period, like
most things in the military,
there's a huge draw down
in spending and funding
and everything.
And there's also a lot of
reflection looking back,
hey, what did we learn
in the First World War?
Well there was two competing thoughts
behind camouflage in the First World War,
pushed by artists and naturalists.
Naturalists are people that study nature,
so they were looking at how
animals blended in in nature.
They had two thoughts.
Dazzle ended up winning,
which is confuse speed and direction,
but they also thought maybe
you can paint in colors
that your eyes have trouble adjusting to
and you can sorta make the
shapes meld into the background.
Shading is a really big
important thing for that.
Following the First World War,
they studied all this and they said,
"Okay, Dazzle didn't necessarily make
"the number of sinkings smaller."
It didn't increase them.
They didn't really see what effect it had.
But they were able to determine
that it made people feel
good about themselves.
Guys on the ship felt good that their ship
was painted in this
ridiculous, crazy scheme
and it would be a lot
harder for them to be seen
or found or anything of that nature.
The U.S. Navy is really the only one
that actually keeps researching it.
The British kinda shut it down.
The U.S. Navy opened a
small office in 1920,
they go through a couple of drills,
they do some studies.
And by 1935 to '37, they
have published a manual
that will determine U.S.
Navy camouflage patterns
for the remainder of the interwar period
and the World War II period,
until the advent of radar.
And this one is called "Ships 2."
They eventually, 25 schemes, of which 21
are officially adopted come out of this,
and it's really laid out
as an instruction manual.
Talks about types of paint, reflectivity,
the theory behind it and
then approved schemes.
And it really sought to digest
all of the different information
that people wanted to
know from countershading
versus Dazzle versus all
these different schemes
and thoughts and everything.
And this is the only
service that really tries
to digest a lot of this
material and make it worthwhile.
So we'll stop and talk about
paint just really quickly.
The "Munsell Book of Color,"
which is something I found
when I was first doing
this, it's basically a book
of dedicated colors,
tell you what the hues
and the lights and the
reflectivity and all of that is.
All the colors are based on that.
A lot of the colors that
are used in camouflage,
it's pretty fascinating,
were created by artists
who were literally just,
would go out and look
at the sunset or look at the ocean,
or look at the different things.
And this is how we get such
diverse number of colors
across the board for camouflage,
is 'cause they realized that these colors
need to be adaptable
per their environment.
You can't paint a ship
to fit the British Isles
and then send it down to the Mediterranean
and expect those colors to
be similar to that area.
So it's a good thing to bring up,
is that camouflage is decided,
the colors and the pattern,
for the point at which
a vessel is gonna be
in the most danger.
So a battleship, before
the advent of air power,
is going to be camouflaged
for a long-range gun fight
in the sunlight or sunset.
A submarine will be camouflaged
for action at nighttime.
A landing craft, like an LCI,
will be camouflaged for
working close in-shore.
So that means that oftentimes
these schemes don't work
whenever that vessel is doing something
that's not that point of action
or that most obvious time.
Another important element in
paint is the reflection factor,
basically the amount of light reflected.
So, white paint reflects more light,
dark paint absorbs more
light and reflects less.
A big thing that we take
advantage of in camouflage
and coloring, and I'm gonna make sure
I'm saying this word properly,
because it's kind of a mouthful,
is the Purkinje Effect,
which is the tendency
of the human eye to shift
towards blue colors in low light.
So that's why a lot of ship colors,
it's not just because the ocean is blue,
I mean, it happens to be blue with it,
and so is the horizon, but
you use a lot of blue colors,
and even a lot of the colors
they call gray look blueish
because they want to take
advantage of low-light situations
or shading where your eyes will shift
towards the blue spectrum.
Gloss is, is the paint shiny or not shiny?
And in camouflage, you do
not want or use shiny paint.
They happen to use oil-based
paint back in the day,
which was always gloss,
and so they had to add
tinting agents to it for them
to take that reflectivity off.
But shiny is bad.
One last thing to mention about paint
is that it's all mixed from a base color,
which is usually a gray,
because that's interwar
colors and everything.
And then they add tinting agents,
and they add flattening agents to it.
So, for you modelers out there
and for anyone else trying to
sort out camouflage schemes,
this from a historical and
thinking research standpoint
is a little bit nerveracking
because it means
that they don't just go
to the hardware store,
bring their paint chip and
have it mixed on the computer,
they actually had to follow the recipe.
So if someone has got a little heavy hand
with the tinting agent, their
Deck Blue might come out
more Navy Blue or might shift
back towards Ocean Gray.
So, it's kind of the person
that's doing the mixing
is sort of, it's at their mercy.
So I'm gonna talk about a
couple of just the basic schemes
that were used.
Now, we can do a lot.
This is a very complicated subject,
so I'm trying to just skip the surface
with a couple of these.
So we're gonna talk
about some of the basics.
Solid Scheme, so that's when
we paint the entire ship
one solid color.
This is an excellent example of pre-war.
We've got the Colorado here.
Solid Schemes were used
pre-war and late war.
Pre-war because, just
like that gray before,
we're using it on the battle lines,
so we feel that that blue
blends in with that horizon
a little bit more, makes it
a little bit more difficult
to see, we're talking ships in a line,
slugging shells long distance.
The other thing that it
ends up coming into play
as we start painting
ships more solid colors
later in the war, especially
in the Pacific Theater,
this is more difficult to
see from aerial observation.
And that's the big difference
between the First World War
and the Second World War.
First World War, we're
trying to mess up your view
from surface, either periscope level
or gun director level.
In the Second World War, we
have airplanes to worry about.
So, there are some things
you can't camouflage
about ships, like their wake.
But you've got a better
chance of blending in
with the water from an aerial shot
as you do with any other colors.
Another thing, now this
one's a little bit cheating
'cause there appears to be
just a whole bunch of dudes
wearing Dress White uniforms,
walking around on deck.
It's a little bit not fair,
they wouldn't be up there
during combat conditions.
Another thing to think about is
the type of blues that
they used for these.
So, next scheme.
U.S.S. Kidd, another just
classic solid-blue scheme.
You can see how sometimes
it doesn't blend in
with some things.
You've got horizon line here.
And this is gonna be important
in some of our later schemes.
Really awesome picture.
So we've got the U.S.S. Dayton.
Pre-war, I think this
shot's from fall of '41.
Solid Scheme, you can see how it blends in
with the ocean, bow
waves and wake are still
a little bit of an issue.
But this one has a really
neat effect in that
thin structures, such
as masts or antennas,
things of that nature,
were painted lighter colors
so they could blend in with the horizon.
So if you look at this vessel,
just fore of that stack
and aft of the bridge there,
you see the mast going up
and bloop, they've got a
nice little horizon line
painted on it.
And keep in mind, with all these schemes,
it's not to make you disappear.
You're not playing
Invisible Man with the ship.
It's really to mess up the
attacker in the moment.
If you're making a run with your aircraft.
Maybe you misidentify the vessel.
Maybe you don't get the
speed or direction correct.
If you're popping up and
down with your periscope,
maybe you're confused by what you saw.
That's the whole point, is
to increase your chances
of getting away with it.
Submarines are worth mentioning.
Something really fascinating
about camouflage,
when I started looking into it,
First World War they found that
some German submarine captains would paint
their conning towers white.
White was a very divisive
color in the First World War,
and it actually kinda
makes a lot of sense, too.
And the ultimate reasoning was,
white is very difficult to
see at night on the surface.
Reflects a lot of the light.
It's a low-light situation,
so there's that effect
where you're shifting towards blue.
And I keep seeing it, and
it's a great argument,
think about the Titanic.
Big white iceberg, no one saw it coming.
We can do a lot of
debates about binoculars
and everything, but in reality,
something that's stark white
on a black ocean really
starts to blend in.
Now submarines in the U.S.
Navy were painted black
pre-war, there's a couple
of different schemes
and everything, but one
of the primary things
a submarine has to do is it needs to hide
while it's underwater.
World War II submarines
spent most of their time
above the surface, however
when they are submerged,
if you're flying over
them with an aircraft,
you can see the shape of a submarine.
So, if you paint the conning tower white,
that could be great
for a nighttime attack,
or some sort of very light blue,
which is a peak time
for submarine attacks.
However, if you need to be submerged
when you're being hunted by an aircraft,
that white is gonna stick
out through the water.
So, there's a lot of thought behind it.
That's why they're usually black.
I call these gimmicks, but
this was an early attempt
at a Pattern Scheme.
This is the U.S.S. Northampton.
The Northampton here is painted
with a rather tremendous false bow wave.
So the idea behind this is that we paint
this white curl on the front of this ship.
In this photo, she's really not moving,
or she's moving just
ever-so-slightly forward,
but the idea is, if you look
at this from a surface level,
you're gonna see her
running with what they say
in Naval terms, "Running
with the bone in her teeth."
Looks like a dog carrying a bone,
just a big, huge, frothy white wave
because this ship is really
making high-speed revolutions.
So the thought is, we'll put
this false bow wave on there
and they're gonna get the speed wrong
and they might miss with their torpedoes.
Ultimately, they found that
this just wasn't visible enough.
It was just kind of a waste.
One of those things that
made everyone feel good
on the inside, and it looks
cool when it's sitting in port,
but from a practical standpoint,
doesn't really do the trick.
Same thing, you see a lot
of early war Pattern Schemes
that take advantage of cool
colors, cool splotches.
They look awesome up close.
But they realize pretty early on,
I think this is a version of Measure 12,
that once you back up at any
sort of appreciable distance,
it looks really awesome, but
these just kind meld together
and it just ends up looking like a ship.
So this is when they started to say,
"Well, what is the point of this?"
Now, Pattern Schemes did work fairly well
for landing craft.
And once again, very good
in the Pacific Theater.
This is where you see a
lot of the greens, browns,
and blacks get applied to landing craft.
Think about the environment
that these guys are in.
Yes, they travel on the high seas,
but for the most time, they're vulnerable
when they're beached.
And they're also closest
to the enemy, in theory,
when they're beached.
So you may as well paint them in a scheme
that matches the islands
that they're sailing in,
or can help them blend in with the beach.
The idea is, you've
got aerial observation,
a low plane flies over,
maybe they don't see
a couple of LCIs working
their way up the coast
on a resupply mission.
These are also some of the
cooler looking schemes,
honestly, and they're
very mottled and painted,
spray painted, airbrushed on there.
But they work because you're dealing with
a lot closer visual ranges for these.
Good underway shot.
I've been asked before,
"Waldo, why do they paint
"camouflage and paint the numbers on it?"
It does seem a little ridiculous,
but ultimately you want your
team to know that it's you.
Organization's very important
in landing an operation,
so you need to know what
landing craft is doing which.
Like I said, camouflage is not a cure-all.
It's just a increase-your-chances.
So mid-war we start to see Graded Schemes.
And these schemes are the first attempt
at helping solve the problem of,
I want a deceptive scheme that makes me
misidentify this vessel,
or I want a scheme
that hurts the ability to see it.
So these Graded Schemes used two colors.
They create what's called a false horizon.
So you've got two blues,
that help you from aerial observation
if you're flying off at a distance,
you're looking down at a 60 degree angle
or something like that,
you're gonna see blue on blue.
So you may miss the vessel,
or you may misjudge what it is.
With the false horizon,
if you're looking at it
at sea level, you might not realize
that this is a full-sized battleship.
With that false horizon on there,
you don't really realize how
much free board is there.
So is this something smaller?
Is it a cruiser?
Is it a destroyer?
It also has the effect of making it look
like the ship is physically further away
with that false horizon on there.
Plus, it looks pretty cool.
So the last category,
basic category of schemes,
are Deceptives.
Now, this is, aside from looking awesome,
this is really the pinnacle
of painted camouflage
development in any navy.
These end up becoming, for the U.S. Navy,
what's called Measure 31, 32, and 33.
And what these are a mix of are Deceptive.
So, what kind of ship am I looking at,
what direction is it going,
what speed is it going?
And that countershading, that
attempt to kind of nullify
the curves and lines of the ship.
So, pretty awesome looking.
I think something that's
good to point out with this,
so a false bow is very popular in Dazzle,
of the First World War.
Is this the front of the ship?
Is this the back of the ship?
This is the U.S.S. Missouri,
you see a really great example
of this if you look on
the far right of the ship,
that's all painted Ocean Gray,
and then there's a slash
where it switches to black.
And that gives you a false bow or stern.
There's also a great
example of countershading
in here, if you look at
the center of the ship.
In the superstructure,
it's all painted black.
There's a lot of catwalks there,
there's a lot of different decks,
there's a lot of structures.
And they realized that if you paint a ship
in some sort of cool pattern,
as soon as the sun gets
above it and casts a shadow,
all of a sudden it's popping.
It's just really easy to see.
So you try and darken up
areas that would be in shadow
and you lighten up areas that would not.
Or the other way around,
depending on what you wanna do.
So, dark up there in the middle
so it nullifies the shadows,
however if you look at
the bow on the left side
of this image, the very
tip by the bull nose,
there's a curl of light paint
that follows the deck line there.
That bow flares up.
So if the sun is up,
that area that's painted
that light color is gonna
be cast in a dark shadow.
Outside the limits of that shadow,
it's been painted black.
So they're trying to even up those colors.
What's unique about these
patterns and schemes too,
is all previous patterns
were sort of at the mercy
of the ship commander or
the regional commander.
They would just bust out that
"Ships 2" camouflage manual,
they'd say, "All right, you're
operating in the Pacific,
"these are the colors you use,
"these are the approved schemes,
"we can suggest something if you want it."
These schemes were actually
developed specifically
for capital ships, and were issued
from a design office in D.C.
And this is how it comes.
It's a paint-by-numbers
for your battleship.
So you get your battleship,
you get a couple hundred guys
and a couple hundred gallons of paint,
and you bust out this sheet
and you start to paint
by numbers of your ship
to break it up.
This one happens to be specifically for
the battleship Texas,
well the New York class.
So, New York or Texas.
And their whole idea is,
let's break up the form
of this vessel.
U.S.S Randolph, this is a
really neat picture, too.
This is a Measure 32 as well.
Look at this really quickly
and see if you can immediately tell
which side's the bow and
which side is the stern.
It does a really good job
of balancing all this out.
It also had a false horizon as well.
It uses that flight deck,
and it colors everything
from the flight deck
up, there's a little bit
of a smudge in there, with lighter colors
to help them blend in.
So think about how all that works.
It's a pretty awesome picture.
And I think last...
Oh, we've got a couple
of destroyer photos here.
Another good example.
This one attempts to nullify a bow wave.
You've got a darker
color up here on the bow
where that water would
be curling up white,
and it's matched by a lighter color.
The idea with these schemes is,
what am I looking at, where is it going?
And it should be noted that
by the very end of the war,
when the kamikaze starts
to become prevalent,
you start to see these
darker schemes disappear
because it does tend to
make your ship stick out
a little bit.
It's a little bit more conspicuous
than if it was just a solid color.
Here's an awesome photo of the Laffey
from periscope view.
This has an excellent false bow.
So look at this photo really quickly.
Is this ship coming directly at me,
or is it crossing to the right
of the view of this camera?
It's easy enough to sort
out, if you sit here
and you stare at it, you
realize it's symmetrical
and everything.
But if you look really
quickly and all you see
is that bow and then that
false bow off to the right,
it's meant to create that
little bit of confusion.
Great photo of Murderer's Row.
This is a good example of
how diverse the camo can be.
Individual ships can choose.
You've got a lot going on here.
You've got a hospital ship
way up on the top left.
You've got a graded battleship
just to the left of that.
Lower in that upper corner,
you've got the Blue Ghost
hanging out up there.
You've got a CVL.
And then you've got this
row of Essex-Class carriers
that have been painted
in a very similar scheme.
There was a lot of debate
about painting ships
exactly the same.
Because if you make one
pattern that's super unique,
then every time the enemy sees it,
they're like, "Oh, that's
totally the U.S.S. Yorktown,"
every single time.
So, you want some repetition of patterns,
but you also don't wanna make it so crazy
that you've got a lot
of logistical issues.
And last, before we go,
this one's just a personal favorite.
This was an experimental scheme.
This is PT171.
Obviously, this is not a
practical wartime thing,
because they literally
painted the covers on the guns
and everything.
But this is a mess to look at.
Where's the bow?
Where is the stern?
What's going on here?
It's pretty cool, and it's
an excellent visualization
of how you can use colors to really
screw with your perception
of a physical object.
This one was never implemented
in any sort of large way,
it was part of an experimental program.
But it's kind of a mind-bender to look at.
And so, it's pretty entertaining.
All right.
So, I'm gonna switch back to
good old Josh, sitting here.
And I've kinda come up
with a way to visualize,
before I shift to questions,
sort of show a few
things, I think it shows
a little bit different perspective
than just photos.
Because I'm a little nerd, I built models
like 20 years ago, ship models,
and I always painted them in
the appropriate camouflage
for these ships.
And so, 20 years later, I finally found
a use for these things.
They've been sitting in a box.
So, I have a blue room here,
this is gonna be our ocean,
obviously the ocean isn't brown.
But we've got a model of
the U.S.S. Arizona here.
So, hopefully this works.
You've got gray.
It's a gray ship, blue ocean.
In certain low-light situations,
it may be able to shift
to a more blueish color.
This is the pre-war thinking.
It's convenient, it's easy on paint.
But what's really neat is I
made this one this weekend,
and you can kinda see the difference,
little eye doctor thing,
better one, better two.
So we look at the exact same ship model,
but with a Dazzled Scheme on it.
It really breaks it up.
It's pretty interesting.
We've got our stern here.
We do have a false bow going on up there.
It's just very stark.
And so, I had tried to figure out
how to get a light in
here to show contrast
and shadows, but it kept
washing out the screen,
so we're just gonna look
at Josh's painted models
here for a sec.
So, that's pretty interesting to see
how a Dazzled Scheme really kinda messes
with the outline and shape of that ship.
And hopefully the internet is supporting
the resolution of this.
I've got one more to show,
and it'll demonstrate why
those early Pattern Schemes
didn't work all that well.
So we look here at the U.S.S. Hornet.
We've got cool dappling.
It looks pretty awesome,
especially when it's parked in port.
And obviously, I know
that my modeling skills
weren't that great when
I was a little kid.
So, ship looks pretty cool.
You see it on the horizon, you're like,
"All right, this is awesome,
we can break up the shape."
But this is really great demonstration
of why they realized that
these schemes are neat,
but it's sort of a waste of paint
because once the ship
starts to get anywhere
decently far away, all those
colors just blend together.
You can't really even see
the striping on the funnel.
You can see a little bit of the splashing
around the bottom, but in
reality with that straight line
and everything on there, it
doesn't break it up enough.
So, hopefully everyone has enjoyed
Josh showing off his models.
Hoping that that looks pretty awesome.
It's just kind of a cool scheme.
So I'm going to switch to some questions,
if everyone'll give me a
chance to do some clicking,
and see what's going on here.
Eh, a good one on here.
Comment on the introduction of
the 1943 Halsey Gray uniform
for camouflage of the
officers on the deck of ships.
This is a funny question
because it's kinda
one of those things that someone invents
in an office 'cause it sounds
like a really good idea.
Like, "Oh man, if
someone's standing on deck
"and they're wearing
the wrong color uniform,
"they're totally gonna make
the entire ship stick out."
So that was the thought
behind that Halsey Gray,
is, we've got officers
wearing white or khaki
standing on deck of ships.
Sailors are wearing, technically pre-war
they're not allowed to
wear chambray and dungarees
above decks, they're
supposed to be wearing
undress whites or undress blues.
The point is, is all that
stuff is meant to impress.
But they don't blend in
with camouflage schemes.
So Halsey Gray was sort of introduced
as the thought behind that,
and it was sort of a new uniform.
But it never really got adopted,
'cause there was just so
much khaki out there already
and they didn't have
the time and the ability
to shift all that.
But you do see those things kinda pop out.
Were models painted before
actually being painted on a ship?
Yes.
The British had this
whole cool little setup
where they would make
models and they would test
the light reflectivity.
You see the same thing in the U.S. Navy.
But they wouldn't ship the model out.
They wouldn't send them the model,
they would just send them
that paint-by-numbers sheet
to say, "Hey, check this thing out."
Let's see.
That P.T. boat word,
zebra, black and white.
Most of those, it's
super contrasting colors.
And so, they liked to use
black and white on them.
And that's part of that
inspiration from the naturalists.
Look at the zebra, let's
recreate the zebra.
Which is another thing
that a bunch of people,
especially in the First World War,
wanted to paint the
bottoms of ships white.
Because animals have white bellies,
and they were really
taking it to the extreme.
Canadians painting their
vessels light green.
Canadians followed the
Royal Navy approach.
The Royal Navy used a
lot of greens and pastels
because they blended in with what's called
the Northern Approaches.
Basically, for the most part,
all the territorial water
around Great Britain.
So the British sort of
have an inverse design
relationship with us.
They start World War II
dazzling with a lot of greens
and blues and even teals and grays,
and things of that nature, like Pea Soups.
And then they start to kind of shift back
to solid schemes by the end of the war,
whereas we go full Dazzle until we switch
to solid schemes for aerial
issues later in the war.
Schemes of Allies compared to Axis.
The United States and
the British are really
the only ones that take
camouflage to the extreme.
Everybody does have a
form of ships camouflage,
everyone practiced it, it's sort of...
What's fascinating, the
British and the American colors
develop in two completely
separate programs
but they basically arrive
at the same colors.
Because they're the colors
that are dictated by nature
and by your eyes.
So a lot of countries use this stuff.
Whether or not it's applied
in any sort of methodical way,
or useful way, it's not
as cleanly organized
as the United States and Great Britain.
But you see individuals,
some marine commanders
in the Kretzmarine taking
advantage of things.
You see Japanese ships painted up.
Bismark famously has
got the false bow checks
painted on it.
So, everyone does it.
No one does it to the extreme that we did.
Good question, most
effective for battleships,
what is the pattern that's most effective?
It just depends.
What is this ship doing?
If this ship is an OBB, an Old Battleship,
and she is probably a
Pearl Harbor survivor
and is part of bombardment task forces
supporting invasions in the Pacific,
she's probably painted a solid scheme,
because she needs more
anti-aircraft defense
than ship in a line.
Whereas, if you've got a
modern fast battleship,
if they're engaging in a gunnery duel,
those 31, 32, and 33 Dazzle Schemes
or Deceptive Schemes, are the ones to go
for those time and situations.
Changing navy warfare, too,
some things move so quick
you can't repaint the ship.
The Missouri had that
awesome paint job on it,
and she got repainted almost
as soon as she got overseas
because it didn't work for
what she was gonna be doing.
So, it's hit or miss with those things.
Let's see, did a ship's
company paint the ship
or was it done by yard staff?
Little bit of everything there.
There's actually a Navy
rate, that is a painter,
but don't always have to have those.
Kinda like having a sailmaker around.
Most part, the ship's
company did the painting.
Usually, if it's in dry dock,
there is gonna be support staff there
that'll be doing it and
they may apply the scheme.
Because they tried to
put those new schemes
with major dock refits, but if
you need to do it in theater
or you need something for your crew to do,
you're gonna set them to painting.
Painting is also, should've
mentioned this earlier,
it's not just, let's color
the ship to make it cool
or make it disappear.
Paint is very important on ships
to just keep ships in good shape.
It is a protective coating.
Stops them from rusting.
Kinda helps proof areas and everything.
There's non-skid material
that you put on it,
so you don't go sliding down the deck,
it's basically sand.
So there's a lot that goes into it.
They realized that like,
"Well, we're already putting it
"on the ship, so we could
just color it as well
"and get another advantage of it."
Royal Navy, Mountbatten Pink.
Yeah, I think it was Lewis
Mountbatten was sitting
on deck of a ship and he looked off
and saw a British civilian cruise liner
that had sort of a salmon-pinky color,
and he realized that it blended
in with the setting sun.
And so, the Brits use that,
oh, ugly, ugly pink color
that blended in with the sun setting.
It's called Mountbatten Pink.
Takes a long time to paint a ship, yeah.
We painted our PT boat,
78th boat, and we had a
air-conditioned warehouse, and
we talked about this earlier,
when you go to a museum ship,
even if you get kind of annoyed when maybe
someone's blocking the ladder
and there's a few people,
you don't realize that these
ships were absolutely packed
with people.
So there was maintenance
constantly going on.
So it wasn't like, "All
right, it's Saturday,
"let's paint the ship."
It was working, parties
were constantly working
on this material.
So, it sort of happened all,
you just needed to make sure
that the right colors were being placed
in the right areas.
Feedback from the fleet about
camouflage effectiveness.
Everyone always has an opinion.
And it's interesting, a
lot of people are skeptical
of what comes from behind the lines,
and then a lot of the
people from behind the lines
think that the up-front
people don't really know
what's going on up there.
People did report, and there
was actually communication.
But I do know of one specific instance,
and I'm sure it was that way,
'cause the Navy's really
good about trying to digest
the lessons it learned and
keep open communications
about a lot of the thing.
And so, this kind of
stuff would be mentioned
in action reports.
When we were working on
the PT305 with the museum,
actually was able to find a document
that listed some of the
experimental schemes
they were trying in that PT squadron
in the Mediterranean.
So they painted them on individual ships
and then they sent them back and said,
"Hey, this worked, this didn't."
And then they actually
got suggestions in return
that said, "Well, you need
to try this, this, and this."
So there was a little bit
of collaboration there.
But for the most part,
especially later in the war,
they just issued those schemes.
And they ended up looking pretty cool.
A lot of people just enjoyed having them
on their ship, anyway.
Oh, let's see.
We have a couple more here.
How often were ship colors changed?
It just kinda depends.
If you're in a situation
where you can have access
to a lot of paint, or
maintenance facilities,
or anything like that,
then you may shift it
per very campaign or action.
But there were some ships,
like especially destroyers
that get stuck on escort duties
or go out in the Pacific and
they just bing bom, bing bom,
bouncing around everywhere,
sometimes they don't get painted
for quite a long time.
And they come in looking pretty ratty.
So, as a huge war, lot of ships,
it's a difficult one to answer without
any sort of certainty.
All right, I think I got one more in here.
Modern Navy uniforms.
Yeah, I don't get the blueberry either.
Inflatables for the use for D-Day,
were they camouflaged?
They made them a little
bit more conspicuous.
From the Navy's standpoint.
But like I said, if you've got a photo
of even a camouflaged Reel ship,
you can sit there and kind of sort
the photo itself out.
So, with any amount of
time, you can figure it out.
But you don't wanna make it clear
that your fake ship is
fake right off the bat.
You kinda wanna sell it just a little bit.
But at the same time, you
don't wanna spend a lot of time
and paint stocks and everything,
sort of supporting that.
All right, I think...
Let's see if I've got any more questions.
And then, I think that may be it.
Very good question about the top.
So, decks and main batteries painted
something other than gray.
All right, so there is two
types of aerial observation.
There's kinda looking down at it,
and then there's looking straight down,
or at least from a really high angle.
And so, pretty much every
camouflage scheme we see,
I've only shown horizontal views,
it's almost always the same
color from straight down.
Something fall off this thing.
But you paint all this
cool, crazy stuff on there,
but then the deck is just
painted what's called Deck Blue.
And that's pretty much across the board,
any scheme you see, they're gonna paint it
one solid color so that
if you're straight down,
or at least high-angle observation,
you're just seeing blue
on blue, water on water.
