A Look At How WWI Naval Paint Jobs Were Done

The dazzle-painted USS Lapland. National Archives/ 45500123

Atlas Obscura: The Painstaking Process Behind Those Wild WWI Naval Paint Jobs

“Dazzle” paint was first tested on tiny model ships.

There were plenty of new, sometimes bizarre opportunities for camouflage in World War I: searchlights disguised as shrubbery, lookouts concealed as trees, and the Women’s Reserve Camouflage Corps dressed in suits that blended seamlessly into the landscape. But at sea, the U.S. Navy required a different type of visual trickery: what came to be known as “dazzle” paint.

The idea was for ships to be seen, “but seen incorrectly,” explains Jennifer Marland, Curator of the National Museum of the United States Navy. If paint could be used to distort a ship’s angles, the thinking went, that would “make it difficult for the ship to be targeted efficiently by a submarine.”

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WNU Editor: For those who loved building model ships .... this must have been their dream job.