Dazzle Camouflage

[PRC]

Came across this guys writeup on Dazzle Camouflage and thought I would share here.

Basically it's the camouflaging of ships, not to conceal against backdrop or water, but to obscure the ships true heading and direction.  Some of these designs are pretty out there:

[ulmont]

This smiley has rarely been more appropriate:

[Ed Anger]

Old camo schemes were awesome. I loved the Japanese one where they painted gun turrets on the Zuiho's flight deck.

[Josquius]

And following the same thinking there was a brief period where infantry would go into battle wearing sequened ball gowns.

[saskganesh]

Dada cloaking is great. Under obscure light, those must have had an effect.

[saskganesh]

And following the same thinking there was a brief period where infantry would go into battle wearing bright red uniforms.

fixed.

[MadBurgerMaker]

Pretty cool looking and all that, but........couldn't you just eyeball the wake to see which way the thing is headed?

[MadImmortalMan]

Pretty cool looking and all that, but........couldn't you just eyeball the wake to see which way the thing is headed?

There was just one thing wrong with the plan...It was bollocks.

[Warspite]

Pretty cool looking and all that, but........couldn't you just eyeball the wake to see which way the thing is headed?

I guess that's hard for a periscope that's not got a great angle.

[Barrister]

Pretty cool looking and all that, but........couldn't you just eyeball the wake to see which way the thing is headed?

There was just one thing wrong with the plan...It was bollocks.

Really?  I thought that the thinking was sound, but that any kind of camo became obsolete with the introduction of radar and sonor.

[PRC]

The patterns also made it hard to get a good distance reading through a rangefinder - which is utilized by focusing two images until they overlap perfectly and then you have an accurate reading.  Later periscopes incorporated rangefinders as well and these ship paint patterns made getting that overlapping image through a rangefinder difficult.

[dps]

Pretty cool looking and all that, but........couldn't you just eyeball the wake to see which way the thing is headed?

There was just one thing wrong with the plan...It was bollocks.

Really?  I thought that the thinking was sound, but that any kind of camo became obsolete with the introduction of radar and sonor.

WWII radar and sonar wasn't really all that accurate for fire control until right towards the end of the war.

[Malthus]

Not a single dazzling urbanite in the thread. 

[Siege]

MadBurgerMaker and MadImmortalMan have to be related to each other.

[KRonn]

I guess there are a few reasons this camo was done, since I think I've seen a lot of ships painted up with some kind of camo. At sea I'd think there are many conditions where camo could at least make it harder to judge a target ship's course, type, speed, etc. Long distances,  poor visibility, viewed from a sub's periscope. As mentioned, determing course info and range finding. Does anyone know other reasons camo was used? Or how effective it actually was, or wasn't?