Dazzle paint schemes have always been a very interesting thing. Because you're effectively making the object more visible in order to obscure specific details about it. It's one of those shower thoughts that's so crazy that it actually works.
To give an example of whether the bizarre camouflage paint worked, when one battleship was finally taken out of the paint shop, the tugboat driver was so shocked and confused that he steered the tugboat around her TWICE to make sure he had a good idea of her overall size and which direction she was heading!
@Otosj van Tolerbok He has a point, even at a distance it could make determining the size of a vessel difficult. If you can't determine the size, your range finding calculations can be off.
Dazzle paint of a sort is still in use today in the obfuscation of new car designs. Prototypes are wrapped in vinyl printed with a modern take on dazzle paint to confuse the prying eyes of corporate competitors.
That's true and has been done since the 1980s. The only time it failed was when GM tried to conceal its Corvette when it received a totally new body for 1984. The driver was warned the media were getting very nosey and the guards at the test track had caught reporters sneaking in several times. One of them worked for Popular Mechanics and was able to catch a picture of the car from the side. The test driver seldom dropped below 100 mph, making it very hard for other less skilled photographers to get a clear shot, partly thanks to the body wrap. Unfortunately, the "cat was out of the bag" and the office was flooded with questions about the car. I don't know if their public relations office spoke up or were ordered to hang up the phone...
Norman Wilkinson's talents were used in World War 2 to experiment with ways for making airfields less visible to enemy planes. He was a remarkable artist, most famous for painting railway and travel posters for nearly 50 years - they are collector's items now.
I could be misinformed, but if not, you missed a very important point. As important as direction is in targeting a ship, so is range and speed. The optical range finders used a split screen system to calculate that, but depended on the operator to properly overlay images. The Razzel-dazel paint made that difficult, and a little error would be a big miss. Changes in range were also used to determine a ships direction as well as speed.
@@NauticalStudy Sounds like the topic for a new vid, doesn't it. It would be interesting to know if it were more effective viewed by parascope, or the long base finders a battleship might have. BTW, I should have said Changes in range "and angle" were also used to determine a ships direction as well as speed. Also, there is a light amplification effect using just magnification, such as telescopes and range finders. Contrast you can't see with the naked eye at night, pops up under 30 power!
In a large organization such as a large navy, there are many "disadvantaged units" and their importance is routinely underestimated.* They have to do with much less than a wide-based, split-screen optical range finder. If you can identify the class of a ship, you may be able to look up the height of prominent features (such as a smokestack) and use trigonometry to find a distance -- length is useful only if you know its direction of travel. Dazzle can obscure what class of ship it was, as some of the pictures in this video demonstrate. I have seen pictures of Dazzle'd ships where it was difficult to see its length or identify features well-enough to determine its height. And this was in an office setting, not a ship/boat/aircraft at sea.
@@DouglasMoran All true, and few ships in WWI had radar (I'm kidding). I have some experience using mills to guesstimate range of targets. Still, subs used optical range finding as did frigates and larger for their guns and torpedoes. And I think subs were the primary reason this sort of camouflage came into existence as subs use "peek-a-boo" tracking. Come to think of it, it's all based on trig. And again my understand is that the dazzle was based on messing up the optical rangefinder, other features would be icing.
I've long wondered. If Titanic rammed the iceberg, like the sister ship did with the uboat, instead of trying to go around it... Would it have survived? I mean, yes. The front would likely be smashed and ruined. But I think they could have secured enough of the bulkheads so they wouldn't at least sink. ^^ Thought brought to the world by an armchair specialist with no nautical credentials. Though imagine being the captain having to order the crew to aim for the iceberg.
@@Cruz474 Yes. I know. But I wasn't suggesting that the Titanic could do significant damage to the iceberg. I understand that icebergs are very solid. But what I am getting at is that by trying to get around the iceberg, the whole side got exposed to the iceberg and it ripped open most of the sections that were designed to be able to be closed off to keep buoyancy of the ship. Causing the whole ship to sink. My thought experiment is that if they instead decided to aim straight at the iceberg (ramming maybe is a bad wording as they still could try to slow down to minimize damage instead of going full speed ahead), the only bit that would be hit is the front. And by the time the ship had stopped, probably the only damaged bit would be the front and the egos of the crew along with a few causalities getting crushed and/or drowned in that front portion. They could then just close off the front section and stay afloat. Either until rescue came to tug them away or emptying the crew and passengers safely without the whole ship sinking. again. I have no degree in engineering or naval procedures. I just thought it could be a solution that would have saved more lives and maybe even the ship.
Oh man I would love to see that. Perhaps have a series of large identical ship models floating in a pond, each artist gets a week or so to paint them with the goal of making the most effective camouflage. Then people have to guess how long and what kind of ship model they are based on silhouettes, winner gets some cash or something and the ability to set someone else’s ship on fire.
The key to this story comes at 0:31 when the narrator says the British were hard pressed - they were desperate and ready to try any sort of nutty idea. And it was a nutty idea. Note that the reason for dazzle painting was not a defense against submarine attack, it was a defense against enemy surface ships using optical coincidence range finders to aim their big guns, which could hurl shells further than you can clearly see. No one had radar in WW1, so big guns were aimed by lining up two images to coincidence. In a gun battle between 2 ships, the first to fire and cause damage was likely to win, so confusing the gun aimer for a minute or less was beneficial. Or beneficial in deciding to turn and run. Since submarines could not use rangefinders (too big), the target position and course was estimated by centering it in the periscope at two instances a few seconds apart, and noting the periscope bearings. Unless the target is turning, dazzle paint has no effect on this process. Once surface warships got radar, dazzle paint was worthless.
Not entirely true, it did work slightly against submarines as well. I read one account on a German U-boat commander recounting his hunting of a ship painted in dazzle. He initially believed he was looking at two ships far away, heading slightly away. It was only when he got far too close for comfort that he realised it was just one ship, heading slightly towards him.
Believe me please! I built a expensive radio controlled boat It was a fletcher class so I painted it with dazzle it was a beauty! 1 problem!!! I could not tell which way it was headed!!! As push power to bring it in It sailed into the bay!at full speed out of range! My girl called me from the bridge And said I see it! Where??? Leaveing the bay! Believe me dazzle works fantastic!
Awesome I've heard of these paint schemes on ships during the war years, but never seen remarkable painting designs such as in this video. I mean some of them are works of art without a question. Just beautiful. Amazing
I'm glad that I watched through to the very end with your Bill Murry piece! Very entertaining and enlightening. Yeah, a couple of those designs were extremely confusing.
I find it interesting that they went from insane paint schemes to just painting ships a grey color (see ships like the USS New Jersey, USS Enterprise and USS Ronald Reagan)
This turned the german submarine captain into art critics for which if they disliked the paint scheme they sink the ship and if they liked them they let them go because sinking a well painted ship to them is like insulting the said painter.
I was under the impression that Uboats would use their deck guns much more often than torpedoes. Either way, some of the paint schemes worked well on me.
Should mention that both HMCS Regina and HMCS Moncton got dazzle paint jobs in 2019 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of victory in the Battle of the Atlantic. Regina headed out to RIMPAC 2019 and you can see her dazzling away in the "big fleet" shots from that exercise. Google HMCS REgina Dazzle.
Many thanks for this superb video on an esoteric but very real topic of both world wars. Your show prep and visuals for this episode are first-rate. Great colors in some of these and the black and white photos also speak to some arrangements that probably looked as startling in color. My sympathies go not to the U-boat captains, but to the men who had to handle relative ship handling in convoys, by keeping their position bearings on other ships. Probably gave the bridge crews and lookouts optical migraines…
Still in use today, albeit for different reasons; We had 2 new Corvettes with what looks like cardboard box shaped growths under a black and white dazzle paint job roll through our super small Coastal Oregon town about June 2019 ? I had to be that guy that outted the team as they pulled into the same tiny Seafood restaurant. Cool guys that told me zilch, still not positive the were even Vettes’ or Vipers or Yugos. Pretty sure they weren’t Yugos.
Another aspect of dazzle camo is that some techniques for determining range already caused eye strain and head aches, so forcing the poor fellow at the rangefinder to take even longer to figure out the range coarse and speed of a ship would reduce the efficiency of producing a firing solution. It is not improbable for a u-boat captain to take one glance at a dazzle ship and decide to find anything else to stare at.
re: new Royal Navy scheme it’s for anti-piracy, anti-smuggling, anti-terrorism, hence being on their patrol ships. it’s still effective and the targets would have to have high tech equipment to defeat it which defeats their attempts to go unnoticed as that equipment would be detected
Makes perfect sense. Zebra pattern works to break up lines and therefore the ability to identify and predict movement.... RAZZLE DAZZLE! Carry on.... Now I have a strange urge to steal an experimental camper van.
Hi Nautical Study, love the channel and your videos. You put a great deal of work into them and turns out I love learning about ships. I just had a video suggestion for you. If you are interested I think making a video on the HMS Dreadnought would be cool. Anyway great job and keep up the good work!
One thing is even if it didn't work in the way that you could still tell the direction. I know if I was a German submariner and I knew they had a paint that would disrupt the direction, I'd presume it was working so would be more likely to hesitate, if I was in a compromised position. So I imagine it did work even if it didn't, a bit like how secret weapons that turn out to be terrible, still shock the other side who scramble to find a solution
It’s interesting to note that dazzle camouflage was most effective to the British themselves, and much less so the Germans. Let me explain. The British used coincidence rangefinders made by Barr & Stroud. Coincidence rangefinders are highly susceptible to dazzle camouflage and the British assumed the Germans were using similar technology. They even mounted canvas “range baffles” on the masts of their ships, these were triangles made from canvas and wire that were meant to further confuse coincidence rangefinders. If you look at many mid-to-late war photos of Royal Navy capital ships you’ll see them. It’s easiest to spot them on the mainmast by the way. What the British didn’t know is that the Germans were using stereoscopic rangefinders made by Zeiss (yes, that same Zeiss that makes camera lenses today) which were far less susceptible to errors introduced by range baffles and dazzle camouflage. In post-WWI interviews, submarine officers did say that under certain conditions it would be more difficult to arrive at a firing solution for a dazzle-painted ship. However the opposite could be true under different lighting conditions and angles. Famously Soviet submariners stated that German Baltic camouflage used early in WWII aided in aiming. Additionally, the US Navy adopted a scheme known as Measure 12 early in WWII. This camouflage scheme quickly turned out to be quite dangerous since it seemed to enhance the ship in all the wrong ways. Like the German Baltic camouflage, it was quickly withdrawn and repainted.
You started to sound like the ships were strutting the cat walk in the latest fashions. Shoulda played Right Said Fred "Im too Sexy" in the background. Lol!
This is actually remarkably timely. Just this morning while on my way to work I passed the battleship USS Alabama on Mobile Bay. I noticed the color of the ship is nearly identical to the color of the clear blue sky. It was nearly invisible, save for all the pointy boom boom sticks mounted on every horizontal surface. So naturally, like anyone on their way to work does, I instantly thought, how does dazzle paint work and how is it better than a battleship wearing the sky? And now I know the answer. So why are submarines black? Maybe it’s harder to see a black submarine if your submarine has windows? Why is it called a poop deck when the head is at the front of the boat? There’s a couple ideas for ya matey. Get to work
Actually, Uboats often attacked on the surface. In WW1, because of the ROE originally employed by the Kreigsmarine, they basically had to stop and search merchant ships. The Admiralty countered with Q ships, merchants with blooming big guns hidden on their decks.
Are you implying they would only fire one to two torpedos per trip from port? If they only surfaced at port, they couldn’t repressurize or get oxygen. They had to surface.
WW1 submarines small and had very limited internal space. Some were designed to carry reloads outside the pressure hull under the deck plating. The sub had to surface to move them inside the pressure hull once room was available.
@@NauticalStudy, when I was younger I got a book that had 882 1/2 facts about the titanic. Now that I’m coming into my 20s I’m fascinated with the sea and the travel
@@thetalkingjshow8797 absolutely! It was one of my favorite things to read as a kid and it’s reliable info so think it could prove to be a useful asset.
the island ship’s pronunciation? pronounced in english as Crine zen. looks harder to pronounce than it really is, unless you heard it you’d never know it! and it’s not the speeding away that’s the issue with missing: it’s the depth charges the escort shops will drop that’s the true danger! though small in number, they could still pack a punch if the ships happened to be equipped with them
Here's a fun little side-note. The Red Bull Formula 1 team tried using something akin to dazzle camouflage on their cars during the off-season testing sessions, in an attempt to prevent other teams from figuring out how their car's aerodynamics worked from analysing photos. How effective it actually was is anybody's guess but it does look pretty rad. img.redbull.com/images/c_crop,w_4246,h_2831,x_170,y_0,f_auto,q_auto/c_scale,w_1500/redbullcom/2015/02/01/1331702737465_5/infiniti-red-bull-racing-rb11-test-livery-track
It’s perfect for hiding your battleship in a herd of zebras. Like we did in Nam.
Nice strategy, any chance we could use it anywhere else?
Dazzle paint schemes have always been a very interesting thing. Because you're effectively making the object more visible in order to obscure specific details about it. It's one of those shower thoughts that's so crazy that it actually works.
th-cam.com/video/YX8BzK_LU0E/w-d-xo.html
To give an example of whether the bizarre camouflage paint worked, when one battleship was finally taken out of the paint shop, the tugboat driver was so shocked and confused that he steered the tugboat around her TWICE to make sure he had a good idea of her overall size and which direction she was heading!
@Otosj van Tolerbok He has a point, even at a distance it could make determining the size of a vessel difficult. If you can't determine the size, your range finding calculations can be off.
Dazzle paint of a sort is still in use today in the obfuscation of new car designs. Prototypes are wrapped in vinyl printed with a modern take on dazzle paint to confuse the prying eyes of corporate competitors.
same with aircraft and other sensitive vehicles…
That's cool!
That's true and has been done since the 1980s. The only time it failed was when GM tried to conceal its Corvette when it received a totally new body for 1984. The driver was warned the media were getting very nosey and the guards at the test track had caught reporters sneaking in several times. One of them worked for Popular Mechanics and was able to catch a picture of the car from the side. The test driver seldom dropped below 100 mph, making it very hard for other less skilled photographers to get a clear shot, partly thanks to the body wrap. Unfortunately, the "cat was out of the bag" and the office was flooded with questions about the car. I don't know if their public relations office spoke up or were ordered to hang up the phone...
Norman Wilkinson's talents were used in World War 2 to experiment with ways for making airfields less visible to enemy planes. He was a remarkable artist, most famous for painting railway and travel posters for nearly 50 years - they are collector's items now.
I could be misinformed, but if not, you missed a very important point. As important as direction is in targeting a ship, so is range and speed. The optical range finders used a split screen system to calculate that, but depended on the operator to properly overlay images. The Razzel-dazel paint made that difficult, and a little error would be a big miss. Changes in range were also used to determine a ships direction as well as speed.
That’s totally true and that’s on me for not putting it in
@@NauticalStudy Sounds like the topic for a new vid, doesn't it. It would be interesting to know if it were more effective viewed by parascope, or the long base finders a battleship might have. BTW, I should have said Changes in range "and angle" were also used to determine a ships direction as well as speed. Also, there is a light amplification effect using just magnification, such as telescopes and range finders. Contrast you can't see with the naked eye at night, pops up under 30 power!
In a large organization such as a large navy, there are many "disadvantaged units" and their importance is routinely underestimated.* They have to do with much less than a wide-based, split-screen optical range finder. If you can identify the class of a ship, you may be able to look up the height of prominent features (such as a smokestack) and use trigonometry to find a distance -- length is useful only if you know its direction of travel. Dazzle can obscure what class of ship it was, as some of the pictures in this video demonstrate. I have seen pictures of Dazzle'd ships where it was difficult to see its length or identify features well-enough to determine its height. And this was in an office setting, not a ship/boat/aircraft at sea.
@@DouglasMoran All true, and few ships in WWI had radar (I'm kidding). I have some experience using mills to guesstimate range of targets. Still, subs used optical range finding as did frigates and larger for their guns and torpedoes. And I think subs were the primary reason this sort of camouflage came into existence as subs use "peek-a-boo" tracking. Come to think of it, it's all based on trig. And again my understand is that the dazzle was based on messing up the optical rangefinder, other features would be icing.
That's correct.
RMS Olympic ramming the U-Boat was badass its a shame she dont get the same fame as the Titanic
I can't imagine how that must of been inside the U-boat... Its about the same thing as the Empire State building ramming a Prius at 20mph
@@gittyupalice96 I couldnt either they got one hell of a concussion
I've long wondered. If Titanic rammed the iceberg, like the sister ship did with the uboat, instead of trying to go around it... Would it have survived? I mean, yes. The front would likely be smashed and ruined. But I think they could have secured enough of the bulkheads so they wouldn't at least sink.
^^ Thought brought to the world by an armchair specialist with no nautical credentials.
Though imagine being the captain having to order the crew to aim for the iceberg.
@@jmalmsten No. A U-Boat is a hollow metal shell. An iceberg is literally a gigantic floating rock.
@@Cruz474
Yes. I know. But I wasn't suggesting that the Titanic could do significant damage to the iceberg. I understand that icebergs are very solid. But what I am getting at is that by trying to get around the iceberg, the whole side got exposed to the iceberg and it ripped open most of the sections that were designed to be able to be closed off to keep buoyancy of the ship. Causing the whole ship to sink.
My thought experiment is that if they instead decided to aim straight at the iceberg (ramming maybe is a bad wording as they still could try to slow down to minimize damage instead of going full speed ahead), the only bit that would be hit is the front. And by the time the ship had stopped, probably the only damaged bit would be the front and the egos of the crew along with a few causalities getting crushed and/or drowned in that front portion. They could then just close off the front section and stay afloat. Either until rescue came to tug them away or emptying the crew and passengers safely without the whole ship sinking.
again. I have no degree in engineering or naval procedures. I just thought it could be a solution that would have saved more lives and maybe even the ship.
It's not about making them harder to see, it's about making them harder to hit.
I sure did learn something! Thanks!
I wish they’d bring back dazzle paint.
Or at least make an annual dazzle paint scheme contest.
Oh man I would love to see that. Perhaps have a series of large identical ship models floating in a pond, each artist gets a week or so to paint them with the goal of making the most effective camouflage. Then people have to guess how long and what kind of ship model they are based on silhouettes, winner gets some cash or something and the ability to set someone else’s ship on fire.
@@johnbeauvais3159nice to hear from you.
My g-grandfather sailed to France on the Leviathan during WWI. Trivia: Actor Humphrey Bogart was a crew member.
Did Bogart say to your G-Granndad "Of all the clubs and Gin joints in the world you had to walk into my cabin !! " 😁
It's pronounced "HMS Tay-marr" after the river which flows past the naval base in Plymouth.
No, it's T'mar, after the famous Klingon!
Ships need to go back to this. I love the crazy designs
Two or three of those examples are really effective!!
The key to this story comes at 0:31 when the narrator says the British were hard pressed - they were desperate and ready to try any sort of nutty idea. And it was a nutty idea.
Note that the reason for dazzle painting was not a defense against submarine attack, it was a defense against enemy surface ships using optical coincidence range finders to aim their big guns, which could hurl shells further than you can clearly see. No one had radar in WW1, so big guns were aimed by lining up two images to coincidence. In a gun battle between 2 ships, the first to fire and cause damage was likely to win, so confusing the gun aimer for a minute or less was beneficial. Or beneficial in deciding to turn and run.
Since submarines could not use rangefinders (too big), the target position and course was estimated by centering it in the periscope at two instances a few seconds apart, and noting the periscope bearings. Unless the target is turning, dazzle paint has no effect on this process. Once surface warships got radar, dazzle paint was worthless.
which was why it fell out of favor in WWII as it wasn’t effective against anything and would only work against shore posts
Not entirely true, it did work slightly against submarines as well.
I read one account on a German U-boat commander recounting his hunting of a ship painted in dazzle.
He initially believed he was looking at two ships far away, heading slightly away. It was only when he got far too close for comfort that he realised it was just one ship, heading slightly towards him.
Believe me please! I built a expensive radio controlled boat
It was a fletcher class so I painted it with dazzle it was a beauty!
1 problem!!! I could not tell which way it was headed!!! As push power to bring it in
It sailed into the bay!at full speed out of range! My girl called me from the bridge
And said I see it! Where??? Leaveing the bay! Believe me dazzle works fantastic!
The Abraham Crijnssen is a museum ship in my hometown Den Helder.
Love the background music
I really enjoyed this video of these dazzled ships, and have wondered how it worked.
Some of those are so good i cant tell what im looking at up close in a picture. Imagine 3 miles away
Awesome
I've heard of these paint schemes on ships during the war years, but never seen remarkable painting designs such as in this video. I mean some of them are works of art without a question. Just beautiful. Amazing
As a muralist I have used the dazzle style with great effect and admiration from my clients. Cheers
I was dazzled by your narrative.
A+ comment
Sailors: How to make ship invisible?
A certain painter: Make it more visible
U-boat captain: **visible confusion**
I'm glad that I watched through to the very end with your Bill Murry piece! Very entertaining and enlightening. Yeah, a couple of those designs were extremely confusing.
I find it interesting that they went from insane paint schemes to just painting ships a grey color (see ships like the USS New Jersey, USS Enterprise and USS Ronald Reagan)
Thank you for making this. I really had no idea how these paint schemes actually worked as camouflage
i love ur videos keep up the good work
The Olympic actually had 2 very cool Dazzle schemes, one in 1917 and one in 1918.
If ships had programmable animated LED lights on the hulls you could make all kinds of crazy shit happen.
And if your grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon.
If.
The biggest word in the English language.
…that’s coming. guarantee they’re thinking of that for future ships
@@lancer525
For some reason I read that in Morgan Freeman’s voice.
@@lancer525 Like how you completely failed Ginos “If my grandmother had wheels she would be a bike”
Great channel dude! Good luck
This turned the german submarine captain into art critics for which if they disliked the paint scheme they sink the ship and if they liked them they let them go because sinking a well painted ship to them is like insulting the said painter.
Funny, but not true.
I was under the impression that Uboats would use their deck guns much more often than torpedoes. Either way, some of the paint schemes worked well on me.
Deck guns don't sink ships.
@@wintersbattleofbands1144 warships, no. Cargo ships, yes.
Except you can conceal a ship in the right conditions. For example, the scheme used by HMS Eskimo in the Murmansk convoys.
I love the aesthetics of dazzle paint. It’s so cool.
Should mention that both HMCS Regina and HMCS Moncton got dazzle paint jobs in 2019 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of victory in the Battle of the Atlantic. Regina headed out to RIMPAC 2019 and you can see her dazzling away in the "big fleet" shots from that exercise. Google HMCS REgina Dazzle.
Many thanks for this superb video on an esoteric but very real topic of both world wars.
Your show prep and visuals for this episode are first-rate.
Great colors in some of these and the black and white photos also speak to some arrangements that probably looked as startling in color.
My sympathies go not to the U-boat captains, but to the men who had to handle relative ship handling in convoys, by keeping their position bearings on other ships. Probably gave the bridge crews and lookouts optical migraines…
Still in use today, albeit for different reasons; We had 2 new Corvettes with what looks like cardboard box shaped growths under a black and white dazzle paint job roll through our super small Coastal Oregon town about June 2019 ? I had to be that guy that outted the team as they pulled into the same tiny Seafood restaurant. Cool guys that told me zilch, still not positive the were even Vettes’ or Vipers or Yugos. Pretty sure they weren’t Yugos.
6:13, That’s the fact, ¡JACK!
Man that was awesome, loved it I play World of War Ships and see the camouflage pattern all the time great video.
You could have researched sunk tonnage before and after the introduction of dazzle paint. that would have been useful.
Or read the memoirs of WW1 U-boat commanders. German. See what they had to say.
Another aspect of dazzle camo is that some techniques for determining range already caused eye strain and head aches, so forcing the poor fellow at the rangefinder to take even longer to figure out the range coarse and speed of a ship would reduce the efficiency of producing a firing solution. It is not improbable for a u-boat captain to take one glance at a dazzle ship and decide to find anything else to stare at.
Dazzle camo feels like when you aren’t sure what your password is so you type it really fast and hope it gets by the computer.
re: new Royal Navy scheme
it’s for anti-piracy, anti-smuggling, anti-terrorism, hence being on their patrol ships. it’s still effective and the targets would have to have high tech equipment to defeat it which defeats their attempts to go unnoticed as that equipment would be detected
Currently HMCS Moncton and HMCS Regina both have dazzle paint schemes.
Makes perfect sense. Zebra pattern works to break up lines and therefore the ability to identify and predict movement.... RAZZLE DAZZLE! Carry on.... Now I have a strange urge to steal an experimental camper van.
Hi Nautical Study, love the channel and your videos. You put a great deal of work into them and turns out I love learning about ships. I just had a video suggestion for you. If you are interested I think making a video on the HMS Dreadnought would be cool. Anyway great job and keep up the good work!
It's funny you mention that because I found myself researching the HMS Dreadnought while looking into the Anglo-German arms race!
One thing is even if it didn't work in the way that you could still tell the direction. I know if I was a German submariner and I knew they had a paint that would disrupt the direction, I'd presume it was working so would be more likely to hesitate, if I was in a compromised position. So I imagine it did work even if it didn't, a bit like how secret weapons that turn out to be terrible, still shock the other side who scramble to find a solution
Nice, never understood it before this
What is the name of the ship passing the lighthouse in the picture at the end?
That would be the SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse.
Dazzle painted ships looked so handsome
cool channel! subbed!
Very interesting video..
what music do you use for backround music?
Emperor's Waltz by Strauss
@@NauticalStudy Thanks man
As important, it often made the size of the sip hard to determine. Without that, range finding was more difficult.
It’s interesting to note that dazzle camouflage was most effective to the British themselves, and much less so the Germans. Let me explain. The British used coincidence rangefinders made by Barr & Stroud. Coincidence rangefinders are highly susceptible to dazzle camouflage and the British assumed the Germans were using similar technology. They even mounted canvas “range baffles” on the masts of their ships, these were triangles made from canvas and wire that were meant to further confuse coincidence rangefinders. If you look at many mid-to-late war photos of Royal Navy capital ships you’ll see them. It’s easiest to spot them on the mainmast by the way.
What the British didn’t know is that the Germans were using stereoscopic rangefinders made by Zeiss (yes, that same Zeiss that makes camera lenses today) which were far less susceptible to errors introduced by range baffles and dazzle camouflage.
In post-WWI interviews, submarine officers did say that under certain conditions it would be more difficult to arrive at a firing solution for a dazzle-painted ship. However the opposite could be true under different lighting conditions and angles. Famously Soviet submariners stated that German Baltic camouflage used early in WWII aided in aiming. Additionally, the US Navy adopted a scheme known as Measure 12 early in WWII. This camouflage scheme quickly turned out to be quite dangerous since it seemed to enhance the ship in all the wrong ways. Like the German Baltic camouflage, it was quickly withdrawn and repainted.
dazzle paint: it works!
Philadelphia experiment: am i a joke to you?
5:17 People on a U boat must have had one hell of a time looking at this
Coming from World of Warships, I never understood that camo pattern~
Nicely done!
Ah yes... the HNLMS I'm not even gonna try that one.
A ship of legend from WWII
You started to sound like the ships were strutting the cat walk in the latest fashions. Shoulda played Right Said Fred "Im too Sexy" in the background. Lol!
Good Stuff, subscribed
This is actually remarkably timely. Just this morning while on my way to work I passed the battleship USS Alabama on Mobile Bay. I noticed the color of the ship is nearly identical to the color of the clear blue sky. It was nearly invisible, save for all the pointy boom boom sticks mounted on every horizontal surface. So naturally, like anyone on their way to work does, I instantly thought, how does dazzle paint work and how is it better than a battleship wearing the sky?
And now I know the answer.
So why are submarines black? Maybe it’s harder to see a black submarine if your submarine has windows?
Why is it called a poop deck when the head is at the front of the boat?
There’s a couple ideas for ya matey. Get to work
Actually, Uboats often attacked on the surface. In WW1, because of the ROE originally employed by the Kreigsmarine, they basically had to stop and search merchant ships. The Admiralty countered with Q ships, merchants with blooming big guns hidden on their decks.
lol there was really a ship called hms terrible?
I wonder if painting my car like that would help to avoid speeding tickets.
thank you for share video
0:12 cool submarines, hope the crew wont get dizzy after spinning like that
The reader would just buzz, say "not on file", and then ask for "price, department, and quantity".
Wait...they actually tried that cartoon cliche of disguising as a bush to evade detection?
4:54 actually so hard to tell even this close where the bow is, think about being a mile away!
5:19 Uh-
IS THAT 1 BOAT OR 3, I LITERALLY DON'T KNOW-
Very effective dazzle paint
The PT 170 I can stare at the photo and still not get a good read about it! Very Nice!
4:45 That whole ship looks like one giant barcode. I wonder what would happen if you scanned it with a barcode reader.
Splinter camo next???
This reminds me of the 1959 DC comic book where Batman had a zebra print suit.
Hey I thought this was well worth the effort. Thanks
very interesting thanks
5:18 ahhhhhhh this messes with my head so bad 😭😭😭
Im guessing they dont still use it because modern torpedos have sonar and actively track the target anyway
I always wondered... now I know! A few of those made me nauseas looking at them...
If they can see us, might as well confused them.
5:17 ... I can't tell if it's one ship or more ships moored side by side
Your statement about having to surface to load torpedos from storage would surely only happen in port so is irrelevant to attack operations at sea.
Are you implying they would only fire one to two torpedos per trip from port? If they only surfaced at port, they couldn’t repressurize or get oxygen. They had to surface.
All those pics were of subs loading torps in port prior to departure. They certainly didn't have to surface to reload!
@@jiyushugi1085 not to reload, to access more ammo!
WW1 submarines small and had very limited internal space. Some were designed to carry reloads outside the pressure hull under the deck plating. The sub had to surface to move them inside the pressure hull once room was available.
You should talk about safety features put in place after the Titanic
You know it’s funny you mention that because I was working on a video discussing why there weren’t enough safety measures on titanic.
@@NauticalStudy, when I was younger I got a book that had 882 1/2 facts about the titanic. Now that I’m coming into my 20s I’m fascinated with the sea and the travel
@@thetalkingjshow8797 I have that exact book on my bookshelf from when I got it as a kid!
@@NauticalStudy do you ever use it as a source of inspiration? It was full of a lot of facts that could be used
@@thetalkingjshow8797 absolutely! It was one of my favorite things to read as a kid and it’s reliable info so think it could prove to be a useful asset.
Such dazzle!
Interestingly, the Germans were so impressed they used it on their ships too - notably on the Bismark.
3:54 isn't that tsar Nicolas the 2nd?
the island ship’s pronunciation? pronounced in english as Crine zen. looks harder to pronounce than it really is, unless you heard it you’d never know it!
and it’s not the speeding away that’s the issue with missing: it’s the depth charges the escort shops will drop that’s the true danger! though small in number, they could still pack a punch if the ships happened to be equipped with them
First time hearing of this
I would just go on youtube and find a video on how to hide ships at sea.
Here's a fun little side-note. The Red Bull Formula 1 team tried using something akin to dazzle camouflage on their cars during the off-season testing sessions, in an attempt to prevent other teams from figuring out how their car's aerodynamics worked from analysing photos. How effective it actually was is anybody's guess but it does look pretty rad.
img.redbull.com/images/c_crop,w_4246,h_2831,x_170,y_0,f_auto,q_auto/c_scale,w_1500/redbullcom/2015/02/01/1331702737465_5/infiniti-red-bull-racing-rb11-test-livery-track
Car companies do this all the time on prototypes
Very coo-el.
Check out the luxury yacht "Guilty Pleasure"
HOW DO. YOU ONLY HAVE 1K SUBS WHAAAAT
Give em a lil of the ol razzle dazzle...
Lol the very end 👏🏻
4:53 thought I had epilepsy.
I learned about this from Battlefield 1 actually lol
Next step: Bead Dazzling.
Nice work. You should do a video about African countries navies. I don’t think I can even name one navy from Africa