A recent study has cast doubt on the effectiveness of World War One dazzle ships – vessels painted in camouflage designed to confuse enemy submariners about their speed and direction.
The concept of dazzle camouflage, often credited to the biologist Graham Kerr or the artist Norman Wilkinson, was introduced during the First World War as the British fleet contended with the threat of German U-boats.
The authors created a computer simulation of the RMS Mauretania - a British troop ship during WWI, - ‘painted’ it in various achromatic dazzle camouflage patterns and asked 16 participants to indicate the ship’s direction of travel.
Dr George Lovell, senior lecturer in Abertay University’s department of sociological and psychological sciences, explained: ‘Overall, we found that the perceptual draw to the horizon was less for our participants with greater maritime experience.
‘Assuming this would apply to enemy sub captains, then this suggests that the dazzle camo would have been of value, though our computer simulations of torpedo strikes showed that this would be so only for fast and distant ships.’