Dazzle Painting

World War I Podcast

World War I was a war of production and supply: whoever could feed their populations and soldiers, make the most weapons, and marshal the most resources would win the war. Surrounded by enemies on land, and desperate to break the trans-Atlantic trade and supply lines of the Allied Powers, Germany used submarines during the war to hunt down and destroy Allied vessels. With this German U-Boat campaign threatening Allied supplies and production capabilities, it soon became obvious that something had to be done to counter the U-Boat threat or the Allies would lose the war.
One of the tactics adopted was the use of “dazzle painting” – a jarring, brightly colored paint scheme for ships. Recognizing that it was impossible to make a ship invisible, Norman Wilkinson, the father of dazzle painting, decided to use bright and contrasting colors in geometric patterns to distort the size, speed, and shape of a ship. While the ultimate success of dazzle painting was much debated after the war, it remains an interesting chapter in the history of World War I.