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Awesome! This is similar to dazzle camouflage from WW1, the idea being to disguise the heading of the ship. I'm not sure it was ever shown to actually work thou
by rozab 6y ago
Awesome! This is similar to dazzle camouflage from WW1, the idea being to disguise the heading of the ship. I'm not sure it was ever shown to actually work though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage
- Tuna-Fish 6y agoDazzle was meant to fool coincidence rangefinders. The method of operation of such a rangefinder is that you see two halves of a picture, and your job as the operator is to adjust a range knob until the two halves "line up" and produce a single picture. By making parts of the ship easy to mistake for other parts, dazzle made this hard. Dazzle fundamentally failed at this task because the primary opponent, Imperial Germany, did not use coincidence rangefinders. Instead, they used stereoscopic rangefinders, against which Dazzle had little effect. (Incidentally, the Germans also went to war with a naval camouflage paint scheme that was best designed to defeat their own instruments, and was notably less effective against the Royal Navy.)
- Waterluvian 6y agoThis has me really curious about a bigger topic: “what are some massive wartime expenditures (money, resources, attention) that ended up being completely ineffective?”
- KineticLensman 6y agoSoviet anti-tank dogs [0] in WW2. Although in truth the expenditure wasn't massive. > the Soviets used their own diesel engine tanks to train the dogs rather than German tanks which had gasoline engines.[5] As the dogs relied on their acute sense of smell, the dogs sought out familiar Soviet tanks instead of strange-smelling German tanks [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog
- pjc50 6y agoMost of the German "wunderwaffe", really. The V2 programme killed more during its manufacture than it did as targets.
- Negitivefrags 6y agoThere is a comedic book on this called "My Tank is Fight"
- hawk_ 6y agoMy favorite example of this is the Spruce Goose. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_H-4_Hercules https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_H-4_Hercules
- eduardo_f 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk
- emmelaich 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-Automatic_Ground_Environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-Automatic_Ground_Environm... Cost billions; more than the Manhattan project. Obsolete soon after deployment due to ICBMs. (Taking your "war time" to include cold war time)
- gresrun 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_R._Mickelsen_Safeguard_Complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_R._Mickelsen_Safeguard... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safeguard_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safeguard_Program
- snowwrestler 6y agoThe canonical example is probably the Maginot Line--to such an extent that it became a general metaphor for that sort of thing.
- mcguire 6y agoOn the other hand, dazzle did make the crew feel better. And the ships had to be painted anyway....
- andbberger 6y agoDazzle arguably made incidence range finders more effective, providing more edges to align.