Camouflage: The History of Concealment and Deception in War

166 Pages·1980·18.34 MB·English

by  Guy Hartcup

CAMOUFLAGE
By the same author
The Challenge of War
The Achievement of the Airship
Code Name Mulberry
CAMOUFLAGE
A HISTORY OF CONCEALMENTAND DECEPTION IN WAR
GUYHARTCUP
/New
Charles Scribner's Sons York
^ry
al:e;: c
On account of Remus, a Border collie,
evading deer in Richmond Park, the idea
for this book first took shape
Copyright £ 1980 Guy Hartcup
Libran of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Hartcup, Guy.
Camouflage.
Bibliography:p.
Includes index.
—
I. Camouflage (Military science) History.
I. Title.
LG449.H37 355.4 80-18761
ISBS 0-684-16721-2
Copyright under the Berne Convention
All rights reserved.
So part ofthis book may be reproduced
in any form without the permission
of Charles Scribner's Sons.
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 \ C 20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2
Printed in the Lnited States ofAmerica
21253S3
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
Definition of camouflage. Principles. Camouflage in
nature. Early examples in military history. Need to
make men and their equipment less visible.
DECEIVING THE EYE AND THE CAMERA 16
1
Camouflage on the Western Front. The Special Works
Park. Concealment and deception practised by
Ludendorff and Allenby.
2 DECOY AND DAZZLE 35
Q-ships. British and German use of naval decoys.
Reducing visibility of warships. Dazzle-painting for
merchant ships.
3 THE THREAT OF THE BOMBER 48
Policy for industrial camouflage in World War II.
Use of artists and scientists at Leamington. Help for
the bomber offensive against Germany.
4 DEFLECTING THE BOMBER 60
Concealment of industrial targets. Airfields. Docks.
Water. Effectiveness of static camouflage. Smoke.
Decoys. German industrial camouflage.
5 FROM PASSIVE TO OFFENSIVE 77
Camouflage by Army before and after Dunkirk.
Development and Training Centre at 1 .unburn. Radar
stations. Emphasis on deception. Special Operations
Executive. Preparations for returning to Europe.
Operation 'Fortitude'. Use of deception and smoke in
north-west Europe.
6 WITH INTENT TO DEC! IV] 95
Deception in the Desert. Tobruk. El Alamein. Use <>i
smoke to hide Mediterranean ports. Deception and
concealment in Italy. Deception in India and Burma.
Sonic warfare.
7 CONCEALING THE UNCONCEALABLE 117
Sea-going camouflage. Early efforts. Admiralty schemes.
The U-boat war. Concealment of small ships. Fast-
sailing merchant ships. Decoy ships. Aircraft
camouflage. Pre-war schemes. Day and night fighters.
High-flying reconnaissance and maritime aircraft.
Difficulty of concealing the night bomber.
8 CONCEALING AGAINST THE INVISIBLE 143
Light and heat systems of detection. Influence of
Vietnam War. New camouflage materials and their
application.
conclusion 147
Assessment of static, sea-going and aircraft
camouflage. Lessons learned from ground camouflage.
The Russian Front. Individual effort.
select bibliography 151
references 152
acknowledgements
157
INDEX 158
INTRODUCTION
'As I did stand my watch upon the hill
I looked towards Birnam, and anon, methought,
The wood began to move.'
Messenger to Macbeth
If an optician were to bring me a similar piece of optical
apparatus [the human eye] I would immediately send it back.
Herman Helmholtz
Man has practised the art of concealment and deception in hunting
and warfare from the earliest times. Around 15000 bc a figure called
'The Sorcerer*, since its discovery in the twentieth century ad, was
painted on the walls of a cave known as Les Trois Freres in the Ariege
Valley north of the Pyrenees. He wears the skin of a reindeer with
antlers attached to his head. Whether the artist's intention was to
depict a hunter disguising himself as his prey, or whether the animal's
skin conferred supernatural powers on the wearer, we do not know.
In support of the theory of 'magic' it will be shown that on certain
occasions in war disruptive painting on a factory was believed by the
workers to provide immunity from air attack; while some crews of
merchant ships which were dazzle-painted believed that this in itself
guaranteed immunity from submarine attack.
This is a history of visual camouflage as practised from the earliest
times to the present day. The word first came into use in World War I
and derived from the French verb camoufler, 'to make up for the
stage', though it has antecedents dating from the sixteenth century
via the word camouflet, a practical joke. Brown paper was twisted
into a conical shape; its lower edge was lit and its apex held under
the nose of the unsuspecting victim asleep in a chair. He was abruptly
awakened by the smoke filling his nostrils. As a more deadly form of
practical joke, 'camouflet' became a term in military engineering
describing a small mine used as a countermeasure against the enemy's
tunnelling operations.
In a general sense, camouflage is the art of concealing the fact that
you are concealing. But from the military point of view it is more
complex and is best defined under the headings concealment, decep-
tion or misdirection, and screening.
There are two aspects of concealment : fn>-t there is the sense in
which factories, airfield-, installations, ships, aircraft, and troops and
their equipment merge into the background making use of natural
and artificial means such as paint or matei iak ( "haia< u \ istic examples
8 INTRODUCTION
\\ere the disruptive patterns painted on the roofs and sides of aircraft
factories to confuse the aerial bomb-aimer and the covering of artillery
with netting as concealment against the airborne camera. Second,
there is the disguise of an especially vulnerable warlike object or
target to make its appearance different and therefore uninteresting to
the enemy. The covering of a distinctive sheet of water such as the
Maesche Lake near Hannover, which was used as a navigational aim
by Allied bombers, or the erection of an additional funnel on a tanker
to deceive the U-boat commander, are examples.
Deception or misdirection may be divided, first into general
attempts to mislead the enemy as to intention, to give a false idea of
strength, or to draw the enemy's attention away from a real attack.
An outstanding example was the deception scheme before the British
attack at El Alamein so that a false axis of attack was indicated by
means of dummy vehicles, tanks and dumps, while the real offensive
was prepared in great secrecy elsewhere. In naval warfare confusion
in the mind of the attacker is usually achieved by disruptive patterns
of paint. Second, methods of local deception such as attempts to
distract attention from a real target by means of decoys or to make
the enemy expend his strength and ammunition on a false target.
Decoy fires outside British towns and industrial targets helped misdirect
the bombs of the enemy's main force who believed they were dropping
their loads on the flares of their pathfinders. The siting of dummy
artillery or tanks are examples of the latter.
Screening includes the concealed screen, which may take the form
of false crests, walls, or hedgerows, or \isible screens intended to hide
military activity or act as a decoy. The screening of roads from ground
observers in the vicinity of the front line was frequently practised in
World War I and occasionally in the second. Smoke, of course,
frequently hides movement or misleads the enemy.
Deception also includes the transmission of false information by
radio and other means, the planting of false operation orders, orders
of battle and other ruses de guerre. Their purpose is to mislead the
intelligence service of the enemy about the strength of the forces
opposing him or future plans of attack. These aspects of deception
in the main fall outside the province of this book.
Camouflage varies according to whether the object will be \iewed
from the air or the ground and also the climate, terrain and the type
of warfare. Mobile operations usually demand no more than the use
of local vegetation assisted by nets but static warfare, in the case of
camouflage of industrial targets against air attack, has required
physicists, engineers, chemists and architects because of their know-
ledge of structures and materials. At sea, scientists with a knowledge
of optics and physiologists are the most likely to soke problems where
atmosphere and light affect visibility. However, the artist, with his