Razzle Dazzle

How do you hide a warship on the high seas like you would a tank on land? You don't, at least not in the first half of the 20th century you didn't. Instead you employed a technique called Dazzle Camouflage.

The idea behind these random patterns was, obviously, not to obscure a ship from view, but to confuse an enemy scoping it out from a distance. Supposedly it would make it more difficult to ascertain a ship's size, speed, and direction with all those sweeping, intersecting lines. they were also supposed to make it harder to match up the dual images you see in a rangefinder used to measure the distance between yourself and an object. This screws up torpedoes and all that fun explosive stuff.

Okay. Camouflage. Woo hoo. Why do we care? Because this "breakthrough" created a fleet of abstract modernist ships. A fleet of dazzled ships at harbor must have been quite a wonderful sight. Before I learned about this a couple years ago I always imaged warships in that ubiquitous battleship grey. It's nice to know the military used to have a little pizazz. Too bad modern radar and sonar technologies made this stuff obsolete long ago.

If I am ever rich enough to own a boat, it's going to look something like this...

Like a giant Alligator.