Cubism Is Off to War!

During World War I, German naval artillery used rangefinders with a dual-image convergence system: when the two half-images were aligned, the target ship was in proper range of the ship's gun. The Royal Navy struggled to create a method of thwarting the accuracy of these rangefinders, and the solution came from a most unlikely source: British painter Norman Wilkinson who devised a unique form of camouflage which drew upon the principles of modern art -- specifically Cubism, Futurism and Vorticism. Dazzle camouflage, as it came to be known, used bold, eccentric angles and bright colors to fool the German gunners' eyes and make it impossible for them to correctly align the two images in their rangefinders.

That's right: the Royal Navy decided to fight the German naval menace by slathering modern art all over their warships.

Wilkinson's techniques were adopted by the British, U.S., French and Canadian navies, and thousand of Allied ships sailed under dazzle camouflage throughout the war, each with its own unique visual scheme. Dazzle camouflage was created by a battery of abstract artists, including Vorticist Edward Wadsworth.

But it didn't end with WWI. The U.S. navy continued to sail dazzle ships through the second World War as well. So return with us to a time when the dazzle ships ruled the waves, and the Allies had the most utterly awesome-looking navy in the universe.

Dazzle ships under way!


The French warship Gloire:


USS Leviathan, 1918:


No color photos of dazzle ships exist, but we do have artists' renderings of some original designs:


A dazzling WWI aircraft carrier:



Another camouflage design:


HMS Empress of Russia:


Modern art comes full circle: a Futurist painting of dazzle ships in drydock:


Don't you wish we had color photos of these things? The RMS Mauretania:


And lastly, the incredible design on the USS Charles S. Sperry, in 1944. (Be sure to click on it to see a larger version):


Oh, by the way, Dazzle Ships is also the name of a great album by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark.