The Imperial War Museum is a treasury of collections of all sorts of things related to war/ One of those collections is a set of wooden ship models. These are not ordinary models. They are what remains of a major effort by the Admiralty to protect British shipping from the depredations of German U-boats during … More Camouflaged Wooden Models at the Imperial War Museum
The British Admiralty discouraged the use of dazzle camouflage on their battleships during WWI. There were a few exceptions. Actual patterns in various colors were applied to the new battleships Revenge and Ramillies. I covered Ramillies in an earlier post. Revenge is a more difficult problem because there is a book that claims her pattern … More HMS Revenge in WWI
This is HMS Ramillies in an experimental WWI camouflage pattern. I found the pattern recently on-line at the Imperial War Museum site. But the model was painted from a copy of that pattern that went on a tour to Canada and other places. It has a lot of subtle colors and a fairly complicated pattern. … More A Model of a British First World War Battleship in Camouflage
the Royal Navy introduced aircraft during the First World War. Some early seaplanes operated from tenders like HMS Engadine. The seaplanes were hoisted from the ship and placed in the water, After landing they could be lifted back on board. The photos show several Short 184 large torpedo carrying seaplanes on their mother ships. … More Early RN Fleet Air Arm in My Collection
Dazzle camouflage was developed to help protect merchant ships from U-boat attacks. Here are a couple of examples of patterns that were applied to Q-ships. Q-ships were commissioned warships that were resigned to look like merchant vessels. The submarine would be tempted to come to the surface in order to complete destroying its prey without … More Some Examples of British WWI Dazzle Camouflage
The American Army sent a massive force of ground troops to France to help bring an end to the First World War. There were no airplanes to cross the Atlantic then, Everyone came by ship. The largest of the transatlantic passenger ships have been called superliners because they were so much larger than other ships … More The Superliners at War
Here are a few more models from my collection painted in their First World War “Dazzle” camouflage designs,
The models featured in this post were giant transatlantic passenger liners. They usually traveled without escort. Their high speed often kept them from being attacked. But Justicia, a former Dutch ship, was sunk by a U-boat while waiting to proceed into port.
This group of models are examples of merchant ship dazzle patterns used on decoy ships. The ships were designed to appear similar to normal merchant ships but they were actually full-fledged warships with a strong armament that were expected to lure a submarine to the surface by their appearance and then to destroy the U-boat … More RN WWI Camouflage on my models – part IV
Here are a few more models from collection, This time British and Australian smaller cruisers wearing dazzle patterns. Strictly speaking, Amphitrite had already been converted to a minelayer, and Ascot was a minesweeper.
Wetherhorn 