Wetherhorn

While I was researching material for my book about US ship camouflage in WWI, The Easter Egg Fleet, I found a lot of items that weren’t directly pertinent. One example is the camouflage patterns created for Italian ships. The patterns are extremely imaginative and utilize multiple colors and shapes..  Here a few examples with photographs of the ships and a contemporary colored drawing showing the pattern used on each side:

An Italian passenger liner named America using black, white, yellow, green, #1 blue, #3 blue and grey.

 

 

Three tankers from the Ansaldo shipping company:

The first is painted in white, #1 grey, light green, dark brown, and medium brown.

 

 

The second is painted in black, grey, green, white, brown, light blue and reddish brown.

The last is painted in black, white, #3 grey, #4 grey, #3 pink, and #2 grey-green

Some Italian ships used camouflage designs from other countries, like the Jole Fassio shown here in a British Type 11 C design. That design calls for the use of color#4 pink, a color not used in the US and whose existence has even been denied. All the colors except black and white could be specified with specific numbered shades. Those shades started with #0 for an extremely pale tint, and grew progressively darker until they reached #5. The extreme shades of #0 and #5 were only rarely called for.

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