Before I go into my own takes on this subject I thought it would b a good idea to review what’s already available. I prefer to focus my own efforts on new items, or things that have not had a lot of exposure. That said, here is a short review of what others have already done.
David Williams published a book called “Naval Camouflage 1914-1945, a complete visual reference”. It is one of the sources that I almost NEVER use. One of the reasons is that it has a lot of information for which I have never found real corroboration. for example, in the First World War section he mentions red frequently. But red appears never to have been part of the approved admiralty colors. Wilkinson doesn’t include it in his own list of colors. There are examples of artists using red in paintings and posters, but the official records don’t support this. The caption on the Mauretania photo on page 29 mentions red and yellow, but the actual ship was painted in blue, black, and white. Another example is his long lists of US navy patterns in the WW II section. He lists almost every Type 31,32 and 33 design as having a class letter. That simply is not the case. Most designs were never produced for all the color combinations he lists. I got a feeling that when he described early naval camouflage it was almost like an observer trying to understand a game of chess without knowing the rules. He can tell about what he has seen, but doesn’t understand what lay behind.
My own introduction to WW II naval camouflage came form 2 tiny booklets and a series of articles in Scale Models magazine. The articles were written by Del Palmieri and appeared in 1979. It included the first lists, albeit incomplete, of which ships were painted in which patterns. The little booklets were “U S Navy Warship Camouflage 1939-1945” by Chris Ellis, and “Royal Navy Warship Camouflage 1939-1945” by Peter Hodges. As representatives of what was available in the 1973-75 period they are quite good. But they are small, and lack depth. Pat Hreachmeak’s “The Painters Guide to WW II Naval Camouflage” came out some 20 years later and suffers from similar limitations.
US Navy camouflage received more thorough coverage when Alan Raven wrote about it. His superb articles are still available on the Ship Camouflage website. He also wrote a 4 volume series about Royal Navy Camouflage between 2000 and 2003. These paper backs have lots of excellent illustration and commentary regarding colors and dates used. Unfortunately, they lack an index. Recently Malcolm Wright has issued hardback volumes about Royal Navy camouflage. They are in color (with all the problems of trying to match printed colors to paint) and have excellent commentary. There are a couple of weak points. The destroyers and smaller craft usually had the same pattern on both sides, but when they did not, Wright omits them. He also includes a few WW I designs, and they are, to be generous, not totally reliable. But the books are about WW II designs, and in that they are a really great reference.
The Floating Drydock made 2 booklets on US Navy WWII Camouflage in 1976-1977. At the time, they were probably the best references available. They used actual patterns they found to illustrate the booklets. Later they also issued plan books of other designs, without commentary. Once those items were available the US Navy Historical Center (now the Navy History and Heritage Command) put a large number of actual original WWII pattern photographs on line. There was even a plan to analyze some of those plans, and the first section, covering some Sumner/Gearing class destroyers, was actually completed.
I would be remiss if I failed to mention that the US Naval Institute also put separate photo essays about WW I and WW II ship camouflage in their “Proceedings” magazine in 1971 and 1973.
I’ll cover the Japanese in about a week, but the German and Italian navies also used ship camouflage extensively. One of the first places to show German camouflage was Robert Stern’s booklet “Kriegsmarine”. In 1977 Dieter Jung, Arno Abendroth, and Norbert Kelling produced the German language “Anstriche un Tarnanstriche der deutschen Kriegsmarine”. It even included photo captions in English. A newer reference in English has appeared recently; German Naval Camouflage” by Eric Leon ad John Rasmussen. For accurate camouflage of German ships in WWII I think these are essential. The Italian Navy finally got a detailed in depth book in 2006 when Erminio Bagnasco and Maurizio Brescia wrote “La Mimitizzazione delle Navi Italiane 1940-1945”. It even includes a separate synopsis chapter in English.
To round out the coverage of ship camouflage the approach of Art Historians must be mentioned. Professor Roy Behrens has written a few books on camouflage. His “Ship Shape”, and “Camoupedia” are wonderful sources for a lot of information. Glyn L Evans produced “Dazzle Painted Ships of World War I” in 2015 followed by James Taylor,s “Dazzle, disguise and disruption in war and art” in 2016. The major theme in both of the latter books is the role of the art community in producing, and recording, camouflage schemes as an art form. Publications like those add depth of understanding to what goes into producing effective ship camouflage.
In the near future I will add my own pages about camouflage from different countries and eras.
T
Wetherhorn 