US Ship Camouflage in WWI

The Americans had been experimenting with various ship camouflage ideas long before the United States became a belligerent, When that finally occurred, American artist Edward Everett Warner became the leader of the US Navy team producing ship camouflage designs. Warner had already been making disruptive designs when Wilkinson came to the US with a lot of examples of RN designs.

The following designs are split into 2 sections, as were the

Actual designs. The first part are designs for US Navy ships. They are identified by the prefix “N”. My original source for these patterns and pictures is the U S National Archives. The patterns are located in one area, the photographs are mostly in another, and the colored drawings are in yet another. Photography in WWI was Black and White. The colored sketches were made by artists, both men and women, who served in the USNRF during the war They are an invaluable resource for showing what the colors really looked like. However, different artists had differing ability with regard to precision ,

PART ONE: NAVY DESIGNS

The first set of designs where the contemporary artist sketches make a major impact is the designs prepared for the first converted mine layers. They were given design numbers in the N-1 and N-2 series. The original file copies for the patterns in the National Archives are badly damaged, possibly by fire. The originals were inside clear plastic sleeves when photographed, resulting in areas without color. The sketches by the contemporary artists give a much clearer picture of the designs and colors used. The original designs were prepared using blueprints. The original designs normally used a palette of black, white, #2 blue-grey and #3 blue. The number indicated the intensity of the color, #3 blue was actually quite dark but #2 blue-grey was a light color.

USS CANANDAIGUA (SP-CZ1694)