Camouflage - WW2 Documentary Special

Camouflage comes in many forms, shapes, disguises, and even processes, for there are indeed many ways to hide your soldiers, guns, tanks, and even ships at sea. Today we take a wee look at camouflage during the war.

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Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Marek Kamiński
Community Management: Ian Sowden
Written by: Indy Neidell
Research by: Indy Neidell
Map animations by: Daniel Weiss
Map research by: Sietse Kenter
Edited by: Miki Cackowski
Artwork and color grading by: Mikołaj Uchman
Sound design by: Marek Kamiński

Colorizations by:

Image sources:
Bundesarchiv
RIA Novosti #284, #286
IWM NA 2304, TR 1397, TR 1662, UNI 5248, A 11197, A 6163, FL 9253, FL 20930

Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
Fabien Tell - Other Sides of Glory
Fabien Tell - Break Free
Max Anson - Ancient Saga
Alec Slayne - Conspiracy Inc.
Fabien Tell - Weapon of Choice
Jon Bjork - Shrouded in Conspiracy

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

[WorldWarTwo]

From soldiers and guns to tanks and ships at sea, let's take a closer look at how this art of concealment has been applied during wartime. Have you encountered any camouflage tactics so brilliant they almost fooled history itself?

[Bass_Playa_Two_Point.O]

As someone who, back when you could tell original from repro, collected a lot of this WWII stuff, i found it interesting that a guy with whom I worked in the late 70's, Lou, explained how, in the Bocage country, during the Normandy Campaign, his colorblindness allowed him to save his platoon on numerous occasions, because the camouflage German uniforms and positions didn't have the optical effect on him.

[hankw]

In 1918 my, then 3 year old, grandmother had a chicken named camouflage. This was during the first world war and amongst the American populous, camouflage was a buzz-word like 'stealth' in the 1980's and 90's. Her toddler ears picked this up and her pet chicken was thus named Camouflage. RIP grandma Mary-Jane, you are loved and missed.

[martinpfeilsticker]

Sergeant: Soldier, I didn't see you at the camouflage training! Soldier:Sir, thank you very much, sir, very appreciated!

[Ben-fkey]

Would it be possible to have an episode based around logistics? We've heard a lot about the Allies struggles in France but I'm curious how the Soviets resupply and maintain their forces especially considering their advances over huge distances. Also the logistics situation in the Pacific would be interesting to hear about as well with the famous example of American ice-cream boats.

[TheEvertw]

I love the Navy dazzle schemes. Designed to trick spotters into misjudging the distance and/or speed of the vessel, not so much its presence.

[MechWomanWarrior]

This past Halloween I dressed up in A ghillie suit to hand out candy for the kids.

One kid takes the candy, promptly looks up at me, and says "Thanks, plant!"

I'd call that successful camouflage 😂

[Tornikessu]

You may have nice camouflage patterns. But the absolute best one is the Finnish Winter war camo made from white bed sheets!

[rashkavar]

One thing that's very important to know about how British naval camouflage worked is how German rangefinders worked. Using a German designed rangefinder, you would look at a ship through a scope, and see the top half of the image in 1 level of zoom and the bottom half at a different level of zoom (or something that produces a similar effect). When you adjusted it such that the images lined up, you had it at the correct range, and could read off the range. But with the dazzle camouflage, it was very difficult to get that right - any given line on the ship you were using to try to see if things line up properly could be broken up at any arbitrary point along it by the camo, so to find the range you had to figure out which breaks were from the camo and which were from the optics. Net result: rangefinder use was much slower to find a number, much less likely to be exactly correct, and much greater eye strain on the operator (thus impairing performance long term over the course of a chase or pitched long-term battle. Yes, you'd have some amount of relief crew to compensate for that, but there's only so many people on a ship who are going to have the relevant training, and the rangefinder person is going to have to learn that person's job too, and...it muddles things up.

The idea isn't to say "There isn't a ship here." The idea is to say "There is a ship somewhere here but you don't know exactly where....but we know exactly where you are!" And because British rangefinders used a different method (the details of which I forget), they were all but immune to any German attempts to just copy the dazzle patterns. (As I recall, the British rangefinders had other disadvantages, but those were ones that were less easily magnified through camo paint.

[PedroConejo]

I worked for a while in Rolls-Royce Main Works, Derby. The building was called the Chapel, and I always assumed it was a repurposed chapel. Years later, I read about the wartime camouflage of the entire factory - a residential area had been painted over the buildings, and lo, that particular location was painted as a... chapel. The factory was never effectively bombed, but that was as much the fault of the Luftwaffe as it was the camouflage. Lots of factories in the town still bore their wartime camouflage, even in the 70s.

[fuzzydunlop]

As someone who's been studying the war both professionally and recreationally for the entirety of his life, it's seldom I get smacked with new information at this point, but the idea that the basic premise for 'digital' camouflage was conceived as far back as 1944 is wild to me.

[SlaghathortheGreat]

During the invasion of the Dutch East Indies a Dutch minelayer managed to escape Japanese aircraft by only moving at night and during the day laying next to island covered in leaves and painted on rocks, just make sure they looked like part of the island.

[DracoOfficer]

Oh oh oh oh camouflage, things are never quite the way they seem
Oh oh oh oh camouflage, I was awfully glad to see this big Marine

[ssgtmole]

One of the more technical camouflage techniques I read about was the scheme of putting a string of lights along the leading edge of an airplane wing. This made it much harder to see the aircraft during a relatively clear day as it tended to blend into the overall brightness of the sky.

[Tinbender-zrjd]

Another important aspect of camouflage was the straight line. The human eye picks out straight lines quite easily especially from a fast moving aircraft. We would cover things with the camouflage nets and stick poles up in them and attach cut branches to them to eliminate any straight lines. Additionally, the cut branches with leaves had to be changed frequently because as the leaves dried out, they would change color and would stand out against live leaves around them.

[anthonygray]

My Uncle Barney was in a short Argosy Magazine article, I think in 1941. He was in the standard uniform and fellows to his left and right were in various cammo outfits. He still had his WWI type helmet on, at the typical jaunty angle. He was an Army Engineer.

[gregcampwriter]

"There is an old poem I know, which freely translated from the Irish says, 'I realized fear one morning, when the blare of the fox-hunters sound. When they are all chasing after the poor bloody fox, it's safer to be dressed like a hound.'"

[Yells_at_Cloud]

Even just 25 years before, the French were still using bright blue/red uniforms and Germans still had the super shiny spiked helmet so camo for infantry in particular wasn't even a priority so oddly enough camo development really is a relatively new thing in terms of warfare. Even today camo schemes get changed back and forth rapidly as a middle ground between effectiveness/cost/style needs to be found.

[haeuptlingaberja]

Key point here is probably the very limited, "specialized unit" availability of these WWII camo designs. Aside from white winter gear and khaki desert schemes, it was basically Feldgrau for the Wehrmacht and pea soup for the Allies.

[richardross]

When the US Marines invaded Tarawa, they were issued camo fatigues that didn't breathe. My old boss was there. He told me 40 years ago that the fatigues were so hot that by 1000 hrs he and all of the other live Marines, on Betio, had to strip down to their skivvies. Good Luck, Rick