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[tonyH]

I thought that dazzle patterns were a bit old hat until I discovered...

[DavieTait]

I think these were last tried in mid 1943 to early 1944 and not since. The dazzle paint scheme's only work with the MK1 Eyeball and I can't see anyone in any Naval staff suggesting painting the current warships like this although it may make the T45 Destroyers looks a bit more interesting lol ( to me that is I just find all that acreage of flat steel boring even if its very very effective in lowering the radar cross section )

[John @ WEM]

That was the USN's so-called "Adaptor" scheme, applied to the Gloire during a refit in the States. It was also used on USN PT boats in both the Med and the Pacific Theater, though in both places it was fairly quickly repainted as it was a pain to maintain.

[fooman2008]

The dazzle was pretty effective against subs since they have to guesstimate both speed and range to target without fire control computers.  If you break up the outline of the ship it alters your perception of the length of the ship and where her stem and stern are.  Range in usually calculated by the estimated height of the masthead, again the lines and painting can alter this causing incorrect solutions for firing.  Like mentioned before it was pretty soon superseded due to maintainability problems but it was effective.  I read that one of the few PT's fitted in the Pacific with it managed to avoid a number of Japanese dive bombers when accidentally caught out in the daylight, the dazzle would throw off their estimates of her speed and course and cause them to miss (not by much, but a miss is as god as a mile)
Foo

[tigertiger]

For me the interesting thing to consider was disguising your heading. if you look at the picture of Gloire above, you can see how the heading could be confused.

So as a Uboat captain if you know the range, and the speed is guestimated, but the heading is wrong you have very lttle chance of an intercept course.
Either for a torpedo, or in the few seconds a kamikaze pilot would have had.

I should imagine the dazzle would be doubly confusing in the usual grey weather of the North Atlantic, unlike in the sunny picture above.

[Capt Podge]

Some ships used to have a bow wave painted on the bows to trick the submarine commanders into thinking they were underway when they were in fact stopped - useful in bays when carrying out replenishment or troop embarkation / disembarkation.l

[fooman2008]

I have seen pics of both Graf Spee and Tirpitz with false bow waves. was a fairly easy way to throw off speed estimates of subs apparently.
Foo

[John @ WEM]

So, you're a U-boat commander in WW1 when you run across this one at sea, trying to gauge angle on the bow, range, target course and speed....