Camouflage was first understood by hunters.
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Camouflage was first understood by hunters.
Observing and packing their prey, hunters knew that skin colors and pattern was a form of protection beside teeth and claws.
The dull colors of herd animals such as deer tended to merge into the background of their landscape, whereas fast-moving predators like tigers has a different kind of camouflage in which dark stripes and spots contrasted with light skin colours to break up their shape from long distance.
These technique of camouflage were absorbed by the most primitive of hunters who clad themselves in skins , feathers, or foliage to disguise their presence infill the y were close enough to catch them.
The tradition of the camouflaged hunter has continued out of prehistory right up until today when hunters use hides or clad themselves in. Varieties of green or brown, including the complex ghillie suit (see picture)
While we need to wait up until 1846 before military adopted camouflage. During the Indian Mutiny, a corp of the British soldiers wore a khaki colour start substituting the red uniform.
However the Modern concept of camouflage, the use of printed or painted patterns to disguise soldiers and equipment, properly began in WW1. British and American troops continued to wear khaki uniforms, French soldiers a dark blue coat and red trousers, german soldiers wore their traditional Feldgrau, a lighter grey uniform and other European nations wore varieties of grey, grey-greens such as Italian, Austrian and Serbian armies. The only use of patterned camouflage by individual soldiers was the early use of painted disruptive Patterns on the new style German Helmet introduced in 1916.
Patterned camouflage, that began in WW1, was applied as a method of disguising ships, aircraft, tanks and artillery from the view of observation aircraft and aerial photography.
The colors initially chosen were khaki and shades of green and brown. It was then found that Thai could be improved by adding contrasting with splodges of black and lighter colour to break up the shape of the weapon seen at a distance. With aerial photography being in black and white, contrast and shape mattered more than colour.
In France the idea of painted camouflage was first evoked by Guineans de Sceuola. A fashionable Parisian portraitist serving in the artillery that in 1914 painted canvas sheets to throw over artillery not in action. The French general staff were impressed and put in charge of the first military camouflage section in the history. By 1918, 1200 men and 8000 women power employed in French camouflage worshops with De Sceuola as a supervisor.
Talking note of French developments, the British raised their own camouflage section. The German army followed.
In air and ocean the situation was different: how to achieve “invisibility” in a costantly changing environment?
Lieutenant Commander Norman Wilkinson, an academic marine painter before the war, came to rescue with the theory behind Dazzle camouflage. Through this disguise the enemy could not tell the direction and shape of the ship and often lead to miss the shot.
Black, white, blue and green no vertical lines but sloping lines, curves and stripes also affected fashion.
Germany made their first steps in 1930 in what was to become the most comprehensive and complete use of printed camouflage materials by any armed force in the world up to 1945.
They ordered a camouflage triangular tent sheet/ poncho Called Zeltbahn.
With the “Splitter pattern” consisting of angular shapes in green and brown against a tan background overlaid by green broken lines.
German Armed forces includes the Waffen-SS, the military arm of the Nazi where most of the camo experiments took place.
Otto Schick a professor from Munich invented most of them: Oak leaf pattern and the Plane tree pattern and the palm tree pattern are to name the main ones and tested around 1937.
Nature and trees as inspiration has a symbolic meaning of enhancing the German forest, the spiritual homeland of the Germanic culture and the culmination of “hunter as soldier”.
In 1942 the American army shifted from the kakhi colour to a variety of green including sage, forest green and olive drab.
After a competition Norvell Gillespie, a horticulist and gardening editor won with the frog pattern composed of abstract rounded shapes produced in two main color combinations in the picture.
The reality was that camouflaged uniforms would hardly evolve in the U.S. Army until the Vietnam War twenty years later as well as for the British Army that remained a marginal concern used only by specialist troops on special operations.
