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Dazzle ships

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heirflick

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heres a little bit of history that i dadnt know.....'Dazzle ships'

 

dazzle-painting-ship.jpg

 

above shows the outlandish colour schemes used by the british navy during the WW1. They were called 'Dazzle ships' and the thinking was that

gunnery officers on enemy ships could not get an accurate fix on them because the colour schemes threw them off!....no accurate radar plotting then! anyway its all being done again accross the pond to raise awarness of these ships that served in the war.

 

 

.......history lesson over for today - now off and get a cup of tea!:)

dazzle.png

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The idea was that it was difficult to be sure if you had got the images overlapping exactly in the rangefinder, so shells could be fired at the wrong range, falling short or long. In WW2, ships often had false bows and sterns painted on for the same reason, one quick way of gauging the distance was to see how 'wide' the ship looked in the rangefinder, by making the ship look shorter, a quick guess made it appear further away than it really was, and the shells would pass harmlessly over to a point further away.

a21bismarck041fiord.gif

They even painted bow waves on. The false bow wave also made aiming a torpedo more difficult as the ship looked like it was sailing faster.

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RMS Olympic as HMT Olympic in dazzle colours.

Near identical sister ship of the better known Titanic.

 

398px-RMS_Olympic_in_WWI_dazzle_paint.jpg

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Olympic#mediaviewer/File:Olympic_WWI.jpg

 

Gives an impression of what the Titanic might have looked if it dodged the iceberg, made it to New York and served in WW1.

Edited by minister_for_hardship
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The Germans, in WW1, also covered at least three aircraft with transparent Cellon cellulose sheeting, instead of the standard doped linen. The idea being to make them less visible - but the shiny surface didn't help, nor did the tendency to degrade in sunlight and to go brittle in the cold at altitude, so this early attempt at stealth aircraft was abandoned.

 

Here's a Cellon-covered Fokker E1.

 

4-EF306-4-PB3.jpg?sequence=1

 

fokkerE3cellon_cockpit.jpg

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  • 1 month later...
I doubt that our naval service will ever get one!

 

You would have to be very careful to remember where it was, or you might never find it again.

 

They have struggled to get them into service - it's all a bit 'new'. Might get one second-hand in a few years...?

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You would have to be very careful to remember where it was, or you might never find it again.

 

They have struggled to get them into service - it's all a bit 'new'. Might get one second-hand in a few years...?

 

the last time second hand ships were bought was in the charlie H era when Le Orla and Ciara were got from the British when scaling down their Hong Kong fleet - doubt it will ever happen again!

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the last time second hand ships were bought was in the charlie H era when Le Orla and Ciara were got from the British when scaling down their Hong Kong fleet - doubt it will ever happen again!

 

The Royal Navy only has nineteen real warships today - but they still have 40 admirals and 260 people qualified to captain a vessel - a touch of top-heavy over-manning going on....

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  • 2 weeks later...

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