Mountbatten Pink

Wow, the pilot of this WWII Supermarine Spitfire must be really comfortable with his masculinity to fly a pink plane, right? Or maybe that's how the RAF rolls- gangsta. No, that is not it. The color of is known as Mountbatten Pink. It was developed by Lord Louis Mountbatten in 1940 as a camouflage paint scheme for ships of the Royal Navy. The story of its creation is that while on convoy protection mission, he saw that one of the ships seemed to disappear from his sight faster than the rest. The ship was the Union Castle liner and it had been brought into the Royal Navy recently and still had its "civilian" lavender or mauve paint. Lord Mountbatten thought the color so effective a camouflage that he had all the ships under his command painted in his new favorite color. Mountbatten pink was reportedly out of use on larger Navy ships by the end 1944, but it seems its use in the desert was continued. It was famously used in the North Africa Campaign on the vehicles of the Special Air Service (or SAS, you might have heard of them) I posted a pic of a post-WWII "pinkie" as they were called, a while back.

http://homemadedefense.blogspot.com/2009/08/historical-oddities-pink-panther.html

The Spitfire seen above was an unarmed variant used for aerial reconnaissance by 16 Squadron in 1944 and was well liked by the pilots even though there were not many of them. Fast forward to the 1991 Gulf War, and Mountbatten Pink or a very close facsimile appears again in the Royal Air Force. Below are some pictures of various RAF aircraft with pink, mauve, etc. camouflage scheme. Most are from the Gulf War era.

A Star Wars reference always goes over well with me

I can't tell what type of aircraft this one is though

A Victor tanker - probably not in Saudi Arabia, given the snow

I especially like this one. Topless nose art always a favorite of mine

The aircraft is a Sepecat Jaguar

This one is a Blackburn Buccaneer, a low-level strike aircraft

New Camo Project-Airsoft HK G36

I decided to try my hand at a rifle camouflage pattern (again) and to that end bought a cheap, spring powered airsoft gun modeled after a gun I will never get to own, the H&K G36KV. This is how it came out:


I once again used Krylon super flat spray paints, but my local Wal-Mart has again come through for me and had some new colors available. First I used the ultra flat khaki as a base coat. Then I made a stencil by cutting out some sort of sinuous lines from a piece of a thick paper folder. I made another stencil with similar but smaller size lines and one more with some little squiggly lines. I made the stencils by looking at the shapes in a few of my favorite patterns. Including UK DPM and Omani Orange DPM. Then I laid down a pattern of light green stripes, after that was dry I did a combination of dark green with the small stripes, squiggly lines and a few big stripes. One final spray of light green lines to even out the look and put some overlap on the dark green. Done. Took about 1/4 or less the time of my "digitized" paintball gun camo.
http://homemadedefense.blogspot.com/2011/03/camouflage-project.html







Overall, I am a lot happier with this project than I was with my paintball gun.
I think most of that is due to having some better colors to work with. Having a medium hue color like the light green made the khaki and dark green smooth out and blend. I like it, but not enough to put it on a real gun. Tell me what you think, I can take it.

Worst Camo Evar

OK, Next person who bitches about the US Army UCP (ACU) camouflage pattern has to wear this.
This is an Iranian pattern, and it is apparently known as the "ice cream paint job pattern". It is the worst camo pattern known to man. (Excluding the fashion patterns in red and orange and pink and so forth) I mean, what were they thinking? It could possibly be an OK pattern for a snowy environment, but in the desert? Really? I also like how his uniform is slovenly and un-military like when guarding the most important site in his country AND getting his picture taken by the media.




Man, it sure is easy to make fun of some people. Of course, what is not funny is that this unfortunately dressed soldier is guarding a Nuclear plant at Bushehr which will soon make Iran a nuclear armed nation. To believe that is not the goal of their program is frankly, amazingly stupid. The rest of the world (US EU, Saudi Arabia and everyone else who really does not want a Nuclear Iran) probably should have simply paid the Israelis to destroy the Iranian nuclear program. Or joined them in a false-flag operation. Why them? Well, they would like to do it and the Iranians couldn't hate them any more than they already do now could they?

Camouflage- Factory Scale

Way back before GPS and flawless maps of virtually the entire surface of the earth, it could be very difficult to fly to another country and bomb the hell out of a specific target. Even if you had a good idea where it was, it could be difficult to locate from the air, many bombing runs were flown at medium to high altitude to better avoid anti aircraft machine guns and artillery.

When the United States entered WWII, there was great fear of a Japanese attack on the West Coast and its invaluable military infrastructure. One important site was the Lockheed Aircraft factory in Burbank, California. The Lockheed Vega factory was located next to Burbank's Union Airport, which it had purchased prior to the outbreak of the war. This factory was ultimately where almost 20,000 aircraft were produced for the war effort. Most notably, they produced 9,000 of the P-38 Lightning, the best fighter of the entire war. They also built 2,750 B-17 Flying Fortresses under license from Boeing. So it was pretty important. The decision was made to take steps to protect the entire site from air attack. Rather than take the conventional route and reinforce buildings, construct bunkers and ring the area with dozens of anti-aircraft guns, they decided to camouflage the entire factory so that it would be unable to be located from the air. This way any enemy reconnaissance would be unable to pinpoint the exact site of the factory complex.

Lockheed's Burbank Factory

The same area after the camouflage had been completed

The camouflage scheme devised was nothing short of genius. The entire factory, including the parking lots, outbuildings and everything was covered in a gigantic burlap tarp painted to give the impression of a rural neighborhood. There were rubber cars set, up, fake roads and houses. The illusion was finished with hundreds of fake trees and shrubs. The trees and shrubs were created from chicken wire treated with an adhesive and covered with feathers to provide a leafy texture.

The difference in perspective for pilots flying several thousand feet up completed erased the difference of a few feet from the ground to the top of the tarp

Whether the ruse would have been effective is an interesting question. Certainly if the Japanese were to discover through spies the nature of the disguise, it may have been totally ineffective. But a single recon plane, or a bomber group at 20,000 feet trying to defend its self from fighters and avoid ground fire might well miss it. Since this was well before many of today's navigation methods and visual identification was the only method available, it could have made all the difference of there had aver been an air raid.To me it just represents some of the amazing innovation, creativity, and effort that was what made the difference in many ways during the largest and most terrible war that history has seen.

Camoflaged Weapons

Well the poll time has ended and I left it up for more than a month without realizing that I misspelled "modern". Oh well. I don't get paid for this, you know.

64% think that camouflaging a weapon should be the personal choice of its user and 11% think that firearms shouldn't be camouflaged at all. The other 23% are with me and think that modern small arms should all wear some camo. My reasoning is that if you are going to wear camouflage it is silly to have your weapon stick out. Don't believe that? Check these out.

Look at how much more the weapon stands out from the background.
Another thing to consider is that many elite units like the Army Special Forces, SEAL teams and SAS often do camouflage their weapons. And if they do it, everyone should right? ; ) Also, modern "paints" like Duracoat are very good at protecting a weapon from scratches and the elements. Surface rust can begin to form in a day or two on unprotected surfaces. God knows what happens when soldiers get salt water on a gun. I shudder to think.
Nightvision can also make blued and parkerized weapons shine like they are glowing.
Proof you say?
The weapon on the the top is painted, I believe with bowflage, and the lower is a plain AR-15. Notice that the parkered aluminum is very visible. Modern weapons have significant amounts of plastic, and it does not take any more money or time to make them in colors that blend well like olive drab and coyote brown. For those of us who are not paid to be shot at, this is not as vital an issue to be sure. And some people just don't like the aesthetics of camouflaged guns. To each his own. And I've seen some pretty awful paint jobs. But I dare you to look at these and say that they look bad or wouldn't be an improvement over the old standard.

Or you could go this route.

Update-- ACUPAT

I found some more info on the Army's quest to find a more effective universal camouflage pattern. I discussed the Army's ACUPAT or Universal Camouflage Pattern (UCP) a few weeks ago. For those of you who were late to class, this is the ACUPAT:


There have been many people who say that the ACUPAT is absolute crap, and some of them are soldiers who have worn the ACU in Iraq and Afghanistan and unlike the rest of us armchair general types, actually know what they are talking about. Congress, never wanting to be left out of something they have a chance of screwing up, have also made their braying voices heard.

The result of 4 or more years of talk on this has produced the following: a new set of modified camouflage patterns intended to at least partially replace the ACUPAT.The UCP-D is regarded as the best of these new options, and has been tested by Natick Labs and of course, roundly disparaged by the military and the Internet crowd. To me it looks like it might be a step in the right direction, at least as far as what is needed in Afghanistan, which is much more wooded in many areas than most of Iraq. It is also worth noting that, in general, the only new equipment that is liked by soldiers is equipment that has not yet been issued to them. I don't have any pics of these newer patterns out in the real world, but hey, who needs real world testing right?

UCP Delta

The main difference between the current ACUPAT and UCP Delta is the addition of a lot of a color known as coyote brown, which is the main color of new gear being issued in the USMC. Coyote brown is very useful because it blends in a very wide variety of terrains, from jungle mud, to sand, to rocks, or tree trunks. For that reason the Marines have begun to issue their plate carriers (armor), pouches, and other gear in coyote brown. The idea is that they can use those items with either their woodland or desert uniforms.

Camouflage Effectiveness- ACUPAT

If you are like me, you hear a lot of smacktalk on these intarwebs. While we won't be getting into 9mm vs. .45, 7.62mm vs. 5.56mm, or even Coke vs. Pepsi, today we will discuss the Army's "new" camo, known as ACUPAT (Army Combat Uniform Pattern) or just the ACU.

ACU was developed as an All Environments camouflage, intended to help hide the wearer whether they are in a wooded, arid, or urban environment. Technologists noted that at the time of final development (2003), Army soldiers could be patrolling in a very arid desert area of Iraq and in 1o minutes, go through a palm grove oasis that is almost entirely green and then be in an urban area with very little vegetation of any type.

Modern camouflage operates in 2 different ways to hide its wearer. The first is with color. Earth tones, greens, etc. are much harder to see than bright red or blue and make it where the eye is not immediately drawn to you. This idea goes back a long way. From prehistoric buckskins, to the grey and acorn brown of Confederate Rebels to the best of them all, good old Olive Drab (or Army Green, if you prefer). One of the most radical changes in the color scheme of the ACU was the removal of black from the uniform. It was decided that true black is actually quite uncommon in nature and black tends to make a person "pop" or stand out from their surroundings. The ACU is mostly a tan uniform with Foliage Green and Urban Grey laid out over it.

The second component of camouflage is shape. The human eye has developed to automatically distinguish items of interest from a background.
(Think how far away you could spot a girl in a bikini, for example. I wear glasses, but I am pretty sure I can spot a hottie at at least 200m.)
One thing that is considered important by our brains is other people. The shape and silhouette of a person is one of the most recognizable things in nature. So, to combat that, we came up with the idea of using different shaped patterns on clothing to "break up" the shape of the body. This was first used widely by the Germans, both in WWI and especially in WWII. ACU is what is known as a digital pattern camo, that uses arrangements of pixels rather than amorphous blobs or stripes to break up the human shape.

Now, before we go any further with this, let me put this out there for you. A soldier's uniform is not really meant to camouflage him. It is meant to give him something tough and useful and sufficiently warm to wear. It is an extra benefit if it helps them to not stick out of their surroundings. Please keep in mind that general camo is also not really meant to make you invisible to the enemy when they are 25 feet away. Distance, concealment, light levels, and movement are all about as important when we are trying to hide from someone.If you wish to be invisible to the enemy, digging a hole or wearing a ghillie suit would be a lot more effective. Congress has even started to look into the ACU debate, on account of many people say that the ACUPAT does not camouflage anything, anywhere.

I would also like to say that while I don't think that ACU is useless or horrible, I also do not think it is good at camouflaging in all environments. I have seen many pictures of soldiers in ACUs in temperate wooded areas (GA and NC mostly) that seemed like they were glowing. But in the mostly arid areas of Central Asia and the Middle East where we are now engaged in fighting, it seems like it works pretty good. There are many who say the the ACU works fine, but only when it is good and dirty, and some of these pics reflect that and some do not.

You want proof? Check out these pics, including some from Afghanistan and Iraq and then tell me what you think in the comments section. To clarify, I am only requesting comments on the camouflage of the ACU, not its durability (terrible) or its new features (pretty good).

Stryker Brigade in Iraq

ACUPAT and German Flecktarn

USMC Desert MARPAT, Woodland, ACU, and Flecktarn

Count the soldiers you can see

This is the current " best" camo, known as Multicam, being tested by Army Rangers way back in 2003, and yes, the one on the left is using a Xbox 360 controller.

So while I feel I have vindicated the Army's ACUPAT, for one final thought, check out what some soldier did before deploying to Afghanistan. The one behind the other is original ACUPAT and the front has been modified.
He simply put a little brown dye in the wash and made a much better overall color. Of course, he was yelled at and threatened by his superiors, instead, of you know, given a medal and a job at DARPA.

So what do you think?