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.

Camouflage Project

So I decided to try my hand at a camouflage finish for a weapon. Being nervous but smart, I came to the conclusion that I did not want to try it on a real gun without some practice. So I painted my paintball gun.

I originally wanted a simple scheme that would make it a little easier to conceal when playing in the woods. I started by disassembling it and taping off any areas like the barrel and trigger where I didn't want any paint to get. Then I gave it a couple of base coats of ultra flat khaki Krylon spray paint. Then having breathed too many fumes I decided that I would attempt to give it a "digitalized" paint scheme. I only had three colors to work with, all from Krylon: khaki, and a fairly dark green and brown. Some more intermediate colors like coyote brown, olive drab or foliage green would have been nice, but you have to work with what you have. After the base coat, I took out the painters tape and began to cut and place pieces of tape to start the design. It ended up like this:



One thing it is hard to keep in mind with this is that the parts you are taping off will be the base color and the parts currently visible will be the next color in the design. It is usually best to base coat with your lightest color, then use the next lightest and the darkest color last. Also, use the darkest color very sparingly.

This is the result of the masking and green paint. It is okay, but I thought that adding the brown would give it a little more depth. So, more hours of cutting and placing little pieces of tape.


This is the main receiver just prior to getting the last coat of paint. Note that there are more places taped off, as I want less brown than green or tan. Also, it is important to make sure that your third color overlaps both earlier colors. I also tried to keep the lines uneven and to leave little islands of each color surrounded by the others to help the shape breaking up effect. This will help to give the design some depth.


This is the final result. I am fairly pleased with it. It isn't as bad as I feared or as good as I might have hoped. I do think it came out a little too "busy" but I think it is not too bad for a first try. If I did another, (which I certainly would not) I would try to make the various colored areas larger and more blob-like and less line-like. That would make it more like the real digital patterns like CADPAT and MARPAT.

In case anyone is curious, the paintball gun is a Spyder EMR-1. If you choose to do something similar, heed my warning: this takes a lot of time. Too much really. You can get just as good an effect with a couple of stencils and instead of spending hours of time, get it done in minutes- minus the drying time. Let me know what you think, I will moderate the comments so that it looks like everyone loves it anyway. :)

Multicam

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?

ACU

Military Technology- Razzle Dazzle Camouflage

In an effort to better protect ships from attack, especially from the threat of submarines, British artist and Royal Navy Lieutenant Commander Norman Wilkinson devised a camouflage scheme for warships at sea. The idea was to use a pattern of angular, geometric shapes and lines in bold, contrasting colors. The scheme became known variously as Razzle Dazzle, Dazzle camouflage or Dazzle painting. It was used a great deal on the ships of the Royal Navy and others in WWI. It was used as late as the end of WWII on some American Navy ships.




About this time, after viewing the above picture, you may be thinking that artist/camouflage designer Norman Wilkinson perhaps became confused and drank a glass of turpentine while he was working. That might explain trying to conceal a 600 foot long, 11,000 ton ship by painting it in purple star bursts. But the point was never really to hide the ships from view. Rather, the aim was to make ships trying to fire on the ship confused about the direction, speed, size, and range of their target. So the point was really to confuse the rangefinders and gunners of the enemy, not to hide from their lookouts and scouts. The hope was the Dazzle camo would make the enemy unable to identify the ship, or to tell whether they were looking at the bow or stern, or even if it was approaching or sailing away. Rangefinders of the early 20th Century operated on the co-incidence principal. The idea is that the ship is targeted with the rangefinder and the operator sees two half-images of the ship. He adjusts the knobs until the images meet up and finds the range based on tables and such. The camouflage was supposed to hinder this by making a pattern that seemed to not match up correctly at any range. Also, the dazzle patterns usually had a false bow wave to throw off accurate estimation of the ships' speed.

In a 1919 lecture, Norman Wilkinson explained:

The primary object of this scheme was not so much to cause the enemy to miss his shot when actually in firing position, but to mislead him, when the ship was first sighted, as to the correct position to take up. [Dazzle was a] method to produce an effect by paint in such a way that all accepted forms of a ship are broken up by masses of strongly contrasted colour, consequently making it a matter of difficulty for a submarine to decide on the exact course of the vessel to be attacked.... The colours mostly in use were black, white, blue and green.... When making a design for a vessel, vertical lines were largely avoided. Sloping lines, curves and stripes are by far the best and give greater distortion.

RMS Empress of Russia, painted with Dazzle camo as troopship in WWI

The British painted over two thousand ships with Dazzle camo in WWI, much of the work was supervised by artist Edward Wadsworth. The patterns and colors were different for each ship, and each pattern was tested in miniature before being used. The small wooden models were viewed through a periscope and the patterns evaluated by Naval personnel before being scaled up. Most of the models were constructed and painted by women from the London Royal Academy of Arts.

Man, that is just nauseating

Razzle dazzle was evaluated and selected by the US Navy in 1918 and the Navy continued to use it to varying degrees through the end of WWII. All of the Essex-class carriers and Tennessee-class battleships were painted with Razzle Dazzle camouflage. Rather than the unique designs of the Royal Navy, the US Navy decided to standardize the process and paint the various ships with tested and approved designs.

Was Razzle Dazzle effective? Well, your guess is as good as mine. It is very possible that the protection was negligible. Even if if worked well for a little while, it is certainly possible that the Germans could have found technology and tactics to work around it. In post war reports, the British Admiralty decided that it had no effect on the success of submarine attacks. They did however, feel that the bold and brightly colored ships inspired higher morale in both the ship's crews and the public. So I guess that was nice.

Whether or not the idea working in WWI, by the end of WWII it was close to completely obsolete. The amazing jump in effectiveness of naval based reconnaissance planes made many of its features useless, and the technology of visual rangefinders got better as well. With the advent of radar and radar range finders, Dazzle camouflage was done. There are however, some people who stated that it was still effective against submarines, which at the time usually needed to stalk their prey from underwater and their only view of the target was from tiny periscopes just inches off the surface.

HMS Belfast with the camouflaged paint scheme it had during WWII

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.

Military Technology- Vehicle Camouflage

In recent years, especially after the 2006 Lebanon War, military strategists and engineers have been working feverishly to find some way of reducing the effect of Anti-tank guided missiles or ATGMs. Many of these systems use infrared imaging or radar to track the target and as the missiles themselves are very difficult to destroy in flight, hiding the tanks' IR and Radar signature seemed like the way to go .

Saab Barracuda and Fibrotex have both made multi-spectral camouflage systems that seek to hide or disguise the visual/near Infrared, thermal and radar signature of the tanks. They also use heat transfer materials to hide the heat that accumulates on the tank in the day.

Saab's Mobile Camouflage System (MCS) seeks to hide glossy materials and flat surfaces with a three dimensional textiles with appropriate colors and infrared signatures in line with the environment of the area of operations. The 3D nature of the system is also hoped to have an effect on laser targeting and ranging systems of land and air based threats. The most recognizable part of a tank is the turret and main gun and the MCS seeks to camouflage the distinctive outline of these structures with contour disrupters. The radar camouflage hopes to diminish or eliminate the detection by synthetic aperture radar, but I think that is wishful thinking for the most part.

Danish Leopard 2 tanks

The Fibrotex system, seen here on IDF tanks, is similar, but uses a network of tiles rather than a textile cover. They state that it is effective in hot and cold environments, wet or dry conditions.

Israeli Merkava Tanks with Flexible Camouflage System

This is a German Leopard 2 tank in Afghanistan, it is painted in a disruptive, digital pattern designed to camouflage the tank, at least at distance. Once again, I am not sure how effective this would be on a 50 ton vehicle that makes about as much noise as sending a school bus through a chipper shredder. I have heard some rumours and that the paint used has some thermal qualities that are intended to lower its IR signature, but so far no proof of that has surfaced.