Tales from a Scenic Artist and Scholar. Part 983 – Camouflage Artists, the American Camoufleurs of 1918

Copyright © 2020 by Wendy Waszut-Barrett

Yesterday’s post concerned studio founder Gerald V. Cannon and his recruiting of scenic artists for the war department in 1918. He was part of a countrywide plan to mobilize scenic artists to paint camouflage for war purposes.  WWI signaled a new era of concealing military vehicles and weapons with paint. Some artists’ ideas included sky to blend with the horizon and fake waves on a traditionally gray battleship. Other artists specialized in dazzling camouflage, or a disruptive pattern that concealed the outline and form of a camouflaged object. WWI camouflage artists designed patterns that would make it more difficult to figure out a ship’s size, speed, distance and direction. Each country approached camouflage from a slightly different angle, relying on artists to create effective camouflage painting.

On April 4, 1918, “The Courier” reported, “Many American artists, following the sacrifice of their brothers across the sea have enlisted in this extraordinary service and joined the ranks of camoufleurs to help win the war. Appraised of the secrets of their European brothers and possessing no small genius of their own, our American camoufleurs are at work in Europe to fool the Hun as he has never been fooled before, and their secret is not yet out” (Asheboro, NC, 4 April 1918, page 7).

The was an interesting article published in “Trench and Camp” on Feb. 9, 1918, that I am including in today’s post entitled, “The ‘Real’ Camouflage’” (Fort Riley, Kansas, page 2):

“At first, camouflage was the clumsy emulation of nature. Boughs of trees, the thatch of houses and the beams of deserted buildings were used to shelter guns. But soon the fields were swept so clean that every tree became suspicious and every wreck of a house was bombarded by artillery and bombed by aviators.

Then came the camouflage that made the word familiar with a new and finely-descriptive word. Sign-painters and house-daubers were called to paint canvas in the colors of the earth. As this proved successful, scenic artists were assigned the task. Artists’ corps were mobilized and the work thoroughly organized until, final, it became practicable for an artillery officer to procure any camouflage he might desire upon a few hours’ notice.

All this called for counter-efforts, as interesting and as ingenious as the camouflage itself. How was an aviator to tell whether the ground below them was a deserted field or was canvas and framework concealing hundreds of guns? How could the artillerist known when he was wasting shell on a mound of earth of was shattering guns that had been the death of thousands? Something could be learned, of course, by careful observation and by ceaseless scrutiny of the front. Gradually, however, the armies have come to rely for the penetration of camouflage on the work of the aviators and of the mathematicians who study shell trajectories.

As the system is now developed, all armies have trained aviators who go up regularly with convoying battle planes to take pictures of the enemy positions. Their negatives, developed, enlarged and printed, are gone over microscopically by men whose proficiency in reading photographs is positively uncanny. We know it sounds unbelievable but here is an example of what numerous British map readers can do with these photographs: an aviator may come back with a picture taken at 20,000 feet. On the print the map readers know there is a hidden battery. They search for it vainly. At length they see on the print, by the aid of powerful magnifying glasses and infinitely small tracks. By following the course of these tracks, trained men figure that horses from the battery have been led to water, and they know that where the tracks end, elsewhere that by the watercourse, a battery may be concealed. They report. Guns are trained accordingly. The next day’s photograph may show a ruined battery. It seems a fairy tale, does it not, that the tracks of horses will show on a photograph taken from an aeroplane which is itself a scarcely discernible spot in the heavens?

But there were there were thousands of instances where neither horse tracks nor any other evidence of camouflage could be seen. Then it was that the British and French devised a trick which may now be described, inasmuch as it has been discovered by Germans. It occurred to a clever aviator that perhaps the Germans might be painting their camouflage with the naked eye and might not be using effects that would withstand a color screen. Accordingly some of the aviators made observations with different color screens before their lenses and were delighted to find that, in accordance with laws familiar to all photographers, the yellows or the greens had been “filtered out.” The result showed plainly where the German guns were hidden and led to an eye-opening bombardment. It was some days before the Germans found out what was happening and why their faithful camouflage had suddenly become so useless. But when they discovered the reason, the Germans very promptly countered by a device as simple as that British were employing: where an artist desired to get a general yellow effect on camouflage, he merely put on yellow glasses. The color that then appeared yellow to him was hideous to the naked eye, but it defied the color screen of the camera. This accounts for the curious futurist color effects scene in photographs of camouflaged tanks.

Now both sides paint and photograph through color screens, and a new method of camouflage will have to be developed.”

To be continued…