Hiding your Army | Military Camouflage | The Tank Museum

well hello again on yet another beautiful spring day it's David really from the Tank Museum still not at the Tank Museum and what I'm gonna have now is a session or a bit of a ramble I think would be a better word on camouflage and I'll be talking about camouflage from the point of view of really 20th century camouflage a little bit about uniform something about vehicles as well but we haven't got access to the tank museums collections so what you're looking at around me at the moment it's just things I've been able to dig out to help support some of the stories and the things I want to touch on now as you can imagine camouflage is an enormous subject because it touches so many different areas of the way the military acts how it dresses how it paints vehicles etc and one of the things I just wanted to mention by the beginning is from the point of view of camouflage how I'm gonna look at it is inevitably our touch on areas which really actually fall outside what the military would define as camouflage but inevitably most of us we always associate this idea a little bit about subterfuge deception camouflage as we see it as we often think of especially if you're a model maker or you collect uniforms or something other than camouflage that's on a piece of equipment and these things often actually merge because it's all part of that historically goes back to the beginning of warfare that art of warfare where what you're trying to do is to see if your enemy where is your attack going in how many men or what equipment do you have and that of course is something that actually stretches the way from just the coloring of a uniform but it touches all those other areas as well so some of this I'll bring in here and there but I repeat again now at the beginning this is won't be covering everything so if you want to start putting in the comment I'm surprised he didn't mention will start now because there'll be a lot of stuff I won't cover off but take us back really to that idea that the idea of camouflage in terms of the military in a uniform that's been around a long long time we're always used we love this idea don't we around people dressing in these four Napoleonic era in these particularly outstanding colors to identify you as part of this force or as part of that side and the regiment's within that force as well that starts changing actually you know that that progress through the 19th century it starts changing quite earlier on earlier than perhaps sometimes we think but the knowledge that to dress in a different way so you don't stand out has been used by the military is quite early on and so you'll see these Yeager's these units where they're using green or darker colors for what we'd now perhaps start calling snipers or sharpshooters people that were going to pick people off or hide around the place that actually is happening much earlier in the 19th century than perhaps people think and it's gone on before then as well in the in the outfits of certain people before what what I wanted to look at though really is from the beginning of the 19th saw sorry the beginning in the 20th century when Britain is already as a country we've gone from cue to the ball war gone from a certain types of red dress for field service uniforms and we've moved over to car key now car key is an Urdu word it means dust colored picked up from the British in India there was a period where white uniforms were being dyed with tea or other things so that they would look more dust colored all with the intention you don't stand out as much on the battlefield or you don't make yourself a particular target now Britain had introduced this Germany introduced before the First World War the field grey outfit which again from the point of view of trying to look Dulla on the battlefield France has just developed a new type of uniform when it goes into service or sorry it goes into off to war in 1914 that uniform hasn't being issued and it's not actually ready yet so France goes off still with its red facings on its jackets and a much more what looks like earlier 19th century color on a lot of its uniform that it's there at the beginning there and but the idea of making yourself less conspicuous on the battlefield that's not brand new to World War one what quickly happens though in the First World War is this idea that actually you do not want to stand out in the landscape and France again very quickly starts looking at replacing its earlier with its red facings red trousers etc that type of part of its uniform they want to get rid of that and they start as well as many other countries looking at the issue of camouflage and it's really the French that takes a lead on that and this is where we come to this interesting crossover between camouflage and its association with artists because very early on is French artists who are the ones that are suggesting or coming up with some ideas for we need to now start hiding men and equipment on the operations they're on and how do we go about doing that so even before Christmas of 1914 the French have set up some initial camouflage units they are starting to come up with ideas of suits for soldiers to wear that have been painted on they come up with a palette range in other words a series of different colors that are associated with certain areas of the battlefront so that if you choose these colors if you're going to make something such as camouflage netting or Hessian screens as they were made raffia etc was being used if you're going to put them in one part of the front these are the tonality the colors that you need to pick on because they seem to be relevant to that particular area and of course they start using some of the artists themselves talents about breaking up outlines and picking on that pre-war art movement of basically cubism all the forms where they're looking at these angular cabe's to break up outline and put patterning on things so there's that lovely lion Gertrude science you're sitting with Picasso in one of these artillery pieces rumbles past or with this blockage camouflage on and Picasso says to her we did that pointing at it as if like this is really Cuba start going past now the British follow up on the French there later to the to the subject the word camouflage by the way it's not in common use the ideas have been around before hand you know Darwin's talked about the way animals have this protective pigmentation Faora American who writes a great big tome on all this just before the First World War very influential for a period the the conversations about looking at how nature does things but the word camouflage really comes to the floor in the First World War in such a way that if I find the quote it's really not a word that's particularly well known beforehand but here we go this is from a magazine article the athenian magazine that was published 23rd May 1919 camouflage a word that has met with more wear and tear in a few months than many receiving a century and basically earlier the when introduced this word to the public they'd use the phrase as well in 17 of saying it's an act of hiding anything from your enemy yeah and so this idea of the concept of trying to hide things it's not new but the word is being used in the First World War for the first time the British set up a outing Wimmer Oh in France they end up putting together a special works they call it Department which ends up emulating much what the French are doing they then in South Kensington set up a special works department there which does the same sort of thing and the range of things is not just about patenting material or Hessian or canvas it's also about doing things such as making paper mache heads and these are used in the front line they're sometimes put on a you know as if they're looking around the corner or something a sniper would shoot that head thinking is a weird one and some of these when you have to see the photographs of them you know they really go through from the very basic to super bleary created heads and again you know you can see how the artist the sculpture the painters getting involved in all this and what they wait for is wait till the sniper shoots of that paper mache head they take it down and then they'd end up putting a rod through it so they could actually work out the angle of entry of the bullet and therefore line their art with a projection of where that sniper might be firing from they did other ones where they would put dummies out in no man's land overnight it's a dummy they'd have on the end of a string so they can have it moving so it might make people come and reveal their positions etc there's all sorts of clever ways even to the point of creating enormous backdrops that were used almost theatrically to actually pretend the landscape goes on something ends or something begins and you you end up you know there's one on a railway line where instead of the lines going off into the distance it's painted by scene painters in such a way that if they were looking through binoculars into the distance it looked like it goes off in another direction so all of these arts from the stage productions from painters from all these different sources culpers etc all come to the fore and I'm actually used by the military in the First World War the Americans start their own camouflage school as well the Germans as well they look at camouflage and start taking it very seriously probably a bit later than certainly all the countries take it later than the French and again the Germans as you're would call if you've seen those pictures of their style Helms they actually have them painted inset colors to begin break up the outline now in the First World War as well one of the classic areas of camouflage that often gets picked up on and again it goes back to that association with artists sorry about this let me just hold my notes here down a little way that was in April of 1917 there was 55 ships were sunk in one month and that led also in one week I've actually got my notes here so 55 ships being sung by u-boats in a week that led to someone called Norman Wilkinson who was in the Royal Navy at the time he realized yes you can paint chips gray you can do all sorts of things trying to make the merge with their backgrounds but the truth is a ship on the water is pretty obvious for most people to see it's going to make a bow wave it's going to always contrast you'll never have it the right colour at the right time so Norman wilkinson's comes up with the idea that we now know where's as dazzle ships so why not break up the outline of the ship and faceted change these angles on it paint patterns on it that will make it harder and this is his intention for somebody for example the u-boat captain looking through his periscope will is it coming towards him or is it going away from him where does it begin where does it end and in this they are emulating again so many of these things when you look at it what they're emulating is ideas from nature think to the idea of the zipper yes in certain types of terrain a zebra looks it might blend in you know lions who are zippers main predator you know that they're there after them they're actually colorblind lions so actually this one I do the black and white within grassland and certain types of shrubs gonna work quite well you know this this idea of breaking it up but more importantly naturalist thing that probably that lines on there when you have a herd of zebras and they're running together the idea of the line going for it where does one animal end and where does another begin at cetera so the lunge the moment will it be in the right way and that's exactly what Norman Wilkinson was trying to achieve when he's doing dazzle ships now the British Navy we take on the idea of dagger ships as always this joke about paint manufacturers thought he was the best thing since sliced bread because it meant repainting huge numbers of ships with this dazzle pattern camouflage on the US Navy Wilkinson goes to America the US Navy takes it on for its merchant fleet etc there's a number of star is whether it really achieved its aim is hard to tell but again it was another part of seem to be doing something and also it made the crews feel better it looked like we were doing something about this u-boat threat and again so vast vast numbers of ships were painted in what looks now to us such a modernistic scheme that was being done from 1917 onwards it tended to fade out in the interwar period it really is in world war ii stand in slightly different ways but actual dazzled painting happens again in World War two so again back to artist Edward Wordsworth a British artist was one of the teams that was actually sent inspecting and helping the dockyards paint and he does a series of prints and some gorgeous paintings of those dazzle ships that again this idea of the art and the the camouflage of merging all the time and if you look at the Imperial War Museum and again British artists were actually commissioned as well there is war artists advisory scheme let's get the artist to record this phenomenal event that we've never had before in our history World War one so they're sent off to actually record this and again some of these artists cross over into their different spheres from camouflage to actually the enacting of camouflage onto ships for example in Wordsworth case and again I I think with that one as well there's another element that comes in certainly was dazzled patent etc because immediately the war's over 1919 you can see bathing suits are made in dazzle camouflage ball dresses there's the Chelsea arts ball has a black and white one and every other person who's been some form of dazzle pattern outfit so this idea of how camouflage leeches straight into fashion and nowadays it comes back the other way with so many militaries you know this idea of the military outfit and fashion we mentioned it already before in certain other talks but in this particular area straightaway dazzled Patton you know it appears on an awful lot of other products a minute the world wars over so what other things can we talk about and in terms of the First World War one of them is for tanks there's a royal academician called Solomon J Solomon and he's being asked by the military to help with camouflage work and he's one of the people that comes up with the first eye ideas and well they're actually they're copying the French but he's one of the first ones who's actually seized through the production of one of these hollow trees with a stepladder is a lookout post that's erected out in France overnight and this idea about they're made sometimes behind the line they put up together quite quickly because obviously you don't want to but people studying the front line not well number one not see it go up the number two that it has to either replace or blend in very very well with the surrounding scenery Solomon's doing that but he's asked to go along to Thetford in Norfolk to have a look how could we camouflage the first tanks now one of the issues again coming back to this palette of colors Solomon is wondering how on earth they can get what is it really like on the front line could I have an idea where these tanks are going to be used so that whatever colors I choose could help blend and that's another one of these things that for us it seems fairly obvious today actually for a number of the people at the time getting you anywhere near the front line or getting concrete information out of the serving army out in the field was quite hard work but what Solomon ended up doing he paints a whole mark one tank up at set food and the rest it looks like the rest of the crews then park up their tanks and copy the tank that he's designed and painted and that's called the Solomon scheme and that's what we've got painted on our mark one tank that's on the diorama the last mark one left that's in the museum coming over the top of the trench there as it was in that first tank attack in September of 1916 now Solomon whether he saw the outcome of that attack but basically the Solomon scheme goes by the way quite quickly because one of the issues that those tanks have had is as they cross the battlefield as you know on the rhomboid shaped tank the tracks going all the way around the outside that Mardis carried around the whole of the outer structure of the tank as there's a tracks are going round that tends to run down the side and even if you have got a lovely camouflage scheme very quickly that run off of the mug drying on the side you end up with a fairly monochrome looking vehicle and so quite quickly you'll see there's one or two mark two tanks sometimes you've got a sponsor that's removed and reused again but quickly or see actually there becomes a monotone Brown a British Army standard color is painted and it's again we've got a model that was made at the factory where they made tanks in the First World War and we really think it's not being repainted it's been in a case most of his life that is the colour so we've we've chosen that one to replicate for when we paint our tanks charming phrase issues about it dog turd Brown all sorts of things we would describe but it's really just a muddy brown and that becomes a standard you will see individual tanks are painted in different schemes and there were other ideas coming forward as time went on throughout the First World War - how you might better camouflage tanks so that Solomon scheme goes by the boy there's still talk of coming up there's someone called Percy Tudors heart and he comes up with a zigzag scheme he's asked - he tries a number of different schemes there's some items of his like a sniper outfit he did that's an imperial war museum we've got a superb huge model of the First World War tank that he painted to try his scheme on which looks again very modernistic but it's lots of lines and zigzag sections but there's also a photograph where it seems to being applied to a netting structure that was carried over the top of the tank presumably to help camouflage it from above as well and that's another thing where we then immediately a person to eat a hoss scheme by the way it doesn't get he gets very frustrated about all this because a lot of his schemes if he read his memoir which I've got a copy there a lot of his schemes are rejected by the militaries and he's very frustrated because he think he should be helping the war effort by doing this but one of those points as well the straightaway comes out is how do you hide your tank from above and again Solomon's part of this there's publications made and they're looking at number one is how you can even at your base your tankard Rome wherever the the rear area where the tanks are don't line them up out in the open don't they give them sort of a sense so that if someone's flying over the photoreconnaissance they can count them look at them or bomb them from the air when they go forward they're heavily camouflaged quite quickly and again this would weed now perhaps called field craft the idea that you cover your tracks behind you quite quickly so if the tanks gone forward don't let it be seen so cover those over so it's not just the camouflage on the vehicle it's how you treat things around it and that goes through on to the Second World War as well you know all these manuals they'll they'll tell you about camouflage in one sense but they also relate it to the field craft of how you operate how you access the vehicle where you go to it what's likely to work in a wider context so for example I mentioned earlier about Bill Bellamy's memoirs great read there he gets really mad because his camouflage is tanking the call of the field and he sees two senior officers walking straight across the field making a beeline straight for his tank you don't do that because if anybody's watching was looking from a distance if it seems to be they're going to a single point you know there's something interesting there you should be skirting around the edge of the field you should be trying to hide keep behind a hedge find etc etc doing things that way because otherwise your initial camouflage if it's just everything's leading to it including pathways cables etc if it seems to be going to a central place all that camouflage netting over the top to hide what's underneath forget it it's not doing anyone any good now in terms of actual materials most uniforms in the First World War don't use camouflage but there are areas where camouflage comes into play and one of course is with sniping in the ghillie suit now sniping here's another lovely fascinating factors sniping the word sniping comes from when you're going off to shoot sniper bird that very hard to shoot because of its habits that they're so sniping you've got to be good at what you're doing ghillie suit gillies a Scottish word basically a servant in the past up in the highlands I used to get sometimes some of the ghillies they'd help on a shoot but also they'd be the ones that be looking out for poachers and sometimes they dressed up to blend in with the landscape to lure the poacher on as it were or to hide from the poacher be able to be able to sort of so they weren't scared off so they could grab a poacher that way now again in the First World War a number of sniper suits are designed or painted or adapted by those users and fairly quickly again it's fairly obvious you can see they've got hoods a face stands out if you've got brown etc all around you the model a bit of green if you've got some vegetation but a white face stands out so you either camouflage your face or you put a hood over the top so you'll see a lot of these early experimental suits where they've the French in particular they're painting them beautifully Pont allistic finishes you know sort of dabs of color all over sometimes with a hood on in Britain the idea the ghillie suit they start adding bits of Hessian bits of cloth bits of other things so it ends up looking like a sort of either a bit of a to become sort of rag covered suit but that blends in very nicely with these different colours and if someone's sitting there still used to this day by um different snipers and over time one of the things that happens with ghillie suits so they've done things now such as putting in with the under suit a protective level or way of trying to produce a heat signature and they've even some today where they've actually got a charcoal based line so it sucks up any of the smell of the person because the story is out in Afghanistan some of the snipers there all the sudden the local goats we're sniffing them out and being out of warn the Rover and wondering what's this so you don't want to give away your scent as well as what we're used to seeing you know fit on the visual spectrum you don't want to be able to see that person and those ghillie suit if you've ever been to one of those demonstrations you know like they British Army always does it up on Salisbury Plain where they they start shooting to the audience watching right you know where's the nearest sniper and everyone's pouring across the landscape with their binoculars and suddenly this guy steps up in front of you about two yards away and everyone wears their knickers cuz I didn't think he was quite there the you know that art of wearing a ghillie suit and being able to maneuver without being seen using the camouflage but using the landscape is vitally important as well that Val of course is still talked to many militaries all around the world today great story in the marker ban book I think it's in his big boys wrongs book about how the I think it was an SAS patrol or fourteen platoon whatever it was in Northern Ireland hiding in the IRA guys they were watching literally came over a nearly peed on them didn't know they were there they were that well hidden in the books at the time so the camouflage is being used in the First World War it is there but it's not so prevalent so only about 1929 that for the first time it's the Italian army ends up printing a pattern that they start using for ten tidge for a cape and four uniforms as well later on they get used for as well and but then you'll see the Soviets experiment in the 30s with camouflage suiting the Germans issued their first bit of camouflage kit 1931 to their military on a regular basis and I've got one here this is the salient bomb or silt bomb which is basically a triangle of cloth that's waterproofed and this has got what they call the army splinter patent AMI and as a triangle it can be used in two different ways it's got a hole in the middle that can go over your head and it can be used as a poncho so you can wear it over that way there's even a manual that goes with the zel bond which which go through pages and pages all these one things you can do with it as it were but the key ones is where it's a poncho or with about four of them I think it is together you can make a pup tent to sleep under and or you and your mates can as it were well you have a serving soldiers and this is starting to be issued from 1931 it's issued throughout the war go through a number of changes and of course that touches on this enormous subject which is camouflage uniforms in general but also in particular people get very excited about German camouflage and even in my lifetime the different names you know from splinter pattern all the different names ma Co various different things that they've tried to describe these German camouflage schemes basically there's two main strands the army or the verm act in general has one type of camouflage waffen-ss tends to go down another route most of the army ones tend to be splinter pattern ones the waffen-ss tend to use all these broken up round and more rounded shape ones in lots of different ways and just behind me here one of the things I bought out this is a replica one but a bit of an idea of one of those smocks these are being used by the SS as early as 39 40 you'll see them in the fighting but like many one of the simple things you do is you actually print two different camouflage so that it's reversible and that was done in a manner so that straight away you could just turn it inside out on the nature of the terrain now there's plenty if you're interested in German camouflage because of course you know for vehicles and everything everyone gets very excited about what they were up to at the end of the war I think it was guy called Richardson an American does a report in here they've reprinted that you can get yourself a copy of that and the Germans of course were also looking towards the end of war they've gone through this huge range of different camouflage finishes some of them don't go into service some of them were actually printed they're not actually made up some of them and again there's this massive area out there with fakes it's really interesting really one of the books actually takes out of the brassey's camouflage books which is I think on the list as well here one of the other books points out that brassey's have actually reproduced a photograph of a pair of German peas Patton as they call it trousers which are complete fakes and that idea about how things are sometimes made from original materials put together to go onto the market goodness knows now with all this reproduction stuff how we'll be able to tell that in the future so if you're going to spend some money on these things you know unless you're very very wealthy buy yourself a good repro one because they look very good and obviously you can't wait walking the dog if you really are that way kind but watch it with the what's called genuine stuff because there is so much stuff out there and you really really do need to know your stuff if you're gonna spend all these you know lots and lots of money on just getting a bit of original German camo I think Zell Barnes / I'm still out there in quite large quantities so maybe that one's not so bad but the issue at the end of the German when they're making camouflage in 4445 they're also getting into because for the first time we're now getting into the infrared or near infrared part of the spectrum and they're actually making camouflage with dyes in that will mean you don't stand up and that's another thing in modern camouflage sometimes we're looking at it it's actually meeting not just the visual spectrum that were used to seeing but also thermal and other areas and infrared one if you the British have got the tabie system coming into play Germans are starting to use an infrared cameras you see them on there some of those late model Panthers etc so they're looking at camouflage schemes and I always remember you know reading about some of that in books you know was it really true did it really happen then I went to the German technical collection of complaints it's one all in a suit in a case they're all done up you know they've got a complete so they're all original and we're absolutely fascinating now of course with the internet you know you can find out lots more about this stuff very much more quicker and things are corrected a lot quicker as well so the German equipment in the war you know lots and lots and lots written about it plenty of books out there as well if you do get into that when it comes into service who wears it why one of the other countries that's is going to be looking at camouflage America again it's done some experimentation in the 30s it's only when the war beginning the loss of the Philippines that the Americans then really quickly look at camouflage for uniforms and one of the things they come up with quite quickly is a what becomes known as a as a duck hunting pattern or something along the lines of just getting going duck hunter is a phrase I believe they ended up using but what ends up happening with Americans is that they all their development they quite quickly need something out in the field is MacArthur all doing suits you know look we we can't hang around for this so you'll see lovely photographs of Americans experimenting with different types of materials out in in the desert and all sorts of places but quite quickly they end up getting a camouflage together that goes out into patterns to go out to the jungle and this is actually a US Marine cape but one of the jungle five pattern is in sight is on one side that's got five hands and the other side has got three patterns which is a lighter for beaches or other sorts of areas and that pattern these made up into having bone suits again just like this printed the two types on either side so you can reverse and take them around ends up making them a bit hot because of the nature of the fabric they're using but they do try to use this pattern again it's used out in Normandy initially in 44 you'll see photographs of guys wearing these first of all they had our overall suits as it were made up with them then they made them to part two easier to address and do all the ablutions in the field etc and but they'd become your read all the stories quite quickly there's a worry because even though the camouflage is supposed to be hiding you the problem is if you're camouflaged look like the enemy's camouflage and someone sees you you're gonna get shot at and this was considered too similar to the camouflage being used by the Germans one or two blue-on-blue incidents as they're called and that type of camouflage is withdrawn from northwest Europe quite quickly so it doesn't see any more use out there so what it's Britain up to Britain ends up with it's just got its battle dress it's got its serger it's got its Deming denims before the war we're not over keen on camouflage uniforms apart from yet again one or two very small areas such as sniping but when we start using camouflage what comes along is sim response really - first of all we look at the suit that the german paratroopers are using and we emulate that for paratroopers so there's this kind of step in overall cover all that goes on for the first paratroopers and then a major Dennison comes up with the Dennison smoke in about 1942 and that is painted on with big broad brushstrokes in fact they were actually saying that probably the material was laid out on the floor and for the first pattern of the Dennison small probably it was mopped so you see these big brushstrokes now those first pattern the material the cotton that is laid out the dyes that they use are actually ones that when they get met wet they start merging so actually the colors the original outlines that were painted on seemed to merge together and they seemed to fade as well but I'm just going to show you because we have the advantage here I've got a first patent Dennison so there's one of those German smocks by the way this here is a first patent Dennison which hasn't been issued and is in very good order and you can see if holding that up there I don't you can see these big broad brushstrokes of and there's little bits where you can see where the brush has been where this was put on first pattern by the way Wooley cuffs here doesn't have any securing for taking the tail up and again half length zip up the top blanket lines and Goler we'll just remember that one as well not angora and you can also see the pockets are actually from separate bits of material that are actually sewn on the top of it all so that's first pattern second pattern that comes along ends up they use a different type of more permanent dyes but one of the things I would just point out as well is again look at the colorings on these things and one of those issues with camouflage and here's another example as well how the fading and the different even though those brushstrokes are really clear they're on the British camouflage that humid Dennison actually what ends up happening though is depending on when there is and this one looks much more ready Brown they end up washing and wearing in two very different ways of tonality so when you're looking at these things as well it's quite hard sometimes if it's newly issued it looks a much darker richer color but that quickly goes when it's exposed to water and the atmosphere etc and use of course and I'm just because of course you're all interested in first second packing one of the other issues is that for paratroopers they were given because someone also mentioned in one of the questions these were the denim over suits that you try to put over the top of all your gear when you drop down they have a little grenade pockets in the front there and that's in that green denim and again a lot of times as well so this one is not camouflaged at all you took this off as soon as you've landed and you tended to then wear all your webbing on the outside of your Dennison but that was a British scheme color scheme that was used there was another color scheme if you look back on to where we did about tank suits we mention about as well the camouflage tank suit has its own camouflage scheme and very similar this was a camouflage suit suit that's what these are the trousers that are actually dated 1943 and you'll see in late 44 early 45 British soldiers wearing it's a lightweight windproof cotton but it's really a camouflage suit and there was a smock top to it and again you can see with brushstrokes and the different colorings here so Britain was getting into its camouflage it just doesn't see the amount of usage that you do certainly with a German army and to a certain degree as well I haven't got any Soviet stuff here to show you but the Soviet army and there's another obvious area of camouflage as well in terms of uniforms which is this idea of against no camouflage so you just put on white clothing or white with a bit of something to break up it this gif is continually white and again for helmet camouflage as well so there's some of the uniforms there and one of the other things about camouflage in the second world wars is this business about how do you teach people to use camouflage so yes camouflage for uniforms but what do you do when it comes to actually just from your notebook what you actually do when it comes to actually field craft and use of camouflage so for example here I've got this is a an American net camouflage net they're all wrapped up still with that lovely smell to it I met on its own doesn't do an awful lot so what you have to do is add to that in it with local foliage so if you're putting it over your vehicle you then pick foliage out weave it into the net so it then blends in to what's around you and again these are all the sorts of things so again for vehicles its shape shineshadow things that you're taught and in Britain in the Second World War they put together a camouflage school and yet again I'll come back to artists a number of serious artists are drawn into that camouflage school and start coming up with ideas about how this was going to be used and one of those artists was a chap called Roland Penrose and he's got the great good fortune of knowing Lee Miller now again if you look up Lee Miller she's she was a model for people like Man Ray in a number of the Surrealists in the 30s she was absolutely beautiful and she also went on she was a great journalist and she had photographer and she ended up working for cons nest I think it is you know who published Vogue and she goes out as a photographer now she very gallantly posed nude and let Roland pin Rose paint her because Roland Penrose ends up teaching the Home Guard the British Home God and he makes a manual a Home Guard camouflage manual how is it you know what's the best way to do your camouflage it's not just as I mentioned getting in there how do you actually use that and to spice up his lectures which is why we've got a young lady down there with no clothes on if you've been able to pick out spice up his lectures he would actually put in a slide of Lee Miller and naked under a camo sheet or painted suitably to a camouflage just to keep the guys you know awake and just to see you know because what is it there's going to make you remember and I was interested to read because that's one of those stories have known for quite some time but actually I went and found the Americans that did very much the same sort of thing because there was a young lady called chili Williams in America and she did some photographs for the engineers I think it was in America and she's got a fantastic pair of legs and she blends into the background or he wears something with a little motto in and one of the American engineers in charge of all this this is his quote because these were published in photographs issued out to all the troops so they have something to pin on the wall and at the same time learn a good lesson one hopes and it says here of her what she put together for them vital principles are impressed on their minds of camouflaged students in a most effective manner that's what the American chief engineer said about it so that I do about how you're in engaging the troops think the tiger feeble etc if you bring some young ladies in that's another one of those ones where keeps people's interest there's no doubt you've been looking at by the way the picture down there is by fortune Ino met Anya who is the guy that's his wife I was allowed to do he's the guy that painted to all those wonderful illustrations of the First World War for the sphere magazine he did that famous one of goodbye old friends the Blue Cross one of the guys saying goodbye to his horse that's on the ground you know before running off a wonderful artist in as an illustrator really and some lovely books out now on his wartime work and other bits he did as well so that's why I've dug out my full genome atonia and put it down there so you can see how you are now going to remember well I don't know if you are going to remember will you see if that sort of system works for you another one of the artists that was being used so Roland Penrose is there another one the artists lot of great British names come in there William hate Edwin Liddell that's a print by Edwin Adele down there 1946 as soon as they come out they worked with the camouflage unit some were then commissioned as war artists as well that's part of a series called school prints that was done just after Walter at a store a beautiful number of great art British artists we used to come up with these posters that we used to listen to basically they were called schoolkids because they're going to go in classrooms etc but he worked for the camouflage unit as well weird you know how you suddenly notice things sitting around the place but had that print some years and another one of these people that the British used and goes to the camouflage school at Farnham and then he sent out to North Africa is Jasper masculine and he was a magician before the war and he starts trying to use some of his deception ideas out with the 8th army and again there's been some lovely programs there's a book on him and how he's coming up with these how might we use some of those skills to mask what we're trying to do and that ranges from hiding things such as tank put a structure over the top of it so it ends up looking like a truck or something or other you know lots of different things that way even does one scheme is try and hide water is always a really great navigation point for bombers and there's one time where he's actually trying a schemes are actually hide the Suez Canal of all things so any German planes flying over one be able to locate where they are similarly in Germany at the same time you know they end up once the Allied bombing campaign gets going the Germans start a massive campaign of trying to hide buildings or building dummy buildings or hiding areas such as like in hambo or the the River Basin is they actually put netting over the top and painted what looked like on top roughly continuing the street plan so if a road that would end by the edge of the river no it doesn't it goes on the netting over the top so all these ideas are being used in a number of different countries the massing is a great story and he helps the 8th army and one of the other things of course with with using deception you can't do deception badly because then it's obvious so if you do as for the before the Battle of Alamein they do this massive buildup of forces in the south to try and get the idea that one more you know will buy into there's going to be an attack in the south not actually where it comes in in the north but if you make them too obvious having all these dummy trucks and everything else around the place it's going to be obvious it's a dummy so you have to pretend to hide what you've done so they do water pipes they give it a couple of days they hide some of it they try and camouflage these dummy gun emplacements he's massive great pretend stores that they're putting there but not that well just so hopefully the German planes flying over will buy into this and I think it's only words but Alamein is the Germans genuinely don't know exactly where the attacks coming in so that part of that deception the Russians of course were brilliant at this they're doing it all the time in in their operations and they're the art and they've carried that on so many Western or NATO countries looking at their how they do deception it's almost part of the Russian sort of psyche and the way they go about things is keeping that at a fundamental you know core of what they're up to deception again goes on obviously in the UK with operation fortitude ready for the d-day landings so we see all those pictures have blown up dummy tanks that you could blow none of those sadly I know someone asked one of the questions about that none of those have survived because the rubber in the glues they perish over time you can buy modern blow-up things sort of still use on exercises etc but you can't get any of those none of those wartime ones are left to sadly and they did things like landing barges in the Thames that would just add a plywood etc and actually for fortitude the greatest effect that had on that plan was the fact that all the German agents in the UK in the double cross system had been either imprisoned or turned and we were feeding false information back from radio transmitters back to the Germans and that information along with false radio traffic for dummy units so the Americans 6o third Battalion from the engineers come over with a lot of people from Hollywood from the film industry except they're coming up with these dummy things it's actually it's that radio traffic that is the best sell to the Germans because of course by this stage of the war the number of photo reconnaissance missions they're able to put out is limited and actually they're picking up on the radio much more and that's what's having its effect on the Germans so just running through then so I've just mentioned I think I've covered an awful lot of things I wanted to just ending up one of the things we you know I've not really taught that much about V and the problem there is that we can talk about that when we're back at the museum because you can see the camouflage on the vehicles and I know a lot of your model makers if you look we've done one in particular feel among the painting of German Tiger tanks using the German ground numbers when we reopen the world war ii gallery you'll see we've repainted a number of the british tanks so there's a deserts theme called the corn to scheme there's other schemes you know what was the the rule of thumb for the British well we start with something you know they often call it the Mickey Mouse scheme in earlier in the war is black and brown if American vehicles turned out the rules were just leave them in the American olive drab unless there's a need to repaint them but otherwise we're quite happy with that and there's different orders for how you can authorities vehicles throughout the war and again you'll see as well in local camouflage applying a mod or whitewashing snowy weather it's said we can see all that but I've afraid to say we're going to probably have to talk about those when we've got the vehicles they're all a better way of being able to illustrate that when in the back of the museum's all right that doesn't disappoint you too much but I mentioned camouflage netting earlier and again when you look at those vehicles there's the Hessian grape netting again Hessian was sewn on lots of women were back on the home front you get a standard net and you'd sew on all the bits to go on the outside different color schemes for different areas of the world that it might be being sent to but they also used on tanks you'll see as well there was often called as shrimp knit and it was a much finer netting that was sometime draped over things sometimes this is not just like on here so here's a net on on the helmet it doesn't really do anything yes you might say it break up some of the outline or some of the shine but it's only when you apply further things to that net does it then start really doing its job to blend in and as I mentioned on the headgear one actually for tank crew that's not really that essential from the point of view you know that big tank is gonna be seen anyway it's only when you're away for the vehicle you might want to actually break out up the hair outline of your helmet that you're wearing that way moving on after the war years again there was a tendency straightaway to revert back to norm camouflage weapons if you look at it overall Britain we didn't have our DPM detract disruptive pattern material camo like on this rubberized over suit here this this pattern doesn't come in till later in the 1960s it's designed earlier in the 60s that serves the British military for about 40 years and it was only in about 2010 the multi-terrain pattern comes in and is issued to the British Army the Canadians are first to use digital camouflage on their uniforms the American army copies the Canadian one pretty much but even there you know the idea of digital pixelated it's sometimes called that breaking up when they've done tests and good pixelated camouflage it's about two and a half seconds to pick up that person wearing that compared to about one second on a normal traditional type of camouflage so that's why you can understand that hold a bit of time difference can make a big deal of difference so a lot of countries have gone for that doesn't always work though because again the Americans did a lot of experimentation the early 2000s went for this in the end they they chose different things somewhat overruled it came out with this universal pattern off they went to Afghanistan and very quickly that was criticized gets up to Congress level and new patterns have to come out so we still make I say we countries still make a lot of time and energy goes into camouflage but nowadays I would emphasize again it's much more about that overall spectra and infrared heat signatures especially with vehicles electromagnetic spectrum what's coming out other than what you can just see which makes me laugh because in you know in a sense we've gone more down the routes of visual camouflage in the last 20 30 years yeah look at the plethora of patterns out there when in fact that's probably now not one of the key areas about why people will be wearing camouflage and I would argue again as I've said before when looking at other uniform things we've done some of this is to do with national identity it's obviously do with identifying your crew some of it of course it's about deception of course is about hiding the people there but a lot of the time as well it's about what I might call fashion the vast majority of uniforms are out there being printed at the moment in so many different ways you know including just you know the vast majority are are about fashion not the military and you know there's a billion pound industry in America alone just for hunting clothing and you're looking at things like you know after that duck patent in the 1960s it was based on the wartime American pattern 1980 I forgotten chaps name who comes up with what starts as real tree mossy oak you know and then that's led to and he purposely wanted to do a camouflage scheme that identified that you weren't part of that military background you know this is a different type of camouflage scheme so there's a lot out there that you can imagine we could talk about all cover and already I've has ever gone on a lot longer than I should have really have done but hopefully that's something interesting amongst it somewhere in there there might be something of interest for you on camouflage and I've put out some of the books there that if you're particularly interested this one quite hard to find now destruct disruptive pattern material Hardy Blackman yeah interesting stuff he's it's a huge beautifully illustrated book he's trying to argue the case all the time about would it be nice if people could wear camo without having to associate with the military all the time but I hate to say I don't think you can have his cake and eat it because you can see he's actually obsessed by military camouflage but consistent he wants to tell you he doesn't like the military this one here is on called ghost army which is about the American unit that comes to Britain to try and do deception and again these are always interesting because you start realizing the number of Hollywood fashion designer Bill Blass who are the other people that come over the guy did the Munsters he's one of the the people there set designers another one the brasses book of camouflage watch the reference shots in there as well as a bit of a history there this one I just dug out that's personal Tudor heart who's that the artist who did some of those things in the First World War Geoffrey barkas did a book this one's by guy har cup Jeffrey bonkers his book he was out there in in charge of camouflage and World War two this was another one general history's getting on a bit now out there you'll find countless books on German camouflage that was the catalog from the Imperial War Museum our lovely picture of the the first world war tanks in here with our model that was on loan to this one but another lovely catalog oops as it all starts falling apart and that one is on French military camouflage as well a whole century of French military camouflage on the vehicles and there's another one that was done on kiss of camouflage as well the people who started it all going so I will finally stop I hope this kept you entertained and hopefully it's in the shot down the front there as well as a little plug if you do get bored after a you're not falling asleep with me waffling on for so long you can get yourself a nice tiger or first world war tank jigsaw puzzle thousand pieces I noticed the first one will tank ones $4.99 that's a good buy for a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle so you can sit there and as I always finish off by saying if you do buy something like that from the tank museum shop that helps us as a charity keep going so as ever stay safe and we'll see you again soon

Channel: The Tank Museum

Views: 155,281

Rating: 4.9333506 out of 5

Keywords: the tank museum, tank museum, bovington tank museum, david fletcher, david willey, military tank, camouflage, tank camouflage, uniform camouflage, army camouflage, military camouflage, david fletcher tank chats, tank chat, tank chats, tank chats david fletcher, tank museum bovington, the tank museum tank chats, david willey camouflage

Id: bdHO-5XIg_s

Length: 54min 48sec (3288 seconds)

Published: Sun May 10 2020