British WWI camo patterns

[Ade H]

I've been trying to find out about the experimental ideas for camo which may have been tried on British WWI tanks. So far I've only found the Solomon scheme and a kind of multi-coloured zigzag pattern. But when David Willey did the Tank Museum Q&A videos in 2020, he flicked through a book (without saying what it was) which I'm fairly sure showed a tank in a dazzle scheme. Was that ever tested? Does anyone know what that book is?

[Kingsman]

The Solomon schemes were the only types actually used, and only on some Mk1s.  It was rapidly realised that the tanks got so muddy as to make camouflage painting pointless. The zig-zag scheme was applied only to a single MkIV as an experiment but the colour contrast was apparently inadequate and the colours could not be discerned beyond a few yards.  Solomon of couse also invented the ship dazzle camouflage and British WW2 disruptive painting carried forward the lesson from that of high-contrast colours for best effect, especially on moving ojects: deceit rather than concealment. But I'm not aware of such a scheme being applied to a tank in WW1 even experimentally.  Dick Taylor doesn't mention it in Warpaint vol1 but he does mention the others.

 

Captured tanks recycled by German forces (technically Bavarian) were painted in German buntfarbenstrich but that doesn't qualify as dazzle as they used large irregular areas of colour. Some post-war suvivor tanks have been painted in some odd schemes since 1918.  We did experiment with "dazzle" and other colour schmes in the 1920s and 30s and the image I recall seeing most is a Morris CS9 armoured car in a sort of splinter-dazzle scheme.  It may heve been applied to some Medium Mks I or II but these are most usually seen in broad wavy bands.

 

Book artwork is frequently unreliable, especially of that period as any colours will be purely conjectural: there was no colour codification and no colour imagery.  But I have no idea whick book you might have seen.  It isn't David Willey's own book "Tank" and it isn't anything else I have on the WW1 era.  Volume 1 of Warpaint was re-published with Museum branding in 2020 so it might have been that.  But the only "dazzle" image in it is a b/w photo of the Morris CS9 again from 1935.  The Museum was talking around that time about reprinting the HMSO David Fletcher book series, so it could have been an original copy of Landships.  But there are no images in there that are remotely "dazzle".

Edited January 25, 2022 by Das Abteilung
addition

[Ade H]

Thanks for replying, DA. I know that these schemes were found to be pointless with all the mud; I was after some what-if inspiration for a Tadpole which I made when I was new to modelling, so I've picked it out for a strip and repaint.

[Kingsman]

Ah, tadpoles.  AFAIK none of these were ever used and other than the prototypes in the UK none were ever converted.  They were not new-build tanks: conversion kits were manufactured and shipped out to Central Workshops where they sat outside unused.  I found a picture of them in a book last night but cannot find it online. If any were converted I am certain they were never used in action but I'm prepared to be proved wrong.  The extended horns proved to be insufficiently rigid, leading to twisting and track throwing.

 

So, you could be in the realms of "what if" here, in which case you can almost do what you like as long as it stays "what if".  We don't want to be debunking it as reality 5 years down the line..........

 

Here is the dazzle MkIV with its turtleback mesh screen, which you may have seen already.  Below that is Bovington's model which is said to represent that scheme, designed by Percyval Tudor-Hart not Solomon J Solomon.  Originally an idea for a fabric for uniform canouflage.  You might like to track down a copy of the book 'Camouflage' by Thames and Hudson in conjuction with the IWM.  I understand that this has a lot on WW1 camouflage.

 

 

 

 

Here is an Australian Austin armoured car in a dazzle scheme, bizarrely with very prominent red/white ID stripes.  I can't find an online image of the 1935 Morris CS9 in dazzle.

 

 

The British Army is looking at these ideas again now.  The bar armour on some AFVs like this Scimitar are ideal for hanging changeable fabric screens.

Edited January 25, 2022 by Das Abteilung
correction

[John Tapsell]

The Royal Navy is experimenting with dazzle schemes (again) too. These are HMS Spey (top) and HMS Severn (bottom) - what goes around comes around...

 

 

[Kingsman]

Stop press.  The "Camouflage - the Art Of Disappearing" book author is Tim Newark.  It is published by Thames and Hudson.  It is also shown as being published by Osprey, possibly an earlier edition/version just called Camouflage.