Dazzle camouflage: benefits and problems revealed

P. George Lovell*, Rebecca J. Sharman, Tim S. Meese

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

During WWI, ships were painted in high-contrast 'dazzle' patterns believed to distort, among other things, submariners' perceptions of direction when aiming their torpedoes, but was this strategy effective? Here, we investigated the effects of different camouflage patterns, including versions used in the war, on the perceived direction of travel for a three-dimensional computer model of the RMS Mauretania. The results of this study showed that texture gradients ‘twisted’ the perceived direction of the ship, the effect being ~10° for a regular pattern of circles. We also found a second, larger effect, 'hysteresis', that biased perceived target directions to parallel the horizon for directions of travel within approximately ±30° of 90° (left–right). Hysteresis persisted outside this central plateau, causing perceived directions to be offset from veridical. The twist and hysteresis effects combined linearly and were constructive (enhancing protection) or destructive (diminishing protection) depending on the directions of (i) travel and (ii) the 'twisting' texture gradients. However, the strength of hysteresis reduced as a function of experience. Our simulated torpedo attacks suggest that systematic perceptual distortion of direction by dazzle might have been effective only where submariners had low hysteresis and ships were fast enough to benefit from the perceptual error imposed by twist.
Original languageEnglish
Article number240624
Number of pages18
JournalRoyal Society Open Science
Volume11
Issue number12
Early online date4 Dec 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 4 Dec 2024

Bibliographical note

Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Access Statement

All data and analyses are shared upon the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/574yj/?view_only=1e88610081414640b5148412ea3a01e5 . Electronic supplementary material is available online at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.7501101 .

Keywords

  • dazzle camouflage
  • perception
  • camouflage
  • psychophysics
  • direction
  • vision

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