Science Porn

[SteelCurtain]

So my iPod on the antiquated dock in my bathroom was set on random, and it played an old episode on 99 Percent Invisible that I hadn't heard in a long time. (If you haven't listened to 99pi, and you love awesome stories in short form, do yourself a favor) It didn't pique my interest the first time I heard it, but this time, it fascinated me.

Apparently, in WWI, before the Americans entered the war when we were sending supplies to the Brits, the problem of U-Boats was dire. So we tried camouflage, but high similarity camouflage was dumb when you have a smokestack billowing black smoke on the horizon. So we developed this disruptive camouflage (like zebras use) called Razzle, sometimes called Dazzle.



In WWI times, torpedoes had no tracking or homing, so they had to be fired like a quarterback throws a football, leading the receiver. So the direction that the target was headed relative to you, the speed of the ship, the length of the ship, were all factors in the trigonometry that the torpedoman would have to calculate on the fly.

Razzle Dazzle worked by confusing the torpedoman.



Could you imagine looking through the periscope and trying to gauge which direction that ship is going?



These ships were painted in outrageous colors, too. Not just black and white. Those colors could be orange, yellow, pink.

It's difficult to measure exactly how effective Dazzle was, but there is no question that it was effective. Very effective.

Cool ass shit.