Methods of concealment and deception in hunting and in warfare has been practiced since antiquity. Camouflage has become a complex military tool that involves concealment and deception. We readily think of concealment as the merging of troops, weapons, and equipment. However, camouflage also evokes deception in which decoys are created to mislead an enemy as to intention, to give a false idea of strength, or to draw the enemy's attention from a real attack.
Pre-twentieth-century warfare involved camouflage. There is the famous Greek story of the Trojan horse. In 212 B.C., Greeks constructed a false beachfront with straw and supported by a light structure. When Roman forces assaulted the "beach," they floundered and were cut down by the defending Greeks. The Scottish King Robert I (1274-1329) had his troops dig hidden pits with which to trap English cavalry at the battle of Bannockburn in 1314. Dummy forts and artillery were frequently employed to deceive enemies. As guns became more accurate, armies attempted to merge into the landscape by abandoning their distinctive uniforms. The first troops to wear khaki uniforms were the Indian Guides, an English army unit who dyed their white uniforms a mud color (khaki means "dust" in Urdu) in 1846.
Camouflage was used extensively during World War I. In 1914, a French portrait painter, Guirand de Scevola, painted canvas sheets which were used to cover and hide 75mm guns. He eventually became the head of the first camouflage section in the history of war. An English artist, Solomon J. Solomon, also headed up a similar section for the British; he created artificial trees for observers to hide in while checking out the German lines. Solomon also painted the first British tanks with a disruptive pattern of browns and greens to blend in with the landscape. Nets were a favorite way to hide equipment and artillery during the war. After the United States entered the war, military leaders set up a camouflage unit with Homer Saint-Gaudens (the son of the celebrated American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, 1848-1907) in charge.
Two camouflage measures were used extensively at sea during World War I: the decoy ship and dazzle painting. The British used decoy vessels, called Q-ships, to lure German U-boats close where they could be dispatched with gunfire. The Q-ships looked like ordinary merchant vessels, but they had hidden guns that could be quickly exposed and fired at the unsuspecting submarine floating on the surface nearby. Dazzle painting was first suggested by an English zoologist, John Kerr (1869-1957). Kerr and a painter, P. Tudor Hart, argued that disruptive paint schemes of strongly contrasting colors could break up the outline of a ship's structure and confuse enemy observers. Norman Wilkinson, a naval lieutenant who shared these ideas, oversaw the dazzle painting on British ships.
Airplanes were also first camouflaged during World War I. An American physicist, M. Luckiesh, pointed out that an airplane needed two paint schemes: one to help hide it when seen from above, and one to hide it when seen from the ground. The Germans spent much more time on airplane camouflage: they painted the upper surfaces a dull green, purple, and earth tones. Under surfaces were either painted white, pale or turquoise blue, or pale blue-green.
Since World War I, armies have continued developing camouflage skills. Leslie Watson, a British horticulturalist, devised the use of small holes bored into concrete airplane runways. These holes were filled in with soil and tufts of grass, causing the runway to resemble grassland rather than a strategic landing place for aircraft. Before the D-Day landings of World War II, the Allies used fake radio messages as well as dummy equipment to confuse the Germans. Today's camouflage specialists are scientists rather than painters because modern weapons can operate in various wavelengths: ultraviolet, infrared, and microwave. Camouflage nets are still in use, particularly those made from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) but most are rendered ineffective against radar. Aircraft and ships now use radar-absorbing paint.
Camouflage clothing became more sophisticated after World War II, for both hunting and military use. Camouflage used in the Vietnam War used tiger stripes and woodland patterns to blend in to the vegetation there, while camouflage developed for the Persian Gulf War used desert patterns. A treebark pattern camouflage for hunters was developed in the 1980s, with gray and black shapes and vertical lines which mimic a wooded environment. In the late 1990s, camouflage designers began working on patterns that vanish into the grids of night-vision scopes. High-tech camouflage clothing that actually changes colors is under development, but not perfected.
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