If you go to Portsmouth Historic Dockyards to have a look at the M. 33, the ship that I was reenacting a landing party from last weekend, you will see that she is currently painted as she was during the First World War in dazzle camoflage. At first sight you might think that painting high contrast geometrical shapes onto a ship's hull could not possibly be good camoflage, and you would be right. It doesn't actually work. The idea was to try and break up the outlines of the ship making it harder to target and came from observing herds of Zebra on the plains of africa. As they run and dodge to get away from preditors their stripes can create an optical illustion fooling their preditors to launch themselves at a places where the Zebra isn't. So it was decided to try doing the same thing with warships, but they forgot two things:
1. Warships are much slower than Zebra.
2. Warships are much bigger than Zebra.
Needless to say using dazzle paint camoflage didn't last long and was soon replaced by various shades of battleship grey after the war.
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