Tag Archives: experimental camouflage

Odd Buffalo

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Brewster F2A-1 fighter of Fighting Squadron Three (VF-3) At Naval Air Station, North Island, California, 9 September 1940.

The plane is painted in McClelland Barclay experimental camouflage design Number 2. Note gun-camera mounted on the starboard side of the fuselage, forward. Grumman F2F-1 fighters of Fighting Squadron Two (VF-2) are in the background.

U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command. Photograph. Catalog #: NH 96146

U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command. Photograph. Catalog #: NH 96146

Design number 1 is in the below, NH 96143

Of course the U.S. Navy and Marines had legit issue with the Brewster F2A Buffalo, dubbing it “the flying coffin” when flying against highly trained Japanese pilots with arguably better aircraft but the Finns, who used 44 Model B-239 (export) F2As nicknamed Pylly-Valtteri (“Butt-Walter”) and Lentävä kaljapullo (“flying beer-bottle”) among others, made mincemeat out of Red Air Force planes for a time.

Only the Brits would do serious research in hiding a destroyer under an umbrella

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Apparently, you could use thirty-one 14-foot umbrellas to break up a ship silhouette.

31-umbrellas-destroyer british-destroyer-with-13-umbrellas-for-campflauge

This photograph shows a Royal Navy ship using experimental camouflage. The photograph comes from the records of the Admiralty’s research laboratory. The idea was to camouflage ships against land backgrounds. The diagram shows how many umbrellas were needed to camouflage a ship. The purpose was to provide a quick solution. The structural camouflage (the umbrellas) would be used as well as painted camouflage. The umbrellas also broke up the outline of the ship. This made it difficult for an aircraft or a submarine to work out what kind of ship it was. The umbrellas would help the ships to avoid attack or even allow them to lie unobserved in order to ambush enemy shipping expected in the area. It was thought that such circumstances might occur in the Far Eastern theater of war.

Via National Archives.uk Catalogue ref: ADM 212/129