‘Dazzle‘ (or ‘Razzle-Dazzle, or Dazzle Camouflage) was an early use of camouflage in modern warfare. It looked like this: And this: Starting in WWI, Allied ships, and, less frequently, airplanes, canons and tents, were painted in a series of broken stripes and intersecting geometric shapes – not to hide an object, but to confuse, or ‘dazzle’ the eyes of observers.  The point was not to conceal a ship, but to make it hard to tell precisely what kind of ship it was, where a ship was, which direction it was going in, and how fast it was travelling. The goal of Dazzle, as the British Admiralty explained was: …to make it look as if your stern was where your head ought to be. If you think that a Dazzle painted ship looks like a cubist artwork, you’re absolutely right.  The concept of Dazzle is generally credited to  artist Norman Wilkinson (though zooologist John Graham Kerr had earlier proposed a disruption system inspired by animal camouflage). He knew that steamships could not be hidden because of …