Nature always knows best. That dazzle did indeed work along these lines is suggested by the testimony of a U-boat captain: It
was not until she was within half a mile that I could make out she was
one ship [not several] steering a course at right angles, crossing from
starboard to port. The dark painted stripes on her after part made her
stern appear her bow, and a broad cut of green paint amidships looks
like a patch of water. The weather was bright and visibility good; this
was the best camouflage I have ever seen
U-boats
were equipped with two periscopes, one for searching out enemy ships,
the other with a more powerful lens but narrower field of vision for use
in combat. Though the use of periscopes allowed the U-boat to remain
safely underwater while carrying out an attack, looking straight out at
misty sea level, which was rarely level at all made accurate vision very
difficult. Hitting anything with a torpedo this way is as much a
testament to luck as it is to skill. Wilkinson advocated “masses of strongly contrasted colour” to confuse the enemy about a ship’s heading.Even
so there were those among the allies who thought they knew how to shift
the odds even further. Naval ships were already being painted gray to
blend in between the ocean and sky as much as possible. But a ship at
sea cannot really be camouflaged as colors change along with the light
throughout the day and when silhouetted against a blank horizon it is
impossible to hide. But since ships were almost always moving targets
U-boat commanders had to aim their torpedos at where they thought the
ship would be when it reached it, not at the point where the ship was
seen. This involved careful calculation of distance, heading, and speed
based on the coincidence principal, and this is where Norman Wilkinson
thought they could be deceived.
