Camouflage in World War II (1939-1945)

Units engaged in desert warfare evolved the system of “laager” or defensive encampment, armour, transport and artillery-pieces being dispersed in a defensive formation according to the local contours, and camouflaged with netting and sand, there being an infinite abundance of the latter. The result was that the encampment proved difficult to detect or to gauge the size thereof.

It would also be remiss of the author not mention the Camouflage Corps of the Allied forces. This little-known corps comprised an assortment of artists, scene painters, architects and even zoologists who made, through trial and error, a specialty of the art of disguise and mass deception. An example of their work was the hiding from German eyes of the movements of the British 10th Corps during the Battle of Egypt. The 10th Corps was moved from the rear into the forward line, and owing to the work of the Camouflage Corps in rigging up dummy guns, tank laagers, transport concentrations and troop lines, the movement of the vast mass of  Allied soldiers and war material went totally unsuspected by the Germans.

Naval camouflage was also an art-form, and through endless experiment (as well as drawing upon the lessons learned during the First World War), ships were able to be rendered almost invisible to the naked eye, and their range difficult to calculate.

Of course the methods of camouflage mentioned were meant to hide large pieces of military equipment and units and formations from the enemy, but even the common soldier had recourse to camouflage, which in many cases proved to be a matter of “Life and Death”, a case being camouflage outfits issued to snipers, the overalls often having strips of frayed cloth sewn to the shoulder and outside sleeves, which had the effect of diffusing the outline  and rendering a stationary figure almost invisible, while other camouflage garments were just rather clever in design, such as the German Army reversible jacket that afforded the wearer a choice between camouflage or the white winter pattern.

The ingenuity and wiles of those concerned with camouflage deception during World War Two was truly phenomenal and, through their collective contribution,  can be said to have laid the very foundations of modern camouflage techniques, the art of camouflage having today become not only a necessary adjunct to military science, but an integral part thereof.