History's Weirdest Camouflage Explained in 13 Minutes

The weirdest military camouflage from every era explained: Rome painted whole ships the colour of seawater, Britain painted its soldiers bright red on purpose, and the United States spent five billion dollars on a camouflage pattern that made its own soldiers easier to see. Military camouflage has almost never been about becoming invisible. Every era bought itself a few seconds against one particular way of being looked at, and every era paid for those seconds with something it did not expect. This video walks through ten of them in order, from a Roman scouting boat waxed blue green from hull to sail, to a hooded cloak that hides a soldier's body heat from a drone camera. Along the way: the Highland deer stalkers who brought a suit of grass and rags to a war, the French portrait painters who replaced a real tree with a hollow steel copy overnight, the ships painted in black and white blocks that were never meant to hide at all, the admiral who painted his entire destroyer flotilla pink, the eleven hundred men whose tanks weighed ninety three pounds each, and the grey pixel uniform that nobody ever tested before it was issued to an army. Chapters: 00:00 Why the worst camouflage in history looked completely normal 00:59 Rome: scout ships waxed the colour of the sea 01:59 Red coats, gunpowder smoke and the first khaki 02:54 A quick word, and four things still ahead 03:41 The ghillie suit: Scottish deer stalkers go to war 04:43 Fake trees: the French camouflage section of nineteen fifteen 05:38 Dazzle: the camouflage designed not to hide 06:33 The awkward truth about whether dazzle ever worked 07:22 Mountbatten pink: an admiral decides it personally 08:41 Sunshields, inflatable tanks and the Ghost Army 09:53 The five billion dollar grey that nobody tested 11:14 Hiding from thermal cameras, radar and drones 12:12 Every era, one sentence The pattern across all ten eras is the same. Camouflage works against the sensor it was designed for and fails against the next one, and the only real disaster in the whole story is the one design that was never checked against anything at all. Sources and further reading: Vegetius, De Re Militari, on scouting ships painted the colour venetus Wikipedia, Ship camouflage, Khaki, Lovat Scouts, Ghillie suit Guinness World Records, first use of modern camouflage, Section de Camouflage 1915 Britannica, Dazzle camouflage, and the Admiralty dazzle committee report of September 1918 Wikipedia, Mountbatten pink, Operation Bertram, Middle East Command Camouflage Directorate The Ghost Army Legacy Project and the National WWII Museum, 23rd Headquarters Special Troops United States Government Accountability Office report on Army camouflage, 2012 Wikipedia, MARPAT and Multi-scale camouflage, on why pixels are not the point If this is the kind of history you want more of, subscribing is the whole reason the next one gets made. #camouflage #militaryhistory #SketchyWarfare #camo #dazzlecamouflage #ghilliesuit #ghostarmy #ucp #militaryuniform #warhistory #ww1 #ww2 #historyexplained #militarytech #armyuniform