Many Of Us Have Heard Of The Term,

Razzle Dazzle,

 but where did it come from? and why is it used today? first question first, Dazzle painting emerged in the 1910s as a design solution to a very dire problem, American and British ships were being sunk left and right by German U-Boats, England needed to import supplies to fight the Central Powers, and these ships were sitting ducks in the Atlantic Ocean, they needed a way to fend of the torpedoes, conventional high-similarity camouflage just doesn’t work in the open sea, conditions like the colour of the sky, cloud cover, and wave height change all the time, not to mention the fact that there’s no way to hid all the smoke left by the ships’ smoke stacks, the strategy of this high-difference, dazzle camouflage was not about invisibility, it was about disruption, confusion,

torpedoes in the Great War could only be fired line-of-sight, so instead of firing at where they saw the ship was at that moment, torpedo gunners would have to chart out where the ship would be by the time the torpedo got there, they had to determine the target ship’s speed and direction with just a brief look through the periscope, the torpedo gunner’s margin of error for hitting a ship was quite low, dazzle painting could throw off an experienced submariner by as much as 55 degrees, so dazzle painting did actually work, on to the second question who still uses century's old technology today?

enter the 2015 RedBull RB11 for its first test drive, at Jerez in Spain with a black and white razzle dazzle camouflage special test livery, it is intended to hide design features from their competition during this early R&D phase of the season, crikey before you know it razzle dazzle will be a fashion statement, 

wait a second it already has! Anon, newspaper photograph of dazzle-inspired bathing suits at Margate, UK, from the New York Tribune, 1919.