 Ship camouflage was used in earnest by the British Admiralty in the First World War. The marine artist Norman Wilkinson led research into dazzle camouflage, resulting in the painting of thousands of British and later American ships in dazzle patterns. He intended it not to make ships invisible, nor even to cause the enemy to miss his shot, but to deceive him into taking up a poor firing position. In the Second World War, dazzle was revisited by the Royal Navy and the United States Navy, and applied to a limited extent by other navies.
