page_title: Aircraft camouflage
section_title: Active camouflage
hierarchical_section_title: Aircraft camouflage / Methods / Active camouflage
caption_attribution_description: English: Principle of Yehudi lights counter-illumination camouflage. Silhouettes of oncoming Grumman Avenger against sky with and without lamps. The lamps were automatically adjusted to match the brightness of the sky, reducing the visibility of the plane as seen from a potential target (ship or surfaced submarine) by up to 70%.
context_page_description: Aircraft camouflage is the use of camouflage on military aircraft to make them more difficult to see, whether on the ground or in the air. Given the possible backgrounds and lighting conditions, no single scheme works in every situation. A common approach has been a form of countershading, the aircraft being painted in a disruptive pattern of ground colours such as green and brown above, sky colours below. For faster and higher-flying aircraft, sky colours have sometimes been used all over, while helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft used close to the ground are often painted entirely in ground camouflage. Aircraft flying by night have often been painted black, but this actually made them appear darker than the night sky, leading to paler night camouflage schemes. There are trade-offs between camouflage and aircraft recognition markings, and between camouflage and weight. Accordingly, visible light camouflage has been dispensed with when air superiority was not threatened or when no significant aerial opposition was anticipated.
  Aircraft were first camouflaged during World War I; aircraft camouflage has been widely employed since then.
context_section_description: In the early years of World War II, German U-boats often escaped attack by aircraft because they spotted the aircraft while it was still far away as a black dot in the sky, no matter what camouflage colours were used. To solve this problem, in 1943 the U.S. Navy, following the Canadian diffused lighting camouflage trials on warships, conducted secret experiments on counter-illumination in the Yehudi lights project. Sealed beam lights were mounted on the leading edge of the wing of a Grumman TBM-3D Avenger, and around its engine cowling, with the lamps facing forward. The intensity of the lamps was adjusted to match the background sky as seen from an observer in a surface ship. Aircraft with Yehudi lights were not detected until 2 miles (3.2 km) away under conditions where aircraft without the lights were detected 12 miles (19 km) away. Though successful, the system was not put into production because of improved radar detection.
  During the Vietnam War, Yehudi lights were again tried, this time mounted to an F-4 Phantom painted in a dull blue-and-white camouflage pattern. The experiment reduced by 30% the distance at which an observer visually acquired the Phantom. In 1997, active camouflage was again investigated, this time with thin computer-controlled fluorescent panels or light-emitting polymer covering much of an aircraft's surface.
caption: Yehudi lights raised the average brightness of an aircraft to match the sky.
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