Each ship had a different ‘dazzle’ camouflage and many students at the Royal College of Arts in London were roped in to design them during both World War 1 and World War 2. All of which made it harder for the U-Boats to target them. He came up with a strange but rather bright idea, to cover the surfaces of a ship with odd geometric shapes, which would distort the vessel’s overall shape and make it hard to understand the direction of travel. (A painting by Wilkinson depicting Royal Navy ships) He saw first hand the effectiveness of the German U-Boat and was spurred on to come up with a workable solution. He joined the Royal Navy Reserves and found himself assigned to anti submarine duties in the Dardanelles and Gibraltar. Wilkinson was an artist and his first professional work was for the Illustrated London News, though he went on to have a solid career creating promotional artwork for British railway companies.īorn in 1878 Wilkinson was a bit too old for service in the trenches when World War 1 broke out in 1914, but he still did his bit. This is nothing new, in fact the technique dates back to a Victorian gentleman called Norman Wilkinson who was schooled in Hertfordshire, England. That is not a typo.įor quite a few years it has been common place for manufacturers to wrap their new cars, both race and road, in black and white liveries featuring what seem to be wild and outlandish designs. When Cadillac decided to shakedown its new DPi-V.R it was a little more cunning about the way it tried to keep things under wraps, it did it with a wrap. Many methods have been used from the crude human walls used by Audi Sport at Le Mans in 2016 to the liberal and energetic use of blankets to cover sensitive parts.
Because of this racing teams, especially manufacturer backed teams, are always keen to keep technical details of their cars under wraps for as long as possible. Motor racing has something of a reputation for cloak and dagger activities, if it is not the ‘Grand Prix Sabotuers’ of World War 2 that Joe Saward is always so keen to chat about, it is modern industrial espionage, stolen technologies and sabotaged machinery. To do this it took inspiration from both Formula 1 team Red Bull Racing and also the Royal Navy in World War 1. When Cadillac launched its new Daytona Prototype International (DPi), based on the Dallara P217, it tried to keep some of the key parts of its design a secret.
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