It hardly needs anyone to prove the importance of camouflage. And now, and at the very beginning of the last century, entire institutions worked on how to make their equipment invisible from the enemy. The ships were masked with coloring according to Wilkinson and Shpazhinsky, but tanks, tanks were painted very whimsically, and sometimes, on the contrary, in a dull gray color, everything, they say, depends on the terrain.
American tank "Sherman" disguised as a tracked transporter. Even close, you can't really tell what it is, but from afar, well, definitely a truck!
Layouts have become another method of masking. The tanks are in one place under the haystacks, and their mock-ups made of plywood, boards, and even stones (as the Japanese did in Okinawa) in another. In Germany, during the Second World War, even a manual was published on how to make tanks out of snow, since there is a lot of it in Russia. And all this would be very good, if not for one big "but". Such a masquerade was not usually protected by the tank itself. That is, he defended, but only to some extent. It would be much more interesting to make it so that, say, a real battle tank would look like … a city bus. The enemy would not have noticed anything, came very close to him, and he - bang, and the enemy was gone, only smoking debris.
A rubber inflatable tank is, of course, very cool. But he doesn't shoot at the enemy!
And I must say that such an idea occurred to people immediately after the First World War. Let's look at this photo. On it, a caterpillar transporter carries tourists through the mountains. Everything is very civilized and innocent. We see the slopes of Mont d'Arbois in the commune of Megève, in France. Everyone is happy and smiling, but in fact, tests of secret armored vehicles were filmed here!
In this case, the chassis is tested. And everything else is just for show!
In some of the photographs we see General Jean Baptiste Eugène Etienne, well, the very one whom his compatriots called "Père des Chars" (Pope of tanks). He proposed a lot of interesting things then, and in 1919 he already published a monograph "Study of the mission of tanks in the field", where he summarized the experience of their use on the battlefield, that is, he did not waste time and worked very intensively. Among the many ideas he put forward were ideas for camouflaging tanks, and he just checked one of them in the Alps, disguising the tank chassis as Alpine transporters for recreational walks in order to hide this development from a potential enemy.
The steepness overcome by this chassis is very decent, isn't it ?!
And here we see a real test.
Now the question is: imagine that there is a desert around you. A road goes through it, and along it your trucks with fuel, ammunition and … tanks go to the front. And then an enemy reconnaissance plane appears above you. What consequences await you after this, because there is nowhere to hide in the desert? It is clear that you can call cover aviation. But sooner or later she will fly away, and then what?
British trucks go through the Libyan desert under the cover of Lysander aircraft.
Well, if measures are not taken or if they are insufficient, then the consequences will be the same as in this photo.
British tanks in Tunisia on the road after a German air raid, 1943.
Well, what if tanks were advancing across the desert to the battlefield? After all, they will be even more visible, as if in the palm of your hand, and from above it will be possible to bomb and fire. Eh, disguise them as something not so important, such that you can regret the bomb, so that you can then drop it on the tanks, because bombs … they also cost money, and their reserves are far from unlimited!
British tanks "Matilda" in the area of the Tobruk fortress, 1941.
Well, if you think about it, but be smart, then … you can hide anything you want. For example, to do as the British did in India - to disguise the Lanchester Mk. II under … elephants! The elephants, they say, are coming, and there is nothing to look out for! And rightly so, when elephants go everywhere, the eye no longer distinguishes any little things in their movement. Here are elephants and there are "elephants". Such is the peculiarity of human perception. True, such "elephants" will have to move slowly. But … after all, this is only when enemy air reconnaissance agents appear, and as soon as they fly away, the speed of the "elephants" can be increased!
British armored vehicles "Lanchester" Mk. II disguised as elephants!
You can act differently. Capture enemy tanks and move them towards the enemy! It is clear that they should bear the identification marks of their own military forces. But … these signs are relatively small, and people usually look at the object as a whole, and not at its individual details.
Italian tanks M13 / 37 with Australian insignia.
English tank "Matilda" with German crosses. North Africa, 1942
Yes, but look at the next photo. On it is an American long-wheelbase 18-ton tank vehicle "Mack EX-BX" (6x4) with a gasoline 131-horsepower engine and wheels with 22-inch tires, in the back of which he transports another, lighter truck. Decent speed makes it not such an easy target, so it is much easier for such a machine to slip to the front line than, in fact, a tank or with a tank on a platform. But take a closer look at what exactly he is lucky. On its platform is a "snag tank" disguised as a truck!
A camouflaged Valentine tank on the platform of a transporter tractor.
Well, and the pinnacle of success for the British camouflage was Operation Bertram in September-October 1942. Then the German command was completely disoriented in relation to the true direction of the planned attack of the British, which ended in defeat for them at El Alamein. And all because the mass of tanks "Matilda" were converted into cars and quite unexpectedly for the Germans found themselves where they did not expect them at all!
This photo clearly shows the device of the camouflage "shell" of the Matilda tank. It consisted of two halves, very light and cheap, which could be removed from it very quickly!
The driver of the Matilda could watch the road through the grille!
With "Matilda" and A9 it was easy: the driver in them was located in the center, so it was possible to organize observation for him through a lattice fan. On the Churchill tank, its place was somewhat on the side, and it was not so convenient, but the benefits of such camouflage outweighed everything, and the British turned even these heavy tanks into a “covered van”. They just made the entire front part of the layout lattice, and that turned out to be quite enough. But a clever clue was invented for the eye: dark traces of dirt cleaners on the "windows". They could be seen from afar, and this increased the reliability of the object of disguise.
But the most interesting thing the British did with the wheeled self-propelled guns "Deacon" ("Deacon"), into which they converted the all-wheel drive trucks AES "Matador". At the front, the vehicle had an armored hood and cockpit, and at the rear on the platform was an open rear turret with a 57-mm gun. The ammunition load of 58 shells was located here in two armored boxes. With this arrangement, the gun did not have a circular fire - there was an unprotected sector where the cockpit was located. But she could shoot forward, despite this, and it was this circumstance that the British decided to take advantage of, turning this SPG into another "truck". Moreover, the alteration was very reliable, because the car was wheeled, so no, even a very attentive observer could have suspected that there was a tank in front of him!
SAU "Deacon".
And this was done not at all in order to drive these self-propelled guns to the front line. Quite the opposite! They were supposed to be used in such camouflage directly in battles! The fact is that in desert conditions there was no exact front line. Of course, there were minefields, and solid lines of trenches and barbed wire, but all this could always be bypassed if desired. And so that the enemy did not succeed, all participants in the war in the desert conducted continuous reconnaissance, both in the air and on the ground. Italian armored cars were specially adapted for operations in the desert and conducted reconnaissance and patrolling at a considerable distance from their troops, and on occasion attacked British transport vehicles and rear units. It was against them that the "Deacon" self-propelled guns were involved in the first place.
The Deacon's crew is busy converting their SPG into a truck.
The tactics of using them was very simple, but effective, like those of trap ships that sank many enemy ships during both world wars. Noticing a lonely truck, the Italians rushed in their car to intercept, and tried not so much to destroy it ("it will always be done in time!"), But to capture it as a trophy. Having approached closer and firing a couple of warning shots, they forced the "truck" to stop and went to him for a "live". And it was here that the camouflage fell from him and from a distance of 50-100 meters his cannon fired a 57-mm armor-piercing projectile at the Italian armored vehicle, and if necessary, then two, since its rate of fire was very high. And that's it! As a rule, the Italians' car flashed like a candle, the survivors were taken prisoner and … very often they drove on towards new "adventures". There are cases when these unusual self-propelled guns admitted enemy tanks to themselves, and then destroyed them with the first shot. Well, when discovered, they quickly turned around and at full speed were leaving the enemy, firing back like a cart from a cannon! So cleverly camouflaging the tanks according to the place and time is a great thing!
And this is "Churchill!"
