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. In World War II, disruptive camouflage became widespread for fighters and bombers, sometimes combined with countershading. Some air forces such as the German Luftwaffe varied their paint schemes to suit differing flight conditions such as the skyglow over German cities, or the sands of the Mediterranean front. During and after World War II, the Yehudi lights project developed counter-illumination camouflage using lamps to increase the brightness of the aircraft to match the brightness of the sky. This was abandoned with improvements in radar, which seemed to render visible light camouflage redundant. However, aircraft continue to be painted in camouflage schemes; recent experiments have again explored active camouflage systems which allow colours, patterns and brightness to be changed to match the background, and some air forces have painted their fighters in digital camouflage patterns. Stealth technology, as in the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk, aims to minimize an aircraft's radar cross-section and infrared signature, effectively providing multi-spectral camouflage at the price of reduced flying performance. Stealth may extend to avoiding or preventing vapour contrails.
History
World War I
The French were among the first to introduce camouflage, starting with Nieuport fighters with which they tested a variety of schemes during the Battle of Verdun in early 1916. A light blue-grey Nieuport 11 was flown by Georges Guynemer which he named Oiseau Bleu (Blue Bird) while some Voisin IIIs were also painted in the same colour. At the same time, disruptive schemes using several colours were also tried out. By mid-1916 a silver-grey aluminium dope became the norm for Nieuports until the French introduced a standardized disruptive camouflage scheme for combat aircraft in 1917. This was used widely on such aircraft as the Breguet XIV and SPAD XIII that consisted of dark and light green, dark and light brown, black (sometimes omitted) and an underside of grey or beige.
In mid-1916, the Germans experimented with a transparent cellulose acetate covering on several aircraft, including a Fokker E.III, that rendered the aircraft nearly invisible from most angles, however the sun reflecting off it defeated it even before its lack of durability did. When the Germans fielded the Albatros D.III biplane, pilots readily confused them with similarly shaped Nieuports which used the same combination of colours. The solution the Germans came up with was to replace the red-brown with purple, which from a distance still worked well as a camouflage colour, but could readily identify the aircraft as German. As in France, individual manufacturers applied a variety of camouflage finishes, dependent on their own interpretations of what was required. Light grey (LFG Roland C.II), patches of greens and browns (Fokker D.II) and streaky olive green finish over a turquoise base (Fokker Dr.I) were all used until April 1917, when pre-printed lozenge camouflage (Lozenge-Tarnung) was introduced with up to 5 colours. Aircraft of the British Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service were either coloured on top and sides with a protective dope called PC.10 (a mixture of yellow ochre and lampblack) or PC.12 (iron oxide and lamp black) while the undersides were given a clear dope. These colours were not intended originally as camouflage but were developed to prevent the fabric from being damaged by UV radiation from the sun, and their camouflage effect was an added bonus. Both services also used black for night bombers, while a wide variety of experimental camouflages were tried out for specific roles such as trench strafing, with multiple colours. Alternatives were tested in late 1917 at Orfordness Experimental Station, resulting in the introduction of NIVO (Night Invisible Varnish Orfordness) in early 1918; this was used for all external surfaces on night bombers until superseded by World War II colours. Ship-style dazzle camouflage was tested on aircraft such as Sopwith Camels, but was not used on operational aircraft.
World War II
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