Camouflage Buildings - please help

[Guest Papav66]

Lottery chiefs have given nearly £50,000 to investigate the role of a World War II team which helped camouflage buildings from the enemy.

 

The camouflage directorate, originally based in my home town of Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, helped design disguises for factories, ships, dockyards, power stations and airports.

The group included up to 250 artists, designers and draughtsmen.

They created fake buildings to fool bombers from the sky and divert them from genuine targets.

 

Camouflage clothing

They also covered rivers and canals with sheeting, to make them supposedly disappear to those flying overhead.

The group also helped design camouflage clothing for the Armed Forces.

The Heritage Lottery Fund money will be used by the Sez-U Community Theatre and the Leamington Studio Artists to document, record and archive the work that was carried out by the camouflage directorate.

Exhibitions, workshops and a play will also be put on to explain some of the research findings.

 

So if you can help or have any info then please post here. thanks Paul (& no I haven't got the money)

[LeeEnfield]

Sounds interesting.

Looking forward to reading/hearing more.

[Snapper]

It's still possible to see feint traces of the cammo on the former Stoke Newington Town Hall (now plain old assembly rooms since Hackney expanded in 1965).

 

MB

[Rick W]

The railway works in Wolverton had a massive camo paint scheme along its walls, trying to get pics from local archive.

[Guest Papav66]

Based at the Regent Hotel during the Second World War, the artists, designers and technicians worked in secret on aspects of military and civilian camouflage.

 

Surveying factories and installations from the ground and air, the unit created models and designs that could be viewed in all weather and light conditions.

 

The men and women used a large turntable with viewing platforms and giant water tanks constructed in the building that is now the old art gallery and museum in York Road.

 

Project leader Fergus Durrant said: "Can you imagine trying to camouflage a building on the scale of the Ford factory now? That was the enormity of their task.

 

"On top of that, resources were so tight - they just did not have the materials to spread the camouflage."

 

Mr Durrant said: "We have found the blueprints for the original design of the turntable, so we're going to reconstruct it as a theatre set and perform a production based around the work of the camouflage unit and the people involved."

 

Big name artists - including Christopher Ironside, who later designed the decimal coinage, and Wilfred Shingleton, who later won a 1946 Oscar for his work on Great Expectations - worked at the Leamington directorate.

 

And Charles Darwin's grandson Robert Darwin was also involved.

[Rick W]

All good stuff.

[Snapper]

The railway works in Wolverton had a massive camo paint scheme along its walls, trying to get pics from local archive.

 

As that still there? Famous for the sixteen year old killed in 1915 and buried at Berkshire Corner on the Armentieres-Ypres road. Sorry, I digress and the poor kid is so famous I've forgotten his name. :coffee:

 

what happened to the Off Topic smiley. I've been off topic since the wife banned me from eating chocolate.

 

Barnes

[Tony B]

The St Helier hospital north london. It was prominent white building above Bentley priory, that still had traces of camoflage on it inthe 1990's . i was working at empress state building at West Brompton, next to earls Court. Used to nip up the roof and had a superb view of London. the hospital stood out like a beacon.

[Guest Papav66]

just came across these chaps:

 

Stephen Bone 1904-1958 Artist, critic, journalist, broadcaster & author of childrens books enlisted as a Camouflage Officer, in Leamington 1939-42

 

 

Colin Moss 1914-2005 Painter,draughtsman, printmaker & teacher, Camouflage Designer.

 

Leon Underwood 1890-1975 worked at the Civil Defence Camouflage Unit 1939-1942

[Guest Papav66]

examples of Colin's work

[Adam Elsdon]

Alot of RAF stations still have buildings that show signs of camouflage painting from WW2, i always wondered about the effectiveness and what else they done to them other than paint them.

[Guest Papav66]

Colin worked alongside artists such as Leon Underwood, Richard Carline and Edwin LaDell and the stage designer Paul Shelving. Their acute visual awareness, creativity and technical skills made them ideally suited for this work.

 

In 1943 the Ministry of Home Security gave all its artists (including Colin who was by then a serving member of the Life Guards - part of the Household Cavalry) a month's paid leave to produce paintings of the camouflage jobs they had worked on. The artists were paid £2 for each painting they produced. Colin later made a submission to the War Artists Advisory Committee of some of these works which are now in the Imperial War Museum.

 

Extract from "Colin Moss: Life Observed" (Chloe Bennett, Malthouse Press)

 

"We worked in regions, I was in the London region, and it was all power stations and factories (we only did civilian camouflage)," Colin recalls. "We used to fly over the building and write a lot of notes about the surroundings and take photographs, and then we went back to the studio and they used to have scale models made".

[The scale they used was one sixteenth of an inch to a foot.]

 

"You worked on a scale model and painted it in a certain range of colours, which was used on all camouflage work. There was a turntable which you put it on and a moving light, which represented the sun, and you got up on a platform, which was about the height that a bombing pilot would come in at, and turned this thing around to see how it reacted to different times of day."

[They assumed that the bombers would be flying at 1500 feet as this was the optimum bombing height.]

[Guest catweazle (Banned Member)]

Thats fascinating,you think someone was sent up the ladder and told try and hide it.great stuff.

[Richard Farrant]

Does anyone remember the old Dennis vehicle factory just off the main road at Guildford? It was demolished to make way for a new industrial estate in recent years, but up until its end, the walls were still painted in camouflage pattern.

 

Richard

[Guest Papav66]

I don't know that particular building but going off tangent a little, the Government today still has a pot of money sitting in an account to restore/re-paint buildings that were camouflaged so that they can be returned to their pre-war appearance.

[Guest catweazle (Banned Member)]

What this one

 

[Richard Farrant]

What this one

 

 

 

 

That is the location, not sure when that photo was taken but they look like the original buildings. I think a lot of it has been knocked down and new buildings put up.

[Tony B]

What about the use of natural materials to camoflage installations?

[Guest catweazle (Banned Member)]

bikes can be military vehicles to

Does that include ww2 butchers bike on warden patrol only i am about to restore one?:-D

[LeeEnfield]

Does that include ww2 butchers bike on warden patrol only i am about to restore one?:-D

 

 

 

Oh gawd,..........another one, :whistle: but, I guess, YES, ........just call it 'reqresitioned',...........

 

Where and what was that building, Tony ??

[Tony B]

That's a twin machine gun post covering the approaches to Kemp tower strong point and the slip where the CI Military Museum are on St Quen's bay Jersey. Some of the bunkers were painted up as house. this one was built with false chimmney pots and had a window with a flower pot painted on the side, now long worn of i'm afraid. it is the jersy Fortress commander's signal bunker.

[N.O.S.]

When we put up the first T2 hangar slap bang in the middle of a very white chalk pit, the planners insisted we paint the galvanised sheeting (why?). We asked what colour?, they asked what colour the buildings were during the war, we said either camouflage or plain black, they said paint it black, we did, it still looks awful......What's the opposite of Camouflage?

[Tony B]

Some colour blind T*T from council planning by the sound of it.

[ashley]

Here`s a section of camoflauged bunker, thiough camoed on the inside !more to follow in another posting, bet Jack knows where it is

 

Ashley

[Kfz70]

Here`s a section of camoflauged bunker, thiough camoed on the inside !more to follow in another posting, bet Jack knows where it is

 

Ashley

 

Fort Henry, Studland Bay. Right hand side of the emplacement in front of the door leading down to the ammunition storage area I think...