In World War I, Britain painted thousands of ships in clashing "dazzle" patterns. The goal wasn't to hide them: it was to make a U-boat officer at the periscope misjudge a ship's heading and aim his torpedo in the wrong place.

• ✓Meese & Strong, i-Perception (2025), PMC11909666
• ✓Blodgett, Ship camouflage, MIT thesis (1919)

This ship was painted to be seen. On purpose. In 1917, U-boats were sinking British ships faster than they could be replaced. So artists painted thousands of ships in clashing shapes. Not to hide them. To fool the man at the periscope. A torpedo is slow, so he had to guess the ship's heading and aim ahead. A 1919 test claimed dazzle threw that guess off by up to sixty degrees. But in 2025, scientists rechecked the data. The paint added about seven degrees. Most of the error came from the horizon, striped or not. In that test, the sea did most of the fooling. The stripes just got the credit.