Private Snafu - A Lecture on Camouflage | 1944 | WW2 Cartoon | US Army Animated Training Film

Private Snafu (Situation Normal All F----- Up) is the title character of a series of black-and-white American instructional cartoon shorts, ironic and humorous in tone, that were produced between 1943 and 1945. Private Snafu demonstrated to the soldiers what not to do in service and designed to improve troop morale during World War 2. The cartoons were produced to the US Army by Warner Bros. The voice of Private Snafu was performed by Mel Blanc. (Mel Blanc earned the nickname "The Man of a Thousand Voices". He is best remembered for his work as the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, and many other characters.)

In this part:
Technical Fairy, First Class gives the troops "A Lecture On Camouflage" with the aid of Private Snafu. He points that modern camouflage, if used intelligently, is both an art and a science. Pvt. Snafu illustrates good and bad camouflage.


HISTORICAL BACKGROUND / CONTEXT

Military units have used camouflage of one kind or another since antiquity. However, with the invention of the airplane and the rise of aerial warfare, camouflage (to hide targets) and decoys (to draw fire away from real targets or to intimidate the enemy) became extremely important.

Starfish sites:
Britain was the target of heavy Luftwaffe bombing long before the U.S. was drawn into World War 2. The Germans were fond of nighttime bombing raids, so the British developed Q sites and Starfish sites as decoys. Q sites were areas of lights designed to attract bombs away from military installations such as airfields. The actual sites were under blackout conditions. Starfish sites were decoys of lights in the countryside that mimicked lights of cities.

Operation Bertram:
As Field Marshal Montgomery faced Erwin Rommel and his German forces in North Africa in 1942, British Brigadier Dudley Clarke launched Operation Bertram, in which fake equipment and munitions tricked the enemy into thinking the forces were miles from where they actually were. At the same time, the real artillery was hidden under fake supply trucks and other structures that appeared to be either useless or badly-camouflaged dummies. The deception was enhanced with false radio transmissions. German intelligence was convinced that the Allies' attack would come later, from a different direction, and involve at least one more armored division than they actually had. The deception contributed greatly to the victory in the Second Battle of El Alamein.

Ghost Divisions:
In the U.S., the the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops was charged with intimidating the German army by convincing them that the Allies had more troops and equipment than they actually had. The 23rd created a "ghost army" of transport vehicles, troop carriers, tanks, and munitions, all made of inflatable balloons, complete with sound effects. The U.S. Rubber Company even built inflatable airplanes (along with tanks and boats) to draw German fire away from the actual D-Day landing sites.

Lockheed and Boeing airplane factories:
Col. John F. Ohmer studied the camouflage and decoy techniques of the British in 1940, and wanted to reproduce them to protect the installations at Pearl Harbor. His proposal was rejected as too expensive. The attack on Pearl Harbor changed all that, and Ohmer was put in charge of a camouflage unit for U.S. targets on the West Coast. Among those targets were the Lockheed airplane factory in Burbank, California and the Boeing airplane factory in Seattle, Washington. Ohmer enlisted the help of Hollywood set builders and prop designers, as well as many civilian laborers and military personnel, to cover the factory with a fake residential neighborhood. Underneath, aircraft were being built for the war effort.

Razzle dazzle ships:
Camouflage at sea is a whole other ball of wax. The reflection of the water, lack of landmarks, movement, and the enemy's technology all combine to make hiding a ship vastly different from land-based disguises. During World War 1, German U-Boats fired torpedoes not at the ship itself, but where the ship was expected to be by the time the torpedo got there. By disguising not the ship, but the ship's speed, you could cause those torpedoes to miss their targets. To do this, British naval officer Norman Wilkinson developed Dazzle camouflage to confuse the enemy's eye into miscalculating the size and speed of a target. Forms of this camouflage are still used today.

Private Snafu - A Lecture on Camouflage | 1944 | WW2 Cartoon | US Army Animated Training Film