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18 August 1966: Australian soldiers in Việt Nam wait to return to base after the Battle of Long Tần. The action occurred when D Company of the 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, encountered the Việt cộng 275 Regiment and elements of the D445 Local Forces Battalion. [Image: Australian War Memorial (AWM negative CUN/66/704/VN).]

Known to collectors by a bewildering variety of names, Buntfarbenaufdruck ('multicoloured colour print'), which was originally developed for the Reichswehr ('Territorial Defence'), employs geometric shapes that are clearly derived from dazzle camouflage and, like dazzle camouflage, were intended to confuse the focal visual system. Instead of bright colours, however, Buntfarbenaufdruck uses wood brown and medium green polygons on a light Feldgrau or tan background, with a 'random' overprint of green dashes, in places, to improve the camouflage effect. These drab colours were intended to reduce the visual contrast between soldiers and the predominant colours of a woodland environment; therefore, they were intended to work against the ambient visual system.

It was probably in 1935, when the Reichswehr became the Wehrmacht ('Defence Force'), that the Buntfarbenaufdruck was renamed Heeres-Splittermuster 31 ('army splinter pattern '31'). The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht ('Supreme Command of the Defence Force', OKW) issued the camouflaged Zeltbahn 31 ('shelter section '31') to all units of the Heer ('army'), Kriegsmarine ('navy') and Luftwaffe ('air weapon').

However, the Zeltbahn was the only standard camouflage garment to be widely issued to Wehrmacht units. In spite of the demonstrated effectiveness of the camouflage combat uniforms that were trialled by the Waffen-SS, at the outbreak of World War II, the OKW did not introduce its own camouflage uniforms until 1942. Neither did the OKW issue them so extensively as the Waffen-SS did.

Waffen-SS camouflage uniforms

The disruptive pattern camouflage uniforms developed for use by the Waffen-SS probably represent the most significant advances in 20th Century camouflage uniform design.

Like Buntfarbenaufdruck, they used boundary disruption, to confuse the focal visual system, and drab, woodland colours, to fool the ambient visual system. Unlike Buntfarbenaufdruck, however, they used irregular shapes, which were derived from natural forms, and varied the spatial frequencies — the size of, and distance between, like-coloured areas — of these shapes, to simulate the random arrangement of objects in the environment. The Waffen-SS also introduced differently-coloured variants of the same camouflage pattern, to allow for the different colours of foliage, according to the season. Most significantly, however, they introduced elements of countershading, into their camouflage patterns, in the form of large areas of solid black.

The role of black, in camouflage patterns, has recently been disputed because black is found nowhere in nature. If, for example, you were to look at a bush or a tree from a distance of less than a metre, you would probably see little — if any — 'black'.

If you were to look at the same bush or tree from a distance of 100 metres, however, you would note that the combination of distance and shadows makes some parts of the scene appear black, or nearly black, even though these colours are not actually present at the source.

This perception of black is caused by the absorption of almost all incident light and colour, by the atmoshpere, between yourself and the objects that you see. Since this perceptual phenomenon is related to the distance between yourself and the objects that you see, your brain interprets it as depth.

The introduction of black into a camouflage pattern, therefore, simulates a third dimension and introduces an additional factor to confuse the focal visual system. This innovation, and others that were pioneered by the Waffen-SS, influenced the design of camouflage uniforms even until the present day.

Copyright © 2005, 2008 Brad Turner. All rights reserved.