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Uncover your potential', indeed! Once you stop ogling the girl, though, you might notice that this Australian Special Air Service (SAS) recruiting poster shows Australian Disruptive Pattern Camouflage to very good effect. [Image courtesy Brad Turner collection.]

Italian three-colour camouflage (2nd pattern)
Kingdom of Italy

Although wartime German camouflage patterns have been extensively documented, wartime Italian camouflage patterns remain largely overlooked. It is frequently claimed that only one camouflage pattern — usually designated M29 telo mimetico ('camouflage cloth') — was used by Italy during World War 2. Nonetheless, the evidence to hand suggests that at least three quite different camouflage patterns were used by Italian forces during the Second World War.

Some authors have noted at least six distinct colour variations for wartime telo mimetico, and the greyish yellowish brown, greyish olive green and greyish reddish brown colouration shown here is probably one of them, although it must be noted that this particular example was scanned from a 1952-dated shelter half. It is an example of second pattern camouflage, which appears to be an anisotropically-scaled (87% horizontally, 75% vertically) variation of the first pattern. Presumably the dimensions were changed to accommodate smaller printing rollers.

Apart from the manufacture of jump smocks for Italian parachutists after 1937, the Italian Royal Army (Italian: Regio Esercito) principally used telo mimetico for the production of camouflaged shelter-halves. After 23 September 1943, though, Italian three-colour camouflage was used by military formations of the Italian Social Republic (Italian: Repubblica Sociale Italiana, RSI) for a much wider variety of garments.

kamouflage.net is grateful to Lorenzo Russo, for his invaluable contributions to this article.

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