DISGUISING WARSHIPS.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 December 1915, Page 12 (Supplement)

DISGUISING WARSHIPS.

The Germans, who have been 'orejit* ed with some clever devices to conceal the identity or character of their war vessels—submarines being rigged to look like schooners and cruisers being painted to resemble large yachts—will be interested to learn that the Americans are reported to be adopting similar plans, according to a Reuter telegram from filiode Island. Although, of course, nothing authoritative has been allowed to be published on the subject, it has been reported for a long time that the ships of nearly all the Powers engaged in the war have adopted various disguises, and pictures which have appeared in the American and British newspapers show with what elaborate markings it, has been sought to deceive the enemy, The experience of twelve months' however, has, it is understood, tended to show that the value of ruses of this kind is apt to be largely exaggerated. Certain it is that some of the disguises ' are as disadvantageous in one way as they are of use In anothe- There is a story that one of the destroyers which had been painted with a large bow wav« to give her' the appearance of moving rapidly through the water was mn down by a tug which was deceived by her apparent speed, the tug being headed for the stern of the vessel in the belie! thalt she was going at a fair rate when, as a matter of fact, she was stopped. This was in its way a tribute to the efficacy of the destroyer's disguise, and other incidents have been related which illustrate the same thing, but so far as is known -there has not been a case where the deception proved of advantage in action, unless the Emdem's use of a dummy funnel at Penan* could be u count#*,