Saturday, December 8, 2012

Dazzle Ship Camouflage Cartoon

H.A. MacGill (1918), newspaper cartoon


A few days ago, we ran across a newspaper cartoon (above) from the Bridgeport Telegram, Monday, August 26, 1918, p. 12. The artist was H.A. MacGill and the title of the comic strip was Percy and Ferdie—Another Gas Balloon Punctured. When it first appeared in print, there were three additional panels, but they've been omitted here (because they weren't very funny, and had little or nothing to do with camouflage). This remaining panel offers some sense of the American public's response to World War I dazzle-painted ships when they saw them in the harbor.