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USAF SEA camo scheme


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7 hours ago, 11bee said:

Cute but does it serve any tactical purpose? 


It’s not all about fooling the Mk.1 eyeball. Some sensors (being intentionally vague here) use contrasting edges (light/dark) to lock on to. A pattern with numerous small contrast edges could potentially make an accurate lock on target more difficult if not impossible. 

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2 hours ago, habu2 said:


It’s not all about fooling the Mk.1 eyeball. Some sensors (being intentionally vague here) use contrasting edges (light/dark) to lock on to. A pattern with numerous small contrast edges could potentially make an accurate lock on target more difficult if not impossible. 

 

Indeed. With digital camo, the general outer edges might have high contrast, but all the inner detail that clearly identifies a subject would be very hard to lock on to. With those extreme digital camos, even my Mk.1 eyeball has difficulty doing so. Another example is the facial masks and paint that confuses facial recognition software.

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On 11/15/2019 at 2:34 PM, 11bee said:

I believe the US did some experimental stuff in WW2  to address this (at least from a frontal perspective).   They used lights within engine cowlings and leading edges to eliminate the aircraft’s silhouette against the sky.   By all accounts, it was extremely effective but was scrapped due to being too difficult to implement.   

11bee,

That was Project Yahoody, it was basically known as sympathetic illumination. It was done on a Avenger with lights in the leading edges of the wings and engine cowling. A, for want of a better word, light meter was aimed backwards at the tail of the a/c and read the light intensity behind the aircraft and the forward lights were adjusted to match the background light rendering the aircraft somewhat invisible. The main problem was that if you were 15 - 20 degrees off the line of flight you could see the aircraft plainly.

A tid bit from my vault of trivial knowledge.

Cheers :cheers:

Itch

Edited by Cajun21
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12 minutes ago, Cajun21 said:

11bee,

That was Project Yahoody, it was basically known as sympathetic illumination. It was done on a Avenger with lights in the leading edges of the wings and engine cowling. A, for want of a better word, light meter was aimed backwards at the tail of the a/c and read the light intensity behind the aircraft and the forward lights were adjusted to match the background light rendering the aircraft somewhat invisible. The main problem was that if you were 15 - 20 degrees off the line of flight you could see the aircraft plainly.

A tid bit from my vault of trivial knowledge.

Cheers :cheers:

Itch

Thanks for the details, you are absolutely correct.   On a related note, I thought I read that the AF experimented with adding lights inside jet intakes to minimize their darkness, for the same reasons as above. 

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On 11/9/2019 at 1:31 PM, Vince Maddux said:

Did anyone notice the refueling doors open in the second B-52 photo?

Yeah!  I will have to get the crew chief to check that out when I get back to Guam.  Fuel burn was a little off on this trip.  Replace that amber bulb on the overhead panel.  It wouldn't go out no matter how many times I flipped the breaker!  

Edited by Dutch
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Found this the other night and listened to it at the bench:

Found it interesting. I don't remember this episode Saturday mornings as a kid...:hmmm:.

 

:woot.gif:

 

Happy modeling all!

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  • 4 weeks later...
25 minutes ago, jonwinn said:

Nice and effective camo pictures. What was the SAM ratio as far as SEA camo to basic grey airframes?

Just curious.- jon

SAM ratio?    

 

Dutch, thanks for that link, that’s a pretty scheme.  Loved to see pucks of what those light housings looked like.   

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13 minutes ago, Dutch said:

SAM loss rate of camo vs un-camo aircraft? Not sure, but it sure eased the pilots' & WSOs' pucker factor somewhat!

 

As Dutch noted, can’t make a real comparison.   By the time the camo arrived, ECM pods and RHAW gear were starting to show up.  Tactics were also evolving.   Lastly, since the SAM’s were primarily radar-guided, paint color would have no effect. 

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