If you were looking for the bad guy at night , at sea , What would you look for ?
Ah , says this country's leaders , This camouflage will make our ships harder to see .Then the bad guy says No , we'll do this and that'll work . Then they both consult learned shrinks who say " well in the heat of war this pattern will work because they haven't got the presence of mind to pick out the vagaries of the pattern in those conditions . " I of course , say " BullPuckies " to that !
Enter a pilot and his implacable crew . What do they fly ? Well , whatever the good guys and bad guys have available to do this . How the heck do you find a ship in the dark of night at sea ? So , You had Bf110 night fighters and other types , and Short Sunderlands and PBY 5 Catalina's looking for the other sides ships at night .
Why didn't the navies of both sides , suffer more losses to these predators of the sky ? It's easy , the lower ranked spotters in these planes were only listened to half the time by their ego driven officers anyway . So the officer corp. of both sides were to wrapped up in themselves to realize the tail gunner or blister gunner saw a wake of a ship .
How could they do this ? Hey , it's nature folks .You stir up the oceans with a couple of thousands of shaft horsepower with those screws and you leave a trail of living luminescence behind . This is common scientific knowledge . You there fore light up a trail right to your stern . Bingo - Gotcha !
Did you know that early in the U-Boat offensive the U-boat crews learned to study the water after surfacing .Especially that well away from the boat .That way if there was Bio-luminiscence present they trailed it for a while . If it took on a tight pattern they knew they were headed in the right direction . Again Bingo - Gotcha !
Yes , linear bio-luminesence was and is visible from less than ten feet above the waves on a fairly quiet night . Now in sailing days this was near impossible .There was disturbance , yes . But a rolling gentle type that disbursed after the ships rudder closed the linear wake behind the ship .There were no screws tossing and stirring up the water ! Anybody choose to chime in . Remember we are talking about all of W.W.1 at sea and part of W.W.2 ( the non-sonar , non radar early years ) .