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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Camoflage Lighting, etc
Message-ID: <1990Jun29.025506.6832@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 29 Jun 90 02:55:06 GMT
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Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
>During WWII ... It was found that natural aluminum color was harder 
>for the search light crews to "see", as the light was scattered, rather than
>providing a surface for the beam to "project onto"...

A related item of note is that the P-61 Black Widow (specialized night
fighter, superficially resembling a giant P-38) was painted *gloss* black,
after experiments showed that a flat black paint made the aircraft show
up as a black silhouette in a searchlight beam.

                                         Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
                                          henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry