Camouflage Unit

Based at the Regent Hotel, Leamington Spa during World War II, the Directorate's 250 artists, designers and technicians worked in secret on aspects of military and civilian camouflage. Surveying factories and installations from the ground and air, the unit created models and designs that could be viewed in all weather and all lighting conditions. The sole aim of the Unit was to disguise key bombing targets. It is said that the choice of Leamington Spa was because of the town's proximity to armament factories in Coventry and Birmingham. Techniques used included draping giant nets over buildings, painting fake road markings onto rooftops and even putting concrete cows on the roofs of key buildings so that they might appear as fields from the air. In what is now Leamington's old museum and gallery the Directorate set up huge water tanks designed to float model boats. Special paints were made to hopefully disguise ships that would be targets of enemy submarines.

From early on in the War, camouflage design seemed to offer many artists a way of earning a living in what would become difficult times. By the beginning of September 1939, the Ministry of Labor had been inundated with requests from over 2000 applicants for work in the Unit. Among the artists who had found camouflage work were Stephen Bone, Hugh Casson, Cosmo Clark, William Coldstream, Adrian Daintrey, Robin Darwin, Frederick Gore, Ashley Havinden, Blair Hughes-Stanton, Christopher Ironside, Robert Medley, Colin Moss, Rodrigo Moynihan, Mervyn Peake, Roland Penrose, Tom Rathmell, Guy Roddon, Robert Scanlan, Edward Seago, Richard Seddon, Alan Sorrell, Julian Trevelyan and Leon Underwood.