During the Second World War, Lt. Norman Wilkinson of the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve came up with a stunning idea.  As an artist, he knew the Navy could not paint a ship so it would vanish into the horizon. And the Royal Navy had no magicians who could make ships disappear.

So he suggested something clever: cover the hull of the ship with squares of paint.

Why? Because it would visually confuse submarine crews so they could not determine in which way the ship was headed.

Did it work?

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.

Steve Levi is an Alaskan writer who specializes in the Alaska Gold Rush (nonfiction) and the ‘impossible crime,’ (fiction.)  An ‘impossible crime’ is one where the detective must figure out HOW the crime was committed before going after the perpetrators – like a Greyhound bus with bank robbers and hostages disappearing off the Golden Gate Bridge –THE MATTER OF THE VANISHING GREYHOUND. Steve’s books can be found at www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi