, 1918 During the First World War, while serving in the
Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, he was assigned to
submarine patrols in the
Dardanelles,
Gallipoli and
Gibraltar, and, beginning in 1917, to a
minesweeping operation at
HMNB Devonport. In April 1917,
German submarines achieved unprecedented success in
torpedo attacks on British ships, sinking nearly eight per day. In his autobiography, Wilkinson remembers the moment when, in a flash of insight, he arrived at what he thought would be a way to respond to the submarine threat. He decided that, since it was all but impossible to hide a ship on the ocean (if nothing else, the smoke from its smokestacks would give it away), a far more productive question would be: how can a ship be made to be more difficult to aim at from a distance through a
periscope? In his own words, he decided that a ship should be painted "not for low visibility, but in such a way as to break up her form and thus confuse a submarine officer as to the course on which she was heading". After the war, there was some contention about who had originated dazzle painting. When Wilkinson applied for credit to the
Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors, he was challenged by several others, especially the zoologist
John Graham Kerr, who had developed a
disruptive camouflage paint scheme earlier in the war. However, at the end of a legal procedure, Wilkinson was formally declared the inventor of dazzle camouflage, and was awarded monetary compensation. ==Second World War==