The 3 September 2012 issue of Navy Times reported that “Blueberries” may be on their way out. The pixilated blue battle-dress uniform has no sooner been adopted than it is under consideration to be deep-sixed. From the outset, someone’s understanding of camouflage was flawed. The uniform is ideal if the wearer wishes to remain unseen in his dentist’s aquarium but ill-suited for wear afloat, on the waterfront, on a beach, or within and about the confines of a naval establishment. The Blueberries are perfect for concealment in the water, but only a small part of the Navy swims in the course of its duties; most service members work on the surface, below the surface, or fly over the surface of the sea.
In recent years, military and naval uniforms have been designed to achieve the following purposes:
1. To make their wearers uniform in appearance to the members of their own military organization and provide symbolic indications of the wearer’s status, experience, and organization.
2. To provide a form of identification and authentication to the public.
3. To provide individuals with clothing suitable for their duties.
4. To give the wearers a tactical advantage over the enemy.
5. To symbolically differentiate the wearers from other military services with different heritages.
The Blueberries fail to achieve items 4 and 5.
Item 4, tactical advantage, brings us to a gray area. I don’t mean an area of ambiguity, I mean a matter of environment. There is precedent for gray U.S. Navy uniforms. A significant number of officers and chiefs wore “working gray” and “service dress gray” uniforms during World War II.
Gray is very practical camouflage in virtually any environment, shipboard or onshore, urban or wilderness, arctic or desert—not perfect camouflage, but universally serviceable. It would work for beachmasters, downed flyers, and beached small-boat crewmen, and it would fit equally well on board ship. Sailors on deck in gray would make more difficult targets for terrorists.
Normally, a camouflage uniform consists of a minimum of five colors so the random blocks of color are indeed random. The palette for a ship paint scheme consists of haze gray, dark gray, white, and black. Substitute “oyster gray” for white and add a second, darker gray, and you have the colors for a naval working uniform.
Jettison the idea of a pixilated camouflage. A sailor’s “pixels” should be industrial and massive, with the middle-range colors and angular shapes each covering 80 to 100 square inches, and breaking up his outline.
The dominant color, covering perhaps as much of the 80 percent of the uniform, would be haze gray. The remaining coverage would be diagonal blocks and streaks of the other four colors to blur the rectilinear edges and shadows that define the human outline. The overworked Blueberries camouflage pattern actually makes the wearer more visible. The contemplated gray camouflage pattern would be significantly less “busy.”
This brings us to item 5. Admiral Arleigh A. Burke saw himself as a “sailor.” We are all sailors. The Blueberries simply superimpose a different color scheme on a Marine or Army uniform. There is nothing about the Blueberries—other than a word-strip patch—that says “Navy.”
While we’re at it, ditch the infantry outside-the-pants blouses and adopt a rugby shirt jumper that is tucked into the pants, perhaps with ripstop, roll-up sleeves. Make the pants straight-leg and unbloused. Let the footgear be either deck-shoes or boots.
Headgear? Watchcaps. With new technologies and a little Velcro, the challenge of a trim, shape-holding, cool-in-summer and warm-in-winter watchcap is attainable. The new working uniform would be stowed inside-out and rolled and stoppered sideways like the old undress blues and white—but a uniform for all ranks and ratings. Primarily a work uniform, with maritime combat-readiness aspects.
Uniforms that dazzle but do not pass the tests of tactical or work-environment practicality send the wrong message to the wearers—and the general public. We are Navy, we are always prepared to fight on board ship, on the waterfront, on the beach, around the hangar, at the gate, or on the perimeter.
That is our message. That is our purpose.