Originally Posted by
Downwind.Maddl-Land
One of the ‘counter intuitive’ things to come out of WWII camouflage research was the effectiveness of the ‘Matt Black’ (R4MD??? or something like that!) overall night fighter and lower surface night bomber finish.
I'm wondering why that could have been, and I think maybe the difference between diffuse reflection from a matte surface and specular from glossy: so if you happen to be in the path of the mirror-like reflection from a gloss finish, it's brighter, but at a searchlight, that will only be the case if the surface is normal to the beam. Is that how it worked?