The latest Puzzler answer seems bogus. Question was why the old headlight found on Cape Cod was half painted black. Here’s the answer they gave:
"Back then, during WW2, they required that on the coast, in areas that might be attacked by airplanes, that all the headlights were painted black, to block out most of the light and make it harder for the fighter planes to find them. This was enforced around military installations and areas near the coast.
So that is why this old head light was painted black. "
Nope, I’m pretty sure it was to try to reduce the light that was used to silhouette merchant ships at night, which was causing huge losses of shipping to German U-boats along the east coast. Germany had no long distance bombers to speak of, nor did they have any aircraft carriers. Maybe there was some fear of aircraft, but the submarine problem was very real.
In sturgeon bay, Wisconsin, my dad flew recon with the civil air patrol in his off hours. Looking for threats against the ship yards. Yeah real during ww2.
Military vehicles all have black out lights as sop. A lot of fun driving at night through the back country with only those lights on.
During World War II, the East and West Coast were considered “Combat Zones.” The West coast feared a Japanese Invasion. The Japanese had aircraft carriers and they did invade the Aleutian Islands in Alaska if for no other reason than to spread out our forces. They also use Balloons with incendiary bombs launched from submarines off the West Coast and floated over the west coast in the hopes of starting forest fires. They Japanese also had submarines to threaten the shipping and the warships in the west coast shipyards. There was also the fear the a Japanese submarines might sneak in close to a city and use it’s deck gun to bombard a city, if for no other reason to instill panic in the civilian population.
The East Coast was not threatened by a German Invasion, but the Nazis had many submarines off the East Coast and they did sink over 100 Merchant ships in the first three months of 1942.
In fact, the remains of 29 German sailors from the U-boat U-85 are buried in the Phoebus Addition of Hampton National Cemetery in Virginia, not 10-miles from my home.
At night, in the pitch darkness, lights can be seen for great distance, and even the reduced brightness of the vehicle headlights could be seen for miles at sea, but reducing the glare of the headlights did make it harder to target a location on shore specifically with accuracy and range…
It took a while for the US Military to smarten up implement the “Black Out Rules” on shore lighting and many of the merchant ships sunk by the enemies’ submarines was due to the ships being silhouetted against city and shores lights… This was refereed to as “Second Happy Time” or as “the American Shooting Season” bu the German Submariners.