Highly Conspicuous Uniform / Real Life

• The British Redcoats, who wore bright red uniforms with white crossbelts. This was before camouflage was much of a factor in warfare. The bright red color helped commanders keep track of troop movements amid smoke-covered battlefields. The color also blended together when British troops stood together, making it difficult for enemies to count their numbers.
  • British uniforms subverted this trope on long enough deployments. Between the dirt they picked up and the fading of the cheap dye used for enlisted men's uniforms, they would wind up khaki after a year or so of field wear. This is why the British turned to khaki when they abandoned the red.
  • But an exception to the above were officers' uniforms, made with different materials and dyes that tended to keep their brighter tones for longer. Which meant the brightest point of red provided a useful guide on who to shoot to cause a little chaos. The Americans took full advantage of this during the War of Independence.
• Musicians (fifers and drummers especially) were often uniformed in the reversed colors to the regular soldiers (British musicians would have coats of their unit's facing color faced in red for example). The reason was simple, so the officers could locate them (the musician was the equivalent of a radioman, drumbeats carried better than voices). Trumpeters especially would also occasionally be sent towards enemy lines bearing messages or to accompany an officer sent to parley with the enemy. Here conspicuousness was also a desired effect.
• The French continued their use of the Highly Conspicuous Uniform into the early days of World War I, when the British and Germans had switched to more practical khaki and field grey, respectively. The French had considered alternative colors, but the problem was that they would have had to buy dyes from Germany. However, the story of bright uniforms is exaggerated, with most frontline troops having more reasonable uniforms. The Conspicuous Uniforms were mainly Reserve or Dress uniforms that were pressed into service because of an extreme dearth of proper ones.
• Whilst the uniforms were camouflaged in WWI, it was a considerable time before Officers' rank marks were removed from the cuffs. A lot of Officers were shot gesturing with a hand above trench-level before rank markings were moved to a more discreet location on the shoulders.
• While German armies were intelligently camouflaged, this was not so with their air force. Germany's premier pilot, Manfred von Richthofen, popularized the idea of painting aircraft with bright colors for quick recognition from friendlies when he painted his own aircraft red.
  • But then military airplanes that were painted to camouflage them were painted to be camouflaged while standing on the ground. The paint jobs generally were not that useful in flight, while especially for flying in larger formations - like Richthofen's "Flying Circus" - the leader(s) had to be easily identifiable by the rankers, especially because communication had to be done optically (hand-signals, waggling wing-tips etc.) before the introduction of radio communication between the pilots in the inter-war era.
• Some French soldiers in World War II had the "Bullseye Badge" variant. A special patch, worn on the chest, over the heart, represented the bleu, blanc et rouge of the French flag as a circle with a blue rim, a white inner circle, and a red dot in the center—that's right, a literal bullseye target.
• In a more modern situation, the US Air Marshals, whose entire purpose was to sit anonymously on planes so that potential hijackers or terrorists wouldn't know if there was one on board, were for some time required to dress in business attire, even if everyone else on the plane was dressed looking like they were ready to hit the beach. Even more insanely, they were required to show their ID at the gate and get on the plane before the other passengers. After this was publicized in the media by air marshals who'd been complaining that undercover agents should actually try to be undercover, they changed the rules. At least one marshal, before the rules were changed, decided to use these rules to his own advantage. Since it was practically impossible to be incognito, he would make a deliberate effort to stand out, making it clear that he was the marshal of the plane, so that if anything did go wrong, his partner at least had a chance of being ignored.
• Real life Bullseye Badges: Allied tanks after the invasion of Normandy carried the US white star on their sides. When a lot of destroyed allied tanks were found to have a neat hole punched in the middle of said star, they were drabbed-down with mud or paint.
  • German vehicles at the time of the invasion of Poland had a national insignia that was a white cross (on dark grey vehicles). After discovering that Polish troops used the cross as a target marker, the white cross was first overpainted with yellow, then later with a black cross painting out the middle of each arm leaving four white corner angles, then went off into lower-visibility variations.
  • Modern air forces mostly have two-tone grayscale versions of their "official" roundels and insignia. Compare the two on the page for the Royal Australian Air Force on The Other Wiki.
    • Two other examples would be the RAF Roundel where peacetime it was Red, White, and Blue but during WWII they made the white either very narrow or left it out and the BIG Red Rising Sun on the flight decks of Japanese aircraft carriers. In fact, in Midway, one of the bomber pilots aimed directly at the big red spot on the Hiryu and hit it.
    • In late 1944 and 1945, more and more British naval assets were deployed to the Pacific to join in the war on Japan. Hard experience, of trigger-happy American gunners who shot at any red circles, suggested that it would be a really good idea for British aircraft to lose the red circle in the middle of the roundel. Thus royal Navy carrier aircraft were distinguished by a blue and white roundel only.
    • Note that until partway into WWII, the roundel used by American planes was a blue circle with a white star and a red circle centered in the star. Guess why American warplanes no longer have a red circle in their roundel?
  • Played straight with the "invasion stripes" used by the Allied air forces during the Normandy invasion. Of course whatever remained of the Luftwaffe in the area was a far smaller threat than friendly fire, so pretty much Justified.
    • Not to mention the various color schemes used by aviators on both sides throughout the war. Some units, such as the American Volunteer Group or the Tuskegee Airmen, are as famous for their paint jobs as they are for their achievements in the war.
  • "Stripping the paint" for aircraft in WW2. The British and Luftwaffe scorned it because it made the aircraft shiny and blatantly obvious. The US 8th Air Force simply didn't care; more than once it was actually suggested that they wanted enemy aircraft to find them, so the enemy would engage and be destroyed.
    • The actual reason for using the minimal bare-metal finishes on the American planes, of course, was that it was cheaper and faster to build and deploy the aircraft if they didn't waste time painting them first. It was also pointed out that the olive-drab favored by the Army didn't exactly blend in with the skies of Western Europe to begin with, which was where the Germans tended to run into them anyways.
    • There was also the point that the coat of paint actually reduced performance (because it added weight) - an unpainted B-17 was 8mph faster than a painted one and an unpainted P-51 was up to 16 mph faster. Also, the olive drab was primarily of value in making aircraft parked on airfields less visible to people attacking that airfield - in WW2, by 1944, US airfields weren't often attacked. These days camouflage is primarily aimed at optically-guided missiles.
    • During the Cold War, US Navy aircraft usually had a base coat of white paint, with various attractive color schemes◊. Beginning in the late 1980s, the US Navy began moving to a low-visibility gray scheme on all aircraft, with the idea meant to reduce visibility in dogfights (for Tomcats and Hornets, seen here◊) and for some measure of camouflage for support assets (i.e. helicopters). Because of the unpopularity of the move, in order to have its cake and eat it, the Navy allows the certain aircraft in each squadron to be painted in a special high visibility color scheme.◊ The development of radar means that visual camouflage is no longer as critical as it used to be, but it can still be useful in a dogfight, with both pilots relying on the Mark 1 Eyeball.
  • The Imperial Japanese Army and Imperial Japanese Navy faced the same problem with their planes having big red dots, which were used as bullseyes by American planes. The IJN arguably was a worse offender, given their planes were painted bright white.
    • In a compensating move, Allied forces revised their markings. The prewar US aircraft marking had a red circle in the middle of the white star. This was removed in 1942 after it was discovered that overeager pilots would fixate on the red dot and attack any aircraft displaying a red circle marking, even if it was only part of a larger marking; the RAF/RAAF similarly painted over the central red dot of their insignia with white for aircraft in the Pacific theater.
    • Many US Navy dive bomber pilots in their after-action reports would indicate that they used said Japanese hinomaru [rising sun] symbol on the decks of Japanese aircraft carriers as convenient aiming points for their payloads.
  • This is deliberately invoked by some SWAT breacher teams. Ballistic shields will sometimes have a brightly colored geometric shape, such as an orange triangle, painted on their center of mass so that it will get shot at instinctively instead of the squishier officers behind it.
• The Cold War offers a particularly grim example: The strategic aircraft (bombers and the interceptors designed to fight them) of many nations were often painted glossy white. Called "anti-flash white," this color scheme was applied because white is the best heat reflector and it was expected that these planes would be flying near nuclear explosions if they went into combat.
• The cockade used by the enlisted men of the Finnish Defence Forces has been a literal blue-and-white bullseye◊ for the longest time. It's the butt of quite a few local military jokes.
• If the enemy is unscrupulous, medics and civilian emergency vehicles still have this problem. While the main reason for putting big red-on-white crosses/crescents on medical assets is to proclaim they're not a threat and to encourage the enemy to direct their attacks elsewhere, the conspicuous markings can indeed backfire if the opposition suspects a Trojan Horse. And yes it's still illegal to give weapons to medics featuring The Red Cross, which is the second reason the Red Cross is barely seen anymore.
  • This Bill Cosby routine sums up the disadvantages of being a conspicuous wartime medic pretty well.
  • Similarly, World War II American officers had a particular white marking on their helmets, which officers at the time would go out of their ways to smudge with mud to hide. It was noted once that Tom Hanks's character in Saving Private Ryan, for instance, would have in real life known better than to leave a bright white "I'm an officer, snipe me!" mark on his forehead.
• Inverted Trope at times during War On Terror operations in Afghanistan. Special Operations Forces troops sometimes have as their assigned mission to blend in with, gain the confidence of, train, and fight beside native irregulars. To that end they wear native dress, let their hair grow (to an extent) and grow beards (to the Afghan tribesmen a beard denotes manhood). Occasionally a Pentagon commando general officer will take it upon himself to try and make them "...present a more military appearance..." by ordering said troops to shave, get haircuts, and wear "proper uniforms". Such an order is invariably ignored by the field troops if their chain of command passes it on and doesn't just bury the order somewhere in the piles of paperwork any modern army generates.
  • Meanwhile, some Canadian troops in the early months of the war in Afghanistan were issued green/brown "temperate woodland" camouflage, due to a lack of beige/brown "arid region" uniforms.
  • Similarly, a number of British and US troops had to make do with jungle-pattern camouflage BDUs during Desert Storm, as there weren't enough desert-pattern fatigues in storage and the jungle-pattern was at least designed for hot weather.
    • Until Multi Terrain Pattern uniforms were issued to the British Army, British troops in Afghanistan had to wear a mix of Desert and Woodland camouflage, as Helmand province's terrain can quickly go from green to brown and back again.
  • Training gear used by many non-deployed military units will give off the impression of either this or a poorly-equipped Ragtag Bunch of Misfits due to various mismatching camo patterns on the gear. Seeing an airman in the grey tiger-stripe ABUs, with a woodland camo BDU patterned kevlar vest, and a sold green helmet (or even a helmet colored with the Army's ACU digital camo) can be a sight to behold, even before they then don a bright reflective belt for safety's sake. Remember, of course, that old gear is often used for training, while they would save the newer stuff for when they actually need it.
• Soviet penal battalions in World War II reportedly made to exploit this trope sometimes to act as decoys (e.g., being dressed in dark uniforms in a snowy environment to draw enemy fire to themselves instead of regular Red Army units). Yes, the people who ordered they do that didn't care about their chances of living.
• The United States military combat uniforms (the Army Combat Uniform, and before it, the Battle Dress Uniform and Desert Combat Uniform) all feature a patch with a reflected United States flag on their right shoulder ^note It is depicted the way the flag would actually appear if a soldier were carrying it. The flag typically goes on the right side because that is the position of seniority when more than one soldier are marching side by side. If the soldier is moving forward, as if he were advancing, the flag would trail behind him, and would thus appear reversed from the right side, because the blue field is always closest to the flagpole. Of course, if you had a strong wind at your back, the flag would be the other way. The same observation can be made with aircraft bearing the US flag, when viewed from the right. When deploying into a location where red, white and blue blend in poorly, it's switched out for a less visible monochromatic version.
• The US Army's infamous "Universal Camouflage Pattern", a grey-ish mess of a bad idea that fit in absolutely nowhere. A picture of a soldier◊ laying down on a couch that actually matched the pattern went memetic, sometimes captioned as 'It finally blends in with something!". The Army eventually issued MultiCam, an actually-universal camo pattern that lost to UCP, for troops in Afganistan starting in 2010, and eventually phased UCP out completely in favor of its own MultiCam knockoff.
• The Swiss Guard both plays this straight and subverts it. The official, well-known uniform is colorful as a peacock. The work uniform is much more practical.
  • Not to mention that looking like a Renaissance Faire reject is a great way to sucker a would-be papal assassin into dismissing you as harmless window-dressing. At least, until you pull a modern sidearm out of those poofy sleeves...
    • This tradition goes all the way back to the original medieval Swiss mercenary bands, who wore very colorful uniforms to announce their presence to their enemies and hopefully demoralize them with their badass reputation.
• Admiral Horatio Nelson wearing one of these led to his being shot by a French marksman at the cusp of his greatest victory at Trafalgar, although what rendered him conspicuous was probably less his officer's uniform than the decorations he wore.
• The US Navy loves this trope:
  • Dress uniforms (the blue and the white sailor outfits) are explicitly meant to attract attention and their antique style stands out far more than other services, plus they tend to be required in any sort of public relations arena where other services still wear less formal uniforms.
  • The Navy Working Uniform or NWU type I, worn from 2008 until 2019. Similar to the digital style of camouflage worn by the Marines, with a digital pattern of the standard fatigue design, the NWU was meant to evoke the style of tactical gear worn by other services. All well and good except for the color, a blend of blue and grey. For extra mileage, officers and senior enlisted had spots of gold coloring on them. Arguably subverted however, NWUs are meant to be worn in a shipboard or industrial environment and are designed not to hide the sailor, but to hide any paint or oil stains the uniform accumulates. Thus, while they might "look" more military than the utilities they replaced, they would have been almost useless in an actual tactical environment. Not to mention that it's pointless for a ship's crew to camouflage themselves.
    • This was replaced between 2016 and 2019 with the NWU Types II and III, uniforms of the same cut and general pattern, but different coloration. They also improved the pocket layout, buttons/velcro, and a variety of other features.
    • They ended up looking almost exactly like Russian riot police (OMON) in their white-blue-gray "city" camo.
  • US Navy flight-deck crews work in an environment which is loud, dangerous, often poorly lit, and very busy. Since being spotted by the enemy is not an issue, the various work groups wear brightly-colored jerseys in a rainbow palette◊, so they can easily spot and identify each other and their role.
  • Averted with the parts of the Navy (like the Seabees and SEALs) who work where they might actually get shot at, previously with a copy of the more traditional fatigues from another service, though now with the NWU type II and III.
• Subverted with Britain painting some recon planes pink during World War II. While they stood out garishly on the ground, when flying dawn or dusk flights the pink was actually the most effective camouflage color. In a similar manner the Long Range Desert Group 'Pink Panthers' look a bit stupid if seen outside of a desert.
  • Similarly-garish was the "dazzle" camouflage of WWI and WWII. Naval vessels were painted with big, blocky intersecting stripes. The point wasn't concealment but rather confusion as the odd lines and shapes made it difficult to determine the range, heading, size, and type of the ships so painted.
    • It turned out that transforming ships into sea-going zebras did not have the desired effect and in World War II this type of camouflage was not attempted again. However, the Royal Navy then did develop a special Western Approaches camouflage where ships were painted mostly white with a few light green and light blue areas. This was actually a pretty effective colour scheme for the North Atlantic.
    • The Japanese navy often used land based camouflage patterns on its sea vessels, making them mostly green. The logic is that a ship will most likely be spotted at sea anyway and this way they could at least conceal ship movements between ports.
    • Some ships used prominent camo on certain parts of the ship and actual stealthy camo on others. The goal here was to disguise them as entirely different types of ship.
• British police officers are frequently seen wearing bright yellow jackets or tabards with reflective panels over their regular duty uniforms. They provide a highly visible presence while on foot patrol and reduce the chances of being run down by a passing car during traffic stops, but can be something of a disadvantage when trying to approach the scene of an emergency call covertly.
  • Pretty well all police, firefighters, paramedics, and other emergency responders are required (or are in the process of and will soon be required) to wear some form of High Visibility Clothing (either as part of the clothing itself, or as a vest worn over it) in situations where they are supposed to be seen. Even, amusingly, military personnel if their duties dealing with civilians require it. Nothing like seeing someone in the latest digital camouflage wearing a bright orange vest with reflective stripes.
  • The current (well, for the past 20 to 30 years in the USA) trend for police to be more "militarized" and wear military style uniforms (either very dark blue or black, or out and out camouflage) conflicts with the idea that police are supposed to be easily identifiable. If someone is pointing a gun at you or breaking into your house, you might think that it would be a good idea for you to be able to instantly identify if they are police or criminals.
• For many years, the German police forces (aptly named The Thin Formerly Green Line or Senfmännchen (Mustard Men)) wore a somewhat pastel-based assortment of colours on their uniforms, including moss-green jackets, mustard-yellow shirts, brown pants and green or white caps. (Many police officers tended to wear black leather jackets on active duty, which was also permissible). This was for reasons similar to the British lime-green vests, but over the years the Lands changed their uniforms to dark blue, partly on the urging of the European Union to make all European police uniforms dark blue.
• UN peacekeeping tend to wear rather ordinary fatigues, but with sky blue helmets (Commonly with "UN" in white letters) and berets. Also, all their vehicles, including tanks, are painted bright white, with UN or the UN logo on them.
  • Some units of the British Armed Forces, most notably the Parachute Regiment and the Royal Marines, have equally vibrantly-coloured berets as part of their uniform. These are often worn on foot patrols during counter-insurgency operations, partly because civilians find them less intimidating than helmets but mostly because the Taliban -and the IRA before them- have learned that those berets mean serious professional opposition.
• According to an urban legend, around the time of the Vietnam War, some high-ranking idiot(s) in Taiwan's military had the bright idea of making their newly-bought tanks look more impressive by painting over the camouflage paint job... with metallic paint of the sort one might see on a brand new Ferrari. By the time their superiors found out, it was too late and the repainting was already done. So when those superiors told them what a stupid idea it was, they sanded off the paint, including the original camouflage paint, leaving the shiny metal underneath exposed. Hardly an improvement.
  • Out of desperation, some Soviet tanks produced during WW2 were sent to the battlefield unpainted. This was for various reasons including production time, likelihood of survival regardless of whether it was painted, and simple unavailability of appropriate or sufficient quantities of paint. Famous instances included the Siege of Leningrad and the defense of Stalingrad, in which the front line was a short drive from the factory gates - or in Stalingrad's case, ultimately within the factory itself. Those unpainted tanks which survived for long enough built a patina of rust, mud, and dirt which was almost as effective as painted camouflage.
  • In besieged Leningrad, there was hardly any conventional green paint for military vehicles built at the local factories. As a Red Navy base, what the city had in abundance was battleship grey in various colours. Therefore tanks and vehicles on the Leningrad front were seen in two or three-tone grey camouflage schemes, which in a local context worked effectively.
  • For similar reasons, British forces in Egypt in 1940 - a backwater low down the supply chain where it was thought a war would be least likely to break out - had practically no desert yellow paint. A massive influx of material from Britain, sent out to defend against an Italian threat, was in its European green. No yellow paint was sent out. Surplus paint held by the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force was scrounged and the Caunter Scheme was devised to make the most of a bizarre assortment of colours. British tanks and weapons were seen in a geometric pattern using up to six colours, including battleship grey, sky blue, chocolate brown, khaki, green and ship's pale grey. What is most surprising is how well it worked in the desert.
  • The first units of the German Afrika Korps also had to make do with European-style camouflage early in the campaign, for both their vehicles and uniforms. The OKH (Army High Command) originally figured that since just one of its 30 mobile (panzer and motorised) divisions would be operating in the African desert, there was no point in going to all the expense of ordering in special paint for it in any particular hurry. When Hitler took special interest in that panzer division's performance, and a full four of Germany's mere 250 infantry divisions were sent to North Africa to reinforce it, they made the necessary arrangements.
• The "Red Devils" of the Sengoku Jidai were so called because they wore bright red lacquered armor, unlike the brown or black armor of most samurai. Their leader, Ii Naomasa, received a bullet wound at Sekigahara, possibly due to the conspicuousness of his red armor making him an easier target.
• Japan Air Self Defense Force pilots and aircrew stationed at Hokkaido wear bright orange flightsuits, deliberately invoking this, to aide in visual search in the event of an ejection over ice-cold water.
  • Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers wear red or orange wetsuits for similar reasons.
• Royal Canadian Air Force aircraft are typically painted in generic military gray or green (for land-based helicopters), except for planes and helicopters which are specifically designated for search and rescue: they are painted yellow with red trim and a big red stripe. Their crews wear bright orange flightsuits or coveralls, their unit's headgear is an orange beret, the parachutes used by Search and Rescue technicians are bright orange with a black stripe and even their backpacks are orange or bright red. The purpose is to let people in trouble see that the Big Damn Heroes are coming.
  • This is common for dedicated SAR units around the world. The US Coast Guard paints most of its equipment in its most highly-visible colors. CG Red is a shade that's closer to Visibility Orange than anything else, and the Coast Guard's Dolphin helicopters, for example, are painted all CG Red with black and white trim. In Britain, the Royal Air Force uses all-over bright yellow for its SAR units while the Royal Navy prefers battleship grey with the tail-boom and nose in a colour not unlike CG Red, and the RNLI paints its surface craft all-over Visibility Orange above the waterline with a navy-blue lower hull.
  • The Japanese Air Self Defense Force's Air Rescue Wing is an inversion; originally UH-60J Rescue Hawks were painted in a high visibility white on yellow color scheme◊, but have since moved to a dark blue on blue maritime camouflage scheme◊.
• Over the course of World War II the Waffen SS were issued uniform items in a multitude of camouflage patterns which often came in both summer and autumn colours. SS units also adopted camouflage clothing issued to the forces of other Axis nations and even borrowed items from the German army. By the end of the war it was not uncommon for Panzergrenadiers to go into combat wearing trousers, smocks, jackets and helmet covers which were in completely different patterns and colours to each other.
• Golf even has an iconic example of this. One of the highlights of The Masters, the first major championship of the men's golf season, is the award ceremony in which the winner is fitted with a distinctive green jacket. Even if he's won the event before. Said jacket identifies members of Augusta National Golf Club, the exclusive private club which owns and operates the tournament. All Masters winners become honorary members of Augusta National, giving them lifetime access to the club.^note At least two Masters winners—Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer—went on to become regular club members as well. By club rule, the reigning Masters champion is the only person who can take his green jacket off the club premises. There's a practical reason for this restriction—the members wear these jackets to identify themselves during the tournament.^note One Masters champion, Gary Player, kept his jacket, returning it to his homeland of South Africa. Though he violated the letter of the rule, he never violated the spirit, as he never wore it. He and the club eventually made an arrangement by which said jacket became an exhibit in his personal museum (open to the public) in South Africa.