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The Ship That Disguised Itself as an Island and Other Lesser-Known WWII Facts

Khalid Elhassan July 6, 2020 35 min

Guadalcanal - Guadalcanal campaign — Marines arriving in Guadalcanal. Encyclopedia Britannica

36. Turning a Ship Into an Island

Close up of the foliage camouflaging the Abraham Crijnssen. Wikimedia

The main detection threat faced by the Abraham Crijnssen was getting spotted from the air by Japanese planes. So to effectively camouflage the ship, its crew needed to cover its entire surface area with tropical vegetation and foliage. The result was one of the more fascinating WWII survival stories.

It was hard and backbreaking work, but where there is a will, there is a way. With their lives on the line, if the Japanese spotted them, the Dutch crew had all the incentive in the world to do whatever it took to avoid detection. The Crijnssen’s deck was totally covered with vegetation, which was arranged in such a way so as to imitate a jungle canopy.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.