| Title Aerial Photo Reconnaissance of World War II | |||||||||||||||||
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Author David Ripperda American River College Geography 350: Data Acquisition in GIS Spring 2010 | |||||||||||||||||
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Abstract "The military organisation with the best aerial reconnaissance will win the next war."
- Werner von Fritsch, Chief of Army High Command, 1938 | |||||||||||||||||
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Introduction My maternal grandfather starting working for the War Department in 1944 in the Aeronautical Chart Service. His job was to convert aerial photography into usable maps. As I never really knew my grandfather, I wanted to see what I could find out information about what his job really entailed. | |||||||||||||||||
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Background | |||||||||||||||||
| The first known aerial photograph was taken by Gaspard-Félix Tournachon in Paris in 1858, via a balloon (Lillesand, Kiefer, Chipman, 2008). While this photograph has not survived, a later one taken by James Wallace Black in Boston in 1860 still exists. These early balloon photographs were later superceded by the use of kites to obtain photographs. The invention of the airplane in 1903 soon led to the first use of it as a camera platform in 1908. Aerial photography for the purposes of military reconnaissance blossomed during World War I, when more than a million aerial photographs were taken to try and break the stalemate on the Western Front. By the late 1930s, the general practice world wide to use converted bomber aircraft to conduct aerial reconnaissance. However, heavy casualties among daylight reconnaissance missioms in 1939 soon led to the suggestion by Sidney Cotton and Flying Officer Maurice Longbottom of the RAF that fast fighter aircraft be converted to perform aerial reconnaissance. These aircraft could use their speed and high altitude to avoid detection and interception by enemy aircraft (Cotton, 1969). Soon both sides in World War II were using sophisticated reconnaissance aircraft to collect aerial photos. |
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Methods
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| Using the Google search engine and the books available to me I was mostly only able to find out information about the techniques used for aerial photography by the United States during World War II, so this section will largely focus on that. A trip to the German Federal Archives might prove more successful, however I do not speak German. During the war, the US Army Air Forces completed the largest program of aerial photography ever attempted. This was done using the Trimetrogon System, a system that employs three cameras: one pointed vertically downward as per normal practice, while the other two were mounted sideways, pointed in opposite directions, and perpendicular to the line of flight. The two side mounted cameras were used to photograph both horizons and a small part of the area photographed by the vertical camera. From these aerial photographs, topographic and planimetric compilations were made for preliminary bases, recompilation overlays, mosaics, and photogrammetric bases. Further details about the Aeronautical Chart Service are available here, while information about the Army Mapping Service is available here. |
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Results I was primarily interested in the aircraft that performed aerial photography during World War II. Fortunately I was able to find a good aircraft reference book, and I found several historical images using Google. In some instances I was able to find a location shown in a vintage aerial photo using Google Earth, and could see what changes had occured over time. | |||||||||||||||||
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The first fast photo reconnaissance aicraft, the Spitfire PR was made in several different variants over the course of the war. The first sortie was on 18 November 1939 to photograph Aachen from 33,000 ft (Eden, 2004). The most famous incident involving the Spitfire PR was the sighting of the German battleship Bismarck in a fyord in Norway during her breakout into the Atlantic, allowing the British Home Fleet to hunt down and destroy it on 27 May 1941. |
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Several hundred Lockheed P-38 fighters were converted into photo reconnaissance aircraft by removing the nose guns and replacing them with cameras, being known as the F-4 and later F-5. These were the main aircraft used by the US during World War II for aerial photography, and postwar were sold at bargain prices to civilian aerial photography companies, being used into the 1960s. | ||||||||||||||||
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Unlike the Allies, the Germans primarily used slower twin engine aircraft to conduct reconnaissance. The multipurpose Ju 88 was soon supplemented by the purpose built Focke Wulf Fw 189, a peculiar aircraft that featured all-around glazing on the fuselage, allowing cameras to be used from almost any location. Late in the world the Arado Ar 234 jet bomber was used to conduct aerial reconnaissance. On 2 August 1944 Oberleutnant Erich Sommer made the world's first jet reconnaissance sortie, photographing almost the entire Allied postion in Normandy without being detected (Eden, 2004). | ||||||||||||||||
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Analysis This project proved to be much more difficult that I had anticipated. The online archives of the US Air Force were not helpful to me, as all the declassified documents they had available seemed to focus on fight and bomber doctrine during the war. There was also no way to quickly search through those PDFs, as they had been merely scanned copies of 1950s typewritten reports. Fortunately, I was able to discover the Escape Maps website, which had transcribed histories of the Army Map Service and the Aeronautical Chart Service. I was also disappointed that I could not find much material about German or British practices in aerial reconnaissance during World War II, but in the case of the Germans the language barrier made it unavoidable. | |||||||||||||||||
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Conclusions Overall I thought I learned a lot about World War II aerial reconnaissance in the course of this project. It was interesting to see on our field trip to Cartwright Aerial Surveys much of the same techniques used during World War II still be used today, though assisted greatly be the modern computer. I would however like to do more research on Italian, Soviet, and Japanese aerial reconnaissance during World War II, as I could not find any information concerning those countries practices. | |||||||||||||||||
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References Cotton, Sidney, 1969. Aviator Extraordinary: The Sidney Cotton Story. Eden, Paul, 2004. The Enclycopedia of Aircraft of WWII Lillsand, Kiefer, Chipman, 2008. Remote Sensing and Image Interpretation | |||||||||||||||||