Slashdot Mirror
WW2 Aerial Photographs Go Online
aquarium writes "The Guardian Unlimited reports that unique aerial photographs of some of the key events of the Second World War are to be made available for the first time over the internet. The photographs are being made available through a website created by The Aerial Reconnaissance Archives (TARA) at Keele University - an official place of deposit for the National Archives at Kew, West London. The entire archive of more than five million aerial reconnaissance photographs, shot by the RAF over Western Europe during the conflict, is going online starting Monday. They include American troops landing on the Normandy beaches on D-Day, the seizure of the Pegasus bridge by British paratroops, the aftermath of the first 1,000 bomber raid on Cologne, and the German battleship Bismarck as the Royal Navy hunted her down. The multiple photographs taken by the high resolution cameras meant they were able to create 3-D images through an instrument called a "stereoscope". The technique was used to construct a detailed picture of the Normandy terrain ahead of the D-Day landings."
It is a device that is a more complex version of a 'View Master' toy. Take two images from different angles. Feed one image to the right eye and the other to the left. Performs amazingly well.
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
According to the BBC, "The pictures will go online on Monday." In the meantime, you can see six of the pictures at the BBC News web site if you read the article "WWII archive photos go online".
Just so everyone knows, the website: (http://www.evidenceincamera.co.uk/) has not been slashdotted, it isn't online yet, I went there about 3 days ago and it was the exact same.
--- any post that takes longer than 20 seconds to write, isn't worth writing
In this context it refers to how well you can tell two pieces of information apart at a distance (there's probably a correct definition, but I can't be bothered finding it).
dictionary.com: 6. The fineness of detail that can be distinguished in an image, as on a video display terminal.
Like a lot of other terms, the original meaning has been taken by computers and placed somewhat out of the context it was originally used for.
Best guess, its probably some old server on the end of a shared university 10mb line or something. JANET are going to be so pleased.
Don't be so certain, JANET (the Joint Academic NETwork, which links together UK universities) has a 10 Gbit/s backbone. That's a pretty fat pipe...
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Dude, you obviously know little about UXO. It may be one tool, but it is not reliable in making determinations about UXO. At best, this is a limited tool for only one source of UXO.
Most of the UXO they deal with in Europe is artillery shells and mines, and they do not have any kind of regular pattern.
Talk to one of the large group of Belgian engineers who are still disposing of it. And not just WWII aerial bombs, but artillery from BOTH World Wars. Including the gift that keeps on giving, chemical munitions. The mines were concealed in the first place.
Most UXO is found the old fashioned way -- farmers and construction workers who call it in.
> For those of you who have never seen "Saving
> Private Ryan" or "Band of Brothers", I
> recommend them.
While I don't disagree with the sentiment of what you say, I wish those films were not so blatantly US-centric. Anyone watching them would be perfectly justified it concluding that America fought against the Axis powers alone and the Europeans and Anzacs had nothing to do with it.
And just to decimate my karma even more, I would remind anyone who is inclined to think of America as an unusually heroic military force that they have never won a significant military victory without superior numbers or equipment. I don't believe any other nation in history has that distinction.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
From the section asking if the bombing was justified:
One popular charge against the bombing is that the city was not a military target. However, other evidence suggests otherwise; The city contained the Zeiss-Ikon optical factory and the Siemens glass factory (both of which were entirely devoted to manufacturing military gunsights). The immediate suburbs contained factories building components of radars and electronics, and fuses for anti-aircraft shells. Other factories produced gas masks, engines for Junkers aircraft and cockpit parts for Messerschmitt fighters. After the attack, Germany was to claim that Dresden's industry was only making civil goods, a notion which much of the world accepted, and still accepts, as true.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Bullshit!
Read your history on Poland, Latvia, Austria, Lithuania, and Romania.
(I'm not trying to start a flame war here. This is a list of countries where there was extensive collaboration with the Nazi policy of genocide against Jews and Gypsies. This is not to say that there weren't people in each of these countries who risked their lives to resist the Nazis and their policies.)
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
By design and by capability, Japan's war production was distributed into a huge number of small shops, the Japanese military leaders feeling this method would blunt any attempt at effective strategic bombing by the US. Up until January 1945, they were right.
Curtis Lemay had been working the 8th Air Force in England during 1942-43, and then sent to the Pacific theater in July 1944, rising to head the 21st Bomber Command in January 1945. Using what he had learned from the Brits in England, he proceded to fire bomb Japanese cities into ashes. On March 9-10, 1945 the firebombing of Tokyo killed 110,000 people, far more than either atomic weapon did.
He went on to lead the Berlin Airlift, and to head the Strategic Air Command from 1949 to 1957, becoming Air Force Chief of Staff in 1961. He also was George Wallace's running mate in 1968.
I don't disagree that the fire bombing of Dresden was an atrocity, but when Germany began bombing London, Britain was by no means able to defend itself
At the start of the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe had 3000 planes within range of southern England, the RAF had 1200 planes for defense. At this point, pilots in the RAF were sent into combat roughly 4 weeks after first stepping into a plane. The Luftwaffe could put about 1600 planes in the air every day, more than the entire RAF even owned, the RAF could put 650-700 planes up if needed, although the bare minimum had to be scrambled to keep the reserves strong. The Luftwaffe began the campaign by targeting front line fighter fields and at the rate the bombers were coming in, ground crews simply could not keep runways operational. Had the battle continued as it was, the RAF would have been decimated within weeks.
The twist however came when an RAF bomber squadron lost their way over Germany and reportedly bombed the outskirts of a major German city by accident. This enraged Hitler who immediately ordered ALL bombers to target London. This single command allowed the RAF to repair the runways and get their planes in the air, and it also meant that they knew where every single German plane was going to. Had Hitler not given that one command, it is likely that the RAF would have fallen in 2-3 weeks, German landing forces would cross the channel before winter set in and Britain too would have fallen. Had this happened, the US would not have been able to get involved and the world today would be a different place.
I am British and I am not proud of Dresden, I know that I most likely would not be writing this today if it wasn't for the US and Russian forces, but personally I have the greatest amount of respect for the pilots of the Battle of Britain who were willing to face such over-whelming odds against an airforce that had already stormed through Europe and barely stopped for breath, yet they stood up to them and in the end did what was needed of them.
There might be a statue, and of recent vintage (1992), but Harris was a controversial figure even during the conflict with many questions in Parliament and from the church about the area bombing strategy.
Here's a letter Churchill nearly sent at the time, saying that he wanted no more "wanton destruction". Not that his position is exactly uncontroversial either, hence this National Archives topic.
PS Regarding the church position, my father remembers reading comment in newspapers from a Canon Bell condemning area bombing, but surprisingly there doesn't seem to be any record of this books I've read, or on the net.