Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
News

WW2 Aerial Photographs Go Online 556

Posted by michael from the bird's-eye dept.
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."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

WW2 Aerial Photographs Go Online More

WW2 Aerial Photographs Go Online

Comments Filter:

  • New Additions to the archive... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kotukunui ( 410332 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @06:03PM (#8015599)
    Aerial photographs of their servers being "slashbombed" and crashing in flames.

  • what is a steroscope? (Score:5, Informative)

    by bluelip ( 123578 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @06:03PM (#8015602) Homepage Journal
    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.
  • Believe it or not, Roald Dahl, the slightly scary looking and GREAT writer of childrens novels was awarded the international aerial photography award during the Second World War for taking highly detailed shots of the Gaza Strip, Crete Gardens and perhaps most famously, the Great Pyramids... he later detailed these flights in his biography

    I have a remarkable print upon my wall of these black and white photos, clear, amazing for the time and look almost isometric, perfect angle shots

    Not bad for a man who wrote about a "cunning" fox

    Kudos

    • Re:Charlie And The One Hour Processing Factory (Score:5, Interesting)

      by EinarH ( 583836 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @06:32PM (#8015811) Journal
      If I remember corrctly he enlisted in Kenya (he worked for Shell Oil Company) in 1939.

      Later (in 1940?) he was shoot down over Liby while flying a rec. aircraft. After some months in hospital he had to fly the Hurricane fighter jet. And with only ten hours of training he shoot down two german bombers over Greece. He also participated in the great battle over Athens.

      After that he started to get mediacal problems (headaches?) and they transfered him to Haifa, Palestine. But he started to get black-outs and in 1942 they transfered hoim to Washinghton as an Air Attache.

      I read about this in a biography many years ago. Great reading with many good stories both pre-war and from the war.

      • Here [barnesandnoble.com] is the book.

        From this page [xs4all.nl]:

        With a fractured skull and a bashed in nose, he was blind for some days, but he pulled through, and six months later he joined 80 Squadron at Elevsis near Athens, Greece, that flew Hurricanes now instead of Gladiators. With a whopping seven hours training on Hurricanes, he managed to shoot down two enemy bombers. This squadron and 33 Squadron of famous ace Pat Pattle (the whole RAF force in Greece, 'all twelve of us') fought against great odds but had to pull out of Greec

      • It doesn't matter too much -- and this isn't a flame -- but the Hurricane was a prop aircraft, not a jet. Looks superficially like a Spitfire (the other backbone fighter of the RAF at the time), but a Spitfire has a bulbous cockpit, the Hurricane's is straight. All about it here [schoolnet.co.uk].

  • Slashdot Blitzkrieg (Score:5, Funny)

    by Fnkmaster ( 89084 ) * on Sunday January 18, 2004 @06:06PM (#8015625)
    That server surrendered faster than the French! Okay, it's just a joke, we already settled it yesterday, the French fought valiantly in WWII [slashdot.org].


    But seriously, the archive sounds like a great idea. There should be more historical material of this sort accessible online.

    • Re:Slashdot Blitzkrieg (Score:2, Interesting)

      by TheWart ( 700842 )
      Just to be sure, the site is not responding, but is it actually because of a /.'ing? In a different article I read about this, it said the site will nt be up until Monday, and because of that, it was not responding when I tried to access it yesterday.
    • Doh. How about reading a book like "Blitzkrieg myth" by John Mosier, and learn how invasion went... and who were the real cowards in the battlefield; not soldiers, but leaders, esp. english ones. Dunkerque was a fiasco later turned as "victory" by revisionist historians. Sure, not too many losses... at the expense of losing western front for couple of years.

      French troops fought pretty valiantly, in any case (as did Polish... but somehow they are never considered same as french [which they obviously were n


      • Dunkirk was a victory...

        Put it this way, the French lines collapse and the Belgians surrender. You've got nobody defending your flanks, and Germans are pouring thru and attacking from behind. Getting any troops out is great, getting the bulk of your army away to fight another day is amazing.
        • Even so, it was a fiasco. We British made an AWFUL lot of mistakes in WWII, it's still a fucking mystery why the Germans failed to capitalise on them.

          Why didn't the Germans invade England? Why didn't the Germans support their U-Boats properly? Why didn't the Germans use chemical weapons in their V1s and V2s? etc etc etc I think, in the end, that it comes down to one simple ting, Hitler was not only evil, he was really fucking stupid too.

          • Re:Slashdot Blitzkrieg (Score:3, Informative)

            by quigonn ( 80360 )
            Why didn't the Germans use chemical weapons in their V1s and V2s?

            Chemical weapons were never considered by Hitler because he was actually a victim of a gas attack in World War I, when he was fighting for the Germans. After that, he temporarily lost his eyesight, and regained it after two weeks being blind. During the rest of his life, he always had health problems and a lot of long-term after-effects caused by the gas.

  • Also pictures of dresden genocide? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bender_ ( 179208 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @06:07PM (#8015628) Journal

    Will they also have pictures of the devastated dresden after they bombed the city center crowded with hundreds of thousands civilian refugees and no military targets in sight?
    • does germany have pictures of the nazis bombing london?

    • Re:Also pictures of dresden genocide? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Captain Pedantic ( 531610 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @06:30PM (#8015797) Homepage
      Actually, they do in the print edition of the Guardian. Curiously, the BBC [bbc.co.uk] are showing all of the pictures printed in the paper except that one.

      There is no way the parent post should be modded flaimbait. The firebombing of Dresden was a major atrocity of WW2, and the person who lead it, "Bomber" Harris should have been tried as a war criminal. Instead, there is a nice statue of him in London. Also, he had a nice sidelne in using chemical weapons on Kurds in Iraq.

      • Re:Also pictures of dresden genocide? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by /dev/trash ( 182850 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @08:16PM (#8016421) Homepage Journal
        First rule of war. The victors never face war crime trials.

      • Re:Also pictures of dresden genocide? (Score:5, Informative)

        by alext ( 29323 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @11:06PM (#8017386)
        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 [pro.gov.uk] 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 [pro.gov.uk].

        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.

        • Re:Also pictures of dresden genocide? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Banjonardo ( 98327 ) on Monday January 19, 2004 @03:37AM (#8018680) Homepage
          Do notice what Churchill says on his letter: for the purpose of increasing terror. I do believe that's also in the US Army (or is it air force) charter: to bring terror upon the enemy.

          This is why the more knowledgeable of us have no clue why "terrorists" and "to terrorize" became bogeymen words after 9/11: the US Military, and that of all the world, were MADE specifically to do this, among other things.

    • Re:Also pictures of dresden genocide? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 18, 2004 @06:41PM (#8015865)
      Good question there... You can find pictures of Darmstadt which was bombed as a preparation for Desden, home of the famous Dresden technique where incendiary bombs are thrown in a way that would raise the temperature so the rest of the city can burn and suffocate. Aka the shoehorn technique.

      Why have you been ranked "flamebait" (flame? did someone say flame?) while 10 million civilian Germans were killed that way and countless Japanese children too I do not know.

      Probably because we are a few, ex Allied or ex Axis countries decendants, who have taken the trouble of verifying historical facts and get both sides of the story. My own history books never mentioned all the civilian bombings, they mentioned Hiroshima, Nagasaki but they never did mention Kobe and the fact that regular bombings did more victims than the A bomb everyone talks about when they try to sound informed. We were never asked to read The Graveyard of The Fireflies (or watch the modern animation). Now that would tell us a bit more about WWII's reality.

      I think those who did live it aren't too proud (my own stepd dad being a B-24 flight engineer) and those who were on the receiving end never had a voice... Because it doesn't look too good.

      Remember, we were the GOOD ones. If we did look bad, it meant the commies were the good ones, so that simply had to go.

      Well, I want to thank you for having the courage to stand up and reminding us what good it actualy was. I hope that instead of replying to this post and yours in hatred, people just start wondering "What the fuck are you two talkign about" and double check any points made here on the Internet. That in itself would be a heck of a victory.

      • The RAF learned the "Dresden" technique studying what the Luftwaffe did to Coventry on November 14th, 1940. After Coventry was raised, the Brits gave it back to the Germans. Harris never expressed any remorse, believing he was right until his death.

        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.

        Cu

      • Remember, we were the GOOD ones.

        Whatever you may think, war - in it's purest form - has no morals.

    • Re:Also pictures of dresden genocide? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Aardpig ( 622459 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @06:43PM (#8015874)

      Will they also have pictures of the devastated dresden after they bombed the city center crowded with hundreds of thousands civilian refugees and no military targets in sight?

      Yesterday, I was at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. As I was wondering around (for the first time since I was 6, wow!), I happened upon a V-1 flying bomb and a V-2 rocket. These devices were used by the Germans against the civilian population of London; firebombs, similar to those used on Dresden and Hamburg, were also dropped by the Germans on Coventry and Belfast.

      Certainly, the firebombing of German cities was an atrocity; but these acts were conducted in response to previous deliberate targetting of UK cities by the Luftwaffe. This is the historical context which I think the parent post is lacking in.

      • Re:Also pictures of dresden genocide? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Doomdark ( 136619 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @07:36PM (#8016197) Homepage Journal
        Certainly, the firebombing of German cities was an atrocity; but these acts were conducted in response to previous deliberate targetting of UK cities by the Luftwaffe. This is the historical context which I think the parent post is lacking in.

        Sure, but that's a lousy excuse for atrocities. That the scope of german bombings was miniscule compared to allies' may be irrelevant, but the fact is none of those civilians was responsible for bombings. Further, Hitler was considered a brutal barbarian (and rightly so); allied bombing raids did nothing to make US and UK look any better. Strategic bombing was also clearly MEANT to "break the german will", by targeting alongside 'real' military targets also civilian ones... so those weren't accidents by any means. It would have been normal to have civilian casualties, obviously, but pure collateral damage would have been much less. This was, like you said, pure revenge.

        It's too bad those bombing barons were never held responsible for their callous disregard of human life (both for their own soldiers and enemy civilians); and the worst thing is it had very little positive effect on war itself. German industrial production kept on raising all through 43 (during heaviest bombing raids), all the way to summer of 44; after which germans started losing important resources (iron ore from France, Romanian oil from Ploesti), and then war industry started to decline. And as to spirit to fight... it was actually studied (after the war), and it was found to have little effect there either. Will to fight between heavily bombed cities, and those that weren't was nominal (study was done by USAF, by the way, to try to evaluate how well campaign went). One can wonder how anyone thinks that killing your loved ones makes you less willing to fight against enemy that caused the deaths.

        But not only were german civilians grilled alive by tens or hundreds of thousands; allied also lost over 100k air force personnel during the war; most of them during bomb raids. And yet many still consider generals who devised these strategic bombing campaings heroes. Sad how winners can write and rewrite history.

        • One can wonder how anyone thinks that killing your loved ones makes you less willing to fight against enemy that caused the deaths.

          Which makes the whole neo-con idea of "shock and awe" all the more absurd.

          In any case, I wasn't attemtping to justify Dresden; just to point out the context in which it occured.

      • How's this Insightful ? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by apankrat ( 314147 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @07:59PM (#8016334) Homepage
        "They committed senseless crimes, so we responded the same way" - this is pretty lousy argument if you think about it for a second.
    • Here is a hint. German should not have used the tactics they did (hell, they should not have started the war in the first place). After all, they tried to do this to London.

      Also, please lookup the meaning of the word genocide.
    • I watched an article on this on the news last night, and they indeed showed aerial pictures of the Dresden firebombing, as well as D-Day, Pegasus Bridge and many other photos.

      I commented then to my wife that if Slashdot posted it, no one would see it until next week ;) Seems I was right....

      Incidentally it was interesting to see the Pegasus Bridge photo as I had not too recently played that level in Call of Duty!
  • to all the servers who were slashdotted in service to the UK. Like this one.

  • Anything that helps... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bc90021 ( 43730 ) * <bc90021 AT bc90021 DOT net> on Sunday January 18, 2004 @06:08PM (#8015634) Homepage
    ...more people understand what a tremndously heroic thing all those soldiers did can only be a good thing.

    For those of you who have never seen "Saving Private Ryan [imdb.com]" or "Band of Brothers [hbo.com]", I recommend them. Remember, freedom comes at a price, and we should all be very thankful to all those who have paid it, and one way is by learning about, and appreciating the sacrifices made. As this archive will only further add to our accuracy or the historical events, this can only be a Good Thing.

    • Re:Anything that helps... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      And also remember when watching Private Ryan and Band of Brothers... (particularly) the British, and to a lesser extent Canada and Free French also fought and died while making spectacularly brave raids -- and much of the D-Day innovations and intellegence data was obtained/developed by the British. Not that Spielberg or Tom Hanks bothered to cover such things, it was just the good old boys of the USA who did everything.

      • Re:Anything that helps... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by fltsimbuff ( 606866 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @06:54PM (#8015931) Homepage
        Just pointing something out here... Most of these movies are made in "Hollywood", in the USA. For what? Entertainment. Movies are made for a particular audience, and since these movies were made in the USA, they were meant to to entertain, install pride, and patriotism of into the American Viewers... If a movie is made in any other country, who do they concentrate on? Then do the same. Because the USA filmmaking industry is so big, many films go out to other countries for their entertainment value, and thus are going out beyond the target audience. Some appreciate the origin of the movies, and the intended audience, and some just whine about it. If I saw a movie from Japan, I would expect to see if glorifying their history and/or culture. Same with any other country. If people want to see facts, they watch a documentary. If they want to watch something entertaining, that leaves them with a sense of pride and patriotism, they watch a movie. That said... If you do not like the way events are slanted in a movie about WWII, then watch something out of your own country. That said, I know that the winning of WWII was in a very large part due to the British that fought and died as much as it was by Americans... The thing to remember is that Britain was a smaller nation, and yet was able to hold the Germans off for a very long time... Besides the revolutionary war, and that pesky war of 1812, Britain has long been an close ally. I have great respect for the people there, and their contributions to the world. Not that I usually hold a grudge, but I cannot say the same for certain other unnamed french and german countries... :P (Yeah, I still sore about the war. I'll get over it.)

    • Re:Anything that helps... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Complicity ( 30481 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @06:18PM (#8015714)
      For those of you who have never seen "Saving Private Ryan" or "Band of Brothers", I recommend them.

      I am in 100% agreement with this statement. I'll go one further and state that it is my firm belief that Band Of Brothers should be mandatory viewing in every school across the WW2-allied countries.

      The mini-series may only depict American soldiers, but what they did in that war was representative of every nation involved. Those men deserve all the recognition they can get for the massive sacrifices that had to be made.

    • Re:Anything that helps... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Aardpig ( 622459 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @06:23PM (#8015744)

      For those of you who have never seen "Saving Private Ryan" or "Band of Brothers", I recommend them.

      And for those of you who haven't seen U-571 [imdb.com], don't bother. Whoever was responsible in portraying the capture of an Enigma machine as the work of the USA, when it was in fact done by Brits aboard HMS Aubretia, should be shot. If you weren't aware of this pretty-insensitive reworking of history, you can read about the fuss it caused here [bbc.co.uk]

      Let's give credit where credit is due; WWII wouldn't have been won on the Western Front without the USA; but the Brits held out for a couple of years against the greatest military in the world, and were instrumental in defeating the Luftwaffe and the Afrika Korps. That shouldn't be taken away from them.

      • Actually, it was the poles, if I remember. When their country was about to go down, they smuggled the thing out of Poland, and gave it to the british.

        I guess everyone likes to steal credit, eh?

        • When their country was about to go down, they smuggled the thing out of Poland, and gave it to the british.

          From the BBC article, which you should have read before posting:

          The swashbuckling film - about to be released in Britain - is loosely based on the HMS Aubretia's bombing of the U-110 from which an Enigma and codes were rescued.

          No mention of Poland there, perhaps you are getting confused by a different event.

        • Re:Anything that helps... (Score:3, Informative)

          by vrt3 ( 62368 )
          Both the Poles and the British intercepted an Enigma machine. You can read the whole story on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]; in a nutshell: the Poles intercepted a commercial non-military version well before the start of the war. It was however close enough in construction to be useful in understanding how to decrypt Enigma's messages. In '39 the Germans started to use more advanced versions, and the Navy used even more advanced versions. Therefore the British tried (successfully) to capture a Navy version from a U-boat.

      • Re:Anything that helps... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by humblecoder ( 472099 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @06:57PM (#8015951) Homepage

        Let's give credit where credit is due; WWII wouldn't have been won on the Western Front without the USA; but the Brits held out for a couple of years against the greatest military in the world, and were instrumental in defeating the Luftwaffe and the Afrika Korps. That shouldn't be taken away from them.

        While we are handing out credit for the victory in WW2, let's not forget about our friends, the Russians. The Russians fought the brunt of the German war machine, and wore them down through sheer attrition. I don't recall the exact number of Russian war dead, but it ranges in the millions. If the Western Allies had to face the main core of the German army, I don't know if we would have won.

        The German army was so strung out by the time of D-Day that they had to resort to conscripting men from many of their Eastern European conquests (Russians, Poles). It was these men who manned the beaches of Normandy, by and large, on D-Day. There is even a story about how the Allies captured a group of soliders from the Far East (Korea, I believe). It turned out that they had been conscripted in the Russian army to fight the Germans, captured by the Germans, and then conscripted into the German army! Other than the German officer pointing a Luger at them from behind, they were not very motivated to fight in this battle.

        If you are interested in learning more about the contributions of the US during WWII, I urge you to read _D-Day_ and _Citizen Soldier_ by the late Steven Ambrose (the same historian who wrote the book _Band of Brothers_ on which the mini-series is based). If you want more insight into the Russian Front, a good book to read is _Stalingrad_ by Anthony Beevor. While this book doesn't cover the whole Eastern campaign, it does give a lot of insight into the brutality of the fighting on the Eastern Front. While the Germans and the Western Allies were at war with one another, there was a great deal of respect between the grunts on both sides. However, the Germans and Russians absolutely hated each other, which made for brutal fighting conditions, the likes of which were rarely seen on the Western Front.

        • While we are handing out credit for the victory in WW2, let's not forget about our friends, the Russians

          This is precisely why I used the phrase "won on the Western Front", not "won the war". I agree 100% that if any country contributed more than others to the victory over axis powers, then it was the Soviet Union. Shame so many of the poor sods in the Soviet army later ended up in Siberian Gulags. A fantastic (if depressing) first-hand account of the Gulags can be found in "The Gulag Archipelago", by No

          • A fantastic (if depressing) first-hand account of the Gulags can be found in "The Gulag Archipelago", by Nobel prizewinner Aleksandr Solzhenitstn -- an absolute must-read.

            ...and that should read "Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn", apologies.

        • If you're looking for a good book from the perspective of the common German soldier, read Forgotten soldier, by Guy Sajer.
      • Whoever was responsible in portraying the capture of an Enigma machine as the work of the USA, when it was in fact done by Brits aboard HMS Aubretia, should be shot

        Well, I wouldn't go *that* far, the winners of any war get to decide what the history books say. The US has a glorified opinion of itself (not entirely without reason) but it also has a bad memory.

        As someone else has mentioned, the Poles played a huge part [ndirect.co.uk] as well.

        The Canucks were also involved pre-1941 (via Britain proxy) by providing mate
    • I'd recommend listening to eyewitnesses or books written by persons involved in wars instead of watching a movie, of all things. But sure, these are based on actual events. However, the key word here is "based".

      • I'd recommend listening to eyewitnesses or books written by persons involved in wars instead of watching a movie, of all things. But sure, these are based on actual events. However, the key word here is "based".

        I agree. In other post on this thread, I recommend reading the books by Steven Ambrose, who wrote the book on which _Band of Brothers_ is based. All of his books contain detailed interviews with the soldiers who were there (on both sides), and some of the accounts are downright amazing. I do h

    • Re:Anything that helps... (Score:5, Informative)

      by gilgongo ( 57446 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @07:05PM (#8015997) Homepage Journal
      > 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 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.

        On the other side of the globe at the time, an out numbered and out gunned US Navy and Marine Corps defeated the other third of the Axis powers: Japan. The most critical battle of the war, Midway, the US Carrier

    • And then only the first 15 minutes which are the most true-to-life picture of war I've ever seen on the big screen. From there it becomes pathetic and nurturing. Utter crap if you ask me. I have bought the DVD though, solely for the first 15 minutes of it.
  • Unbelievable that someone with so much content can't put up the bandwidth to support it. Someone goofed big time.

    What in the world did they expect?
    • Someone should make a torrent then.

  • Wondering... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by iota ( 527 ) * on Sunday January 18, 2004 @06:08PM (#8015640) Homepage
    Well the TARA archive is already slashdotted...
    But I'm most interested in getting answers to these questions --
    -- What's the license/use/citation policy? e.g. Can I make prints?
    -- Can I buy/license a copy of the entire archive? (Perhaps loaded onto one of these [lacie.com]).
    • Historical photographic archives have policies on this. For example, see this Terms of Use [seattlehistory.org] page from Seattle's Museum of History and Industry. Bascially, if you just want to look at it, that's fair use. If you want print(s), you pay for their time and money in making said print(s). If you want to put it in Time magazine, you'll pay the owner for the rights. Often if you're a charitable or educational organization deals can be arranged.

      Keep in mind that it's not just a bunch of pictures. Look at the Meta [washington.edu]

  • I think the server hosting the pictures was from Second World War too...

  • Way to go (Score:5, Funny)

    by gwernol ( 167574 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @06:15PM (#8015695)
    Great, now we've Slashdotted the Second World War. Do you have any idea what we might have done to history? Doesn't anyone watch quality movies like Timeline [imdb.com] anymore?

  • uhm, (Score:5, Informative)

    by relrelrel ( 737051 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @06:16PM (#8015699)
    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.

  • Hey - there's uncle Martin (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rcpitt ( 711863 ) * on Sunday January 18, 2004 @06:18PM (#8015713) Homepage Journal
    I predict that there will be a budding hobby of trying to identify people in shots that are close enough.

    I expect the war games people will have a field day with all this stuff.

  • What was meant by high resolution cameras, back in the 40s?

    Maybe digital camera technology was farther advanced than I'd thought.

    • Re:High resolution??? (Score:4, Informative)

      by scrote-ma-hote ( 547370 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @06:27PM (#8015776)
      You realise resolution has a lot to do with resolving power, which in turn has a lot to do with optics.

      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 [reference.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.

    • Re:High resolution??? (Score:3, Informative)

      by rcpitt ( 711863 ) *
      The optics back then rival all but the absolute best now - and because color was not an issue, the film was first class too. The other thing to remember is that most of this stuff was not 35mm - it was at worst 120/620 (roll film) in something like a Roliflex or it was "gun camera" stock which was longer rolls of similar size - between 6 and 10 times the size of 35mm or larger.

      For those who have never seen the results of a large (or even medium) format B&W camera you're in for a surprise - the grain si

  • For those of you who didn't read the article, it says the archive will be opened on Monday. That's tomorrow. Don't get your knickers in a twist, just come back tomorrow and see it.

  • Visuals? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pipingguy ( 566974 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @06:26PM (#8015772)

    This would be truly amazing (especially for WW2 history buffs) since the only images ever seen of the conflict from non-participants have always been from a first-person cameraman (possibly staged) perspective (or fighter/bomber cams).

    I want to see the Russian move into Berlin from above.

    What will be the resolution of these photos?

  • Checking for unexploded ordinance (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sam0ht ( 46606 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @06:34PM (#8015820)
    These pics could be useful for people who want to check for unexploded bombs. If you see a line of craters with a gap, the gap is likely as not the location where one fell into the earth and didn't go off. So if they include the results of bombing runs, it could be useful.
    I had a friend who did this, inspecting WW2 photos for signs of unexploded bombs for property companies.

  • Not just europe... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Cyno01 ( 573917 ) <Cyno01@hotmail.com> on Sunday January 18, 2004 @06:35PM (#8015830) Homepage
    A few months ago i had my senior pictures taken by this little old guy with a terrible tupee, but while he was setting up his equiptment he was telling me about how after high school(he graduated from the same school as me) he joined the navy as an ariel photographer for the pacific campaign. I guess he flew missions for mapping iwo jima and a few other of the key islands. It was interesting to hear about to say the least, to bad this is /.d, but form the other posts i assume its all european photos.

  • Navy Ship Photos [navyshipphotos.com]

    This is a nice commercial site for navy ship photos from a site made by a former employer of mine. You have to search to find a ship, but there's some nice pictures there. It's owned by a long-time professional navy ship photographer living in Florida, who is a pretty cool guy.

    Ryan Fenton

  • This is their server's finest hour! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Monkey Liar ( 726289 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @06:57PM (#8015956)
    Never has so much bandwidth been sought by so many, from so few.
  • As a former student of the University of Keele, I am shocked and stunned that the place is actually home to something interesting! For those who've never been, Keele is a village on top of a hill with a University which was built on the land of an old RAF site, hence the link with Kew in this case I would guess. It's not exactly the centre of the universe. Other features of note include a nearby motorway services and the fact that it was where 'A very peculiar practice' http://www.phill.co.uk/comedy/prac
    • Wasn't it supposed to the "Univerity of North Staffordshire". i.e. Stoke. Famously the place where people on the train from London to Manchester look out the window and say "at least I don't live here"

  • Dresden, etc. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 18, 2004 @08:28PM (#8016486)
    I'm an American (family arrived well before the Declaration of Indenpendence even), but my fellow Americans here who speak so boldly about German atrocities against England, or make comments like "war is hell" with regard to American strikes against places like Dresden, are sadly lacking a good understanding of history. I can't blame them though, as American history texts have a very different view of the war than those found in Europe.

    Having studied in Germany for a while, I can assure my fellow countrymen that you have no idea just how appalling it is what we did to Germany.

    Yes, what the Germans did to London was very, very bad. Inexcusable. But, they really just targetted London. The RAF was also quite able to defend the country.

    By the time the allies started bombing Germany, the Luftwaffe was already a wreck, completely unable to function. England suffered in London, but Germany suffered in Frankfurt, Muenchen, Berlin, Hamburg, and so on. Basically, every major city in Germany was levelled. Even many minor cities that just happened to be in the flight path of American bombers. A prime example of this is Muenster, where I studied. The only thing there is a nice university and a bunch of college kids, but it is the last/first city you come to on the border if you are flying from England. It was levelled just because it was a convenient place to drop bombs. As I mention above, by the time most of these bombing raids were occuring against Germany, the war was lost for them anyway, making the raids purely gratuitous.

    To this day, if you are doing any kind of construction in Germany, you have to hire a crew to come out and look for old unexploded bombs. Most Americans really don't understand that Dresden (as just one example of atrocity) was completely non-military. Some sources even indicate that many of the refugees probably weren't even Germans, but rather eastern europeans who were fleeing the Russians coming from the east.

    Then there is that matter of the 50 years of occupation after the war by the Russians that was allowed, even encouraged by the allies. Even though Germany is a united country now, its borders were shrunk significantly by the Russians - where Poland is today used to be a major German state, and historically, Poland was farther to the east. The allies let all this happen, because they wanted to turn Germany into a minor agricultural state.

    Much of the intrigue of the war was the training ground for later US foreign policy "techniques" in places around the world. We like to keep countries down in remarkable ways. In fact, it is quite appalling to watch what America is doing in Iraq right now, as it is basically the same kind of model we tried in Japan and Germany. Germans today hate our guts (as they should), and it is likely we will fail with Iraq due to the same mistakes we have perpetually made elsewhere. Unfortunately, we are poor students of history.

    I am constantly amazed by even my educated American friends who still feel that Germans "aren't sorry enough for the war." This is as silly as calling the French "surrender monekys." Remarks like these just make it that much clearer how little of European history and European affairs Americans understand. What's perhaps even more appaling, is that even after being involved in two european wars, and claiming to be allied with european powers since that time, Americans (especially our governemnt)*still* have no concept of these things.

    • Re:Dresden, etc. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by zata40fan ( 743103 )
      The RAF was also quite able to defend the country

      Actually, the RAF had a very rough time of it in 1940 after Germany overran France. They were just barely able to defend their nation and came very close to capitulation. The RAF became stronger only after Hitler turned his attentions to Russia and when the US entered the war. The US was responsible for the destruction of the Luftwaffe and the British never would have made it without America's industrial ability.

      The entire Allied strategy in Western Europ

    • Re:Dresden, etc. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Eluding Reality ( 691589 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @10:15PM (#8017095)
      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.

  • get your credit card out (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 18, 2004 @09:39PM (#8016906)


    i was there three days ago and there was a nice "shop" button on the menu,the site was dead then as the whole worlds media has been pluggin this all week.

    UK isn't like USA where all goverment data is free, (even though it was our taxes that payed for the data and in this case people died grrr)

    so i expect we (and everyone else) will have to pay to view them just like we did with the 1800 national census, we can't even get friggin weather data without paying for it, so ironicly we (us cheapo web developers) have to get it from the USA

    FFM

Slashdot Top Deals

On the eighth day, God created FORTRAN.

Close