Hiding in plain sight: Photo-mapping Nazi Germany
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 19 дек 2023
- Looks can be deceiving. It may not be apparent, on first inspection of this civilian aircraft, that this was one of Britain's first spy planes.
In the years before the Second World War, this aircraft would have gone relatively unnoticed in the skies of Europe. The Lockheed Electra was a perfect camera platform. It could be fitted with cameras in the cabin and in the leading edge of the wing. And it meant that with its inconspicuous livery, it could fly around as much as an airliner would have done in Europe at the time. And while flying over Germany and the rest of Europe, it was able to take photographs.
There are many myths and legends that have built up around this aircraft, but a name that will always be associated with this particular Lockheed 12 is Sidney Cotton. But what exactly was Sidney Cotton’s involvement with Second World War aerial reconnaissance and did he really use this aircraft to take secret photos, under the noses of Nazi Germany?
Plan your visit to IWM Duxford: www.iwm.org.uk/visits/iwm-dux...
Is this the deadliest bomber in history? Find out about the B29 - The aircraft that bombed Hiroshima & Nagasaki: • History’s deadliest bo...
Explore and license the film clips used in this video from IWM Film:
film.iwmcollections.org.uk/co...
Follow IWM on social media:
/ i_w_m
/ imperialwarmuseums
/ iwm.london
Lufthansa was quite busy over the skies of Britain at the same time .
There was a book or a series of books produced from German aerial reconnaissance of UK targets...
The airlane to Croydon was largely follow the railway, from Ashford to Redhill, then turn right. Lufthansa often wandered from this line "accidentally".
@@bingbong7316 "ach ich bin lost oh neiiin what will I ever do..."
An RAF reconnaissance pilot, who flew the Bristol Blenheim, from the outbreak of WW2 until Dunkirk is Alistair Panton. He records the fascinating story of flying Blenheims through the fall of France and until the final Fall of France in his book, "Six Weeks of Blenheim Summer", available as an Audible audio-book or in print. [This is an update.] It's not a particularly long book, but is fascinating for covering a period we seldom hear about. I definitely recommend Panton's book as a fascinating story of what happened in this period.
The Electra is one of the most beautiful airplanes ever.
Art-deco masterpiece!
@@ThreenaddiesRexMegistus😮😊
Wow! I thought I was reasonably knowledgeable about world war two, being almost 70 and having family members that served in all the services apart from the navy and serving as a soldier myself, as did other family members after the war, but I had never heard of Sidney Cotton until I watched this excellent video.
Sidney Cotton is one of the unsung heroes of the second world war who deserves to be wider known, and your video goes some way to making him wider known.
Me neither!
In 2000 the ABC made a documentary called The Last Plane out of Berlin. It was shortly after that that I picked up a paperback copy of George Millar's The Bruneval Raid and in it he goes into detail about Cotton. I was glad I had already watched the doco and knew of whom he was writing.
Excellent video on a much ignored subject. 👍
If you can find a copy "Sidney Cotton: Last Plane Out of Berlin" by Jeffrey Watson is worth a read. Puts a bit more flesh on his life than can be done in a short video.
You might like to read up on RAF Medmenham, where they interpreted the photos. People employed there included Churchill's daughter Sarah Oliver, a Dutch officer who later became famous as Dirk Bogarde, and Constance Babington Smith, who first recognised the V1.
After the Spitfire, the Mosquito was even more successful as the job was so much easier for the two man crew.
Cotton was used by Ian Fleming as an inspiration for the James Bond stories.
Interesting video thanks.
I saw the Electra at Sywell this summer, just after I'd finished reading the story of Earhart and Noonan. Wonderful stuff.
The vintage Electra series are a beautiful aircraft!
I photographed an all aluminum Electra in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada back in the early 00s (2000-2002). It was so beautiful gleaming in the bright crisp winter sunlight. At the time it was flying for “conspicuous consumer” high-end tourist sight seeing flights and vacation transport, and also for historical recreations for TV and movies. It was a beauty inside and out.
Thanks for the video!
I share your view that the Electra is a beautiful aircraft, especially in its all aluminium state.
I recently had two paintings of this aircraft commissioned. It's history is wonderful! I fell in love with it at first site!
I remember seeing (somewhere!) a sideways-looking photo taken from a low flying PRU Spitfire so far down on the deck of a German airfield that a guy at the control tower railing is looking down at it.
I saw a photo taken during the Cuban Missile Crisis of a Russian sitting in a latrine in Cuba reading a magazine .
Thanks for this video in remembrance of Sydney Cotton's important pioneering aerial photographs. Imagery intelligence is a vital mission, hardly ever discussed due to its secret nature. You are correct in regard that it's the interpretation of the imagery that's important. Wartime aerial photography analysts were known to have "calibrated eyeballs."
I am a geographer today, and we learn about photogrammetrists from the past and the machines they used, such as protractors that could measure the perimeter of a shape on paper, to big machines with mirrors and lenses for looking at two slightly different pictures at once to recreate a “3d” image. People were so so so smart back in the day when it came to image analysis. Truly heroes all of them
Lockheed 12s appeared in movies as stand-ins for the Electra 10E used by Amelia Earhart in her round-the-world flight attempt. Two played this role in the NBC 1976 TV miniseries Amelia Earhart, and another did so in the 2009 movie Amelia.
It would have been George Able Tare Fox Love back in the day.
Hey IWM. Love your work 👍
Excellent programme and what a wonderful use of the Elektra.
Very very insightful video. Well produced and easy to follow.
👍Thanks for posting.
I remember an article by the guy who found it. He thought no it couldn't be and when he looked the camera hatches were still there. I believe it was found in south America.
Thank you for this video, I enjoyed it.
Mr. Cottons' actions took a fair amount of courage to perform. Whatever his grievances were with the RAF, if he'd been allowed to continue his work, Mr. Cotton may have been able to devise more sophisticated equipment and processes in photo intelligence if he had continuede.
He wasn't to be trusted - on one trip back from France he couriered Marcel Boussac, the head of Christian Dior for a substantial payment that went into his pocket. Thus he was immediately removed from his post and banned from air operations. He made up quite a few of the stories about his escapades & he became a liability. Talented, creative, crooked & a liar, he would have been a great spy, but not stable enough to be in charge of RAF recce.
My favourite story is when he was trying to work out how to photograph one airfield that was off limits a Luftwaffe officer asked him to fly over it!
He was way too smart for the RAF or any regular military operation.
Wars are won By the least stupid country.
Always had a liking for the Lockheed Electra along with the De Havilland Rapide.
2 lovely looking aircraft that fit their eras so well imo
Art Deco aeroplanes, baby!
Did Mr cotton ever write a book about his life? As would be a fascinating read?
He did: "Aviator Extraordinary: the Sidney Cotton Story as told to Ralph Barker"
@oliverscratch cheers mate, might try find it
‘The last plane out of Berlin’ recounts the Electra and the blue (or pink 🤷♂️) spitfires
Always wanted one of these Electras or the one Skyking used to fly in the old TV show ??? A child's dream ✌️👍
Interesting historical facts that I wasn’t aware of 👍
Wow, from the photo at the 7.10 mark he even flew his Electra over the Mohne dam after the dambusters had dealt to it in May 1943. Incredible stuff. 😂
No, that photo was taken by a PR Mosquito
The 😂 icon indicates it was banter @@davidhouston1729
Can't wait to get to Duxford to see this latest display. Love it.
Luv it! Many thanks ❤❤️
I’ve always wondered how the RAF’s bomber command knew where German factories were? Maybe this pre war recce mapped the industrial sites?
Thank you. Nice bit of history.
If the SIDCOT Suit was an innovation, why did Fighter Command pilots wear uniform shirt and tie during the Battle of Britain?
Because most weren't flying that long or that high.
The Sidcot suit was invented to be worn in open cockpit aircraft, at altitudes of 15,000ft, during the later 1st WW and interwar period.
I"ve always been fascinated by photo recon. The first year I was in college, I had one semester of photo interpretation, for determining forest types and volume. Final exercise was to take a blank base map and lay out a logging road, from end to the other. About 120 miles across virgin forest, swamps and moraine hills. Spent a lot of time with my nose to that stereoscope. Actually got to the point I could do it without the scope, but you lost the magnification. It was handy out in the boonies though.
Reconnaissance.
I visited the 'Spies in the Skies' exhibition at Duxford on January 1st- extremely interesting!
Fascinating. Thanks
Cotton's story is just another of the incompetence of high command and the various military bureaux when dealing with innovation. War is a young mind's game who require only avuncular insight based on a not unappreciable experience but rarely the authority to prevent outlandish developments like wooden planes, skipping bombs, etc.
What's outlandish about wooden planes? Most planes were built of wood until the 1930s/40s.
Very interesting and amazing revelations. It is worth pointing out that the Blenheim was developed from an aircraft designed by Bristol after seeing the Electra in the USA. This prototype was named Britain First and was faster than the Electra- reaching 307mph and was given to the nation to be evaluated as a basis for a bomber- which became the Blenheim. There was no reason why a Blenheim stripped of its military encumbrances could not have been used for photo reconnaissance other than the fact that the Electra was a known civilian aircraft and could be a "wolf in sheep's clothing" whereas the Blenheim was a known bomber and would arouse suspicion. Of course, later on, the Mosquito became arguably the greatest photo reconnaissance aircraft of them all.
The Mosquito was the most effective aircraft of the whole war!
How about a video on the most unlikely of spy planes - The Brixmis Chipmunks at RAF Gatow, Berlin.
interresting story and a beautiful aircraft!
First time I heard of this but on a par with the couple using their yacht to spy on the German military. The Electra is certainly a looker among many similarly beautiful aircraft of this era while the design and build quality is very high. Love the classic Brylcream comb over on the bloke at the wall map 1.12. Not so common these days. Thanks for a great vid despite the rather contrived off camera gaze bits, not a good look...
6:19 It's not "almost a 3-D effect," it is literally 3-D.
A Lockheed Electra was the plane seen in the film Casablanca. Not sure if it was the same model discussed in this video.
No, the studio built 1/2 and 1/4 sized replicas of a Lockheed Electra 12A out of plywood and balsa wood. A real Electra was not used due to wartime restrictions.
You're apparently correct that the "plane" in the final scene was a replica. I think some of the flying shots earlier in the film were of an Electra.@@nightjarflying
@@bradleynorton3365 A real Electra is seen, but only taxiing. The plane taking off is a model of the Electra. None of the flying shots in the film are of an Electra.
@@bradleynorton3365 None of the flying shots "earlier in the film" are of an Electra
Thanks for an entertaining history video! What a great looking plane. As you mentioned, Earhart was flying a Model 10-E Electra. Maybe the Japanese caught on?
Beautiful aircraft.
As soon as I saw the picture, I immediately thought of Amelia.
They look so alike.
No-no-no, Amelia was no plane!
I started to cry, The Golden Generation, they don't make them any more. I'll never be smart as my Grandpa, taught me everything I know.....
had no knowledge of this thank you.
So very very interesting... Huzzah!! 😊
Making pictures while german officers are on board. Thats... Impressive
I grew up next to Lockheed Aircraft in Burbank. They had old Electras and Constellations in storage there. I thought they were beautiful.
Apparently the RAF did similar operations to the Electra after the war with the Hunting Percival Pembroke aircraft to photograph East Germany while flying down the air corridor to RAF Gatow in West Berlin. Sneaky...
Great story. Gorgeous airplane.
Nice 👍🏼
Is there a list of the locations where the aerial fotos in the videos were taken?
Did Sydney Cotton ever use any of the recon Mosquitos, or was that after the airforce took over?
I was wondering if this was the same Electra that Wing Com.F W. Winterbotham of "The Ultra Secret" fame used from time to time?
From a photographer's perspective, this could have a follow-up. The model 24 cameras are very interesting and really should be looked at in detail. Open up, look at the film confection it needs (and negative frame size), how focusing - if any - was done, as well as exposure settings. One detail image shows an aperture lever on the lens. How did they operate that? If the camera stuck up through the plane's floor, then, to have its exposure altered, it may still have needed to be taken temporarily out, in order to adapt exposure. See below about 3 cameras.
If the lenses could be focused - potentially they are locked at ~infinity - then how was this done?
There are several electric contacts for the cameras to be remotely operated, so there must have been a motor drive to advance the film and operate the shutter (cock and release), but potentially exposure time could be set remotely?
A film convection that must have been readily available was "70mm" that was used in cinematography for the highest-end productions. That film had a carrier suitable for movie and consequently had no problems with 24 frames per second: shoot a frame, close shutter, advance a frame, expose the next frame, etc.
As film at the time was not very sensitive, in the chemical processing there was a possibility to push the sensitivity, but this could give loss of contrast envelope (dynamic range) or increase grain with some loss of detail.
At all sorts of levels these people running this operation must have been "deep" into photography.
The first photographic films were only sensitive in one colour band of the visible light spectrum and this is where "monochromatic" (mono=single, chromatic=colour) comes from. The next evolution of film had two spectral colour bands and was called "orthochromatic" (orthos=correct) - note that this is all black and white material and "colour" references spectral sensitivity, and had nothing to do with the resulting grey-scale images that got "printed" on monochromatic photographic paper - where printing means to project a negative film image on a negative paper so as to get a positive result. (After exposing the print paper, it had to be processed or "developed".) IIRC "panchromatic" (pan=all) black & white film became available in the 1950s.
For colours where a B&W film has no sensitivity, the consequence is that this is rendered as black or in mixed colours as too dark for our perception. The other way around in the colour band where you have sensitivity, matching colours in the subject can become very light.
Then there's the lens designs that may have been made in very small batches with very specific designs.
As to the Leicas, the development of these started with the intention to have a test tool to shoot stills with 35mm wide movie film. "Correct exposure" never was defined in a norm, be that the old German DIN, or American ASA, or today's ISO from the ISO institute. After WW2, Kodak dominated the world market and set the standard of how to relate correct exposure to sensitivity.
So a photographer needed to test several things. A film batch's sensitivity relative to their opinion on correct exposure as well as to their approach to processing (both chemicals and process) that impacted the qualities of the results.
Barnack at the Leitz company decided to double the 24mm wide frame of movie photography from 18mm high to 24*36 or else assessment of exposure and processing ("densitometry" and "sensitometry") would have been awkward. And thus the Leitz Camera - LeiCa - Leica) stills camera was created, originally advertised as "double frame (i.e. size). Both 35mm and 70mm movie film have a perforation along both sides for the camera or projector's precise advancements and a much stronger "carrier" (the actual film on which the sensitive layer - emulsion - was placed) in order to be able to handle the fast motion between frames.
I can imagine a larger than 70mm (medium format) on a roll with perforation, but that would be a very special batch of film production.
Possible, but one of the questions of the how they did it kind.
Another thing is the shutter (the thing that facilitates the time of and actual exposure of an image on the film). At the time, leaf shutters dominated the market of stills cameras - these are centrally located in the lens and compare to the aperture mechanism (diaphragm) except the shutter can completely close and has a timed mechanism. But cameras like the Leica had a "focal plane" shutter (also called slit shutter or curtain shutter). Between slit shutters and leaf shutters there are pros and cons and that is another interesting question about the model 24. Lartigue's pre-WW2 images of race cars shows these with slightly motion blurred slanted wheels - the slant is from the slit shutter's time parallax (where one part of the frame is exposed at another time than another part) and the motion blur is from a slowish exposure time, maybe because of the low sensitivity of his film. Lartigue's slit shutter was very likely an aftersales add-on that was mounted on the lens, so it was not next to the focal plane. The camera having its electrical contacts, it may well have had a shutter that totally functioned electrically.
As the Leica was very small, at the time, adding some electric motor drive to advance its film would made it a bit bigger but to do that must have been very simple relative to the model 24. In advancing the film, the mechanically function shutter would have its clockwork mechanism wound for the next shot. Many cameras with a leaf shutter at the time did not have the connection between advancing the film and consequently human-powered in that cocking the shutter - they had separate lever to wind up the shutter's mechanical clockwork again. but as the model 24 had these electrical contacts, it may have had an electrically functioning shutter that could have its exposure time remotely set?
Three cameras? Let me guess, camera #1 in the plane's bottom is taking surveillance shots, camera #2 waiting to take over when the film is full in #1, and #3 having its exposed film taken out and subsequently being reloaded. I imagine a pilot/co-pilot pressing the shutter, looking out their window and a camera assistant swapping cameras and manipulating films, cable connections, etc. Equally well possible there was a photographer looking through some sort of viewfinder next to the camera at what and when to shoot.
If there were Leicas in the engine cowls, then, these being "small format", they would likely point forward and down. This only makes sense at lower altitudes and would be a pre-WW2 tool to get images e.g. of airports when landing there and taking off.
With perforated movie film on a stronger carrier (stronger compared to "roll film" and "sheet film"), the number of shots on a roll could be very high, but also would become bulky. Look in the interwebs for images of e.g. a Nikon F or F2 with a film back for 200 shots = about 8 seconds in standard 35mm movie, albeit that would be about half the length of film due to the smaller movie frame. Then put that idea on a pre-WW2 Leica in an aircraft's engine cowl- meh. But, that said, Leica have had IIRC a mechanical - wind-up clockwork like - motor to advance the film in the stills camera. Very low FPS relative to modern digital, but faster than a human's thumb operates the film advance lever and a controlled advance speed that does not rip the film into pieces. 35mm movie cameras were generally used for run-and-gun handheld or relatively simple tripod-mounted fast (and cheaper) reportage. 70mm movie film was Hollywood's standard for major productions. In stills photography, old school said, if it fits on 127 film then it is small format, anything on ~9cm * ~12cm or larger is large format and in between is medium format. The large format cameras generally shot on sheet film: one sheet for one shot with well-known sizes like 4"*5', 8"*10", 12"*17", and larger. That gives a very slow process.
As to the mono, ortho, pan chromatic films, in order to shoot colour before colour film, an approach was to make colour separations where one image was shot onto 3 or 4 different frames each through a different filter - red, green, or blue and a fourth one for native greyscale. "Technicolor" (r) pr (tm) did this in movie cameras - very elaborate - with three B&W films running in parallel at exactly the same time, with an optical splitter system between lens and films. So if you wanted colour information then such a 3-in-1 camera approach would help. A simple approach to getting stereo would have been to place a simple splitter in front of the single lens of the camera. Imagine a small periscope, now imagine two mirrored opposite each other in front of the camera's lens. That's much easier than Technicolor.
Questions about these cameras, formats, films, processes. Answering these would shed an interesting light on the operation behind and of this intel/recon operation.
Labelled as "imperial" I would argue that it is imperative to figure this all out. Or else historical becomes hysterical and museum "amuse'm".
Film size in those big cameras makes a contact print image about 9"×9". The camera mechanism makes a new exposure approximately every 4 seconds. The pilot needs to fly level and steady during the run or sortie, and a twin engine aircraft is easier to control to achieve this.
Parallel runs allow photo overlap of 80% to achieve 3D images with a viewer. You would be amazed at the result, as objects "jump up" from the ground, even small structures and ground features.
@@knottyal2428 - that's seriously big. Great answer. Understand stereo photography, woud not be amazed by the principle but probably by detail, etc.
I actually have a set of the original gear that was used to create a 3D image to see under camouflage or foliage. Used by the US. UK had a similar piece of equipment as well
This maybe newbie question but here goes…..At what Point in time did they start putting gases into scopes and lenses to reduce this fog or aberration of the picture?
10.30am
I think they were referring to the outer surface in contact with air. Inside can be almost any gas as long as its dry. There are coatings to mitigate this, but it's still a problem sometimes.
Odd that no mention is made of the contribution of the DH-98 Mosquito to the PRU. It provided higher altitude and extended range flights to be undertaken.
So, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, when the U.K or U.S do it, it’s called “reconnaissance”. When anyone else does it, it’s called “spying”.
🤣🤣🤣
The victors always write the history records....
Very smart looking aircraft
I saw a reconnaissance Spitfire in the UK. It was not armed. The wing tips were cut off. I was told this increased the max speed by 5mph.
I read that over 6 million aerial reconnaissance photographs were taken by the RAF during WW2. Most of them have been lost or destroyed but there is still a lot of them stored for research purposes.
the photo interpreters were picked from color blind people as the photos were black and white and they basically saw in black and white so they would notice things that non color blind people would miss.
I used to own Sidney Cotton’s Rolls-Royce Phantom II
I luv your channel! 😅 💕
Love.
I’m sure it helped that he had the perfect cover, being in the photography business.
00:32 What the..?
Many years ago I found a book by Constance Babington Smith: "Evidence in Camera", named after an British Wartime Magazine. And she tells about an American Actor who is allowed flying over Germany with a Secret Camera in his private plane and how it becomes the beginning of the wartime aerial photography over Germany! And how even a superlight, weapon less Mosquito can't fly from a new German Jet, but manage to make a turn at the last possible moment, so that the German plane overshoots and has to make a large turn to come back behind them, and then has to return after several tries.
Same old Empire, capitolised on the expertise of an Australian, the discarded him like a used oily rag when they decided they no longer needed his services. 🇦🇺
Aeroflot was strongly suspected of doing this during the Cold War (ie, a Moscow-to-New York flight going off course and overflying the Electric Boat Co. shipyard just as the first Ohio-class submarine was being launched); this may be why they so readily believed that Korean Air Lines flight 007 was on a spy mission - they may have thought, "We do it all the time, so why wouldn't our adversaries?"
Fun Fact. Third Reich used civilian aircraft before ww2 to map the soviet union and rest of Europe. Even in war they flew secret civ airplanes to map neutral countrys such us the udssr in 1940, For more fun facts just ask
It should have said,hiding in plane sight!😊
Great story.
The real surprise is that the Brits did not paint red crosses on these planes.
Hard to keep a low profile eh wot old chap....
A somewhat robotic delivery, which is shame, given that this would otherwise be an engaging subject.
WTH is Eye Tea Percent?
British Intelligence interviewed many individuals who lived or visited and took photographs of the Normandy area. Many recon flights were made in the same area. How does no one notice the hedge rows that dotted the Normandy countryside?
Reconnaissance from the ground by MILITARY minds was not available.
Stone walls in hedgerows would be "normal" to a native of the area and unremarked on....
but bocage made tanks sitting ducks when they drove up them exposing their bellies...
or drove through the only gate in the walls of vegetation...
until a US Army Sergeant invented the Cullen Cutters" so they could bulldoze their way through keeping a low profile...
so... just admitted war crimes?
Another Australian we hear little of. 🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺👍🍺🍺
Cotton joined a long list of exceptional individuals dating back as far as Oliver Cromwell or earlier proving England and the colonies were not worth fighting for. You will be mistreated and forgotten very soon.
Don't do those FASHIONABLE but POINTLESS and ANNOYING SIDEVIEWS.
No, it's not 'creative'.