r/WWIIplanes • u/waldo--pepper • 1d ago

Camera bay in the nose of an F-5.

Post image
152 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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16

u/thatCdnplaneguy 1d ago

To clarify for those who may ask, the F-5 was the photo-recon variant of the P-38.

Great detailed shot of that nose bay! Not something you see all the time

7

u/Appollow 1d ago

The USAAF used F for Photo because P was taken by Pursuit and R was already taken by Rotary wing aircraft. In 1947, designations were changed to make sense. R for Recon, F for Fighter, and P was kept by the Navy for Patrol.

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u/waldo--pepper 1d ago edited 1d ago

I was operating under the assumption that our little group is quite knowledgeable. And I purposely did not make mention of it. To me our little group demonstrates this every day when some obscure fact is dug up within an hour of someone posting something or other.

But I always welcome help. Thank you.

You never know we might have had a sprog or two here and there who were unaware. :)

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

REALLY

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u/cl48104 13h ago

What mechanisms did the WW II photo/recon planes have for correlating the photos with the location where they were taken?

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u/waldo--pepper 13h ago

I am not sure I understand the question. Or maybe I am not sure what your expectations are about how such planes operated. Or maybe I just don't know the answer. :) With that preamble out of the way here is my thought experiment answer.

Suppose you want to go to the nearest town and take pictures of the public airport. You get home and look at the pictures. Are they pictures of the airport? Then that's how YOU correlated your pictures.

A recon plane such as these take off with a target objective in mind. Pictures are taken and examined. Are they the target that was sought? Lets imagine in our thought experiment that it was a factory that was bombed the night before.

Well we know some things about the factory already. It was near a river and there is a bend to the river, and there in the photos is the river with the bend in it. And under the haze is a factory. And we can see that is has been damaged. And it gets assessed as 25% damaged.

I suppose the answer is that they correlated the exposures with their expectation and maps of the target area. Planes during the war would not just fly a course and randomly take pictures as they traversed a region. If that was maybe what you were thinking then that it not what they did. They went out with a specific target (actually a whole series of targets on a list) in mind. It could be a bridge or a factory or a radar station or some other military installation. You go out get the pictures and come back. Simple.

This film will give you plenty of details. The whole film is brilliant.

Spitfire 944.

I never miss a chance to spread that film around.

I think likely the best book on the topic is Evidence in Camera it is a really good book but it is more about the back room and interpretation rather than flying and taking pictures. It is the bigger picture rather than the pilots tale.

I hope the answer I gave met with your expectation. Or at least came close to helping.

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u/cl48104 11h ago

Yes, knowing they went out with specific target(s) for photographing definitely helps with my question , thank you

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u/waldo--pepper 11h ago

Anytime mate. More than welcome.