PHOTOGRAPH PLYING

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXVI, Issue 7563, 6 May 1919, Page 5

PHOTOGRAPH PLYING

BY A PILOT.

Overland fliers of the future will navigate- by compass, air logs, and photographs. Maps, in the ordinary sense, will not be c;—led.

At any height ov four or' five thousand feet the country across which you are flying looks very much like a photograph. Often, during the war, pilots of the Royal Air Force were able to find their way to their objectives with only an air picture to guide them. An ordinary map would have been useless. Roads had been churned up by shells; villages mr-rked on the map had disappeared; forests were unrecognisable.

But the camera shows what is seen. And this fact was early realised by the men of the air. A vast aerial photographic survey of tlie whole front was'organised, and, at the cost of brave lives and valuable machines, the Air Staff were ultimately In possession of.a complete picture of the battle zone from the sea to Switzerland. This picture was Kept up to date; and from photographic headquarters the squadrons could obtain on demand the latest prints of trench systems, enemy batteries, dumps, field fortifications, new roads, railways, Bidings, hutments, camps and aerodromes.

You cannot go wrong with a photographic map. It requires little or no deciphering. It simply represents, more or less plctorially, the ground you are flying over.

In ordinance survey maps everything depends on the scale. In a large scale mai> you get too much detail; in a small scale map you get too little. Unimportant things— which you do not see from the airare included in the former; while in the latter things which strike you very forcibly from the air are omitted. All this tends to confusion.

A photographic map, on the other han3, visually interprets the landscape beneath the air navigator. The eye of the camera sees things in exactly the same way as the human eye. It is perhaps a little more sensitive, a little keener; but when you allow for toning down and printing* an ordinary photograph practically represents what the eye sees. Our air maps will be on horizontal rollers so that we shall be able to roll back the map as we progress on our journey. For commercial purposes it will be sufficient to have air photos taken at three levels, 5000, 10,000 and 15,000 feet, or alternatively, to have them all taken at 10,----000 feet, with an adjustable focvtssing device so that the same photograph can be magnified to 5000 or reduced to 15,000 as required.

The camera does not lie; it sees and records. And that is why we are going to fly by photographs. Already the gTeat aerial survey of England has commenced; and many other countries are following suit. So far as the air is concerned the land map is dead and done with. Air maps will be photographed; we shall fly by compass and camera.