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A Brief History of Aerial Reconnaissance and Aerial Photography!

Early in the nineteenth century work on various primitive photographic processes was gaining momentum all over the world, but it was in France that photography was becoming a passion and from the beginning early photographers were fascinated with their world as seen from a bird's eye view.   By 1829 photographers like Joseph Nicephore Niepce began attempting to capture images from the windows and rooftops that overlooked their surroundings.  The photographic process was painfully slow back then and the example of Niepce's work seen here titled Image One took over eight hours of exposure to create, which while revolutionary for its day would be considered a poor quality photograph today by any standard.  The early processes used chemicals with exotic names like Bitumen of Judea, a resinous substance, and Oil of Lavender to render their blurry images.  Photographers must have been considered the techno nerds of their day, being part scientist and part magician these men who dabbled with chemicals and strange apparatus were sure to have been considered eccentric by the general public.  In 1839 Niepce joined forces with a fellow scientist-photographer named Louis M. Daguerre who had worked out a new photographic process that he magnanimously named after himself calling it "Daguerrotype" which was later nicknamed "tintype" by the photographers who used the process.  It utilized the combination of polished silver plate, mercury vapors and sodium thiosulfate to create images in one tenth the time it took Niepce to create his image, but it was still painstakingly slow.  The partnership between Niepce and Daguerre did not last but it mattered very little in the long run since the process was quickly made obsolete by other inventor's work.  By the middle of the nineteenth century the helium filled gas balloon was being widely used and theoretically it could provide the camera a perfect platform for creating images of the ground below, but due to the balloon's constant movement and the long exposure time required by the cameras it made capturing a sharp image extremely difficult.  However a French photographer named Gaspar Felix Tournachon also known as "Nadar" is credited with creating the world's first true "aerial photograph" in 1858 at Paris, France.  Unfortunately none of these photographs have survived for us to examine.  Nadar continued with his work and in 1868 he created the amazingly detailed photo titled Image Two of the Paris skyline while suspended approximately eighty meters above the ground in a balloon.  In 1861 Civil War exploded in the United States and provided a catalyst for the fledgling science of aerial reconnaissance.  As stated previously on this site Professor Thaddeus Lowe's United States Balloon Corps would make over 3000 ascensions in support of the Union Army before the secession of hostilities.  Unfortunately it is histories loss that there are no examples known to this author of any photographs being taken from these balloons during the Civil War by either army.  Part of this can be explained by the fact that the balloons made very conspicuous targets for snipers and artillery gunners alike, thus necessitating the need for speed in the gathering of information about the enemy force you were observing.  The next step forward in the evolution of aerial reconnaissance and photography was made by another Frenchman by the name of "Arthur Batut" with believe it or not a device even more basic than the balloon, Batut used a large version of a child's toy kite!  Batut was able to take photos of landscapes using a camera which was suspended from the kite and used a burning fuse system to trigger the shutter Image 3 is an example of a photo taken by Batut in 1889 at Labruguiere, France.  The practice of using kites to capture aerial images continued well into the twentieth century. A photographer named George Lawrence used a string of nine large kites to carry a camera that weighed approximately 49 pounds to height of 2000 feet and took photos of the San Francisco, California skyline both before and after the great San Francisco fire of 1906.  Lawrence's photos were amazing and brought to light the importance of keeping a chronological series of aerial photos to aid in the study of the impact made by man and nature on the Earth's surface.  Scientists today routinely utilize thousands of images taken over prolonged periods of time covering the same area in order to study an untold number of subjects.  In many cases the early photos taken by these pioneers are compared to modern images revealing important changes that continue to affect our world.  If you are interested in seeing the work of George Lawrence the just follow this link to the Library of Congress to view great examples of his work.  The golden era of aerial photos taken from kites officially ended just prior to World War II, but the fate of kite photography was really sealed by the invention of and rapid development of the airplane just after the turn of the twentieth century.  Coinciding with the birth of aviation came dramatic advances in the photographic process from men like George Eastman who founded the "Kodak" company and in 1888 was granted a patent for film on a role which he would use in his immensely popular "Brownie" camera that went on sale in 1900.  In France Auguste and Louis Lumiere advanced the dry plate process and the introduced perforated film that led to a workable movie camera.  In fact in 1909 Wilbur Wright produced aerial images from a movie camera while demonstrating his Flyrer aircraft in Italy, quite simply the marriage of the airplane and the camera was truly one made in heaven.  Like so many other technical advances in history war would play a significant role in the evolution of aerial photography.  In 1914 European alliances, and nationalistic jealousies finally spilled over into open conflict and quickly escalated into a war of global proportions.  The nations of Europe quickly raised armies numbering in the millions and faced off against one another on two fronts spanning great portions of the European and African continents.  With such a large area of combat it became more important than ever to have good intelligence pertaining to your enemies strength and disposition, gone were the days when horse mounted cavalrymen were able to supply the information needed by commanders in the field.  The airplane was considered little more than a toy at the beginning of the war but even the most stubborn generals quickly recognized the value of observations made from aircraft and soon both sides had observers flying over each others lines making notes and sketches of what they saw below.  Due to a lack in development of reliable aerial cameras and mounting hardware photography was not widely employed by the combatants during the early months of the war.  All of that was to change in 1915 when the first practical system for taking clear detailed images of the ground from an aircraft was designed and implemented by the British.  By the end of the war aerial photography had firmly established itself as a vital part of military strategy and during peak times of fighting as many as 10,000 photos were being taken and processed by the allies every day with great detail and clarity as can be seen in Image Four.  Following World War I  the work of two men who shared the last name of Goddard but who were not related would advance the development of the science of aerial photography and literally take it to new heights.  In 1917 George W. Goddard enlisted in the aviation wing of the U.S. Army Signal Corps and was selected to attend the first Officer's School in Aerial Photography, U.S. School of Military Aeronautics at Cornell University.  Goddard was to become a driving force in the science of aerial photographic and would play an invaluable role during World War II and attained the rank of Brigadier General before retiring from the Air Force.  In 1962 General Goddard's expertise was called on again when the Air Force was have trouble in getting clear reconnaissance images of a sensitive target and asked the retired Goddard for advice.  Following his recommendation a pair of obsolete strip cameras were taken out of storage and used for the photos.  The cameras worked flawlessly and twenty four hours later President John F. Kennedy was shown the photos of Russian made missiles deployed in Cuba.  Based on these photos Kennedy demanded the Russians remove the threat and the world held its collective breath as the two super powers approached the brink of war.  The other Goddard who contributed so much to aerial photography is much better known to us since he is considered the father of modern rocketry and NASA's Space Center in Greenbelt, Maryland bears his name.  Dr. Robert Goddard provided the ground work for modern rocketry and his work has been studied by nearly every rocketeer that followed him including the Nazis in World War II and the Russian rocket scientists that engineered Sputnik, the first manmade object to orbit the Earth in 1957.  He was also the first man to launch a liquid propelled rocket in 1926 and in 1929 he equipped one of his rockets with a camera and captured the first pictures to be taken from a rocket.  He began his research at his home in Auburn, Massachusetts but after being told by the local Fire Marshall that he would have to discontinue his experiments he moved to a small town in the southwestern United States that years later would capture the worlds attention again concerning space.  Dr. Goddard moved his laboratory and experiments to Roswell, New Mexico!  The history of aerial photography and aerial reconnaissance while interesting to those of us who employ it has never really captured the attention of the general public through the years, that is until May 1, 1960 when a man named Francis Gary Powers and a planed called the U-2 made aerial espionage and its consequences a household word.  Prior to 1956 Francis Gary Powers was a captain in the United States Air Force and served in the Korean Conflict distinguishing himself as a capable single engine jet pilot.  These just happened to be the exact requirements that the CIA was looking for in the pilots they were recruiting to fly an new high altitude plane born out of the brain of aeronautical design genius Clarence "Kelly" Johnson Chief of Design at the infamous Lockheed "Skunk Works."  The U-2, nicknamed  "The Dragon Lady" was capable of reaching altitudes of more than 70,000 feet with a range of 6,400 miles making it the perfect camera platform for seeing just what the Russian military was up to. No interceptor fighter could reach that kind of altitude and the Russians did not possess a missile capable of taking out a target that elusive, or so the CIA thought.  For four years they were right the U-2 missions had gone of without a hitch but when things started to go wrong they went very wrong.  On May 1, 1960 Soviet fighters shadowed a U-2 piloted by Powers from a lower altitude as it penetrated deep into Soviet air space on a secret photographic mission.  As Powers aircraft glided over the Russian countryside some 70,000 feet below he probably didn't even notice the smoke trail made by a new surface to air missile designated the S-75 Dvina as it streaked toward his U-2.  The missile impacted causing fatal damage to the aircraft forcing Powers to bail out over the Soviet mainland, fortunately the U-2 was equipped with a explosive device that could be triggered by the pilot to destroy the aircraft thereby keeping it out of enemy hands, unfortunately Powers failed to enable the device.  The plane fell from 70,000 feet and from that height one would think there would only be tiny pieces of the wreckage left after impacting the ground or so again the CIA thought!  Unknown the CIA the U-2 descended from those lofty heights and very nearly landed itself intact, as I have previously stated when things started to go wrong they really went wrong.  Feeling the aircraft had been completely destroyed and the pilot killed in the crash the CIA came up with the horribly lame cover story of it being a weather plane that had strayed off course and the Eisenhower administration issued the story to the press.  Following this the previously quiet Russians were only too happy to publish photos of not only the very much alive downed pilot, but also his nearly unharmed spy plane complete with all the electronic and photographic equipment used for espionage.  The United States was caught in the act of spying on the Russians, then lying about it in an obvious cover-up with President Dwight D. Eisenhower being implicated as an accomplice to it, all just months before the national election for president.  Today what was once viewed as spying has been to relegated to routine photo taking by the advent of the earth orbiting satellites whose cameras are capable of taking high resolution photos of every square inch of the Earth from 22,500 miles deep in space.  Even the popular search engine Google has an application called Google Earth that can be downloaded for free and used to view any place on the planet up close so the need for earth bound aerial reconnaissance and photography is gone, right?  Well, not quite.  You see as useful as those satellites are they can't see through clouds and smog, and services like Google Earth quite often employ photographic images so old that they are no longer relevant.  No if anything the science of aerial photography inside our atmosphere is even more important than ever.  It is employed by fields of endeavor ranging from scientific study, to police applications, and even the managing the crops we grow.  Oh and that old looking airplane the U-2  that Francis Gary Powers got shot down in way back in 1960 over the Soviet Union, well it's not only still use by NASA, it's still flying spy missions for the U.S. Military it's not scheduled for retirement until 2014!  But then that's only fair since it will be a venerable 68 years old by then!