Notes On The Interpretation Of Aeroplane Photographs. [S.S. 631.] IA/42982; [Together With:] Illustrations To Accompany Notes On The Interpretation Of Aeroplane Photographs. Series A. [S.S. 631. A.] IA/42982. A. World War I - Aerial Photography.

An impressive exposition of the rarified level reached by fixed-wing aerial reconnaissance and photo interpretation by the last year of the war. Third edition, considerably expanded, of the slight and fragile text pamphlet, first published 1916, paired unusually with the impressive plate volume - both are decidedly uncommon. These were produced in France by Army Printing & Stationery Services and classified "For Official Use Only"; despite a stated print run of 4,000, few copies of the pamphlet have survived. The first item contains concise but detailed notes on how to identify various battlefield structures and features - trenches and wire, dugouts and mine shafts, listening and observation posts, batteries, concrete structures and so forth - followed by a section on rear organizations - railways, dumps, billets and aerodromes - noting that from the "enemy's means of supply" and the study of aerial photographs more generally "often his intentions may be deduced". The pamphlet concludes with a brief section of technical notes on the uses of different types of photographs, oblique, stereoscopic, stereoscopic oblique, and how these may variously offer enhanced potential for interpreting detail. The substantial atlas contains an exceptionally fine range of high quality photos, illustrative of the points made in the accompanying notes. Many of the views are accompanied by maps or sketches to clarify interpretation with locations often identified. Just ten years after the Wright Brothers' epoch-making 12-second flight at Kitty Hawk, the aeroplane had become a gun platform, duelling in the air, and the instrument of accurate, distant bombardment; and perhaps most influentially the ultimate mode of reconnaissance, profoundly altering the nature of engagement. "At the outbreak of the First World War, commanders like British Field-Marshal John French believed that no mechanical platform would ever replace cavalry as a means to conduct reconnaissance. Within months, however, the horse succumbed to industrial warfare, as did traditional methods of cavalry generalship. In the place of cavalry arose the modern military intelligence bureaucracy that employed a Fordist system of photo interpretation in an attempt to achieve total knowledge of the battlefield and total control. The power of photo interpreters, in the words of Paul Saint-Amour, was 'not in the mere ability to command, but in the more rarefied capacity of producing the knowledge that would inform the commanders'" (Gettinger). Dan Gettinger, "The Ultimate Way of Seeing: Aerial Photography in WWI", 2014, Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College, online. Text, foolscap folio. 11 pp, Wire-stitched in light greenish blue printed wraps: plate volume, folio (360 x 310 mm), strong blue cloth-backed greyish-yellow paper-covered boards, printed paper label to front board. First named with double-folding plate of "Shadow Diagrams" at rear; plate volume containing around 100 illustrations on 60 silver print photographic plates linen stub-bound on heavy card, plate of mark-up symbols and a repeat of the folding plate from the text pamphlet. Touch of foxing to wrappers of text pamphlet and just a little rust to staples, top corners of plate volume lightly bumped. Both in very good condition.