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I have a friend who works for an aerial photograhpy company. Their services were comissioned for a project in Germany. When he was going over some data over a rural area, he found this image
We, and most of the people he works with, think the craters in this photo were a result of some sort of cluster bombing from World War 2.
This pic was made in mid 2002. You can see many roads and lots of village areas. I don't know if they are pre or post war.
I'm not trying to make any political or moral statements, just wanted to share. Kinda makes you think.

wow

Do you have any more information about the area where the photos were taken, mrwelvrig? It would be very interesting to find out more about the area and its war-time experiences.

My Dad is a WWII vet and after the war became a pilot and aerial photographer. I think he would be very interested to learn more about this place.

I'll see if I can find any one at his office who knows more about the location. May take a little while, a lot of people are out on "missions". I think they're trying to cram as much work as possible before the holidays.

unfortunatly, bomb craters in europe are still fairly common. remnants of both world wars are constantly popping up. unexploded shells seem to be the biggest problem. the bunker where hitler killed himself was actually in the no- mans land between east and west germany prior to unification (since destroyed due to neo-nazi sympathathies). several online companies specialize in selling war relics found in long abandoned foxholes and redoubts.

the sheer number of war related sites in europe means that craters and artifacts will be popping up for quite some time.

Carpet bombing tends to leave quite the impression on the land.

Its much the same way in Vietnam, worse actually.

Last edited by lil_mikey69 at 11-Dec-2004 03:20

Neat pic, but I'm not sure the depressions are from "carpet bombing".

The sat. resolution appears to be in the 32m range (or there abouts). Here's a link to a 16m sat. pic of Columbus, Ohio:

http://tinyurl.com/3ljlu


A stick of bombs from a typical WWII bomber would have dropped much closer together and barely appear as something like a string of pockmarks at that resolution range.

The distance between the depressions (craters) in the pic is greater than you might imagine.

Consider the fact that the arching line on the right side of the pic is a main highway. The "S" or "5" shaped feature over-lapping the arching line is a major interchange. The clusters of geometric shapes to the left and right of the interchange is a couple cities.


If the depressions were made by bombs..it would have had to have been from something like the RAF's 12,000 lb Tallboy or the 22,000 lb Grand Slam.

Wasn't able to gett any location info before the weekend. I'll try again next week.
The image is acualy LIDAR info from a small plane flown in strips across the area. The guy working on the surfacing, or removing all the "man made" stuff from the image leaving what would be bare earth, said the area is most likely between two or three miles across either direction.
That's all I know for now.

They could be gravel quarries...

Then again, possible they could be bomb craters. There were apparently bomb crater from the Battle of Britain near where I went to school in England, but I never really looked for them. Just read about them in a book...

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If the depressions were made by bombs..it would have had to have been from something like the RAF's 12,000 lb Tallboy or the 22,000 lb Grand Slam.

Yeah, I agree. Those craters are far too big to be made by anything the US had. Most heavy bombers just carried a dozen 500-pounders. The biggest we had was 2,000 punds, but I don't think even that would make a crater of that size.

Regardless, that's a very cool photo.

The image is acualy LIDAR info from a small plane flown in strips across the area.

Ahh..well that kinda throws some of my opinion out the window.

It sure looked like a digitized scan from space.


LIDAR is known for being able to detect geographical features like bomb craters.

If it is only a 2 or 3 mile scan..I'd sure like to know what generates the clusters of small geometric shapes I took to be cities or towns.

By the same token..some of the lines must be something like fence rows.