These photos are from Seafire. Thanks for letting us see them.

Sort of on the subject of post WW2 Germany...

As a kid, my dad was stationed in England working with the first unit in Europe to get the RF4C Phantoms...

They did some testing of the infrared film, that was later used in Vietnam to find underground VC tunnels and caches...

On one flight in the Southern end of Bavaria, the infrared film picked up a batch of Tiger Tanks that had been put in a Cave and sealed up...

They had been brand new tanks in 1945 and had never been field used, there was also tons of weapons cached in the cave.. it was near the Bad Tolz army base...

The other interesting thing the film testing turned up was over Baden Wurtenburg, in the Black Forest, they came across a grove of Maple trees...The conifers had grown higher and had pretty much over shadowed the Maple grove....

However in the fall, when the leaves turned golden on the maples, when this picture was taken... the infrared picked up the image the maple grove made in the air...

Golden Maples surrounded by dark conifers...
were planted in the form of a Swastika with the year 1933 below it...this was 1965..

It was handed over to the German government which promptly went out and cut down the maples..

I have a picture of it around here somewhere, that was an official USAF photo of it..
I'll try to find it and possibly figure out how to post it...

When I lived in England in 1963 to 1966, they were finding bombs left over from the Battle of Britain still all over England...

We lived in the country side and there were also a lot of pill boxes around that had been erected to combat the anticipated invasion...

As kids we use to play army in them all the
time....

Very interesting !!!

Wow, that is truly something to behold.

What happened to the tanks?

Therea are only about five (yes, thats five) Tiger 1 tanks left in the known world, and they are all in museums.

Regards,

Eric

At the time in Europe, most of the relics from WW 2 were just taken out and destroyed, brought back too many bad memories.. especially anything that had to do with the Nazis...

Just like the groves in this picture... the German government went out and cut them down immediately....

By the 1060's there would have neen several museums around the world that would have loved to get their hands on a pristine tiger.


You say the maples were near Baden Wurtenburg ?

I too am a Panzer nut & I wonder how tanks could be seen inside a cave.

D HUmbarger...

We need to find out if we have any one with knowledge of film types....

They were exactly like looking at an X Ray picture....hey I was like 12 or 13 when I first saw them..

I am looking for them in some of the old stuff I still have around here.. If I find them, I will post them...but with that type of film being used, you can make out images and shapes under ground, just like you can make out bones on an x ray....or on a photo negative..

I doubt very much it could have been IR film as that works by detecting a difference in temp...About the best defence against such detecion would be to get something under ground with a good mass of material above your head.

And remember film is simply a "detector"; there has to be a "source"...with IR, that is thermal energy being released from the ground or objects on it...

To detect tank hulks buried long term underground my guess would be something akin to ground mapping radar....The reflection off the hulks would stand out providing they were'nt too far underground...Having said that, I didn't think we had that technology in the 1960's?

As to the comments about WW2 relics in the UK, there are still plenty of bombs either dug up or washed a shore each year...

Where I live, there is still evidence of bomb craters ect plus various old buildings from WW2 which vary from old pillboxes to disused airfields...

Anybody who is interested in that sort thing should take a look at the Subterranea Britanica site:

http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/sites.shtml

Although not strictly pertaining to just WW2, its very interesting none the less...

That we still have a problem with WW2 UXB's is hardly surprising considering that WW1 ordanance is still very much a danger in certain parts of France and Belgium and than underground bunker systems are still sometimes found relatively intact...

Regards,

Pete

quote:

Originally posted by D Humbarger:
I too am a Panzer nut & I wonder how tanks could be seen inside a cave.

I believe IR would let you detect the cave, but would not reveal the contents - you'd have to go in and look on the ground......

Regarding present technology IR; it's like looking at a negative and objects are quite distinguishable. Even earlier IR was pretty good at object recognition.

Granted it takes a little practice as the user is not used to looking in that sort of shading/light pattern.

Regards,

Eric

quote:

We need to find out if we have any one with knowledge of film types....

They were exactly like looking at an X Ray picture....hey I was like 12 or 13 when I first saw them..

Oh, sheet! And the trees in the forest were a THREAT after Hitler was gone?

YAWN!