Theater of the World

by Thomas Reinertsen Berg

  Not that this was easy. The first British reconnaissance planes got lost because visibility was poor and the pilots poorly acquainted with the area. One pilot wondered whether it would be ‘rather bad form to come down and ask people the way’–something he ended up having to do–while another flew over Brussels without recognising the city. Often, the only thing the pilots were able to report on with certainty was where the Germans were not to be found–or they might spend half the day attempting to find the enemy and the rest finding their way back–but aerial reconnaissance gradually assumed the cavalry’s former role. In September 1914 a British general lauded the ‘magnificent air report’ that had exposed the movements of the German troops. Information gained by the aircraft was noted on the maps–as a French pilot wrote: ‘I discovered the positions of twenty-four guns on the line to the west of Vitry. I marked them on the map at 1/80,000 and informed the corps concerned.’

  Strategic aerial photography began rather incidentally–the first images were taken by pilots who photographed cities, landmarks and beautiful landscapes using their personal cameras to have something to show to their family and loved ones. But despite this, nobody had thought of using systematic aerial photography in map-making–when French captain Georges Bellenger established a dedicated aerial photography division and presented his superior with images he believed could be used to create maps, his superior informed him that he ‘already had a map’. Nonetheless, Bellenger developed a technique for creating maps from photographs–this required a good understanding of the landscape and the ability to interpret black-and-white photographs taken from a vibrating plane by unsteady hands.

  The winter of 1914–5 was characterised by a cold standstill in soaking-wet trenches, and the landscape was so heavily bombed that this alone made it difficult to advance. Behind the front lines, however, intensive work was under way to enable the aircraft–the only things able to move to any great extent–to take better pictures, and with the war’s first spring came the first movements in the lines.

  NEW MAPS | Neuve-Chapelle is situated in the French lowlands, close to the Belgian border. The town is neither large nor important, but as fate would have it Neuve-Chapelle became part of the northern Western Front, and therefore a strategic target. If the Allied forces could pass through the town and make it to the larger city of Lille, they would also be able to intercept the railway lines, roads and canals used as transport routes by the Germans.

  British planes photographed the town and surrounding countryside in detail prior to the planned attack–the obtained images formed the basis for a map that was printed in 1,500 copies and distributed to the troops who would go into battle. The information was invaluable–the Allied forces could now study the battlefield and analyse where a German counter-attack was most likely to occur. For the first time in British military history, the army was able to stage an attack with a full overview of the enemy’s defence lines, positions and hideouts.

  ‘Our intelligence show was successful, in that we found the Germans exactly as we had located them, and their reinforcements arrived to the exact hour that we had predicted they would,’ wrote Brigadier General Charteris afterwards. The fact that the attack was not a complete success, since a number of the German reinforcements managed to stop the advance, forcing the British to dig new trenches not so far from where they started, was of little consequence–the preparations were deemed a huge step forward. From this point onwards, maps based on aerial photographs became an integrated part of the Allied strategy, and a system was established in which the day’s aerial photographs were submitted to the cartographers at 8.30 each evening–the cartographers then worked flat out through the night to prepare and print up 100 maps for the troops by 6 a.m. the next day.

  Before the war, nobody had received training in how to take photographs from a plane, but as the need for images increased the armies scoured their ranks to find men who knew their way around a camera–who understood how to take a photograph and what an image could convey. One described the recruitment process as follows: ‘I had had a camera as a boy, and had taken, developed and printed some very amateurish photographs. On the strength of this, I was appointed the squadron’s official air photographer.’ The British founded the School of Photography, Mapping and Reconnaissance to cover their forces’ needs.

  Aerial photography was demanding. Both the pilot and photographer occupied the plane’s cold, wet, wind-battered cockpit, while the enemy attempted to kill them. The pilots had to fly steadily back and forth along straight lines at a constant altitude to enable the photographers to work as methodically as possible–this predictable course made the reconnaissance aircraft easy targets for those tasked with shooting them down from the ground. One pilot wrote: ‘Photography again. I am getting thoroughly fed up with this job. It is the most difficult and dangerous job a pilot can get.’ Another wrote simply: ‘Photography is a good job when you don’t get hurt.’

  For their part, the photographers were tasked with operating a large camera in a confined space. They had to figure out when to take the photographs to achieve the desired overlapping pattern–most often by counting in their heads–and change the glass plate after each image with fingers stiffened by the cold. And then there was the turbulence to deal with. But one of the photographers described braving the harsh conditions and difficulties as worth it: ‘It was something hugely satisfying, however, in both these pursuits… To go over the lines and look vertically down on the enemy’s most treasured and private property, and to know that you had it in your power to make sure they either got destroyed or conquered, was truly a work worth doing.’

  On the ground were those who drew the maps based on the photographs. James Barnes, who held the unofficial title of ‘aerial photograph interpreter’, wrote in his biography:

  Pilot Viggo Widerøe participated in an expedition to the Antarctic in 1936–7 to map both the South Pole and the surrounding waters. Whaling and sealing in the area were significant economic interests for Norway, and the country claimed areas of land by mapping and naming them. Note how Norwegian names dominate–Kong Haakon VII hav, King Kaakon VII vidde and Ingrid Christensen Ld have since been given other names, while Lars Christensen Ld has become the Lars Christensen Coast.

  The reading and interpretation of airplane photographs demands a peculiar mind–the type of mind that would work out chess problems or, nowadays, crossword puzzles, perhaps. To the uninitiated a photograph of a line of entrenchments and myriad shell holes might mean very little, but to the puzzle solver, working over a clear photograph, with a magnifying glass, those shadows and lines and suggested slopes and rises mean much. They tell a story. Often his imagination is set on fire by some puzzling little, thing, the reason for which he cannot quite discover; and then, all at once, he has it! Those funny little dots are iron fence posts with strong wires strung along them. The men who went to that big shell hole left no trace of a path, for they reached their hidden machine-gun emplacement by walking along the lower wire as a sailor would use the foot rope on the yard of a sailing vessel. That well-traversed path some hundred yards away, leading to another rounded pit in lower ground is a deliberate deception; there are no guns there. The battle between the camera and camouflage was on. It was like a poker game with aces up the sleeve.

  In the wastelands of the First World War a new kind of cartographer was born–one who occupied a dark room and used advanced optical instruments to interpret images, rather than going out into the world to view its physical geography.

  The increasing need for aerial photographs forced the civil camera industry to produce increasingly better cameras, with ever-improving lenses that could be used for cartographic purposes. Of course, the higher the planes could fly while still obtaining a detailed image, the less the risk of being shot down, and cameras that could reproduce the ground in sharp detail from a height of 6,000 metres were soon developed. During 1918–the last year of the war–aerial mapping was such an important part of the
strategy that the Allied forces took more than ten million photographs. The maps of the Western Front were updated twice daily using new information obtained from the air. The Germans estimated that they had taken enough images to cover the country six times over.

  ‘The First World War paved the way for aerial mapping–the creation of entirely modern, accurate maps with the addition of contour lines–with the senseless loss of human life and unlimited consumption of funds possible only in war,’ wrote topographer and captain Thorolf Ween in 1933. ‘Developments steamed ahead at the pace the war demanded. And then came peace, and it became necessary to find a use for all these new inventions and branches of industry.’

  NEUE SACHLICHKEIT | The interwar period was one in which the belief in planning and efficiency-improvement measures had a number of eloquent proponents. Scientific insight would be used to create more rational and improved ways of life, and social economists, architects, engineers and cartographers were among those who advocated a new objectivity based on knowledge and an overall perspective.

  ‘We have flown above the country and seen such beauty, the land strewn with opportunities, and often thought that a certain responsibility must accompany all this we have been given to manage. But there is no one to take responsibility for the whole, and so, as often happens, the beauty may be trampled underfoot and the opportunities squandered,’ wrote pioneering Norwegian aviator Helge Skappel of the interwar period. From the air, he described the conditions causing people to flee Norway’s villages and rural areas, ‘because there is no one to bring order to the villages’ economic situation and help everyone to achieve liveable circumstances.’ According to Skappel, it was impossible to ‘build a society without the existence of maps and plans, on which everything appears in the correct form and dimensions. Mapping will thus be the foundation of healthy and rational social development.’

  As a young man, Skappel had travelled to Berlin with the Widerøe brothers, Arild and Viggo–who would later go on to found the airline of the same name–to attend an aeronautical exhibition. ‘The exhibition became a temple for us,’ said Skappel. In a bedsit in Oslo, the three young men made lofty plans that would soon be shot down–upon starting out, the group had to make do with two motorised planes and a glider. After first earning an income through aerobatics performances at rallies and aerial advertising, they later offered passenger flights, flying lessons and aerial photography services. After two years of flying the three friends had collected 6,000 images from across Norway–but had greater ambitions than the sale of attractive postcards.

  ‘We wanted to photograph the country from the air, and through the presentation of economic maps obtain a basis for procuring a complete overview of the country’s industry and business opportunities,’ wrote Skappel. ‘Photographs and maps should be laid out on the desks of scientists and scholars, and surveys and research projects initiated. The structure and development of our new society should then be planned through a collaboration between sociologists, social economists, geographers, agricultural experts, engineers and architects.’ Skappel and the Widerøe brothers developed proposals for areas in which as many of the problems common to each specific part of the country as possible could be solved. In eastern Norway, they chose ‘the rural areas of Ringsaker, Nes, Furnes and Vang, with the adjacent cities of Hamar and Lillehammer. […] Within this area we will prepare a complete ground plan.’

  The question of the creation of an economic map series of Norway had been raised at regular intervals since it was first proposed in 1814, but rejected each time due to budget constraints. ‘Military conquests require military maps. Economic conquests require economic maps. To shed light on the situation, and to explore and obtain an overview of our country’s amenities, an economic map series is just the thing that is needed,’ wrote public official Jonas Endresen Mossige in 1910, but the project failed again and again due to the extensive funds that the creation of such a map series would require.

  ‘Economic surveying has so far only been started by one county (Ringsaker), and in the current economic depression it is not possible to provide for new undertakings of this nature,’ stated an official letter from the Ministry of Defence in 1931.

  NO MAN’S LAND | The aerial mapping of Norway was therefore finally started due to the private occupation of Greenland. On 27 June 1931, the Norwegian flag was raised in Mosquito Bay, and hunter Hallvard Devold sent home a telegram declaring that ‘the land between Carlsberg Fjord in the south and Bessel Fjord in the north [is] occupied in His Majesty King Haakon’s name. We have named the land Erik the Red’s Land.’

  The basis for the occupation was the belief that historically, Greenland belonged to Norway. The old Norwegian states of Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland had not been regarded as part of Norway when the country was ceded to Sweden in 1814, and so remained part of the Kingdom of Denmark. The conflict came to a head in 1921, when Denmark claimed ownership of all of Greenland and its surrounding waters. Norway believed that this violated the rights of the Norwegian sealers and whalers who had operated out of east Greenland since the late 1800s, and so the Norwegian government supported the private occupation.

  In the summer of 1932, an expedition set out from Ålesund, Norway, for east Greenland, equipped with a plane, maps, compasses, drawing materials, two cameras and 550 metres of film–enough to take 2,850 photographs. The aim was to supplement the survey Norway had already undertaken in the area over a period of three years. The plane was borrowed from consul and whaling shipowner Lars Christensen, who had whaling and sealing vessels in the area, while tobacco manufacturer J.L. Tiedemanns Tobaksfabrik sponsored the aerial photography activities with 2,000 Norwegian kroner. In just over a month, the expedition photographed an area covering 30,000 square kilometres–half of which was previously completely unknown territory. In other words, Norway did what most occupying powers and imperialists do after laying claim to a new piece of land–they mapped it to obtain strategic knowledge of the area’s terrain and resources. But the occupation of Greenland would be short-lived. Norway lost the case in an international ruling in April of 1933.

  On 21 June that same year, the Norwegian Navy’s F 300 seaplane took off from the town of Horten. Due to poor weather inland, the pilot followed the coast around the south of the country, all the way to Bergen, where he landed just under four hours later. On the following day the crew flew north, arriving at Ramsund in Nordland after nine hours–including a stop to refuel and top up their oil in Brønnøysund. The aim was to map part of Norway from the air for the very first time. An area of around 100 square kilometres south of Harstad had not yet been surveyed in accordance with the latest standards, and had therefore been selected as a trial area. The previous year, land surveyors had triangulated the area, and marked a great number of points that could be seen from the air–one point per square kilometre.

  On the first day, conditions were perfect. Topographer and captain Thorolf Ween was responsible for taking the photographs. ‘All the equipment functioned perfectly and everything seemed to be going swimmingly–but suddenly, towards the end of our flight, I received a splash of oil to the face, and upon closer inspection noticed that the camera had been heavily sprayed with oil […].’ Ween cleaned the camera and the crew completed the mapping exercise before returning to Harstad, where they developed the film. ‘I was immediately aware that the entire shoot would have to be repeated,’ said Ween–the photographs were covered in flecks of oil, and the plane needed repairs. ‘Luckily–as a cartographer will say when he is forced to be inactive–the weather was terrible for these three days.’ On the fourth day the necessary repairs had been completed and the weather was fine once again, with just a few small clouds scattered around the mountains at 1,500 metres, and so the mapping was started at 10.20 a.m. and completed around 12.55 p.m. ‘Now the aerial mapping of the entire area is complete, and the results will be presented just like any other ordinary, original maps,’ said Ween.

  Unfortunately,
however, things didn’t quite work out this way–the images revealed that Norway’s landscape is far too mountainous to be mapped from the air using a single camera. On the ordinary photographs taken from the air, the highest areas were represented at a smaller scale than the lowest due to being closer to the camera’s lens. It was therefore necessary to use a stereoscopic surveying method, which works in the same way as a pair of eyes–two cameras placed beside each other take a photograph simultaneously; their slightly different perspectives make it easier to see the peaks and troughs in the landscape.

  When the new method was tested in the municipality of Sør-Varanger, the Geographical Survey of Norway chose to collaborate with Widerøe, rather than the Norwegian Navy, who would of course always have to prioritise military considerations over civil ones.

  NORTH AND SOUTH | In 1936, Arild Widerøe and Helge Skappel travelled to Sør-Varanger to photograph the area. ‘The Finnmark coast was cold and bleak on our arrival, with low rainclouds spread across the countryside. We should have cut across and flown straight up to Kirkenes, but instead were forced to take a route around the coast at the North Cape,’ said Skappel. They landed at Svanvik, where the Paatsjoki River forms a great lake, and waited for clear weather: ‘For those who love nature and to hike through forests, climb mountains and live the life of a free man, aerial mapping is easy work–especially in such virginal regions as Sør-Varanger.’

  When the clear weather arrived, Widerøe and Skappel followed a carefully pre-prepared flight plan and a special map detailing the lines along which they would fly: ‘We flew lines up and lines down, with the mapping equipment in operation. When our fuel ran out, or the weather clouded over, we went down, and waited for our next chance to take photographs.’