OCR Text |
Show AMERICA IN ACTION j VICTORY IS PHOTOGENIC Someone had hastily chalked in the word "photo" on the fuselage of a Lowry Field B-18. Spreading its immensity along the expanse of the runway, the big ship looked the part of the deadly bomber bomb-er it had once been, but to the airmen air-men it had "lost its teeth traded 'em for eyes" . . . which, meant that it no longer carried bombs, but was used exclusively as a photo trainer. A few of the students were more awed than anxious. One of them scuffed at an oil stain on the cement ce-ment with a G.I. sole. "Helluva lotta fuss for a couple of pictures," he chanced to remark. The prop wash from the revving cyclone engines whipped his words back to. a small leather-clad officer standing nearby. "Son," the officer said with a trace of Kentucky in his voice, "Remember "Re-member this . . . Guns win battles bat-tles pictures win wars." It was Col. Willard R. Shephard speaking and the colonel makes the few words he says count. As director di-rector of the Air Forces Photography Photogra-phy school at Lowry Field in mile-high mile-high Denver, and a veteran of many years of flying photography, he knows whereof he speaks. In this case he's dead-level right. The authorities that will always substantiate his assertion are of the coldest, grimmest, and most reliable relia-ble vintage known to this war's mankind man-kind namely the rubble of Cologne and Essen, the battered hulks of bomb-shattered Jap vessels at Coral Cor-al and Midway, and the crushed terrain ter-rain of what was once unoccupied France. Pictures win wars. No longer just incidental aid to combat intelligence, aerial photography photog-raphy ranks perhaps as one of the most important developments of modern warfare. The split-second click of an aerial shutter may be infinitely more important to victory than weeks of incessant bombing . . . "You can't hit 'em if you can't see em" is a grand old American phrase and it's a perfect description descrip-tion of the value of photography in today's struggle. In the large scale movements and concentrations of this war which consume millions of men and untold un-told equipment, the aerial camera is the eye of the command. Air shots which are carefully scaled and assembled into a complete picture of a sector known to the picture-takin' picture-takin' trade as mosaics, mete out objectives and concealments of the enemy command which the stereoscopes stereo-scopes of photo intelligence reveal with ease. Released by Western Newspaper Union. |