Arizona republican., 1919-03-24
:: The Eyes of the Skies ::
By Major E. Alexander Powell. u. S. A.

By Major E. Alexander Powell, U S. A.
 II haS been said that the airplane is the eye of the army and it is equally true that the camera is the eye of the alrplane. Do you appreciate that, so highly has aerial photography been de- Veloped during the war, virtually noth- Ing can happen upon the surface of the earth that is not recorded by the aero cameras all-seeing eye?
 Did you know that photographs taken from a height of two miles have shown quite distinctly the wires of fleld telephones? That cables buried hall "a dozen feet in the ground show on the sensitized plates almost as plainly as trenches2 That the foot prints left ba single soldier crossing d cultivated field are detected by the piercing eye of the camera?
 Were you aware that when the United States entered the war 2S0,000 prints had been issued by the British ar service alone? Or that. during the offensive in the Argonne, the American photographic sestions made 100. 600 aero photographs in four days?
 As aerial photography was an en- tlreiy new military subject at the out break of the war in 1914. there were no precedents to act as guides nor was there any special apparatus in ex- 1 istence, Consequently, the entire art was developed and brought to it's pres | ent state of perfection by the allies un- l der the incentive of military necessity and atfer the war bad begun. As | trench warfare made aerial photo i graphy not only important, but vital | to the success of any military opera 1 tlons, the changes and improvements | m the apparatus employed came with l incredible rapidity, practices employed | one week Vecoming obsolete the next | At the beginning of the war it was pos slble to fly at low altitude and secure 1 reasonably satisfactory pictures witf | the ordinary hand cameras which were the only kind then available. But as anti-aicraft artillery was developed 1 the planes were forced to climb higher to keep out of their range and. owing | to the necessity for longer focus lenses special plates. and color filters to over come the haze existing between the ce- | mera and the earth photography al these high attitudes became increas ingiy difficult and complicated.
 The remarkable contributions of the 1 United States 10 war photography 1T the few months in which our observer! l were on the front are set forth il | Americas Nj Munitions 1917-1S, the re- 1 port of the rector of munitions, Ben edict Crowen In this volume th' | American people may read in detail the | amazing story of war activity on thi. | side of the ocean and thus come to un 1 derstand how the governments huge funds. raised by the sale of Libert, bonds and through taxation, were de voted to the purposes of victory.
 When the United States entered tn. war the British. French and Italan' were using plates exclusively and WI at first followed their lead, it not bein: until some months later that we turned to films. At this time the British wer' using 4X5 plates and cameras equipped with lenses of from to 12-inch focus Instead of making contact prints iron these negatives, enlargements 612X81! were made on glossy paper. it bein: claimed that this process gave greate
 control in printing. Whether the Brit
 ish system really had all the advan
 tages claimed for it is open to question but in any event we adopted it an,
 followed it through the first nin
 months of the war. The great master of photography in Rochester were b.
 no means content 10 let another natiol set the pace for the United State
 where photography was concerned
 however and in January. 1918, a con
 cern in that city completed very re
 markable aero camera. radically diff
 ferent from anything which had bee
 seen in Europe up to that time. whic'
 was promptly adopted by the war de