RAF Reconnaissance before Operation Neptune

[Wingman81]

Hi mfg.
Ive recently seen one of the most interesting tv shows about the invasion in Normandy. It was about the planning before the operations. The major plans of the "Atlantikwall" were smuggled to britain by a french resistance member. But it was not enough, they had to make photos of the beaches with Recce Spitfires in dangerous low level flights, additionally the asked everyone to send in Postcards from the years before which could depict the beaches. They said they used special technique in the recce but i cant remember at the moment. So they could later make 3-dimensional maps for the soldiers. Do you know some more about it?

merry Christmas,
Kilian

[mfg495]

Hi Wingman81,

With RAF photo recce, they would take the images with an overlap of 60% on each frame.
So each frame would have 60% of the frame before it and so on through the whole sortie. Then if you place two following frames together and then looked through a stereo viewer (see attached image) you would get a stereo (pseudo 3D) result.
From these stereo images, you can work out measurements and heights of objects, them they would produce scale models of the target areas. These would be used for planning of the attack or the raid.
I have see these models and they are of excellent detail.

I hope this answers your question, if it's not too clear I will try and find some diagrams and examples.

I have a picture of one of these models I will see if I can find it.

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year   

[Wingman81]

Thanks mate.

Yeah thats exactly it. I just forgot the name. Stereoscope. 
Would love to see a picture of it 

[mfg495]

Here are two shots of models, one of the King and Queen visiting the Model section during the war and the other taken from a book showing the detail that was put into these models.

[Wingman81]

Very interesting. I must have missed the last photos you posted until now