Nov 192010
The Bbc has released some footage taken from an airship flying low and fast over the French countryside just after The War To End All Wars (Part 1). Wow. They made a bit of a mess.
5 Responses to “Aerial footage from WWI”
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cool and interesting.
>They made a bit of a mess.
a bit ?
even today they dig up death soldiers, zillion used shells, duds poison gas shells,
live ammunition depos, forgotten very big booby traps
In Battle of verdun 1916 the Germans firerd 50 MILLION heavy shells on French Fort of Verdun !
by the way, the footage show area of Belgium town Ypern or wat was left of it after 4 year bloody war
Somewhere, in one of my books, I have before-and-after photos of this little French town that sat at a crossroads in WWI.
In the “after” photo you can’t even see the roads, and there isn’t the slightest sign of the town at all, not even debris of any sort. Just artillery pummeled dirt where it used to be.
You can still make out the “Tallboy” bomb craters at the ruins of the German V-3 super-cannon complex near Mimoyecques, France in the Google Earth photos of the area.
here good example
the Fort Douaumontfort of befor battel
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/Douaumontfort.jpg/800px-Douaumontfort.jpg
at end of year 1916
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Fort_Douaumont_Ende_1916_rotated_North_at_top.jpg/646px-Fort_Douaumont_Ende_1916_rotated_North_at_top.jpg
each tinier spot are craters from Shells !
Of course they made a mess. Pound the same narrow stretch of countryside for four years with millions of tons of HE and it won’t look pretty. One shouldn’t assume though, that devestation was as widespread as in WWII.