A correct attribution for the "Flash Effect" photo?

[alecsandros]

Hello,
I'll try to be as short as possible: an essential aspect is the fact that the picture NH69730 is part of a longer film. The film is longer and contains more photographic information . Who has the time and equipment can extract a good few hundreds 'stills' from the existing movie, one of which being the picture in analysis. All in all, the placement of the photo at the end of the battle of Denmark Strait (around 6:08) makes sense (for example, turret Anton not bearing on the enemy).

Also, Alberto should be un-blocked...…….
I wonder why you are forever challenging him without rules or order.

[wadinga]

Fellow Contributors,

AFAIK there has never been a suggestion that this is a frame from movie film. It is a single, possibly 35mm, possibly another format, still photo. There is movie film, but none so far shown shows this aspect of Bismarck.

Bill's analysis is very interesting. It would be helpful if Alecsandros would stick to the points raised about the image, and not speculate on timing.

I believe the sleeves on the muzzles are unlike anything else aboard PG and therefore indicate 10.5cm weapons.

All the best

wadinga

[alecsandros]

Excuse me, but I have to insist.
This type of analysis has already been done for another photo from BoDS:
http://www.hmshood.com/history/denmarks ... h69726.htm

Having more stills from the same time interval will help.

[Bill Jurens]

To Alexandros:

It is nice to see you posting again.

Mr. Virtuani should be able to return to the forum on or about 14 January. Provided he can control previous tendencies to post in an aggressive, disrespectful, and offensive manner, he should be able to continue thereafter. While he was certainly not the only one to post in this manner from time to time, in his case the style was more or less consistent, and was, frankly, driving other participants away.

As one of my correspondents wrote in a private message, the key to participation in forum like this is to work towards consensus, and -- if disagreement is unavoidable, to disagree without being disagreeable.

Without seeing the negatives themselves, it is difficult to determine the precise type of camera that might have been used to expose the frame we are talking about. The aspect ratio of the frame as usually printed suggests, but only suggests, a 35mm format, which in and of itself does not necessarily preclude the use of a 35mm motion picture camera, vs the employment of a hand-held item, but I think the latter more likely. One cannot, or at least I cannot, exclude the possibility of another format as well; roughly 70 mm is possible using what would have probably been a twin-lens reflex camera is possible, although this tends to give a square negative format (which, to be fair, may have been lost in printing.) A larger 'press-camera' format, typically known in England and the U.S. as 'four by five' (or 'five by four') is also possible, probably using a 150 mm focal length lens. It can get complicated. The distance of the camera from the muzzles can be approximating by drawing an elevation of the gun pointed toward the viewer and extending lines back from the apparent overlap point between the two gun tubes until they intersect a horizontal line at roughly eye level above the deck. If this extrapolation -- which is admittedly an approximation at best -- is correct, and one assumes a given focal length of lens, then the distances of other objects, given their relative size compared to the gun tubes, can be approximated geometrically.

Bill Jurens

[wadinga]

Fellow Contributors,

I too welcome the posting from Alecsandros, and hope he will contribute in the same excellent way he has done before.

It has been said:

This type of analysis has already been done for another photo

Respectfully this is irrelevant here, why cannot we concentrate on the contents of this particularly significant photograph?

Unfortunately instead of considering evidence in this photograph there is once again an attempt to relate it to its place in some speculative and unproven time scale.

Having more stills from the same time interval will help

We are surely aware certain additional photos are withheld from general consideration by some individuals for various reasons, but whilst they remain intransigent we must work with what we have. It would be interesting to have comments, as requested, on the following:

Re NH 69730, If accepting DS origin, do you agree/disagree

1/ Muzzle end sleeves indicate 4.1" barrels?
2/ Plane drawn through muzzle ends aligns directly towards Bismarck?
3/ Plane drawn through muzzles indicate photographer POV approx. 30 degrees "ahead" of muzzles?
4/ Barrels are approximately horizontal re horizon?
5/ If 3 and 4 accepted that this indicates photographer (because he has to be standing on deck), is looking at starboard side mount stowed fore and aft pointing forwards?

My reading of Bill's posting is that his photogrammetric analysis broadly agrees with these points. If the evidence in the photograph suggests Bismarck is very close (Too Bloody Close!) indeed, well that is what it shows.

If the photograph depicts Bismarck from about 30-40 degrees off her bow and from

mannschaftskuche on the Oberdeck looking more or less perpendicular to the centerline.

PG is sailing on a course well over 90 degrees from Bismarck's heading whilst Bismarck is still firing.

All the best

wadinga

[Byron Angel]

Bill,
Twin-lens reflex ....... might that perhaps have been a Hasselblad?

Byron

[Bill Jurens]

Hello Byron.

I suspect not. "Hassle-dads", as we used to call them, weren't really available until after World War II, and most -- if not all -- were single lens reflex designs of Swedish origin. There were quite a few good twin-lens reflexes available during the war, a good example being the German designed and manufactured Rolleiflex series. I used Mamiya twins because they had interchangeable lenses; a couple of them are now being used as bookends.

It's a shame not to run them anymore, but film is getting hard to find, and people who can still repair and time old leaf-type shutters are getting practically impossible to find, with replacement parts just not available at all.

As an aside, I'm astonished at the quality of cellphone cameras now. In what must be one of the ultimate ironies of the universe,their quality depends upon the employment of highly aspheric lens designs which are essentially duplicates of some of the first eyes ever developed, i.e. those mounted on trilobites. So, optically, we are more-or-less back where we started from...

But I ramble..

Bill Jurens

[alecsandros]

Hello everybody,
Again I'll try to be breef.
Personal discussions, and especially quarrels should be done on the private messaging zone. It robs time and energy for the other members to read pages afer pages of invectives. If heated debate is necessary, I return to a proposition that I've made in the past, i.e. create two teams and allocate a given set of rules and turns for posting, similar to a game of chess. Limit the maximum number of turns to 20 or 30, so as to not grow really really old while playing...

Ref the 5 questions - reposted by Wadinga - I do not know what to say about them, i.e. I do not have an opinion.

Best,

[Byron Angel]

Hello Byron.

I suspect not. "Hassle-dads", as we used to call them, weren't really available until after World War II, and most -- if not all -- were single lens reflex designs of Swedish origin. There were quite a few good twin-lens reflexes available during the war, a good example being the German designed and manufactured Rolleiflex series. I used Mamiya twins because they had interchangeable lenses; a couple of them are now being used as bookends.

It's a shame not to run them anymore, but film is getting hard to find, and people who can still repair and time old leaf-type shutters are getting practically impossible to find, with replacement parts just not available at all.

As an aside, I'm astonished at the quality of cellphone cameras now. In what must be one of the ultimate ironies of the universe,their quality depends upon the employment of highly aspheric lens designs which are essentially duplicates of some of the first eyes ever developed, i.e. those mounted on trilobites. So, optically, we are more-or-less back where we started from...

But I ramble..

Bill Jurens

Hi Bill,
Thanks for the pre-war German camera survey
I still have my dad's 1956 Miranda SLR. Had it re-built in the 90's (yup, shutter!), but it is more a family heirloom than camera today. It must be said, however, that I took a lot of lovely photos with it "back in the day". Still have the light meter too!

B

[wadinga]

Fellow Contributors,

Returning to the photo under consideration, hopefully someone else will be able to consider the five points. Just say what you see. Evaluation of this photo has previously obsessed over what turret Anton might be pointing at, but that need not be answered and may be unknowable.

Referring to the Navweaps site we see a photo of:

10.5 cm/65 Dop. L. C/31d mounting taken aboard German Heavy Cruiser Prinz Eugen while she was at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard (PNSY), Pennsylvania, USA.

at http://navweaps.com/Weapons/WNGER_41-65_skc33.php

This shows the distinctive muzzle sleeves on the barrel ends.

My interpretation based on the five points is we are clearly looking at Bismarck's starboard bow from PG's starboard beam.

All the best

wadinga

[Bill Jurens]

This would seem reasonable to me.

Bill Jurens.

[Herr Nilsson]

Re NH 69730, If accepting DS origin, do you agree/disagree

1/ Muzzle end sleeves indicate 4.1" barrels?
2/ Plane drawn through muzzle ends aligns directly towards Bismarck?
3/ Plane drawn through muzzles indicate photographer POV approx. 30 degrees "ahead" of muzzles?
4/ Barrels are approximately horizontal re horizon?
5/ If 3 and 4 accepted that this indicates photographer (because he has to be standing on deck), is looking at starboard side mount stowed fore and aft pointing forwards?

1) Yes (but it seems to me that the barrels are slightly retouched)
2) Yes
3) I tend to ~25°
4) Yes
5) No, the mount could be turned. In case of ~50° to the right from its stowing position and the photographer standing near the railing behind the crane it would suit courses of 270° for PG and 220° for BS.

[wadinga]

Fellow Contributors,

This is interesting comment, thank you Herr Nilsson, I hope other contributors will include their comments:

5) No, the mount could be turned. In case of ~50° to the right from its stowing position and the photographer standing near the railing behind the crane it would suit courses of 270° for PG and 220° for BS.5

If the photographer is 25 degrees ahead of the muzzle plane and the mount were to be trained 50 degrees aft of forward stowage, he is surely floating above the sea. We can imagine a triangle where one corner is the mount pivot, one side the barrel length from that point and the obtuse angle from the barrel orientation to the photographer is 90 +25 degrees ie 115 degrees. The last side of the triangle is from the pivot to the photographer. The training angle of the mount must be very small, and cannot increase much, before it is impossible to keep the photographer on the deck anymore.

It also seems to me you are considering the after mount

photographer standing near the railing behind the crane

not the forward mounts. We have established we may be talking of another photographer, Dungert, located further forward than the PK party. His yeoman status at action stations suggests he would be on the forward superstructure.

This all seems suitably collegiate, but the clock is running down to the return of the Age of Ragnarok.

All the best

wadinga

[HMSVF]

Fellow Contributors,

Returning to the photo under consideration, hopefully someone else will be able to consider the five points. Just say what you see. Evaluation of this photo has previously obsessed over what turret Anton might be pointing at, but that need not be answered and may be unknowable.

Referring to the Navweaps site we see a photo of:

10.5 cm/65 Dop. L. C/31d mounting taken aboard German Heavy Cruiser Prinz Eugen while she was at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard (PNSY), Pennsylvania, USA.

at http://navweaps.com/Weapons/WNGER_41-65_skc33.php

This shows the distinctive muzzle sleeves on the barrel ends.

My interpretation based on the five points is we are clearly looking at Bismarck's starboard bow from PG's starboard beam.

All the best

wadinga

Forgive me,I have been dipping in and out and am an ignoramus. I get the 'we are looking at Bismarcks starboard bow' but Im confused by 'PG's starboard beam". Is the photographer present on the starboard side of PG taking the picture across the deck looking out port side or that PG is sailing in the opposite direction?

When Ive looked at the picture I always thought that it showed Bismarcks starboard bow and the picture was taken from PG's port side with PG being slightly ahead and to starboard of Bismarck ?


Forgive my ignorance !



HMSVF

[Herr Nilsson]

If the photographer is 25 degrees ahead of the muzzle plane and the mount were to be trained 50 degrees aft of forward stowage, he is surely floating above the sea. We can imagine a triangle where one corner is the mount pivot, one side the barrel length from that point and the obtuse angle from the barrel orientation to the photographer is 90 +25 degrees ie 115 degrees. The last side of the triangle is from the pivot to the photographer. The training angle of the mount must be very small, and cannot increase much, before it is impossible to keep the photographer on the deck anymore.

My attempt at solving: