![]() Of course movements at night would go undetected, but with his analysis and the erratic shadows of the trees it was clear that lengths of road had been covered with painted nets to conceal day time activity. He was told that no traffic had ever been observed on the road from St Pierre Capelle to Nieuport despite it being the only road to the front from Bruges. The nets should not just be pegged around the base of the object, they should slope gently away. When draping nets over an object it was important to soften the angles. What he saw was that the shadows were wrong, that fields looked odd for the time of year, and that the landscape had inconsistencies and imperfections as if it was an imperfectly executed sketch.Īs an artist, he understood how colour and shade can detach a feature in a flat painting from its background. But what he did with his new bright light was to examine in minute detail the photographs he had been given. He had just bought a magic lantern projector, but found it disappointing. Solomon came into possession of some photographs of St Pierre Capelle and Sparappehoek taken by his cousin from a kite balloon. ![]() Observers and even pigeons were sent aloft with cameras. Solomon remarks that the ‘extraordinary capacity’ of the camera was not appreciated until a camera was salvaged from a wrecked German plane and the film was developed. ![]() But photography also played a part in World War 1. For example, it gave vital information about the V1 and V2 secret weapons. In World War 2 photographic intelligence was a decisive asset available to the Allies, of much the same importance as Bletchley Park. He wanted to warn the nation before it was surprised by this technique in the next war. That is, they had successfully concealed a massive build-up of men and material. The Germans, he argued practiced strategic deception. As Solomon saw it, his own successes in concealing a gun here or an observation post there were merely tacticaldeceptions, designed to protect individual targets from being shelled. In 1918 he came to view his own puny efforts in the context of, he believed, a colossal German triumph of deception.
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