Approved for Release: 2013/06/25
Secret NOFORN
Chapter 1
1
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Searching for a System
THE NEED FOR HIGH-ALTITUDE RECONNAISSANCE
For centuries, soldiers in wartime have sought the highest ground or structure in order to get a better view of the enemy. At first it was tall trees, then church steeples and bell towers. By the time of the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, observers were using hot-air balloons to get up in the sky for a better view of the “other side of the hill.” With the advent of dry film, it became possible to carry cameras into the sky to record the disposition of enemy troops and emplacements. Indeed, photoreconnaissance proved so valuable during World War I that in 1938 Gen. Werner von Fritsch, Commander in Chief of the German Army, predicted: “The nation with the best aerial reconnaissance facilities will win the next war.”¹
By World War II, lenses, films, and cameras had undergone many improvements, as had the airplane, which could fly higher and faster than the primitive craft of World War I. Now it was possible to use photoreconnaissance to obtain information about potential targets before a bombing raid and to assess the effectiveness of the bombing afterward.
Peacetime applications of high-altitude photography at first included only photomapping and surveying for transcontinental highways and mineral and oil exploration. There was little thought given to using photography for peacetime espionage until after World War II, when the Iron Curtain rang down and cut off most forms of communication between the Soviet Bloc of nations and the rest of the world.
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¹ Roy M. Stanley II, *World War II Photo Intelligence* (New York: Scribners, 1981), p. 16.
Secret
Approved for Release: 2013/06/25