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Old 01-19-2011, 09:42 AM
Leif Ohlsson's Avatar
Leif Ohlsson Leif Ohlsson is offline
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Further remarks

I ran out of time editing the previous post. Originally, I was mislead by the Bundesarchiv classifying these photos as depicting two events, and wrote a post based on that premise, while still critically analyzing the ordering of the photos and events.

My initial hypothesis based on this was that the two first photos depicted an emergency landing and the seemingly fatal crash & burn of a Po-2 in Ukraine, Summer 1941.

The second event, then, would have been the inspection of a smouldering Po-2 bounty aircraft in the Tschitomir-Dnjepr area, Spring 1942. All according to the caption of the last photo, which was the only one with that 1942 date and Dnjepr location.

But the aircraft in the last photo clearly is the same as the one in the three previous photos (note distinct camouflage, absence of wheel covers, and similar inclination of left aileron in photos allegedly belonging to events dated almost a year apart).

Therefore, I thought, the four last photos belonged together, depicting the Spring 1942 Dnjepr area event. And the first two, therefore, were the only ones depicting the Summer 1941 Ukraine event.

Having published the photos here in the forum it became very easy to view them in sequence. I then found that the landscape in at least photos 2-4, possibly even 5, was the same (note the distinct row of small trees, and the colour of the vegetation):

Polikarpov Po-2 Kartonowa Kolekcia 1:33-bundesarchiv-trees-2.jpg Tree-line in photo 2
Polikarpov Po-2 Kartonowa Kolekcia 1:33-bundesarchiv-trees-4.jpg Tree-line in photo 4
Polikarpov Po-2 Kartonowa Kolekcia 1:33-bundesarchiv-trees-5.jpg Tree-line in photo 5

It then follows 1) that what we have here is one, single event, and 2) that the aircraft seemingly burning to cinders in fact did not burn that much; what we see in the close-up photos is the smouldering of a not-so-serious fire. It also follows 3) that the last photo must be included in the same event (since it is the same aircraft), and that the dating of that single photo most likely is wrong.

A possible cause for this misdating is that the last photo probably is taken by a different photographer, who likely misdated his photo after the event (there can't have been that many occassions to look at developed photos on the Eastern Front), or perhaps someone else has done the dating by mistakenly grouping this photo with some others from the Dnjepr area in the archive of that particular unknown photographer.

It might be the case even, that we, in the last photo, can see the photograpfer of the first five photos! This is of cours an hypothesis, but an intriguing one. Have a look and see if you can spot the officer with a camera, standing at an angle consistent with taking the previous photo:

Polikarpov Po-2 Kartonowa Kolekcia 1:33-bundesarchive-6-169-0407.jpg Did you find him? Polikarpov Po-2 Kartonowa Kolekcia 1:33-bundesarchive-7-169-0407-photographer.jpg
Polikarpov Po-2 Kartonowa Kolekcia 1:33-bundesarchive-5-169-0112.jpg Did he in fact take this photo?

Another hypothesis is that the Po-2 in the photographs did not crash and burn, but simply landed, after engine failure, lack of fuel, or pilot being seriously wounded. The pilot then may have tried to set fire to his aircraft by hastily opening a fuel line or oil line, letting it run out on the ground. The resulting fire might have produced a lot of flames and smoke, but perhaps it didn't harm the aircraft as much as one would have thought seeing the fire from afar. There might not have been that much fuel left. Or, perhaps what he burned was maps, etc.?

I wonder what happened to that pilot. Or perhaps we need not wonder.

History comes alive in a special way in anonymous colour slides, don't you think?

Leif

Apologies for some sentences remaining muddled in the previous post. Hope this clarifies my speculations a bit.

Last edited by Leif Ohlsson; 01-19-2011 at 10:15 AM.
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