det@hawkmoon.MN.ORG (Derek E. Terveer) (04/17/91)
From: det@hawkmoon.MN.ORG (Derek E. Terveer) [Bill, er, ah, i mean Carl, I'm not sure if this should go to sci.military or soc.history...] I have noticed that German gun camera footage of WWII air combat seems to be pretty uniformly of poorer quality than US gun camera footage. (It is a lot more grainy and darker for starters) Has anyone else noticed this and does anyone know the reason for this? I would have thought that the germans, as meticulous as they are, would have had better film. Or was the shortage of "strategic" materials (like silver?) responsible for the lower quality? Or was it a deliberate policy on the part of the air force equivalent of OKH (or whatever)? Perhaps they didn't think it was worth it? Did all that gun camera footage shot in WWII significantly affect tactics and/or weapons development? Moving on to somewhat more modern times, I assume that we still have, as a rule, gun cameras on our (US) fighters. What kind of film is used and why? How much film (physical length as well as time duration) is loaded? Is the camera only on when the gun is actually firing or is there also some trailer that is shot as well, i.e., for a few seconds after the gun has stopped firing to possibly see the resulting damage, if any? Enough questions for now, thanks. derek
shafer@skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer) (04/19/91)
From: Mary Shafer <shafer@skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov> Derek E. Terveer (det@hawkmoon.MN.ORG) writes: > Moving on to somewhat more modern times, I assume that we still have, as > a rule, gun cameras on our (US) fighters. No, there are no more gun cameras in fighters. > What kind of film is used and > why? How much film (physical length as well as time duration) is loaded? No film, video tape. The standard 2/4/6 hr VHS tapes that you use at home. The HUD camera is also recorded onto this kind of tape. The only difference is that it's black and white. It also tends to be a little tacky, with the frame sync bit kind of goofy. There's also a herringbone pattern that sometimes appears. One corroberation of this is how quickly they had the gun/missile/weapon camera film to show at the briefings. It takes a while to convert from film to video and this lag would have showed up. It also looked like video and I've watched a certain amount of this stuff. -- Mary Shafer shafer@skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov ames!skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov!shafer NASA Ames Dryden Flight Research Facility, Edwards, CA Of course I don't speak for NASA "A MiG at your six is better than no MiG at all"--Unknown US fighter pilot