Someone on the WWI-L mailing list posted a link to a scanned book with the rather excellent title Photographs of H.M. Vessels & Auxiliaries and Other Objects Taken from the Air. This was printed in August 1918 for the Intelligence Department of the Admiralty as CB 848 and was very clearly marked secret, issued in numbered copies so that if it fell into the wrong hands the security breach could be traced. There is also the rather odd restriction that
This book is NEVER to be carried in any Aircraft heavier or lighter than air.
Presumably this again was to prevent the Germans from finding a soggy copy washing up on the shore after some damn fool had taken it up for a joyride to compare the photos with the real thing and ended up in the drink. Eh what? Anyway, I think we can presume that the defence of the realm no longer depends on the secrecy of this book, and so we can enjoy the pretty pictures.
Above are the battlecruisers (from left to right) Princess Royal, Renown, Repulse and Tiger. That looks like the Forth Bridge; beyond it can be seen the rest of the Grand Fleet.
Dreadnought, revolutionary in its day but no longer the pride of the fleet. Vantage points like this were why the air force lobby thought that battleships themselves were on the way out: it looks like it would be so easy to just lob a bomb down one of those funnels...
Two light cruisers, Birmingham and Southampton. Plus an airship doing some aerial reconnaissance of its own.
A Yarrow M class destroyer.
This is what a submarine looks like when it has been 'Painted so as to be difficult to detect'.
Aircraft carrier Furious, a modified battlecruiser. Note the dazzle paint scheme. There's an aeroplane parked on the deck, probably a Camel. Just before this book was printed the Furious and its Camels executed the first ever aircraft carrier strike.
A boom defence against submarines, or in other words a barrage.
What an exploding bomb looks like.
A (secret) dead whale.
Related: land views.
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Chris Williams
Result. I shall point this out to my father-out-law, who served on HMS Renown in 1945.
Jakob
The obvious question is - if this is meant to be a recognition handbook, wouldn't it be at its most useful in the air?
Brett Holman
Post authorIndeed! I don't think it was used for recognition as such. The choice of subjects isn't very comprehensive, and then there are those odd things like the exploding bomb and the dead whale, technically not part of HM forces. My guess is that it was intended for non-flying officers (in fact it is explicitly stated that it is not to be seen by anyone 'below the rank of commissioned officer') to show them what things look like from the air -- to broaden their imagination, let them visualise how the enemy would see their ships, or to help them understand the sorts of things their (or by now, the RAF's) airmen would be seeing. But it is a bit of a puzzle.
JF Ptak
Very interesting--I don't recall seeing anything like this before that wasn't strictly for recognition.
Neil Datson
Recognition handbooks would presumably have used silhouette type images. By the time an aeroplane was close enough to take pictures like these they would - had the ships been enemy vessels and perhaps even if they hadn't - almost certainly have been under fire. Obviously there was a tendency to stamp secret on anything, just to be on the safe side. Perhaps they were jealous about the quality of their aerial photography.
A pedant's note. Surely the 'first ever carrier strike' was carried out by the seaplane carriers Empress, Engadine and Riviera on Christmas Day 1914? The Furious carried out the first aircraft carrier strike.
Brett Holman
Post authorNeil:
A very fair point.