Fig. 197.—An aviation field under construction; later stage.
News events will soon call for an aerial photographic service. Already we are seeing newspapers and magazines featuring aerial photographs of the entry into conquered cities and the parades of returning fleets. Accidents, fires, floods and wrecks, of either local or national interest, can best be represented by this newest form of photography.
Fig. 198.—The crater of Vesuvius.
Photograph by Royal Italian Air Service.
The photographing of wrecks, fires and floods suggests the importance of aerial views to insurance underwriters, who require the most minute information on the characteristics of buildings in every neighborhood, and on the extent and nature of damage done. Marine insurance companies might with profit use the airplane camera to help estimate the chances of salvage of a stranded ship or a vessel foundered in shallow waters (Fig. [181]).
Fig. 199.—Waves set up by a ship—of interest to the naval architect.
Numerous scientific uses for aerial views seem likely. Prominent among these is their use in geology, for the study of the various forms of earth sculpture. Pictures from the air of extinct volcanoes will give information as to their configuration that would otherwise require months of painstaking survey to obtain. Aerial photographs of active volcanoes (Fig. [198]), showing the results of a succession of outbursts—one obliterating the other—would prove of the greatest value, especially when studied in conjunction with other scientific data, the whole making a record unobtainable by any other means.
In earthquake regions—notably Southern Italy and Japan—the changing coast lines, shallows and safe harbors, could be promptly ascertained after the subsidence of each fresh shock, with a consequent keeping open of trade routes and often the saving of life. River courses, glacier formations, cañons, and all the larger natural formations which man usually sees only in minute sections, and which he must build up in his mind's eye or by models, are today quickly and accurately recorded by the camera in the air. Such formations as coral reefs, whose configurations can now be accurately learned only by laborious surveys of a limited number, could be studied in quantity and with heretofore unknown satisfaction as the result of a single expedition with a ship-carrying seaplane and aerial camera.
Another scientific field—probably one of many similar ones—lies in the study of the waves set up by ships (Fig. [199]). These are of extreme importance in the realm of naval architecture, but before the day of the airplane could never be easily studied in full scale.