Interesting wwII fotos (FW 189)
 

What an outstanding find!

Yes, outstanding! I was struck by the sight of the infantry(?) columns moving across open country - not so much as a target, but as a very common sight at the edges of a battlefield or the approach to the frontlines - so sadly missing from the IL-2 environment. The majority of the German Army comprised foot-sloggers and horse-drawn vehicles I believe: what a pity it was beyond the game engine to include them.

Thanks Tbag

B

@brando: The large groups/tracks of people are all russian POWs.

Really enjoyed them, watched them about 10 hours ago but was too (extremely, excessively) fatigued to tell you that I really appreciated the link.

A tip for all non-German speakers: translate.google.com and enter the link in the first post. Then you can watch each image and get the description in an understandable language to go.

Isn't the Fw 189 'MikkOwl', err, 'Owl', fascinating looking? One of the very earliest images, image 3 perhaps, showing the pilot in his seat, taken from outside on the ground, was the most fascinating. It's like he's surrounded by transparent glass, sitting suspended on something in the air. One sees the linkage going to his rudder pedals in plain view.

Watching the crew's faces, I see these young guys. As young as myself or probably even younger (I am 29). I don't look at them and thin 'they must be old now', instead I see them as they appear in the photos, much like any of us here. I wonder who they were, how old they were, how they were like, what they thought about the war, the Nazi regime, Hitler, the USSR, Ukraine and that city they flew over and took those great photos of (a round square with amazing looking apartment looking buildings - it's a Ukranian city and the square can be found on wikipedia, the KGB headquarters was there before). And what they thought of their role in the war, and the Fw 189 'Wowl'. I also wonder what they experienced, accomplished, and what became of them. Death from being shot down, bombed, accident or captured then death is not an unlikely fate for those young guys. The photos were from when the war was still 'young', 1941 I think it said. With Luftwaffe guys not being able to go home after a tour (as far as I know) they must have kept on flying until either the war ended or they were casualties or captured.. or defected or deserted.

Nice one!

Is there any way to view full size images?

I liked this google translation: "Pilot: The pilot of the Focke Wulf 189, was added to the ground by the rundumverglaste cockpit of the Enlightenment."

The "cockpit of enlightenment" makes all the difference to recon missions!

I thought they were a bit short of flak support! ;)

B

Enlightenment, heheh, I noticed that too. It was used in places where they were talking about versions of the aircraft especially. Like this image shows single MGs for the gunner indicated that this enlightenment of the aircraft was the early one, as the later had twin MGs bla bla.

Regarding full size - don't think there are any higher resolution pics on the spiegel website. Cheap with bandwidth people.

Fascinating how damned angular the cockpit nose is, facetted windows in a pattern. It's technology limited certainly, but what is amusing is that it mirrors that of the development with computers and computer games - in the past we had blocky, angular 3d shapes as our computers could not handle more polygons to make rounded features, but now they do. And just the same with the Fw 189 contemporary planes :grin: Going from angular to rounded as technology permitted.

Yes sometimes languages are fun :)
The Enlightenment translated to german is "die Aufklärung". The corresponding verb "aufklären" means to clarify, to solve, to brighten, to enlighten, to scout etc. In the text at the photos they are writing about Fw189 being a "Aufklärer", which in german language can be a Enlightenment philosopher or someone/something doing reconnaisance.

Hello everyone!

I did not want at first to intervene because I did not see the point...but knowing that according to the comments the photos are rather small, I should say that these photos are well known and were shown June 1st 2009 on this original site:

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums...ulf-189-photos

There the photos are larger and there are 84 of them...not all them of Fw-189s, but all are interesting!

Beware of this site...you may spend long hours into it before you know it...

JVM