WHere is this smoke coming from

[B-17engineer]

DO you think the smoke is from the aircraft or a train? The B-26 is flying pretty low

 

[Thorlifter]

Looks to me to be coming from the engine. That plane isn't low, it looks to be on the ground and stopped on the tracks.

At least to me eyes.

 

[B-17engineer]

See, that's what i thought too.........ACtually there is a train underneath it, look just behind the cockpit there train cars..........the B-26 is still flying.........

 

[timshatz]

There seems to be something screwy with that picture. At first glance, it appears the smoke is coming from the train under the airplane. However, the shadows aren't right. The shadow from the smoke is almost straight down while the shadow from the plane looks to be off at a diagonal from the plane. In short, the angles appear to put the sun in two different places.

Optical illusion?

 

[B-17engineer]

I was thinking there was something wierd with the picture, there not actually its an actual photo by a b-26 slightly above, the smoke is a train below, the B-26 does look a quiet odd.....

 

[k9kiwi]

Angle of the dangle that one.

Most telegraph poles are 22 feet high, have a look at the ones beside the track.

I would put the plane at around 180 200 feet at least especially when comparing the plane size to the trains rolling stock.

 

[Thorlifter]

Yeah, your probably right. Does look weird though.

 

[evangilder]

Angle and lens compression make it look closer to the ground than it actually is. Lens compression causes things to appear closer together than they appear because of the 2 dimensional image.

 

[orion549]

The "plane's shadow" (you think) you see isn't actually the plane's shadow at all. It's from the locomotive or possibly a large passenger car. The other cars are just lower, and it's either early morning or late day. If you look at the pole in the lower right, it's shadow stretches across the brush, one set of tracks, and then touches a second set spaced well away.

In fact, that shadow is what makes the whole illusion that the plane's on the ground, because it is kinda in the shape of the nose of the plane due to the way the terrain has bent it. If you look, however, it has some very sharp angles to it that the plane would not have if it were on the ground.

The other half of the illusion is also due to the compression as mentioned above.

 

[Udet]

Its a fake, some photoshop lousy job...i do not think train cars would look as tiny as they do on this shot if compared with the size of a B-26; given the shadow projection shown there it is easy to determine that craft would be flying almost at tree level.

Let´s go further, would you suggest a sole engine of the B-26 would be larger than a train car?

Or if not a fake, then the B-26 shadow projection is quite incorret -and the work of a lousy photoshop user-.

 

[evangilder]

The shadow is not from the airplane, but something else on the ground, perhaps a depot building or something like that. The shadows from an airplane at a higher altitude would be out of the frame in the shot. There is a distinct point in the shadow that could ot be from the aircraft. The lens compression makes the airplane appear lower than it really is. The telegraph poles alone look small, indicating that the airplane was considerably higher. It's not a photoshop job, it's a trick of light and compression, that's all. Trust me, I do know a thing or two about photography...

 

[Udet]

Well, the shadow projection resembles nothing else but the shape of the frontal/nose section of the plane. A noteworthy different element would be the clearly pointy shape of the shadow, a type of shape the B-26 nose did not not have.

It is a bit confusing yes. Take a look at the shadow projection of 2 trees and it is consistent with the direction of the shadow intriguing us here.

Provided such shadow did in fact belong to some type of structure, then we should ask what type of structure would be so high to project such shadow; compare the height of that shadow with the shadows of the train cars. I have seen lots of photos of railways used by the Germans to transport troops and war materiel to the fronts, and have never detected any structure or train station facility that would be that high.

Now, if there was any structure to which the shadow belonged, then such structure does not appear on the photo because the aircraft is concealing it.

If there was any structure there then the shadow projection should follow the same direction of the shadows projected by the train cars, which is clearly not the case here.

And finally do you think there could have been any structure there obstructing the railways? The railway section shown does not appear to be any station, or loading/unloading point for that matter.

 

[evangilder]

That shadow is CLEARLY not produced by the nose of the airplane. If that were, then where are the shadows produced by the wings? It has to be something else in the picture. The shadows are consistent throughout. Look at the shadows from the telegraph poles and other objects. Once again, the shadow of the airplane would clearly be out of the frame of this picture.

It looks like the shadow from a normal peaked roof. What the structure is is obviously obscured by the airplane flying at an altitude considerably higher than the lens compression makes it appear.

 

[orion549]

If you had read my post, I explain what is making the "nose shadow" and it's the engine of the train. Those cars are half boxes, in otherwords the sides are 4-5 feet tall and then covered with tarps. So, Judging by the shadows, the "nose shadow" is 5-6 feet above the tops of the cars, which would be perfect height for a locomotive. Give me a bit and I'll save the pic and photoshop some lines into the shadows to illustrate my point.

 

[orion549]

I've edited the pic to show a few things. First, I've outlined the plane itself in red to break it visually from the rest of the picture. Second, I've outlined the ground shadows in yellow. These are of 2 telegraph poles, a tree and the train, with the piece coming out that we're all confusing as the shadow from the nose of the plane as possibly a shadow of the train. Second, I've outlined the smoke and what is or may be the shadow of the smoke. Some is obvious, some of it (down near the train) may not be the smoke, but I included it because it could be, based on what we can see. Hope this clears everything up for everybody.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

It does not have to be. The engines will look larger depending on the alttitude of the aircraft over the train and the distance the picture taker was from the aircraft.

 

[Heinz]

as the others have stated its in the air. Give away is the tracks for my percepion of the pic. Assuming its in England the standard gauge of railway track is 4 foot 8 inch and if its on the ground they look like narrow gauge which of course is incorrect.

 

[Soren]

I don't believe the picture is a fake. The smoke is clearly from the train, that was clear to me from the very moment I saw the pic. Had the smoke come from the engine it would've been turbulent and wouldn't spread.

Large shadow on the ground is likely from a tower covered by the a/c.

 

[B-17engineer]

I know it makes you think it real but when u take a second look something just doesn't seem right wether its the shadow or something it just looks a bit odd

 

[orion549]

It definitely looks odd, but cameras, especially the cameras and film from the '40s and earlier, were not as reliable for quality of picture as we would expect now. Things improved quite a bit after the war and in the '50s, but during wartime the film wasn't very good. The lenses at the time created horrible compression, the chemicals on the film weren't always homogeneous, so you'd get spots of crispness and spots of dullness and low or high contrast that shouldn't have been. I would trust it's a real photo, just not very well taken and with inferior equipment.