Photographs!

This is coolbert:

SECRET/RELEASE TO GERMANY ONLY!

One more tidbit from the book by John McPhee: "Curve of Binding Energy".

Ted Taylor making a visit to the Pentagon, being shown photographs, images of Soviet industry and other assorted infrastructure. Ted able to determine from the images the kilo-tons of explosive force from an atomic warhead as needed to bring the edifice or complex down. Information obtained from the images of great value  to those at the Pentagon involved in nuclear planning - - the SIOP! [single-integrated-operational-plan]

"In the fall of 1950 Ted made a long visit with two others to Washington as a kind of emissary to the Pentagon - - to brief and be briefed . . . for six weeks  . . . Ted looked through stereoscopic glasses at three-dimensional photographs of bits and pieces of the Soviet infrastructure - - a refinery here, an assembly plant there. Pentagon target analysts drew circles with compasses around Soviet military bases, industries, cities. The pictures had been made by the Germans during the Second World War. Taylors' role was to estimate how many kilotons would be required to remove something from a picture."

And WHERE EXACTLY DID THESE PHOTOGRAPHS COME FROM??

As contained in a document outlining and describing the initial contacts between German WW2 intelligence and the American military we find an interesting extract originally classified at the time: SECRET/RELEASE TO GERMANY ONLY! The Holters group Luftwaffe Eastern Front intelligence having surrendered intact at wars end with their impedimenta evidently INCLUDING a large collection or reconnaissance photographs of great interest to American intelligence.

"we had already through the Holters documents and gained a vast fund of information of the Soviet Air Forces together with Aerial Photographs covering most of the Russian Industrial complex within the range of German reconnaissance planes beyond the lines of  farthest German advance into Russia."

Holters group knowing full well that their info, their data on the Soviet Air Force and those industrial facilities in the Soviet Union for which the Americans had NO knowledge of being very valuable. The type of material that could be traded for advantage.

Originally I had thought these images would have been provided courtesy of the Gehlen Organization but rather this was the Eastern Front air intelligence alone that provided the photographs. Holters, Gehlen, von Braun and others like them saw their future with the western allies, weighed their options in a very cool  and astute manner - - their calculations proving to be quite correct!

coolbert.