Yes, I realised that, hence my post. And I am also only too aware of the numbers who died, as you say, in the care of the Allies. We were just not equipped to deal with the sheer numbers and no doubt that photo could have been duplicated in many other areas, as the Allies advanced.

True. I can’t really recall that i ever saw a picture like that, where you can see the scale of the problem. It’s very likely that the current estimates are very conservative.

I find the immediate post-war period extremely fascinating. The disarmament work, the millions of displaced people, millions of soldiers and almost no functional law. It has not been covered in many books, but Giles MacDonoghs ’After the Reich: From the Liberation of Vienna to the Berlin Airlift’ makes for interesting reading. It’s also published as ’After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation’.

How very British to design it with two hoods 😀

The cannonfighter looks fine, although cannons were unfortunatly absent from the actual Battle. The twin might have been something in the early 30’s, but during the war, there was only one use for a twin Merlin configuration – Mosquito!

The WWII material in IWM possession is part of our common heritage and should not be retained for commercial reasons – no matter what ends.

Technically we already own this material, so why should people be charged for viewing/using it?

The collection does not only contains British material, but also US and German WWII material, which they have no right to claim ownership over. Such material is per definition already in public domain.

Look across the Atlantic to see how public libraries/collections should treat their material– public access and public domain.

Dear Vin1,

Sorry your first post turned into a discussion, but please remembers that it’s not directed at you personally. The copyright discussion turns up on this forum from time to time; it’s something there are strong feelings about, because we all share a passion for historic aviation.

This forum have a large group of very knowledgeable members (not me, I’m just here to gawk at the anoraks) and they always share freely of the information they possess. Imagining it otherwise might seem odd, but it’s the natural extension of the current negative trend in personal copyright “enforcement”.

People here have spent years obtaining and processing information and in many cases have unique insight into certain things. This could be considered their personal information, just as an image could be considered a personal item. However, the information is always forthcoming and no question is ever asked about its use.

Many people in the historic aviation community feel likewise about imagery (there are also people who feel different, but I’m not among them and can’t speak for them). Owners of historic pictures should be considered merely custodians of the items, as they truly belong to history and our common aviation heritage. Also consider that very few actually holds the official copyright, possession is not the same as copyright ownership. If someone can use the image for anything, even commercially, there is no reason to withhold it from use, or demand specific copyright entitlement. These images, in their digital form, do not represent a value – unlike their period prints, which are collectables.

The US government automatically place any piece of work produced by its departments under public domain (unless otherwise classified). This means that every WWII image taken by a US serviceman is free for everyone to use. These include nearly every US image currently offered on Ebay – you are buying the print, not the image. Many of the images are even available for free online (in high quality), in the various libraries, including every NASA image and hundreds of images from the wonderful test-flight era of the 50’s and 60’s. Anyway, true public domain entitles anyone to use them, even to print them and sell them.

The official tendency, except for the Imperial War Museum (and please remember that IWM material from WWII is now also in public domain, as the Crown Copyright has expired), is to push these historic images online, so researchers have a decent chance of studying them, without traveling from one end of the world to the other. Currently many official collections are therefore being digitally processed and brought online for everyone’s pleasure. Personally I feel strongly about doing the same with private collections.

I hope you understand the feelings involved and don’t take the discussion to heart – deep down, we are all a happy bunch and always welcome new members.

During the First World War there were quite a few unofficial ceasefires or cases where soldiers arranged off-target artillery fire. Most of it is anecdotal, since the high command was not involved and would have taken serious issues such events. However, reading letters from the front it becomes clear that these informal armistices actually did happen.

Today such an event would be impossible. After the Second World War it was noted that few soldiers actually fired their weapon directly towards the enemy (it’s somewhat against human nature to kill a fellow man) and training was directed towards eliminating that problem. The military authorities are aware of the problem and are now also focused on producing “killers”, rather than just functional soldiers. Due to such new concepts in military training, modern warfare is far more deadly, when looking at the actions of individual soldiers.

I believe that military commands all over Europe took note of these informal armistices and between the two wars they likewise changed how soldiers were selected and trained (their basic approach to war), so it became more unlikely that soldiers would make such unofficial ceasefire arrangements. Although I have come across anecdotes from WWII, where each side is celebrating Christmas with song, I’m not aware of an actual ceasefire. However, what I’m aware off and what actually happened are naturally two very different things :p

About bloody time :p

Nothing short of amazing that not ONE of 36.000 Il-2 is airworthy.

Hi Tom,

Just a little”trick” to you and everyone else looking for something in particular.

http://www.wikipedia.com is a very good place to start your search. It has quite an extended selection of aircraft, but it also has links to external information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me-109#External_links and even footnotes and citations, that sometimes links to web pages (although often it refers to books).

Those places would normally have even more links (it’s not called the WEB for nothing).