WHERE TO POST THIS? D-Day Landings in France

[robertlansdale]

I am editor of Photographic Canadiana (official journal of Photo Hist Soc of Canada). In our Vol 43-2 for Sept-Nov 2017 we had a story "D-Day Landings in France: by Canadian Cine Photographers. The story points out that the ONLY cine film coverage to survive of the first lands on D-Day were by Canadian cine photographers. The clips you see in newsreels etc were of Canadian troops leaving their LCA landing craft at Bernieres-sur-Mer. American coverage was destroyed when the boat returning to England was swamped. The story has been told over the years that the movies were NOT taken by a cameraman but by an automatic cine camera. A book by Dan Colin: War Through the lens: The Canadian Army Film and Photo Unit 1941-1945 in one chapter tells of the Canadians borrowing 15 automatic cine cameras from the American Army. These were mounted on the gunnels of landing craft. Research by military historian John Eckersly over the years found that film clips were from three different boats. My image analysis of longest video (images have been downloaded to this site) show differences in scene and boat content to prove that it is three different boats. All three cameras were positioned on the side boat gunnels where a cameraman could not be positioned. At the time cine cameramen were ordered to mount their cameras on a heavy tripod – not hand-held. Editor quickly chose films that did not have the "jitters" to the images.... so cameramen adopted the tripod to get more of their films accepted. In the case of the landings, the Canadian Photo Unit devised a leather neck brace to get steadier hand-held pictures and one cine photographer ( Sgt Bill Grant) has been given credit for the whole coverage to this day. But on D-Day the editors and censors would grab the steadiest film clips and rush into newsreels. Under the circumstance any hand-held cameras must have been quite unsteady. All film were later destroyed in a fire.... only the 16 mm newsreel survive. Love to send a pdf of the whole story to interested readers.

[Norma Desmond]

Perhaps Street and Documentary or Casual Conversations.

[Sandy Vongries]

Seems as if there should be a place for things like this, I agree with Fred, Casual Conversation with a link. In the past I tried to send someone a PDF and it wasn't a recognized file type. I am no computer star. Though there are plenty of issues on PN still in process, possibly something like Photo Heritage or Photo History could be considered.

[William Kahn]

Given the nature of the subject, I think it's far above Casual. I'd go with Documentary.

[robertlansdale]

I was drawn to this site when I googled for information on "cine cameras American Army WW2", Photo.net had a long theme (don't know how far back that was) mainly on still cameras and it did not provide the answers I wanted to continue my research for that elusive "automatic cine camera". Posted my query hoping someone might direct me or provide info. Thanks for help and a Merry Christmas.