| A Glimpse Into The Past |
| A View Of My Home Town Brockton, MA From Above |
| A few years back while I was rummaging through some old photographs, I came across a set of oblique aerial photographs of my home town, Brockton, MA, that were taken some 55 years ago. As a teenager I was an amateur photographer and enjoyed shooting photographs and then processing and printing them in my make shift darkroom. When World War ll erupted, and having reached the age of 17 years, I enlisted in the US Marine Corps. With the knowledge that I had acquired in the field of photo- graphy as an amateur, I was sent to the Naval School of Photography at Pensacola, Florida and from there I was assigned to a Marine Corps Aerial Photographic Reconnassance Squadron which I served with until World WWll ended and I was discharged After returning home, I continued with my interest in photography. About the same time I met Bob Hanitsch and we became good friends. Bob had been a B-24 Liberator Bomber pilot during WWll. We both served in the Pacific Theater of War. Bob had flown 30 missions from New Guinea to Okinawa and I was assigned to a Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron based on Guam in the Marianas Islands. Bob continued with his interest in flying. He joined the Air Force Reserve and served several years with the rank of Captain. He was also employed as a flight instructor for the Brockton Airways, Brockton, Massachusetts. Nathan Trager was the owner/operator of the Brockton Airways. On a quiet day when there was very little flight activity at the Brockton Airport we decided that photographing the city from the air would be a worthwhile project. Once we were airborne we found that photographing the residential areas would not yield very good results because of the large concentration of trees scattered throughout the city's residential areas, so we decided to focus our effort instead on the main business district. |
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