Originally posted by Arbitrageur
I ended my analysis with the quote from Jeff because he said it could be either a solid object, or just smoke, and we'll probably never know, and I think he's right.
Just for the record, I agree that it would be impossible to completely reproduce the initial event, especially after so much time has passed, and much of the equipment used in the initial event has been long since out of service.
I am drafting a letter, however, to the city of Los Angeles, and to the city of Long Beach. With any luck, one of these Februarys, we'll get a stronger recreation of the initial event. Of course, there is no way to convince them to open fire over the city, however out over the port at Long Beach could be a conceivable location (where the AA Gunners would test fire).
There is still an infrastructure for gun platforms at many of the original AA Battery posts. One of these is documented in last year's reenactment, that I posted earlier in the thread.
Originally posted by Arbitrageur
As for Dr. Macabee's study, I have to say I personally find the analysis done by Lazyguy to be much more persuasive, so if I have to pick one, I'd choose Lazyguys as being closer to being correct.
That interpretation might well be the case. Lazyguy certainly did put a lot of study into that analysis.
The reason I cite Dr. Macabee's study
is twofold; 1) Bruce has a reputation amongst scientists and photo analysts. He's one of the best in the business, and unlike myself he's willing to do his debating in the public arena, with his name attached
Not that that makes him superman, but those do equal points in my book When Stanton
Friedman listens to someone, I have a tendency to listen as well 2) Bruce's study independently came to many of the same conclusions drawn in my own research. Specifically the part about the terminator point on the searchlights, (which is a point many studies on this photo fail to address entirely). I favor studying the searchlight beams for several reasons, however the primary reason is that good data exists on what those specific searchlights were capable of. Also, I had the opportunity to personally document these actual searchlights in action at the most recent reenactment. I was in a position to test them first hand, and acquire new data.
Additionally, optics, and the propagation of light are very well studied fields, allowing for cross-comparison against known science... Originally posted by Arbitrageur
As for your analysis, yes it could be a solid object blocking the searchlights. But one "flaw" I saw in your logic in ruling out smoke is that you produced a picture of smoke that didn't block the searchlight and concluded that "therefore smoke doesn't block searchlights" and therefore it must be solid.
I can see how you may have come to this conclusion. I must admit that I looked at the follow-up tests, 'pictures of smoke not blocking the searchlights' as merely extended tests (supporting evidence) that smoke (until/unless it reaches a certain density) does not generally block a beam of light.
The initial conclusion came to me when examining the original LA Times image in detail, I'll explain more on this in a minute...
Originally posted by Arbitrageur
What you really proved is that in that one photo, the smoke wasn't dense enough to block the light. I think if they fired enough shells all in the same spot, it's conceivable the smoke could get dense enough to block the light. But as I already said, it could be either a solid object, or smoke, I happen to think the smoke and or clouds seems a little more likely but am not 100% convinced it was just smoke.
Absolutely, and that was Jeff's point as well, factoring in the cloud cover that may also have existed on that evening.
Having posted your explanation in full now, I'd like to direct your attention once again to the original LA Times photo (I'll use the one I've marked up, since I have it handy...)
There are two things of note in this image, as pertains to smoke and shell clouds (flak):
1) Smoke exists below the point in the photo where the searchlights merge. In fact, a LOT of smoke/fog exists below this point, and not a whole lot of smoke/fog exists ABOVE the merge point.
-From this fact, we can surmise that each searchlight is necessarily traveling through this smoke/fog, to arrive at the merge point.
-We note that the searchlight pictured on the far left of the image, and the one immediately next to it, travel directly through some of the thickest smoke pictured.
-The majority of the 'searchlight traveling through smoke' time happens before the light beams arrive at the merge point.
2) We can denote individual explosions of AA Shells in the image. These are the small circles/ovals of light we see in the image.
-From this we can deduce (knowing the blast radius of the flak shell was approximately 5 feet) some general sense of proportion and size.
-We can also find instances where several shell bursts appear (from the photographer's perspective) to overlap each other.
-We can note here that non of this activity seems to prevent any of the searchlights from reaching their natural terminator points.
What we DO see in this image, is that each searchlight does have a terminator point (outlined in Green in the image). We can also note each searchlight's point of maximum brightness (marked in red in the image).
Knowing the approximate locations of the AA Batteries (see earlier in the thread where NIKE sites and AA Batteries are plotted on a google map of the area) we can ascertain the expected range of these searchlights.
In my research to date, everything in the image seems to line up, with all searchlights naturally reaching their individual terminator points, with the stark exception of searchlights labeled #1 and #9.
I hope that better explains my conclusions and analysis. Thoughts? Comments? I'd love to hear your take on these points!
It took a lot of characters to type all that, Arby
I'll address the rest of your post in my next response -WFA
[edit on 24-8-2009 by WitnessFromAfar]
[edit on 24-8-2009 by WitnessFromAfar]
