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Originally Posted by rubenandthejets
I know I'll get another mission when I call in, my point is the whole set up of photo recon missions is flawed. Why take pics of ships that will leave port soon, aren't even warships and that I usually sink?
If it was a recce and I either radio in the ship info like a contact report or take photos of the installations / bombing raid damage it would make sense. I might be missing something but I just don't get the reasoning behind it. :hmm: Any help on the rationale of photo recon of merchant ships in enemy harbours would be appreciated.
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In the game, your always asked to recon/photo some harbor.
And likewise, in order to complete a mission in the game, it involved locking onto a ship and taking a picture.
However, in real life, that was not the case. Oftentimes, the US did not have sufficent intelligence on defensive strengths, AA guns, traffic in and out of a harbor, types of ships, terrain, warehouses, docks, dry docks, etc. And that is where the sub came in.
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Reconnaissance (also scouting) is a military and medical term denoting exploration conducted to gain information. Militarily, its shorthand Australian, Canadian, and British form is recce , its American U.S.A. and U.S.M.C. usage form is recon . The associated, linguistic forms are the verb reconnoitre in British spelling, and reconnoiter in American spelling; informally, recce and recon are used as a verb.
Militarily, reconnaissance is the active seeking to determine a foe's intentions by collecting and gathering information about an enemy's composition and capabilities along with pertinent environmental conditions, via direct observation, usually by scouts or military intelligence soldiers especially trained in critical surveillance.
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http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Reconnaissance
Before a bombing raid was planned, reconnaissance was needed to determine what and how many AA positions there were, and the strangth and location of enemy barracks.
This also helped to reduce civilian casualites.
We don't purposely make war against civilians, but unfortunately some will perish. (That is why it is call "war") And recon helps to reduce this number.
Unfortunately, just because you take a picture of a ship, then sink it, does not necessarily mean the recon work was for naught.
Remember "The Karate Kid"?
Wax the car, right hand, left circle, left hand, right circle".
"Wax on, wax off."
We may not, and oftentimes more than not, we don't know the purpose behind what we are ordered to do, but they, (higher ups) don't answer to us, we answer to them.
I'm sure it sounded stupid when they ordered the 509th Composite Bomb Group to go practice bombing over Tinian when they had already flown 12 combat bombing missions.
(A little FYI: the 509th Composite Bomb Group was the group the Enola Gay belonged to)