[Leica] Re: Photographing bridges

[lrzeitlin at optonline.net (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

On Jun 18, 2007, at 11:30 PM, Christopher Williams  
<leicachris@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>   During WWII, Germans living in New Orleans(including ambassadors)  
> were using their cameras(on fishing trips) to photograph the
> waterways in and around the mouth of the Mississippi River. Of  
> course now we know there was no way a U-Boat could get into the Miss
> River but they had excellent targets at the mouth of the river to  
> shoot at for 2 years before we actually did something about it.
>
> I've never had any problems here photographing bridges, but like  
> Jeff pointed out, the local gov does not like their refineries
> photographed.

True story:

My brother-in-law, a merchant seaman during WW2, told me that in 1942  
German U-boat crewmen used to row ashore and attend dances at Finn  
Hall in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, passing themselves off as Norwegian  
seamen. After gathering as much information as they could about  
shipping schedules and departures, they would row back to their  
submarines. During the early part of WW2, we were losing several  
ships a day to U-boats. Very often the submarine wasn't even  
submerged. My brother-in-law, who was torpedoed four times during the  
war, told me that on one of these sinkings, he recognized an officer  
on the submarine conning tower as one of the "Norwegian" seamen at  
the dance hall.

No swearing on a Bible here but I always found my brother-in-laws WW2  
stories to be very credible.

Larry Z