Ronald Lampitt - 'geographer'

Back in 2020, Brendan Conway responded to a post on this blog which mentioned the wartime work of quite a few former Presidents, often in aerial photography interpretation, although this is not an area that has been researched in any detail. 

It finished with a mention for the artist and illustrator Ronald Lampitt.

It's also known that Ronald Lampitt, much admired by geographers and certainly one of my favourite artists, worked in this area of intelligence. His 'geographical eye' and recurring tendency to view almost everything he illustrated from above seems likely to have been strongly influenced by his wartime work, but perhaps also by working with geographers? 

I'd never been able to find out much about his role during the war until recently when I stumbled across reference to his work by the scientific military intelligence expert RV Jones in his book 'Most Secret War'. It seems that he was very close to the V-weapon investigations as well, so there would be a possibility that he worked with Linton at some point. I summarised the findings in this thread:

https://twitter.com/mildthing99/status/1256611375411073024

Lampitt was recruited by Albert Hugh Smith, who was clearly very close to RV Jones. He later went on to become Professor of English at UCL and acclaimed scholar of Scandinavian Studies and English placenames, so he clearly had geographical interests. Perhaps he had links with Bill Mead at UCL who was also a Scandinavian expert?

There are plenty of examples of Lampitt's illustrations on the Ladyburd Fly Away Home website and social media feeds.

https://ladybirdflyawayhome.com/ronald-lampitt/

During the war he worked in Intelligence and although (perhaps inevitably) the nature of this work is unknown, it is possible that his wartime work helped develop his exceptional topographical accuracy and the ability to animate technical drawings into something visually rich and appealing.

The blog explores the wartime careers of quite a few post-war GA Presidents.

Mike Dempsey's blog post also shares his love of Lampitt and his work.

I can see that there is a potential book in unpicking the contributions made by several post-war Presidents, including Michael Wise, who was also President of the RGS, and an important post-war Geographer that many people will not be familar with.

Illustrations: Ronald Lampitt

G H Dury, David Linton and the CIU

When I took my'A' level Geography back in 1980-1982 - doesn't seem possible but it's true - I was asked to buy a Penguin copy of 'The Face of the Earth' by G H Dury. It was actually the same edition as the one shown here on the right.

George Harry Dury's name has cropped up in association with several GA Presidents.

Dury was a hydrologist, interested in rivers. and more widely in geomorphology. He was born in Northants, and studied at the University of London. He taught geography at Birkbeck College. He developed models which extended Bradshaw's Model for rivers.

Like David Leslie Linton, he was involved in air photography interpretation during the war - see Brendan Conway's excellent post on RAF Medmenham for more details on this. Also Balchin's report on wartime geographers features Medmenham. The Central Interpretation Unit (CIU) also included Professor Frank Debenham for example.

Thanks to Brendan Conway for some excellent additional research here as well on G H Dury's work in wartime. Here's what Brendan sent me a few months ago when I mentioned David Linton's wartime work.

One thing about the David Linton profile I found particularly interesting was his WWII work in photographic interpretation, especially in identifying the underground V-weapon factory in northern France (now La Coupole https://www.lacoupole-france.co.uk/history-centre.html).

It reminded me of something that I've noticed cropping up a few times - the role of geographers in WWII intelligence in places such as RAF Medmenham. Linton is one of several who played key roles in intelligence in a similar way to GIS experts in the Bellingcat organisation now.

Other geographers involved in similar WWII activity included H Clifford Darby and Kenneth Mason in Naval Intelligence (https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/humanities-scholars-who-worked-military-intelligence-second-world-war) and G H Dury (George Harry Dury) in photographic interpretation (RAF Medmenham) (https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.0020-2754.1997.00398.x).

There's a good book about such work, including interesting references to RAF Medmenham by Jeremy Harwood called 'World War II from Above'. Harwood wrote an article about it 'Spies in the Skies: How Aerial Surveillance Tipped the Balance of WWII'. Here are some quotes indicating links with geographical expertise and how it was used:

'The staff—mostly an eclectic mix of boffins and academics with quite a few women among them—comprised some of the best brains in the country...Glyn Daniel, the first Cambridge archaeologist to be recruited to the Medmenham operation, described his new colleagues as "an ill-assembled collection of dons, artists, ballet designers, newspaper editors, and writers'.

'...the students were introduced to stereoscopic viewing. They were taught how to handle a stereoscopic viewing frame—this was universally referred to simply as a "Stereo." The two photographic prints that fitted into it were termed a "Stereo Pair." '

​Would Linton have worked with Constance Babington Smith?

'Constance Babington Smith was one of them. As well as being the photographic interpreter who first spotted a V1 Flying Bomb on its way for testing, she was the first to spot the Messerschmitt Me 163 rocket fighter, the Heinkel He 28, the world's first jet fighter, and the revolutionary Messerschmitt Me 262, the twin-engine jet fighter that, fortunately for British and American airmen, Hitler insisted be redesigned to be deployed as a fighter-bomber. She and her team detected other top-secret German aircraft prototypes into the bargain'.

Painstaking interpretation would culminate in the meticulous creation of 3D landscape models used to prepare for bombing raids and battles. There's an interesting reference to the challenging geographical learning required by aircrews:

'By the time the war ended, Medmenham's model makers had churned out more than 1,400 models. Some, like the models of the Möhne, Eder, and Sorpedams used to brief the Dam Busters prior to their famous 1943 air attack, were extremely elaborate. Such was the reliance Bomber Command placed on them that, according to Paul Brickhill, author of The Dam Busters, the aircrews taking part in the attack were instructed to "look at these until your eyes stick out and you've got every detail photographed on your mind." '

It's also known that Ronald Lampitt, much admired by geographers and certainly one of my favourite artists, worked in this area of intelligence. His 'geographical eye' and recurring tendency to view almost everything he illustrated from above seems likely to have been strongly influenced by his wartime work, but perhaps also by working with geographers? I'd never been able to find out much about his role during the war until last week when I stumbled across reference to his work by the scientific military intelligence expert RV Jones in his book 'Most Secret War'. It seems that he was very close to the V-weapon investigations as well, so there would be a possibility that he worked with Linton at some point. I summarised the findings in this thread:

https://twitter.com/mildthing99/status/1256611375411073024

Lampitt was recruited by Albert Hugh Smith, who was clearly very close to RV Jones. He later went on to become Professor of English at UCL and acclaimed scholar of Scandinavian Studies and English placenames, so he clearly had geographical interests. Perhaps he had links with Bill Mead at UCL who was also a Scandinavian expert?

Delighted to see the link to Ronald Lampitt - a favourite of mine who I wrote about for the Ordnance Survey's magazine back in the day. I have a much loved copy of the book, and it will definitely have a place in my Presidential lecture in 2022.
Lampitt's illustrations were included in the book which came out in 1948
I wonder if the author also worked in the same sort of setting.
In The Map that Came to Life the map is portrayed as an objective, precise and above all truthful mirror of nature. And this inherent trustworthiness enabled maps to become important features of the lives of successive generations of people.

More on the author and the book here.

Lampitt’s war service was spent with RAF Intelligence. He created meticulous, hand-drawn maps for allied bomber crews, based on aerial reconnaissance photographs. It was this period of his life that started Lampitt’s fascination with aerial views, which he would later use to great effect in The Map That Came To Life.

Sources: 
Wikipedia page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._H._Dury

Balchin, W. G. V. “United Kingdom Geographers in the Second World War: A Report.” The Geographical Journal, vol. 153, no. 2, 1987, pp. 159–180. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/634869. Accessed 16 June 2020.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00049189708703182

Dury, G. H. “Geography and Geomorphology: The Last Fifty Years.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, vol. 8, no. 1, 1983, pp. 90–99. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/622279. Accessed 16 June 2020.

Thanks to Brendan Conway for the additions to this post.
If anyone knows more about these wartime geographers please get in touch.