WW2 Aircraft Profiles

The collection is closed due to copyright issues not solved.

 

When I started this collection which rapidly grew to some thousand aircraft-profiles,

I wasnīt interested in the source of the pic, I just used the best I could find - often without securing the link.

I used everything I could find and of this just the best as a basis,
just as the artists use the original design of the plane, appearance or the emblems/badges.

When the site grew and grew, it soon became a source itself and many other pro- & hobby-historicians used it as a reference lately.

It was even mentioned at wikipedia!

Lately I was working especially on this topic. Instead of adding more and more, I wanted to raise the quality by adding at least the source
with proper credit. Further, errors were ironed out as son as possible.

But the questions after each profile were not only, where it came from - but more: How authentic is it? On which basis was it painted?
A B&W photo, a (re?)colored photo? An original or spoken/written word maybe? Or "only" a best guess?

Actually nobody of us holds the copyright of any of the material we are discussing here.
It belongs to those, who originally created them back in WW2.
See the discussion of Grumman, who thinks about penalties for toymodels built after their WW2 birds.
For badges and such, the rightowners are the Countries of origin of these units or the "successor in law" for example in case of Germany.

Further I ddid not show just others work as "mine", which could have been read more than once all over this place.

None of the pics was in the same quality, it was sized down to 400x150 pixels - mainly loosing much of detail.
But that was very much OK. I donīt even want to compete with others for the best detailed profile.

My goals was to show in the timeline, how the unit and theatre markings changed.
So every interested can check, compare and learn how it probably really looked. I am not even showing extracted details in full size.

In the legal question we now discuss, the topics "Collage"  and/or "Photomontage" need to be mentioned:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photomontage

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collage

This is the second point, that in case - I was on the right side, for I saw this mainly as a collage.

Modelbuilders need this, historitians and artists  - and often I received emails by relatives thanking me for the quick an thrilling information.

Once they are interested, they might think about buying an artwork in original (far better) quality.

The third point is: It was research of history - with the new added quotes of the sources it follows even academic principles.

The forth point is: It was free.

 

Anyway, as long as others claim "rights" on pictures of WW2 aircraft which they made themselfs, bought at ebay or elswhere / or have painted;

Or if they are even the companies, who once built the planes and claim their rights on the shapes -

A work like this is no longer possible. Thus I close this site down.

 

I wanted to give something back, and not to steal.

 

Best regards to all those interested in the last years,

35.000 hits/month was really impressive!

 

 

 

 

 

Đ Michael Reimer 2011