10 ms·

I know an area that was just white space for most of the 19th, so it wasn't just to fool the Soviets, it was to fool the French too. Didn't get properly fixed u

by flir 3y ago

I know an area that was just white space for most of the 19th, so it wasn't just to fool the Soviets, it was to fool the French too. Didn't get properly fixed until the 1933 map. A big strip of empty paper surrounded by carefully shaded fields definitely stands out. It makes me wonder if the mapmakers could just about handle leaving data out, but couldn't countenance putting fake data in. Interestingly, the earliest OS 6" map has that area shaded as marsh, so at some point someone made a choice to leave it blank instead. There's a fort nearby that's back by 1911, and disappears again for 1938. Guess it wasn't as obsolete as they thought it was.

notahacker 3y ago
Just for fun: the most boring grid square on current OS maps https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/81429 https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/81429 Definitely a black ops site, and don't let the photo convince you otherwise. More seriously, as soon as satellite imagery or even to a lesser extent aerial photography or agents driving around with cameras were a thing, putting the secure site in with a really boring symbol like a landfill site or description like Ind Est would have been a much better disguise.