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Gerald Kenneth Geerlings (April 18, 1897 – January 25, 1998) was an American artist, printmaker, architect, and author. Geerlings is known for his early-20th century architectural etchings, aquatints, and intaglio prints depicting the rise of American metropolises and urbanization during the interwar period. His prints showcase the Gilded Age and Art Deco architecture of American cities, often depicting the skylines and early skyscrapers of New York City and Chicago. Biography Geerlings was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on April 18, 1897. He lived most of his life in New Canaan, Connecticut, where he died on January 25, 1998, at the age of 100. Early life As a young man, Geerlings worked as an architectural draftsman and newspaper reporter. He then enrolled in art school. However, with the start of World War I, he was forced to interrupt his education and career ambitions to enlist in the U.S. Army. Military career World War I In 1917, Geerlings began his military service with the 1st Battalion, 120th Field Artillery Regiment (also known as the "Red Fox Battalion") in Wisconsin Rapids. While with the Red Fox Battalion, Geerlings joined the 32nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team. By 1918, Geerlings had been promoted to second lieutenant. His entire division was soon ordered to Europe. The 120th Field Artillery Landed at Liverpool, England and then traveled by rail to South Hampton and across the English Channel to Le Havre, France. The 120th Field Artillery went into action in the Château-Thierry sector on August 1, 1918, in support of the 32nd Divisional Artillery. After the 32nd Divisional Artillery had taken Juivgay, it was relieved by the 2nd Moroccan Division, which included the famous French Foreign Legion. The 120th Field Artillery remained in the line of support to the Foreign Legion, assisting in blasting a path for the final charge of the Foreign Legion. World War II Gerald Geerlings returned to the military to fight in World War II, this time joining the U.S. Army Air Forces. In 1942, while serving as Captain in the Command Office of the 8th Special Operations Squadron and 8th Air Force in England, Geerlings spearheaded critical cartographic innovations for the newly-formed U.S. Air Force and Allied forces. Adept at aerial perspective drawings, Geerlings devised target maps to aid Allied bombers in key aerial military campaigns through a key innovation in aerial combat. Faced with the absence of adequate British and Allied force map coverage of Axis targets and areas of control (due to the fact that aerial missions of the time predominantly occurred at night, where detailed maps were not required and accuracy was seen as impossible), Geerlings devised a novel way to map strategic targets in order to fundamentally improve bombing accuracy and situational awareness for military aerial campaigns, allowing military air power and bombers to take an unprecedented front-seat in the execution of strategic military campaigns. In a critical cartographic innovation of WWII, Gerald Geerlings developed the "perspective target map", also known as the "Geerlings map". These aerial target maps with unprecedented oblique views of approaches from the viewpoint of bombers in combat finally allowed Allied forces to perform strategic daytime aerial bombing strikes and aerial bombing campaigns for the first time in military history. These "Geerlings maps" were able to convert strategic topographical features and military targets visible to the eye at research centers to illustrations and maps depicting what navigators and bombardiers saw in real-time combat, providing pilots and bomber crews multiple views and approaches of targets instead of typical straight-down map views. Measuring 32 inches by 32 inches in size, Geerlings maps provided views of 6 different aerial approaches for any enemy target, depicted from a height of 26,000 feet as would be experienced by air force members in-flight. Utilizing techniques of "heightened abstraction", Geerlings created groundbreaking maps for World War II bombing campaigns—each approach provided 6 visualizations of strategic enemy targets, combining target views from 15 miles out (for use by navigators) with analogous views of from a distance of 7 miles out (for use by bombardiers). In a departure from the era's use of maps in combat, Geerlings' perspective target maps provided unprecedented depictions of critical topographic features that were often obscured (or not captured) in traditional photo-reconnaissance materials and flat-view maps. Geerlings maps included important landmarks and enemy positions for effective bomber targeting, such as artillery positions, search lights, smokescreens, decoys, radars, and coastline views (including views of changing sea levels at different times of day). Previously, the absence of these features in military maps added significant challenges to nascent attempts at leveraging air combat for military campaigns. During early WWII aerial missions, Allied bombers and air force navigators were often confused by discrepancies between intelligence photos and maps of strategic targets that were provided for air strikes, and the actual appearance of targets and land features seen to the naked eye in combat (e.g. buildings, forests, bridges, or railways that were meant to be used as target guides were found to be destroyed, obscured by smoke, or missing entirely). These unfortunate inaccuracies contributed to the failure of many early air combat missions and the general opinion among military commanders that strategic aerial combat was both "ineffective" and "unnecessary." Geerlings' innovations in cartography bolstered the subsequent emergence and establishment of strategic bombing as a critical tool in military combat. Up to this point, military air power in WWI and WWII had been limited to providing ground troop support and performing daytime reconnaissance missions via slow, low-flying planes (often shot down from the ground by enemy artillery).[1] Before the use of perspective target maps, aerial bombing campaigns largely relied on often-flawed photo-reconnaissance materials to visually identify key targets and were limited to night-time "area bombardment" missions, which had no particular targets and hinged on the general destruction of broad swaths of urban centers and areas of dense civilian populations with the goal of "demoralizing" the enemy into submission. The use of this strategy is exemplified by early WWII bombing campaigns, such as the bombing of London by German air forces during the Blitz. Leveraging his development of innovative approaches to the identification and precision targeting of enemy targets, Geerlings originated and developed the "Target Identification Unit", ultimately becoming an Air Force intelligence officer and serving both the Royal Air Force and U.S. Air Force for the duration of World War II. In 1941, Geerlings was an important figure in the planning and execution of Op.... Discover the Peter Meusburger Michael Heffernan Edgar popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Peter Meusburger Michael Heffernan Edgar books.