this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2025
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HistoryPhotos

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HistoryPhotos is for photographs (or, if it can be found, film) of the past, recent or distant! Give us a little snapshot of history!

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[–] CubitOom 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

How do the lights eliminate air?

[–] webpack@ani.social 8 points 2 days ago

the lights are lasers that delete everything they touch including air, hope this helps

[–] Jax@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

There are also really big fans pointing in the same direction as the searchlights.

[–] CubitOom 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

But don't fans create more air?

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 5 points 2 days ago

Yes, that's exactly how fans work.

[–] JubJubBird@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Omg this is awesome! Is this photo overexposed or did those seachlights realy look like laserbeams? Also: were they moving?

[–] 474D@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

They can easily look like that with just a bit of fog, I have a consumer grade LEP flashlight and it's literally a half mile lightsaber in certain conditions

[–] PugJesus@piefed.social 7 points 2 days ago

Searchlights of that sort are pretty focused, so they probably looked pretty close in reality to the photo, though I can't say for sure since I know only a little about WW2 anti-air searchlights.

They definitely would have been moving!

[–] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They’re probably carbon arc lamps. They’re super, super bright. A bit of mist or smoke in the air, as a cool summer evening might have, and it’ll look like that.

The lights would move trying to catch a plane and then lock onto it so the gunners can target it.

[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Just to have some numbers: A German 150 cm FLAK Spotlight contained a carbon arc lamp with a power of 15 kW (200 A @ 78 V) generating light with an intensity of 1 Gcd (1,000,000,000 cd).

Wikipedia.org: Scheinwerfer

Flugzeug-lexikon.de – Flakscheinwerfer

Super bright is somewhat understated.