Battle of the Bulge Timelapse

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This timelapse is made from the Twelfth Army Situation maps that were made on a daily basis for General Omar Bradley. Each day unique map was made to show the friendly and enemy positions, the frontline, as well as flanking units. It is important to note that Bastogne is only shown as being surrounded for two days, and not the almost week of being cut off.

This is most likely due to the rapidly changing situation in the Ardennes and the fact that Twelfth Army Group would not have been in communication with many of the units to paint a whole picture.

I am interested to know what people think of the timelapse and their thoughts on the maps.

As a bit of a background, I work professionally with the military and produce these type of maps on a regular basis so I find it particularly interesting.

 

Hi sixthreedelta.

Interesting find. Or did you make this?

Firstly, I find the time lapse progresses too fast; with the wealth of detail, the day swishes by too quickly. Lack of colourisation makes it difficult to track details day-by-day.

Secondly, a scale might be handy for those less familiar with the battle.

 

Hi Green Slime,

Thanks for the feedback. I did make this, but obviously not the maps. Great point on the timelapse. I originally made this for my Instagram followers; Instagram has a 1 minute video limit. But I don't think it would be hard to increase the timelapse.

And great suggestion on scale. I'll have to see what I can come up with.

 

Nicely done! I also think a provision fo running it as a slide show would be nice.

 

I think this is great...as said above a bit of colour would be good...id like maybe a unit chosen to follow from the initial deployment to the front to see the progress and push back...a couple of big location signs for context (im not a big Bulge scholar) - Perhaps icons to show the various different units too...one could even add the air units from both sides and any bombing/straffing runs shown...once a standard visual approach has been adopted one could then extend to other battles - for those wanting to visit these sites...perhaps a GPS grid reference could also be given to be exact?
Keep up the great work mate!

 

For those interested:

 

I appreciate all the feed back! This was very much a litmus test to see if there was any interest, which clearly there is. I will consolidate all the ideas and try to come up with something for the new year!

 

Two articles of the Battle of the Bulge. Every two years I go to that area. In Diekirch,Luxembourgh is one of the most interesting
museum of The Bulge.

Jaap

 

For scale, I recommend a bar graph that frequently shows up on maps as it can be blown up or shrunk and stays constant. that plus slowing down and a bit of color would be fine to me.

Great idea!

Gaines