Page 102 – LIFE

High Angle: Helicopter Views Across America

May 4, 2023April 20, 2014 by

In 1952, the notion of a photographer going up in a helicopter to take pictures of landscapes, monuments, buildings and other notable sights from the air was novel enough to warrant a 12-page article in LIFE magazine. That Margaret Bourke-White was the photographer who climbed aboard various “whirlibirds” to make the singular, vertiginous photos, however, would hardly come as a shock to LIFE’s readers back then, or to photojournalism buffs today.

Bourke-White, after all, broke ground again and again throughout her career, and LIFE frequently shared her adventures with its readers.

In 1930, she was the first Western photographer officially allowed into the USSR; she was America’s first accredited woman photographer in WWII, and the very first authorized to fly on combat missions; she was one of the first and certainly the most celebrated of the photographers to document the horrors of Nazi concentration camps after they were liberated in the spring of 1945; she was the last person to interview Mohandas Gandhi before he was assassinated; and on and on.

So, in the spring of 1952, when she traveled around the country, photographing both world-famous and utterly nondescript sites (and sights) in New York, California, Illinois, Indiana and elsewhere, from the vantage point of a helicopter, few who knew anything of her career would have been surprised.

The pictures from the assignment, on the other hand, can still startle and even astonish viewers today, decades after Bourke-White made them. As expressions of one woman’s and one magazine’s endless pursuit of new ways to celebrate America’s breadth, energy and its vast, thrilling scale, the pictures here are unparalleled.

That they were made from a helicopter is just cool.

The Statue of Liberty photographed from a helicopter, 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The George Washington Bridge photographed from a helicopter, 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Midtown Manhattan (with the entrance to a cross-river tunnel visible at lower left) photographed from a helicopter, 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Columbus Circle, New York City, photographed from a helicopter, 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Coney Island, New York, 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

This near-drowning of a Coney Island bather named Mary Eschner drew a knot of people. The reviving victim , at the center of the circle, was attended by lifeguards.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

New York state, 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Back Bay, Virginia, 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Trains after snowfall, Chicago, 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A grain elevator, operated by the Norris Grain Co. on the southeast side of Chicago, unloaded corn from a lake boat in a Calumet River slip (right foreground). In the freight yards (background) snow-covered gondola cars were loaded with coal.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Chicago River, crossed by the Michigan Avenue bridge.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A Pittsburgh Steamship Co. ship carried ore to the US Steel plant. Gary, Indiana,

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A steel plant, Gary, Indiana.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Water skiers and motorboats sped across the water, Long Beach, Calif.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A freight train traveled through the El Cajon Pass outside San Diego, Calif., 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Coronado Hotel and its surroundings, San Diego, Calif.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Golden Gate Bridge, photographed from a helicopter in 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Ocean Beach, San Francisco, 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Farm workers harvested onions, Burbank, California, 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Beach riders guided their horses along the shore at high tide near Fort Funston, Calif.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Over the Texas star on the San Jacinto Monument near Houston, the helicopter-borne camera looked sharply down the 570-foot shaft to the steps and parking lot below. The tower marked the spot where Sam Houston defeated General Santa Anna in 1836.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Margaret Bourke-White hung from Navy helicopter to photograph rescue work.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

LIFE photographer Margaret Bourke-White in a helicopter.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Margaret Bourke-White in a helicopter.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Margaret Bourke-White stands before a helicopter with two unidentified men, 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

High Society: Hillary and Tenzing After the First Ascent of Everest

January 20, 2020April 18, 2014 by

It’s been more than 60 years since Edmund Hillary (later Sir Edmund, of course) and Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers to summit Mount Everest, and all these decades later their feat still resonates as one of the 20th century’s signature moments. Here, LIFE.com looks back at that remarkable time with some rare photos from the celebrations after the climb, as well as page spreads from the cover story that ran in LIFE a few months later chronicling the accomplishment and the bitter controversy that swirled around the entire event.

As LIFE noted in its July 13, 1953, issue, the historic ascent was hardly greeted with unalloyed goodwill and enthusiasm from all corners of the globe. In fact, international politics and racial pride were quickly thrust into the conversation about Hillary’s and Tenzing’s astonishing feat.

“Everest’s Conqueror’s Come Back,” LIFE roared in one headline in that special issue, then immediately blunted the celebratory tone with a caveat: “They bring thrilling stories of a great deed, but little men besmirch their riotous welcome.”

Thus in a sad foreshadowing of the often contentious debate that had dogged so many attempts on Everest throughout the years (Is it worth the risk of life and limb? What does the local community get out of it?) the very first successful climb to the top of the world’s highest peak sparked some often quite ugly jockeying for credit and supremacy. Jockeying, it should be noted, that both Hillary and Tenzing, who were fast friends, readily denounced.

(Also, while LIFE makes more than one mention of “British climbers” in its reporting, Edmund Hillary was in fact a proud, born-and-raised New Zealander. He died in 2008, at the age of 88, in Auckland. Tenzing died two years before Hillary, at age 71, in India.)

“The climbers who conquered Everest,” LIFE wrote, “came down to a world eager to see them, honor them and hear their full story. . . . They came down to such a welcome such surging excitement and hero worship as had never before stirred the steamy lowlands of Nepal.”

The first official welcomers met the mountaineers outside of Banepa [the article continues], 20 miles from Nepal’s capital Katmandu. In the lead was British embassy party, bearing beer and sandwiches; then came the Nepalese to garland the heroes with flowers and sprinkle them with kumkum, a vermilion powder of rejoicing. Devil dancers met that at Bhadgaon, still 15 miles out. The wife of Sir John Hunt, the expedition’s leader, came out to meet him. Tenzing’s wife and their two teenage daughters flew from Darjeeling, India. . . .

To the distress and the half-resentful bewilderment of Colonel Hunt and his British climbers, however, these first wild welcomings carried a clear implication that, in Asia, the real hero of Everest was Tenzing alone. The conquest of Everest, a product of selfless teamwork between Asian and European, was being twisted into an ugly tool of Asian nationalism, inflamed further by the normal British habit of treating the hired Tenzing like a hired man. . . .

Today, as men and women continue to test their own mettle on the peaks of the Himalayas and on the heights of other, equally lethal mountain ranges around the globe, the pictures in this gallery are a reminder that for some people, the risks have always, unquestionably, been worth the rewards.

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay after their ascent, 1953.

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A welcoming sign in Nepal, like most in Katmandu, singled out Sherpa Tenzing for honor, 1953

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Edmund Hillary, 1953.

James Burke/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Tenzing Norgay, 1953.

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John Hunt, 1953.

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Nepalese greet Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, 1953.

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Heroes rode into a welcoming throng in Temple Square of Bhandgaon in India. Tenzing stood in the leading jeep, while Hunt and Hillary sat in the second.

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A celebration for Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, Nepal, 1953.

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Devil dancers pranced in celebration in Temple Square.

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Tenzing Norgay arrived in India after first ascent of Mt. Everest, 1953.

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John Hunt, Edmund Hillary, Tenzing Norgay in India, after the first ascent of Mt. Everest, 1953.

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The reception for the 1953 Everest expedition, Nepal.

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Edmund Hillary at a reception for the 1953 Everest expedition, India.

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John Hunt, Edmund Hillary, Tenzing Norgay at a reception for the 1953 Everest expedition, India.

James Burke/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Life Magazine Cover July 13, 1953.

Life Magazine July 13, 1953.

Life Magazine July 13, 1953

Life Magazine July 13, 1953.

After the Fall: Photos of Hitler’s Bunker and the Ruins of Berlin

January 17, 2020April 15, 2014 by

In the spring of 1945, as Russian and German troops fought savagely, street by street for control of the German capital, it became increasingly clear that the Allies would win the war in Europe. Not long after the two-week battle for Berlin ended, 33-year-old LIFE photographer William Vandivert was on the scene, photographing the city’s devastated landscape and the eerie scene inside the bunker where Adolf Hitler spent the last months of his life; where he and Eva Braun were married; and where, just before war’s end, the two killed themselves on April 30.

Between August 1940 and March 1945 American, Royal Air Force and Soviet bombers launched more than 350 air strikes on Berlin; tens of thousands of civilians were killed, and countless buildings apartment buildings, government offices, military installations were obliterated. Vandivert, LIFE reported, “found almost every famous building [in Berlin] a shambles. In the center of town GIs could walk for blocks and see no living thing, hear nothing but the stillness of death, smell nothing but the stench of death.”

Hundreds of thousands perished in the Battle of Berlin—including untold numbers of civilian men, women and children—while countless more were left homeless amid the ruins. But it was two particular deaths, those of Hitler, 56, and Eva Braun, 33, in that sordid underground bunker on April 30, 1945, that signaled the true, final fall of the Third Reich.

Vandivert was the first Western photographer to gain access to Hitler’s Führerbunker, or “shelter for the leader,” after the fall of Berlin, and a handful of his pictures of the bunker and the ruined city were published in LIFE magazine in July 1945. A few of those images are republished here; most of the pictures in this gallery, however, never appeared in LIFE. Taken together, they illuminate the surreal, disturbing universe Vandivert encountered in the bunker itself, and in the streets of the vanquished city beyond the bunker’s walls.

In his typed notes to his editors in New York, Vandivert described in detail what he saw. For example, of the fourth slide in this gallery, he wrote: “Pix of [correspondents] looking at sofa where Hitler and Eva shot themselves. Note bloodstains on arm of soaf [sic] where Eva bled. She was seated at far end . . . Hitler sat in middle and fell forward, did not bleed on sofa. This is in Hitler’s sitting room.”

Remarkable stuff but, as it turns out, it’s probably only about half right. Most historians are now quite certain that Braun committed suicide by biting into a cyanide capsule, rather than by gunshot—meaning the bloodstains on the couch might well be Hitler’s, after all. On that late April afternoon in 1945, with his “Thousand-Year Reich” already in its death throes, Hitler shot himself in the temple.

Oberwallstrasse, in central Berlin, saw some of the most vicious fighting between German and Soviet troops in the spring of 1945.

William Vandivert/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A new view of a photograph that appeared, heavily cropped, in LIFE, picturing Hitler’s bunker, partially burned by retreating German troops and stripped of valuables by invading Russians.

William Vandivert/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

In typed notes that William Vandivert sent to LIFE’s New York offices after getting to Berlin, he described his intense, harried visit to Hitler’s bunker: “These pix were made in the dark with only candle for illumination … Our small party of four beat all rest of mob who came down about forty minutes after we got there.” Above: A 16th century painting reportedly stolen from a Milan museum.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

With only candles to light their way, war correspondents examined a couch stained with blood (see the dark patch on the arm of the sofa) located inside Hitler’s bunker.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Abandoned furniture and debris inside Adolf Hitler’s bunker, Berlin, 1945.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Papers (mostly news reports dated April 29, the day before Hitler and Eva Bruan killed themselves) inside Hitler’s bunker, Berlin, 1945.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A Russian soldier stood in Adolf Hitler’s bunker, Berlin, 1945.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A desk inside Adolf Hitler’s bunker, Berlin, 1945.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

An SS officer’s cap, with the infamous death’s-head skull emblem barely visible.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A ruined, empty and likely looted safe inside Hitler’s bunker.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

LIFE correspondent Percy Knauth, left, sifted through debris in the shallow trench in the garden of the Reich Chancellery where, Knauth was told, the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun were burned after their suicides.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

In the garden of the Reich Chancellery, Berlin, 1945.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A bullet-riddled sentry pillbox outside Hitler’s bunker, Berlin, 1945.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

An unidentified hand on the destroyed hinge of the door to Hitler’s bunker, burned off by advancing Russian combat engineers, Berlin, 1945.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Empty gasoline cans, reportedly used by SS troops to burn the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun after their suicides in the bunker, Berlin, 1945.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Russian soldiers and a civilian struggled to move a large bronze Nazi Party eagle that once loomed over a doorway of the Reich Chancellery, Berlin, 1945.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

An American soldier, PFC Douglas Page, offered a mocking Nazi salute inside the bombed-out ruins of the Berliner Sportspalast, or Sport Palace. The venue, destroyed during an Allied bombing raid in January 1944, was where the Third Reich often held political rallies.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

At the Reichstag, evidence of a practice common throughout the centuries: soldiers scrawling graffiti to honor fallen comrades, insult the vanquished or simply announce, I was here. I survived. Berlin, 1945.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A crushed globe and a bust of Hitler amid rubble outside the ruined Reich Chancellery.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Home, Sweet Home: In Praise of Apollo 17’s ‘Blue Marble’

August 11, 2021April 11, 2014 by

It was not the first jaw-dropping picture of Earth from outer space. That title legitimately belongs to “Earthrise,” a photograph of our lively blue planet floating above the dead, gray horizon of the moon taken by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders in December 1968.

Nor is it the one photograph that most powerfully suggests the awe-inspiring — and sometimes terrifying — vastness of space. For many of us, the photo known as “Pillars of Creation,” made in 1995 by the Hubble Telescope, still holds that honor.

But no other photograph ever made of planet Earth has ever felt at-once so momentous and somehow so manageable, so companionable, as “Blue Marble” the famous picture taken December 7, 1972, by the crew of Apollo 17 as they sped toward the moon on NASA’s last manned lunar mission.

A large part of Blue Marble’s lasting appeal surely has something to do with the fact that the proportions and the features on display in the photo are so familiar. In a roughly square frame sits the almost perfectly round Earth, seen from a distance of about 28,000 miles. We not only see Africa: we recognize Africa. We recognize the Arabian Peninsula. We see Antarctica’s polar ice cap; in fact, we can almost discern its texture. And while it’s surely an illusion abetted by the gorgeous, swirling clouds against the deep blue of the Atlantic and Indian oceans, but it almost seems that we can make out tiny crests of waves far below, on the sea.

The caption, meanwhile, that NASA drafted for this image remains a model of near-clinical clarity:

This translunar coast photograph extends from the Mediterranean Sea area to the Antarctica south polar ice cap. This is the first time the Apollo trajectory made it possible to photograph the south polar ice cap. Note the heavy cloud cover in the Southern Hemisphere. Almost the entire coastline of Africa is clearly visible. The Arabian Peninsula can be seen at the northeastern edge of Africa. The large island off the coast of Africa is Madagascar. The Asian mainland is on the horizon toward the northeast.

No bravado. No chest-thumping. Just an admirable, matter-of-fact restraint that nevertheless belies not only the significance of the image, but its surpassing beauty.

Beyond its status as an enduring reminder of the final Apollo mission, however, the picture also has, in one regard, as unexpectedly elegiac feel. A few weeks after the photo was made, LIFE — the magazine that for decades had covered NASA and the Space Race more intimately and assiduously than any other publication — closed up shop.

Blue Marble is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a LIFE picture. But LIFE magazine’s final issue was published just three short weeks after the photo was made. The symbolism of these two groundbreaking and somehow peculiarly American endeavors — the Apollo program and the grand experiment that was LIFE — ending at the same time verges on the poetic, and carries with it a thrilling sense of exactitude. Of course they had to go out together.

One is reminded of Mark Twain’s characteristically loaded, amusing observation about his own fate being linked, somehow, to Halley’s Comet. “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835,” he told his biographer in 1909, referencing his own birth and the comet’s previous appearance. “It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with it. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'”

Twain died the next year, in 1910 — the same year that Halley’s Comet made its first appearance (and exit) in the heavens since the year of his birth.

LIFE.com, Blue Marble, 1972

NASA

Girl Power: The ‘World’s Strongest Seventh-Grader’ Wows Muscle Beach

August 11, 2021April 8, 2014 by

The Internet’s a funny thing—or a funny place, or whatever it is—where the most basic assumptions are, quite often, turned neatly inside out. For example: Most people might reasonably suppose that a huge amount of information about a 12-year-old girl once celebrated as the “world’s strongest seventh-grader” must surely exist all over the Web. Right?

But LIFE.com’s research failed to find anything but the most cursory details about April Atkins — a cute, perpetually grinning pre-teen who, for one brief, bonkers moment in the mid-1950s, routinely blew minds at California’s famed Muscle Beach by performing utterly improbable feats of strength.

In fact, it seems that there’s very little information out there about this extraordinary human being…

The photographs in this gallery, for example, made in 1954 by LIFE’s Loomis Dean, never even ran in the magazine. But there was a time back in the day when 79-pound April Atkins of Pacific Palisades, Calif., most definitely had her moment in the sand and the sun.

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

April Atkins, “the world’s strongest seventh-grader,” Muscle Beach, Calif., 1954.

Loomis Dean The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Angora: The Goat That Keeps On Giving

January 19, 2022April 8, 2014 by

There’s something quietly audacious about sending one of the world’s finest photographers—in the midst of a world war—to document the lives of goats. But that’s just what LIFE magazine did in the summer of 1942, when Alfred Eisenstaedt shipped out to south central Texas to visit “Goat King” Adolph Stieler and his 600 Angoras.

As LIFE told its readers in its August 31, 1942 issue, Angora goats “look like aristocrats, and they should, for Angoras are the blue-blooded elite of the goat world.”

Their long, curly, silky fleece, known commercially as mohair, is used in making fine upholstery, yarn and fabrics. Angora goats are dainty, shy and not at all smelly. Their fleece is so rich in healthy oil (lanolin) that goatmen who handle them a lot have pink, soft hands like a baby’s.

Goats are among the oldest and best friends that man has. There are 137 mentions of goats in the Bible. Goats were among the first animals brought to America by Captain John Smith and Lord Delaware. A frisky Arabian goat, according to legend, discovered the stimulating effects of the coffee bean. Great thinkers of history like Zoroaster, Buddha and Confucius all said kind words about goats. Modern men who get to know them, including author Carl Sandberg, conductor Arthur Rodzinski and Mahatma Gandhi, usually think they are wonderful. . . .

So. Take a gander at Eisenstaedt’s photographs, and decide for yourself if Angora goats really are all they’re cracked up to be. Also, please do take the time to read the captions that accompany the pictures; it’s not every day, after all, that one comes across an observation as insightful and weirdly moving as, “Shorn goats crowd together for warmth and mutual sympathy. They are not pretty now and they know it.”

Even blue-blooded elites, it seems, have feelings. Who knew?

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

The Angora goats were not yet a year old.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Goats ate cigarette butts and owners encouraged them, because tobacco kills intestinal parasites.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A flock of 600 Angoras headed for home pastures at the ranch of ‘Goat King’ Adolph Stieler near Comfort, Texas.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Angora goats, Texas, 1942.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A shearing crew went to work on four of Stieler’s Angoras.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An unhappy Angora kid was pushed into the dip after he had been sheared. Dip is a brownish, foul-smelling chemical mixture which safeguarded the shorn animals against ticks.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Shorn goats crowded together for warmth and mutual sympathy.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The original LIFE caption deadpanned, “Goats love to browse standing up. The leaves they can’t reach look greenest.”

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

General MacArthur had been the prize fleece buck at most recent goat show and sale at Rocksprings, Texas. He sold at auction for $530. Note the hair on his face and belly, signs of good Angora

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Angora goat auction and sale, Texas, 1942.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A man examined goods in a mohair warehouse, Texas, 1942.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mohair warehouse, Texas, 1942.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This mohair warehouse at Kerryville, Texas, belonged to the goat-raising Schreiner family, who also owned hotels, banks, and stores. Scott Schreiner (left) was shown here with a local mohair buyer.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mohair products included curtains, mittens, toy dogs, rugs, blankets. Before World War II much mohair was used in auto upholstery. Huge stocks of were used to replace restricted wool.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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After the Fall: Photos of Hitler’s Bunker and the Ruins of Berlin

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Girl Power: The ‘World’s Strongest Seventh-Grader’ Wows Muscle Beach

Angora: The Goat That Keeps On Giving

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