Ethiopia – United States Mapping Mission

[1] The topographic surveyors and their aviation support pilots and crew served on field parties that endured sweltering heat in this Sub Saharan region of Africa.

They also struggled to subsist in remote areas of the country that included jungles, deserts, dense bush, mountains and swamps that harbored deadly snakes, crocodiles, lions, leopards, hyenas, hippos, cape buffalo, elephants, wild dogs, dangerous bees and ants, aggressive tribes of baboons and sometimes hostile natives, not to mention any number of malignant diseases.

[3] According to a country study commissioned by the U.S. Army, the Eritrean War of Independence began in 1961, and intensified in 1962 in response to Ethiopia dissolving the Eritrean-Ethiopian federation.

[7] The team consisted of CW3 Jack Kalmbach (UH-1 pilot), Specialist 4 Ronald Dolecki (field classifier), and Habte Mesmer (Ethiopian interpreter).

[14] The aerial photography used by the Ethiopia-United States Mapping Mission was flown by the U.S. Air Force, normally at an altitude above 30,000 feet for optimum coverage.

High-quality horizontal geodetic control was established by the topographic surveyors on the bulky HIRAN ground stations by measuring their cardinal direction distances from nearby photo-identifiable points on which the surveyors established horizontal positions using theodolites and electronic distance meters (EDM) and triangulation and traverse techniques.

A device known as a Terrain Profile Recorder (TPR), which used the boiling point of a liquid chemical at a specific altitude and a gyroscopically stabilized radar altimeter was used to determine and maintain the altitude of the aircraft above a known elevation, such as a large body of water, while taking a series of aerial photographs that overlapped in the direction of flight and across flight lines in order to provide stereoscopic photo coverage of the entire area.