Better Like This?: Bomber Formation

April 22nd, 2008

This was an interesting diagram I came across a while back of a squadron of WWII bombers flying in the “Group Javelin Down” formation.

I was familiar with the top left view of the diagram – a shot we’ve all seen in movies where we’re looking down a planes flying in formation, but the front and side elevations were new to me and illustrated the 3-dimensional nature of the formation in a way I hadn’t seen before (I don’t research airplane formations very often). Like one of those “front, side & top view” exercises from Drafting class, all three views are necessary to understand the exact shape of the formation. However it’s also a terribly awkward diagram with a number of unnecessary and cluttering lines and an overall organization which actually makes comprehension more difficult. As an exercise I took a crack at clarifying it.

ILLUSTRATOR RECREATION

I started by recreating the diagram, as it was, in Illustrator. This would allow me to pull apart the different parts to view them on their own. Below is the redrawn diagram.

I started by breaking the diagram down into its component parts. Below is a version of the diagram with everything removed except the planes.

It becomes clear that the diagram is basically divided into two separate top and bottom pieces. The huge gaps separating the three views makes direct comparison difficult. I then tried the reverse, removing only the planes and leaving everything else:

The separation of the three views becomes obvious as the 2340′ line cuts right between the top and bottom views. Very few of the lines share a common axis or do anything to simplify the visual clutter, creating all sorts of strange boxes and intersecting lines.

REVISIONS

The first logical step with the planes was to simply move the three views so that they came together in a much more complimentary way.

Redesigning the lines was not nearly as straight forward, though the final solution seems obvious (which is usually the sign of a good solution). No information is lost, and rather than using using multiple, unrelated axis the same information can be shown with one simple (x,y) grid. It also trimmed down the number of distance measurements from seven to six.

The final assembled diagram looks like this:

WHAT WAS LOST? / CHEATING!?

No information was lost here and in fact it was possible to eliminate several bits of information (like the notations of high, low and lead squadron) since they became redundant.

As for cheating, the diagram is now 4-color, instead of the 1-color diagram it started as. Using full color allows easier comparison between groups of planes – the position of the dark plane formation in each view for example. As this was an old diagram, it’s doubtful that the original diagram would have had the option of 4 color printing so it was probably a technical necessity, rather than an oversight. That said, it would be very easy to turn this into a 1-color graphic by simply making the plane groups three different shades of black (100%, 70%, 40%). The basic informational structure does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to understanding what planes are where.

Entry Filed under: Better Like This?