A Strange Glimpse of the Future, Time Slip?

In 1932, German newspaper reporter J. Bernard Hutton and his colleague, photographer Joachim Brandt, were assigned to do a story on the Hamburg-Altona shipyards.

After being given a tour by a shipyard executive, the two newspapermen were leaving when they heard the drone of overhead aircraft. They at first thought is was a practice drill, but that notion was quickly dispelled when bombs began exploding all around and the roar of anti-aircraft gunfire filled the air. The sky quickly darkened and they were in the middle of a full-blown air raid. They quickly got in their car and drove away from the shipyard back toward Hamburg.

As they left the area, however, the sky seemed to brighten and they again found themselves in the light of a calm, ordinary late afternoon. They looked back at the shipyards, and there was no destruction, no bomb-induced inferno they had just left, no aircraft in the sky.

The photos Brandt had taken during the attack showed nothing unusual.

It wasn't until 1943 that the British Royal Air Force attacked and destroyed the shipyard - just as Hutton and Brandt had experienced it 11 years earlier.

(photo: taken Jan. 30-31 1943)