WW2 Aerial Photo resource

[DRG]

http://aerial.rcahms.gov.uk/

Has thousands of ww2 recce photos on file. I am just finishing work on a Lower Normandy map that covers the area of "Operation Spring" that occurred early July 1944 and I had drawn maps with contour lines which was invaluable but searching the above database for France > Lower Normandy gave me a dozen or more recce photos taken either just before or just after that time which allowed me to place roads and fill out villages much more accurately than I would have been able to.

There are restrictions but they can be worked around.

Here is an example of what you will find. This photo was taken Sunday 28 May 1944



You have to be a subscriber to zoom the images but if you have a decent graphics program you can lighten, enlarge and sharpen the image and it will give you more than enough detail to work with. Like this



You'll note that to view that properly the image needs to flipped and mirrored

It will be time consuming going through the collection but there are some real gems to be found. A short cut to finding a photo that I have found worked a few times was GOOGLE the name of the village you want to see + "sortie" as most of the photos are names something like this:

Videcosville, Lower Normandy, France, Sortie 106G/0556, Frame 3017

..in this case Googling Videcosville+ Sortie gives you that photo as the first choice

That resource coupled with Mapcarta allowed me to place the exact location of the recce photo on a modern photo of the area. In some cases very little has changed since 1944 and in my case I was able to ( among other things ) place the location of a wooded area that no longer exists and now a golf course. I could also see which roads were tree lined in 1944 and which were not.

Further to this , here are the countries listed

Aerial images are currently available for the following countries:

•Austria
•Belgium
•Bosnia and Herzegovina
•Croatia
•Czech Republic
•Denmark
•Egypt
•England
•France
•Germany
•Greece
•Hungary
•Italy
•Libya
•Luxembourg
•Montenegro
•Netherlands (The)
•Northern Ireland
•Norway
•Poland
•Romania
•Russia
•Serbia
•Scotland
•Spain
•Switzerland
•Thailand
•Tunisia

I have not checked all the nations but I know that Sicly, Netherlands and Russia have WW2 era photos. If you need to make a map this is the place to look first. Their intent is

........." We aim to digitise and upload 250,000 aerial images by June 2014"

Don