WW2 Aerial Photographs Go Online

aquarium writes "The Guardian Unlimited reports that unique aerial photographs of some of the key events of the Second World War are to be made available for the first time over the internet. The photographs are being made available through a website created by The Aerial Reconnaissance Archives (TARA) at Keele University - an official place of deposit for the National Archives at Kew, West London. The entire archive of more than five million aerial reconnaissance photographs, shot by the RAF over Western Europe during the conflict, is going online starting Monday. They include American troops landing on the Normandy beaches on D-Day, the seizure of the Pegasus bridge by British paratroops, the aftermath of the first 1,000 bomber raid on Cologne, and the German battleship Bismarck as the Royal Navy hunted her down. The multiple photographs taken by the high resolution cameras meant they were able to create 3-D images through an instrument called a "stereoscope". The technique was used to construct a detailed picture of the Normandy terrain ahead of the D-Day landings."

Comments

Also pictures of dresden genocide?

[Bender_]

Will they also have pictures of the devastated dresden after they bombed the city center crowded with hundreds of thousands civilian refugees and no military targets in sight?

Re:Also pictures of dresden genocide?

[Captain Pedantic]

Actually, they do in the print edition of the Guardian. Curiously, the BBC are showing all of the pictures printed in the paper except that one.

There is no way the parent post should be modded flaimbait. The firebombing of Dresden was a major atrocity of WW2, and the person who lead it, "Bomber" Harris should have been tried as a war criminal. Instead, there is a nice statue of him in London. Also, he had a nice sidelne in using chemical weapons on Kurds in Iraq.

Re:Also pictures of dresden genocide?

[Aardpig]

Will they also have pictures of the devastated dresden after they bombed the city center crowded with hundreds of thousands civilian refugees and no military targets in sight?

Yesterday, I was at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. As I was wondering around (for the first time since I was 6, wow!), I happened upon a V-1 flying bomb and a V-2 rocket. These devices were used by the Germans against the civilian population of London; firebombs, similar to those used on Dresden and Hamburg, were also dropped by the Germans on Coventry and Belfast.

Certainly, the firebombing of German cities was an atrocity; but these acts were conducted in response to previous deliberate targetting of UK cities by the Luftwaffe. This is the historical context which I think the parent post is lacking in.

Re:Also pictures of dresden genocide?

[Haeleth]

Regardless of whether you call the bombing of Dresden a war crime, genocide, an atrocity, a massacre, or just a sound tactical decision - it happened. For that reason, I hope the site when it becomes accessible does contain pictures of it, if they exist.

Because it is important that the horrors of war be documented; not as records of "atrocities" or "necessary evils", but merely as an illustration of what we are all capable of when we fail to resolve our differences peacefully. There is little to be gained by pointing fingers of blame; but there is much to be lost if we do not strive to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

Re:Also pictures of dresden genocide?

[Doomdark]

Certainly, the firebombing of German cities was an atrocity; but these acts were conducted in response to previous deliberate targetting of UK cities by the Luftwaffe. This is the historical context which I think the parent post is lacking in.

Sure, but that's a lousy excuse for atrocities. That the scope of german bombings was miniscule compared to allies' may be irrelevant, but the fact is none of those civilians was responsible for bombings. Further, Hitler was considered a brutal barbarian (and rightly so); allied bombing raids did nothing to make US and UK look any better. Strategic bombing was also clearly MEANT to "break the german will", by targeting alongside 'real' military targets also civilian ones... so those weren't accidents by any means. It would have been normal to have civilian casualties, obviously, but pure collateral damage would have been much less. This was, like you said, pure revenge.

It's too bad those bombing barons were never held responsible for their callous disregard of human life (both for their own soldiers and enemy civilians); and the worst thing is it had very little positive effect on war itself. German industrial production kept on raising all through 43 (during heaviest bombing raids), all the way to summer of 44; after which germans started losing important resources (iron ore from France, Romanian oil from Ploesti), and then war industry started to decline. And as to spirit to fight... it was actually studied (after the war), and it was found to have little effect there either. Will to fight between heavily bombed cities, and those that weren't was nominal (study was done by USAF, by the way, to try to evaluate how well campaign went). One can wonder how anyone thinks that killing your loved ones makes you less willing to fight against enemy that caused the deaths.

But not only were german civilians grilled alive by tens or hundreds of thousands; allied also lost over 100k air force personnel during the war; most of them during bomb raids. And yet many still consider generals who devised these strategic bombing campaings heroes. Sad how winners can write and rewrite history.