Wartime imagery

Historic England has opened up an archive of aerial photography from the Second World War. 

There are quite a lot of images of Norfolk as there were a lot of airfields operating at the time, with personnel from a range of countries. There were several airfields within five miles of where I live now, and there is a particular curve in the road near Beeston where I can imagine that the landscape is absolutely unchanged since the 1940s and would be recognisable by anyone from back then. It also reminds me of the temporal connections made in Powell and Pressburger's 'A Canterbury Tale'.

A collection of Second World War aerial photography has been made accessible to the public for the first time. 📷

The photographs were taken by the United States Army Air Forces Photographic Reconnaissance units in England in 1943 and 1944.

See more. ➡️ https://t.co/ziBhpkjQFa pic.twitter.com/VEX8KeompG

— Historic England (@HistoricEngland) August 16, 2023

There is also a link to a whole generation of GA Presidents of the 1940s-1960s, who worked in aerial reconnaisance and image interpretation during the Second World War.

Check out the relevant posts on this link, with thanks to Brendan Conway for additional research. This is an area that deserves a little more attention I think.