Popularity of World War II Aerial Photos Overwhelms Web Servers…

World War II aerial photographs are now on the Internet. A Web site has been developed that houses more than 5 million aerial photos of World War II

The highly detailed aerial photographs, are now providing the public with often their very first views of some of the most dramatic and unfortunately, sometimes also, grisly moments of the conflict.

They give a dramatic and compelling picture of the “real war” at first hand. Images range from the smoke billowing from the incinerator at Auschwitz where millions of Jews were murdered to the US landings on Omaha beach on D-Day. All the pictures tell a dramatic story, as stated by the projects head, Alan Williams…"It is like a live action replay replay.”

Unfortunately such has been the popularity of the site, www.evidenceincamera.co.uk, often visitors have not been able to view its many photos because it was crippled by overwhelming demand on its very first day of operation. That said, the site administrators are now busily redeveloping the sighte with more capacity and more features. It is almost a rule of thumb that if a web site is of really good value, it will be initially overrun by its own sheer popularity.

Why are these pictures coming to light now, haven’t they been around for decades?
The pictures and images themselves were declassified years ago, but if you wanted to find one it literally took days of wading through thousands of boxes of archives just to find an individual image. There are said to be some 40-million images taken in total over the years and lodged in the UK National Archives

Now As the images are were digitised and indexed when they were mounted on the Internet, it should now only take seconds to find what you are looking for.

In fact because there were so many pictures taken, many in stereoscope, some evidence is only now being identified or clarified. The sheer volume of material to be analysed meant many features or events were simply overlooked. It is suggested the Auschwitz camp was one of these unfortunate incidents and the events in pictures were tragically not identified until well after war’s end.

How come there are so many pictures, 5 million is an incredible amount?
During the second world war planners depended heavily on aerial photography and in particular, those specialist photographic interpreters who would spend hours if not days after each flight searching through the pictures seeking evidence and clues from which to pick their next targets. Some would say that the pictures themselves were absolutely vital to the war effort.

Years before the final choice of beaches were made for the D-Day landings; the photographic interpreters had been observing the whole shoreline of northern France.

The site itself is something of a storybook of those often-unsung people whose bravery heralded the end of the Second World War. The pilots who undertook these missions to shoot the highly detailed pictures were some of the most daring in the skies, often flying unarmed, unprotected and alone, often at very low level. Sadly many hundreds failed to return from their perilous missions.

Just how good is the quality of the pictures?
To give a sense of the dramatic, in the Auschwitz pictures, prisoners can be seen queuing up for roll call whereas the D-Day pictures clearly show bodies floating in the sea.

Apart from these types of gripping images, there are also pictures of the German battleship Bismarck hiding in a Norwegian fjord, who just seven days later would be sunk. While the civilian destruction is clearly highlighted, in the very bleak detail of almost total devastation, wrought by the mass bombing raids on the German city of Cologne.

Other famous pictures show gliders near the Pegasus Bridge, which was being stormed by airborne troops just before dawn on D-Day in the first action of the Allied invasion.

So this is really a site for historians and those people with a particular interest in that era?
Certainly these images are of incredible historic content, but interestingly they are also bringing some very real benefit in today’s circumstances, where they are being used in finding the many unexploded bombs that are left over as deadly mementos of the war.

The sites administrators’ go on to state, "We see if we have aerial reconnaissance photographs of the area and send them over, so they can see if there may be any more." Meaning that having found one bomb, the photos may discover others.

Whose idea was it to put these pictures on the Internet?
The Aerial Reconnaissance Archives (TARA) at Keele University created the “evidenceincamera” site. Their ultimate aim is to make all of the aerial reconnaissance photographs provided by the UK Ministry of Defence at TARA, available to the public via the Internet.

The pictures were transferred to Keele University in 1962 from the Allied Central Interpretation Unit, where wartime analysts studied the material collected by reconnaissance crews. The collection is on permanent loan to the university.

The Aerial Reconnaissance Archives is also expecting to release 2.5 million Luftwaffe German air force reconnaissance photographs of Eastern Europe that were seized by the Allies at the end of the war.

Arthur Hissey
Computer Research & Technology
www.crt.net.au