Cropped Photos Luftwaffe Airfields

[Larry deZeng]

Great film, Scott. I work daily with the Air Ministry A.I.2(b) narrative descriptions of enemy airfields that are largely based on the PR photos, or at least were up to early 1944. After your dad and his colleagues did the courageous part, the photo interpreters took the prints and negatives and milked them for every last drop of intelligence they could squeeze out of them. They were able to tell the difference between hangars, workshops, admin buildings, factory buildings and barracks, spot fuel and munitions dumps hidden in wooded areas outside the airfield perimeter, identify whether the runways, aprons and taxiways were concrete, asphalt, planked or packed and rolled clay, and on and on. They would then produce a drawing of the airfield and label everything identified. By the end of the war, these existed for a majority of the nearly 4,000 airfields used by the Luftwaffe from North Cape to North Africa and from Brittany to Nalchik. Those omitted were mostly the ones in Russia. It was a real teamwork endeavor with each player contributing to the final product.

The tenant unit at Laupheim at the time of the attack was III./ZG 101, which lost 16 planes on the ground, including 12 Bf 110s (7 total).

L.