Cropped Photos Luftwaffe Airfields

[blythsco]

Here is a link to a new growing set of crops of aerial photos taken by my father, John S. Blyth, flying a Spitfire MK XI from Mount Farm, Oxfordshire, UK. Many of you have viewed my sets of high resolution aerial photos of airfields, marshaling yards, bridges, V weapons sites, etc. and I would like to thank those of you who have contributed to IDing of locations, features and historical facts pertaining to these photos. My intention in cropping the photos is to allow access for a wider number of you. I will be adding to the collection as time permits.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/2455401...7623296582738/

Cheers
Scott

And check this trailer out while you're at it.

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[Steve Coates]

Many thanks. I was pleased to see the photos of Laupheim. The airfield damage from the bombing raid on 19 July 1944 is clearly evident.

[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.

[jvmasset]

Hello Larry!

Would you have access to photos and/or drawings of Luftwaffe airfields during BoB times?
I do not know when TARA will unearth those...with their present work speed (presumably limited by resouces), somewhere in 2020...

thanks for your help!

JVM

[Larry deZeng]

I used the collection at the U.S. National Archives in Washington and at the Air Force Historical Research Agency at Maxwell AFB in Alabama. The earliest reports in this collection date from around mid-1942 and there are no photos. The earlier material from the B of B period would be (or should be) in the AIR 40 files at the British National Archives (formerly the PRO) in London. I recommend you go to London sometime and take a look as I am pretty sure you will find what you are looking for.

L.

[Steve Coates]

Larry said '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).'

Also lost (although not on the Luftwaffe inventory at that time) were the Fa223 V13, V15, V17, V18 and V19 plus the V20 -V50 in varying stages of completion.

The airfield maps are in AIR 40, at least those for Germany are in files around reference AIR 40/1240. Offhand I'm reasonably sure the folders for the remainder of continental Europe are near this reference although I've not checked any file contents other than for German airfields but I would say from those I've seen that most of the airfield maps were drawn later in the war, 1942 - 1944 as the PRU effort stepped up.