The "Luftwaffe" Photo Collection at the BA, formerly in the US

[Larry Hickey]

Hello,

For the EOE Project, we have been working with the ECPA to acquire research photos related to the project. As most of you know, there is a large collection of Luftwaffe photos at the ECPA that were acquired at the end of WW II by the French, from what was then the "official" Luftwaffe photo archive. Many of these have been appearing in various publications since the 1970s, and are well known.

The BA in Germany also has another large but different part of this photo archive, that originally was taken to the US, and was returned to the BA in the 1960s or 70s. I personally had access to part of this collection in the late 1960s, and had copies made of a number of items at a USAF audio-visual facility located a few blocks from the Pentagon. In trips to the US National Archives in recent years, however, I've not been able to locate a copy of the photo archive that was returned to Germany at the NA photo facility at College Park, MD. However, one of the key people at the ECPA in Paris recently told one of our researchers that the US NA does have a copy of the BA Luftwaffe photo collection that was returned to Germany. Does anyone know whether, in fact, a duplicate set was made of the photo archive that was sent to the BA in Germany? IF so, does this duplicate set of photo files still reside in the US NA photo collections? If so, where is it and under what files can they be found? In my experience at the US NA, there is no such large collection of Luftwaffe material available.

I'm quite sure that some readers of this board will know the answers to these questions.

Thanx,