Luftwaffe Target Code 10281

[Nick Beale]

For FA and IA do we read “Französische Afrika” and “Italienische Afrika” as those places were in the colonial era?

[Andy Mitchell]

Nick,

Yes, thats correct.

[Chris Going]

Andrew, Nick, Hello

TM 3 is Target Material, Section 3 from the 1946 index of the ‘Dick Tracy’ capture, which consisted of some twenty-one (21) C47 plane loads of captured photographic material, much of which was indexed at RAF Medmenham in the summer of 1945 as part of the ‘Turban’ programme, a top secret initiative to secure as much information as possible about USSR targets. Now, there is a bit in Aldrichs ‘Hidden hand’, but a small paper wot I wrote: ‘A neglected asset, German aerial photography of the second world War period’ in Eds Robert H Bewley and Wlodimeriez Rackowski, Aerial Archaeology, Developing Future practice, 2001 Nato Science Series Ser I Vol 337; 23-30 ISBN 1 58603 184 8 (IOS Press) is a useful starting guide to the surviving stuff. If that proves difficult to dinf (probably will), a useful alternative start is best found in Air 34/79.

Dick Tracy was found near Bad Reichenhall by US forces in May 1945. To paraphrase myself, ‘This archive …from internal evidence appears to be the print library of the …OKH. It comprised imagery from some 13,000 tactical and strategic sorties, some 9,500 map mosaics created for the various AOK’s, about 45,000 training prints, and 3,000 other prints. Information on this discovery reached ACIU…on June 20th and immediately brought its commanding officer…to the spot.
Within a fortnight the entire find, coded Dick Tracy after the all-American comic book hero -had been evacuated to the UK, requiring about 21 C47 sorties to be successfully airlifed out of Germany’ A preliminary index was completed by September 1945 and a more complete one by the spring of 1946, at which time most of Dick Tracy had been taken to the US. The Western allies agreed it needed joint exploitation (here had been other seizures as well) and the better Dick Tracy sorties were swapped back and forth under operation COPYCAT.

Section TM 3 of the Target material included dossiers on UK targets, hence the John Calvin download you found, Andy. Now the Dick Tracy UK target index is incomplete, but it’s the biggest surviving holding and some at least of them appear to be the originals from which sets were printed up for distribution to GAF Units.

If we look at airfield targets, the highest UK (England/Wales) number I know of is 522. Scotland '10' Series numbers start at 800. After about 1941 inland targets were only sporadically added to the list. For Chris G's benefit here (below) are some more East Anglian airfields. Target documents for the later additions, such as Eye and Fyfield (under constriction for American forces) are rather skimpy affairs with oblique near ‘standoff’ graphics and consequently not much interpretation.

10 276 Bury St Edmunds; 10 278 Catton; 10 306 Tuddenham; 10 317 Bradwell; 10 348 Castle Camps; 10 386 Great Sampford; 10 388 Bungay; 10 435 Hornchurch Bulphan; 10 439 Nazeing; 10 433 Thetford 10 456 North Creake; 10 466 Debach; 10 473 Eye; 10 482 Fyfield; 10 484 Easton Lodge; 10 485 Takeley; 10 498 Great Saling; 10 499 Gosfield; 10 500 Wethersfield; 10 501 Ridgewell; 10 519 Sudbury; 10 521 Rattlesden;

All best

ChrisG

[Larry deZeng]

ChrisG -

Thanks for the background on Dick Tracy. I used just about every one of the aerials appearing on the John Calvin website, and then hired a freelance researcher from Maryland and spent about $2,000 for copies of other SU Series 10 images held at NARA College Park. But I never found the background story of this collection, except for some correspondence stating that "Target file cards on German-occupied and Russian airfields" were shipped from AFHRA (at that time the USAF Simpson Historical Center) Maxwell AFB in Alabama to Alexandria/Virginia in 1968 so they could be incorporated into the Dick Tracy collection to which they belonged. Today, NARA has no record or knowledge of these cards. Apparently, they got lost somewhere.

L.

[Chris Going]

Larry, Hello.

Glad to be able to provide that information. The thing you most needed (or perhaps still need) to see was the second Volume of ‘Operation Dick Tracy. Catalogue of material. February 1946. Part Two’ created at Medmenham. This contained TM 5; ‘Detailed list of Russian targets’, which are given first in locale order (A-Z) then in Target Number order (pp 247-360).

The SU 10 (Airfields) series goes to 9942, and then resumes (to avoid numbering difficulties) with SU 10.11001, rising to SU 10.14113. There are about 60 more without assigned numbers beyond this. The catalogue is slightly unruly in that you can sometimes find yourself struggling with targets which are really in Poland or in the Balkans. But that’s life.

Each entry is followed by a reference which indicates the location of the image:

Eg

10 3942 Airfield Saransk GX/TM/13/9 Neg 3000
10 3949 Airfield Sotschi GX/TM/DI/6 -
10 3950 Airfield Konstantinowskoje GX/TM/18/122 Neg 2630

Sooooo -for Saransk, it’s best to dig out GX/13/9 at NARA (from RG 242) and see if it contains cut film, and check just what Neg 3000 actually is. Do you have this one?

It’s been a while since I was in the USNA but there should be a copy of this Index there. Did you ever hear of it? Did your researcher ever allude to it?

I guess everything got target file cards (the Copycat films did), but then, as secondary material, they may well have been chucked by an officious but ignorant, space maker.


In anticipation…


Chris

[Larry deZeng]

Concise, comprehensive yet very well stated, Chris.

First, thank you so much for straightening me out on the target cards. I will stop pursuing these like a dog chasing his tail in the mistaken belief that they might contain something useful. Interestingly, the Soviets had updated cards of all their airfields that contained a wealth of details that would make them far superior to the Luftwaffe's photo reconnaissance images. Researchers from Belarus have been able to find some of them in regional repositories but the main collection is at TsAMO Podolsk and access to the cards was still being denied to researchers as recently as 2014.

Below are some notes on Dick Tracy at NARA. As you will note, I always had a fee-for-service researcher acting as a surrogate and I did not go there myself. There are holes in the NARA holdings and useful images are missing for quite a few airfields, such as the large airfield complex at Saporoshje (Zaporozhye).


Cartographic Record Group Location Register
National Archives II, College Park, MD
Pages 133, 134, 135 of 175?
RG 242
Series: German Air Force Target Dossiers - Russia
Code and Stack: MAP-6 Stack 430?

The Russian target aerial photos are in the "Dick Tracy Catalogue of Material, Feb 1946." It's contained in two 3" beige 3-ring binders marked "Dick Tracy," on the bottom shelf just to the right of the attendant kiosk in the NARA Cartographic & Photographic Division (3rd Floor). At least that’s where they were in summer 2018.

The NARA Luftwaffe target aerial photos exist in many series, all listed in Dick Tracy. They contain differing amounts of material and are filed under different headings. See also or especially see "Index to Russian Target Material Contained in Packets". When ordering specific "Target Dossiers" include the place name and GX/TM number. Example - Folder E/44: Target Photographs of Airfields.

I believe the TARGET DOSSIERS are available for A to Z place names and so listed in the Dick Tracy Catalogue.

Notes on Material to Be Copied: for my purposes, the most important element of each photo was the German interpretation analysis written in white marker on the face of the photograph. The analysis gives the number of hangars and other buildings, dispersal facilities, Flak positions, airfield measurements, date taken, Target No., the identify of the Aufklärungsstaffel taking the photo, etc. Resolution of the copied photo is important because the researcher will want to be able to see at least some details of the buildings and other airfield infrastructure, such as their rough size and shape.

Notes on Copying: According to a friend who was there in summer 2018 to do a few samples for me, the much bigger problem is the Luftwaffe photos are too big to scan in a single pass on the research room scanner. One of the staff told my friend that if the photo was too big to fit on the scanner he couldn’t scan it. He ignored her and scanned everything I needed, but it took two scans for each photo.

Depending on the quality (resolution) needed, a digital camera could work better, I am told, although there’s still a big problem. Most of the photos my friend scanned were somewhat curled. On the scanner this was no big deal since the scanner top pushed them flat. However, the camera copy stands do not have the special glass covers that hold the original flat; in fact, when he was there they didn’t allow anything to be placed over the original on the copy stand. This means digital camera photos are likely have edge blurring.

Larry deZ.

[Chris Going]

Larry, Hi

Just a brief response for now:

Its clear you have the Medmenham two-volume Index of Dick Tracy on the third floor. Probably a photocopy. But you have it there, which is great.

Catalogues were also made of other captures, ie: Patron, Tablet, Monthly, Tenant, Hutch, Orwell, the Russian List, and GX ‘A’. These were all very much smaller. I can’t remember if they were also at NARA. It occurs to me that any GX showing up on the Can Index at NARA is likely to be the US end of the Copycat programme. Somewhere I have an index of the Sorties in the US but not the UK, in the UK but not the US, and those in both places.

Scanning etc.
I first saw the GAF GX stuff at the Pickett Street annex when life was very different. What you describe is the system I met with over ten years ago when Jerry Luchansky was getting the sortie plot degree square acetates prepared for Microfilming. The Scanning is a major problem. As the overwhelming bulk of the GAF photographs are contact prints measuring 30 x 30 cm, and thus do not readily fit onto the platen of anything but an A3 or larger scanner. There’s the ‘no overhang’ rule, and the scanner lid must not crease the image when closed.

Unless the image can be safely housed within a clear envelope for copying, the curled print is a headache. A conservator could get them rehydrated and flattened, but that would be at your expense- so it’s a question of multiple shots on a copy stand.

Best

Chris

[Andy Mitchell]

Chris,

Many thanks for the explanation of the TM sources and background to "Dick Tracey".

I will file this away with my file copies.

[Chris Going]

You are welcome Andy

For the record ‘Patron’ comprised 1,600 Sorties, c 10,000 annotated mosaics, 4, 500 postcards, and 600 document folders. ‘Tenant’ comprised 100 sorties and 89 mosaics; ‘Monthly’ comprised 310 sorties, and misc iterms; ‘Lattice’, under 300 sorties, ‘Filter’, some 18 sorties, 1,176 mosaics, and misc hand books. Between them ‘Tablet’, ‘Hutch’, and ‘Orwell’ comprised 466 sorties, 3,211 mosaics, training material and maps, whicle GXA comprised sorties (taking the GX series numbers as a whole to over 21,000) and maps. Principal losses comprised most of the Afrika Korps material, destroyed in 1944, the Heeresgruppen Ost AOK’s who apparently left >10 000 films in Russia. The Luftflotten 2 and 3 print Libraries were destroyed in Paris in 1944. That Stabia OKL Print Library was burned at Marienstein, while the ZAF the Zentral Archiv der Fliegerfilm was burned when barges transporting it were immobilised on the river Saale in April 1945.

I’ve not written much about this in recent years, but I’d better get a bit more down….

Best


Chris

[Tony Kearns]

Hi Andy, I believe that the ref in your post(no3) to 277 would be Dublin, Tallaght (West Dublin) On 29 December 1940 the Luftwaffe carried out a photographic sortie over Dublin Docks, then to Baldonnel , the Irish Air Corps base and finally to Tallaght which was a WW1 RFC/RAF base but abandoned by them after independence in 1922.
HTH.
Regards
Tony K