Subject: WWII Aerial Photo Archive to Go Online



http://apnews.excite.com/article/20040117/D804RT900.html

WWII Aerial Photo Archive to Go Online

Jan 17, 6:00 PM (ET)

(AP) Undated photo released Friday Jan. 16, 2004, of an aerial view of
the June 1944 D-Day landings in...
Full Image

LONDON (AP) - A huge British archive of World War II aerial
reconnaissance photos, including pictures of the D-Day landings in
Normandy, is to go on the Internet on Monday.

Under the digitalization project announced Saturday, some 5 million
Royal Air Force photos of Western Europe will be available to the public
on the Web site www.evidenceincamera.co.uk., archivists said. The site
did not appear to be accessible on Saturday.

"These images allow us to see the real war at first hand - as if we are
RAF pilots," said Allan Williams, head of the Aerial Reconnaissance
Archives project at Keele University in north-central England.

The photos, a key source of intelligence for Allied commanders during
the war, include American troops landing in Normandy on D-Day, the
effects of the bombing of Cologne, Germany, and the German battleship
Bismarck being hunted by the Royal Navy.

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 the
property of the national Public Records Office on permanent loan to the
university.

Before the digitalization, using the photo archive had meant a manual
search through thousands of boxes.

The Aerial Reconnaissance Archives, known as TARA, expects later to
release of 2.5 million Luftwaffe German air force reconnaissance
photographs of Eastern Europe seized by the Allies at the end of the
war.




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