US Air Force WWII Photos

This aerial photo shows Manchester United's Old Trafford football stadium. The photo was taken during World War II, on May 30, 1944, by a US Air Force photographic reconnaissance (PR) aircraft. The stadium (top left) was hit by a German bomb in March 1941 and the damage caused to the south stand can be seen in the USAAF aerial photograph.

This aerial reconnaissance photo of Manchester is just one of the 3,600 pictures which can be seen in Historic England's new map of photos taken by USAAF photographic reconnaissance units in the UK during 1943 and 1944, after the US joined the war in December 1941. The US air force photos can be explored on Historic England's USAAF Collection interactive map. On this map orange polygons are used to show the area captured by a reconnaissance photo. You can view a photo simply by clicking on these colored polygons. 

Most of the photos on the map are top-down vertical aerial photographs. However the map also includes over 400 oblique 'bird's eye' aerial photos. Historic England's introduction to the map includes a section What Can I See in the Photographs? which picks out some of the reconnaissance photos taken of ancient monuments, airfields, military sites, and a number of different UK towns & cities.

The USAAF aerial photos can also be viewed on Historic England's Aerial Photograph EXplorer interactive map. This map also includes thousands of aerial photographs taken by the Royal Air Force between 1938 and 1945.

You can explore some of the bomb damage caused by German bomb raids on London on the Layers of London interactive map. Layers of London is an interactive map which gives you access to lots of historic maps and historical information about the UK capital city. It includes a fascinating layer of aerial photographs of London taken just after the war entitled the London RAF Aerial Collection (1945-1949). 

After World War II the Royal Air Force methodically flew over the whole of Britain to photograph the country from the air. This resulted in 24,000 photographs of London. This aerial imagery provides a stunning visual record of London just after World War II. Bomb damage from the Blitz is clearly visible in lots of the imagery. 

In the screenshot of West Ham above you can clearly see where the bombs fell. The rows of Victorian era terraced housing are interrupted by temporary white prefab buildings (at the center of the image). These new cheap prefab buildings were erected to replace houses bombed out during the war. If you walk this neighborhood today you can still clearly see where the bombs fell. If any building is post-World War II then you can be sure it was built on the location of a bombed out Victorian era building.

Also See

The Luftwaffe Map of Kiev - an aerial photo map of Kiev created by the Germans in preparation for the 1941 Battle of Kiev.