AIR PHOTO ARCHIVE - KEELE UNIVERSITY - Access?

Peter,

Had the same problem. There was much fanfare about the archive being online but never found it. It recently led you to a shop site which seemed to have no connection!

I think the archive has now moved home to RCAHMS but will probably take a while to become available.

This was lifted from their site :-

One of the world's most important aerial photography collections is on its way to RCAHMS.

The Aerial Reconnaissance Archives (TARA) are made up of over 10 million photographs, from images of Second World War Allied and German aerial reconnaissance, to RAF aerial photography around the world up to the 1990s.

Over 100,000 canisters of film and boxes of prints are being transported by articulated lorry from Keele University, the home of the archive for the last 45 years, to storage facilities near Glasgow and the RCAHMS premises in Edinburgh. The sheer size of the archive will see the relocation process continue for several months.

The move is part of a joint initiative between RCAHMS, The National Archives and Keele University to secure TARA's future long-term preservation and continued development. The transfer of post-war aerial photography from the Ministry of Defence is also expanding the imagery held by TARA.

RCAHMS has a track record of effective archive management of large collections of aerial imagery, and is a world leader in the delivery of heritage information and digital imagery on-line. RCAHMS already holds collections of RAF and Ordnance Survey aerial imagery of Scotland.

The move will be completed later this year and will enable TARA, after a period of assimilation, to be preserved, further digitised and made accessible to the general public.

Meanwhile I found www.ukaerialphotos.com/ has come back to life with the 1946 photos although most airfields seem to be invisible! Nice one of Windrush for example. They are very expensive if you want to buy them though.

Peter K