Google Earth 1945 Function Images Dating Discussion

No the images are from aerials taken between 1944 and 1954. The Oakley ones were used post war by the Ordnance Survey for sale to the public as new maps were not being produced. To prevent the public seeing anything that was still in Air Ministry hands the did a cut and paste job to overlay the airfield with fields that followed the patterns on pre-war maps and an excellent job they did. Lone, small fluffy clouds were also used to hide smaller features like AA sites and Radar. All the GE 1945 layer that exhibits square outline where the maps are joins are form this collection although many have been replaced with the original versions where non retail stocks had been found hence the reason why you can see airfields in some but not others. Where the frame joinsa are all over the place (eg Suffolk) these are original RAF frames with no retouching and some go back to 1942 (eg Bury St Edmunds).

The recent additions to Kent on GE are labelled 1940 and 1960 but these are clearly post war and from the 1946/7 RAF survey and 1960 is probably 1966-9 which seems to have been the next big survey.

We have covered this before a few years back but it doesn't hurt to remind people.