Historic Aerial Photo Resources

Just by chance, I stumbled across a collection of RAF HLA series photographs of parts of England, mainly the south, in the NCAP collection online. The source is stated as NARA!

The frames date mostly from 1941 and 1942 and cover many diverse areas and many airfields. There is some low level coverage of Gatwick and parts of the surrounding area. Also included are Linton-on-Ouse, Tholthorpe (as a grass airfield), Chilbolton, also grass, Beaulieu with the embryo runways and many more interesting sites.

I didn't record the frame references but if you have a subscription try searching for HLA/ and NLA/. The Scottish coverage under HLA has been around for a few years but this English lot seems to be fairly recent. It also appears that this series provided the photos for the RAF book of airfields from 1942 (AIR 20/4038) as the sots seem to be the same or very similar.

NCAP seems to be down. This appears to be an annual event these days.

At least one other HES site is down.

NCAP is back up now.

The annual event is back at NCAP. Not being a social media slave I struggled to find confirmation of this years planned shutdown.

On a happier note the Historic England Aerial Archaeology map has been great to use.

historicengland.maps.arcgis.com/apps/web...41f18255e12e5cd5f85a

Many bombing ranges have been plotted and have even solved a photographic mystery at Berners Heath. The coverage is dependant on their detailed surveys and it is the dark red areas that have the most information. Oddly the Holy Island ranges (Goswick) are not fully plotted as they seem to have used 1941 aerial coverage which only included one bombing range and excluded the massive Goswick range area which came later. However Boulmer airfield shows the detailed plot of both the airfield and the earlier decoy. Other sites are marked but not always described. There is no "extra" aerial photos as suggested in the press, just the usual Google Earth type coverage. Maybe there is something else but I have not found it.

NCAP still seems to be missing and this is two days after it was due back online. I wonder if someone pressed delete instead of restore?

I think something was posted about HES sites being off for maintenance.

Canmore and PASTMAP not responding.

I am beginning to worry about the time taking to bring NCAP back up. I had a few queries I wanted to sort out and aerial photos are the best for more accurate timelines.

Peter wrote:

I am beginning to worry about the time taking to bring NCAP back up. I had a few queries I wanted to sort out and aerial photos are the best for more accurate timelines.

I was looking on Twitter earlier, their last update was suggesting that they working right through until the New Year so not looking good. They have posted some EMail addresses to contact them but I would think only for urgent requests. Looks suspiciously like they have had a major failure.

I hope it's not a problem like the one a few years back where a host lost the live and backup websites of a few companies who went out of business as a result.

With the loss of Old-maps.com and now the inaccessibility of NCAP and BFA I am suffering severe withdrawal symptoms.