Historic Aerial Photo Resources

Ooooh!

It's a shame all the stuff I really want to look at is not visible yet - they are teasing us! Hopefully next Christmas all my presents will be in the vertical form

Hardly anything on bombing ranges though

More updates from RCAHMS, this time 1946 aerials covering parts of Nairnshire and Morayshire.

aerial.rcahms.gov.uk/news/news120816.php...2vh0fa0n8u73su7murp3

Airfields covered are Kinloss, Lossiemouth (both already covered) parts of Milltown, most of Elgin, most of Forres, Dalcross and Leanach (no features that are obvious on this SLG).

Luckily some ranges are also covered. The arrow for Clunas is now visible at last but sadly the target is 200 metres off the edge of the nearest frame. Also Burghead arrow is visible, thus resolving an outstanding query buy again the target is 200 meters off the nearest frame. The mysterious and probably mythical Honeychurch range must be in their somewhere as it was used by Kinloss (19 OTU) but I have no idea of it's location as the wartime grid reference is incorrect.

The RCAHMS have released some more aerial images online. The ones of Scotland are OS plates which are already available on the NLS and Google Maps though with higher resoltution (to subscribers).

Possibly of more interest here are some NATO images from Belgium, Germany and Sardinia. I haven’t checked all these but they have NATO airfields so might show some of the structures around them

aerial.rcahms.gov.uk/news/?PHPSESSID=1h1bft4kgpii7ca6pr5hcb0h33

“The imagery includes cover of several airfields in Germany, including two photographed from low-level during a major NATO exercise in 1955. Also featured are a series of photomaps produced in the late 1940s which cover areas of Scotland.”

“The imagery covers large parts of Sardinia, including the capital, Cagliari, and the wealthy coastal resort of Porto Cervo, as well as the Italian Air Force base at Decimomannu, now a NATO air combat training centre.”

NCAP have released a batch of coastal aerial photos from 1973 to 1975 covering most of the east and some parts of the west coasts. These have been visible on the map view for over a year but not accessible as anything bigger than a thumbnail so now they can be zoomed in. Some good range coverage but apart from those airfields close to the coast, really close, they are either missed or partially covered. Glasgow and Edinburgh are covered though.

ncap.org.uk/news/coastal-survey-images-now-online

I believe there were some more from this group but I don't think they have been released - yet? Another oddity is that the KML covering most of this batch doesn't have pins for all the frames covered but if you hover over an apparently uncovered area you may get a frame outline flash up.

Peter wrote:

NCAP have released a batch of coastal aerial photos from 1973 to 1975 covering most of the east and some parts of the west coasts. These have been visible on the map view for over a year but not accessible as anything bigger than a thumbnail so now they can be zoomed in. Some good range coverage but apart from those airfields close to the coast, really close, they are either missed or partially covered. Glasgow and Edinburgh are covered though.

ncap.org.uk/news/coastal-survey-images-now-online

I believe there were some more from this group but I don't think they have been released - yet? Another oddity is that the KML covering most of this batch doesn't have pins for all the frames covered but if you hover over an apparently uncovered area you may get a frame outline flash up.

I was very briefly getting excited there for a moment until I realised! But this is only for Scotland!

The coastal survey covers the following areas:

Eastern coastline from Berwick-upon-Tweed to Cape Wrath, including full cover of the city of Edinburgh, plus parts of Orkney and Shetland.
West coast areas including the Rhins of Galloway, Ayrshire, Firth of Clyde, Arisaig, Lochcarron, Skye, Gairloch, Ullapool and Lewis.

kevin

Peter wrote:

NCAP have released a batch of coastal aerial photos from 1973 to 1975 covering most of the east and some parts of the west coasts. These have been visible on the map view for over a year but not accessible as anything bigger than a thumbnail so now they can be zoomed in. Some good range coverage but apart from those airfields close to the coast, really close, they are either missed or partially covered. Glasgow and Edinburgh are covered though.

ncap.org.uk/news/coastal-survey-images-now-online

I believe there were some more from this group but I don't think they have been released - yet? Another oddity is that the KML covering most of this batch doesn't have pins for all the frames covered but if you hover over an apparently uncovered area you may get a frame outline flash up.

I can see the announcement in News but been able to find the full collection.

Sorry I forgot to mention that the National bit of NCAP mainly covers other nations, mainly Europe, but it does have large elements of Scotland. English Heritage (NMR) - soon to be renamed "Historic England" has not got a digitisation programme as far as I know. That would be a vast and expensive project! Not sure where RCAHMW (or will that be "Historic Wales"?) is at present.

The KML for the new additions doesn't appear anywhere so I clicked on one of the sample sets (all oil related!) and then selected "Fairey" which produced a KML that covered the new ones plus some already released, including a few in Kenya. A bit convoluted but it seems to work. It produced over 6.000 frames of which 4,900 were the new ones.

Peter wrote:

The KML for the new additions doesn't appear anywhere so I clicked on one of the sample sets (all oil related!) and then selected "Fairey" which produced a KML that covered the new ones plus some already released, including a few in Kenya. A bit convoluted but it seems to work. It produced over 6.000 frames of which 4,900 were the new ones.

Thanks, I will try that tomorrow.