The Roger Freeman Collection

The following News item has been posted at the IWM, Duxford:

Somewhere in England’: Portraits of the Americans in Britain 1942 to 1945
We have replaced the Historic Duxford preview exhibition in the corner of AirSpace with a new temporary photographic exhibition. It draws on material from the Roger Freeman Collection which IWM acquired last year. The Freeman Collection consists of around 15,000 images of the US Army Air Forces in the UK during the Second World War. They were collected by aviation historian Roger Freeman over the course of his lifetime, from official sources and from veterans themselves. The exhibition officially opens tomorrow, on the anniversary of the first mission flown from Duxford by the 78th Fighter Group. The 24 photos on display all show individuals who we have researched to try to build a picture of their lives before and after the Second World War.


I'm not sure if arrangements have been made to allow public access to The Freeman Collection.

Thanks for this . I do hope that the 15,000 images will be made available to the public to view as I am sure aviation writers will be clamouring to see new material. I thought the collection was to go on view in the US.

I suspect that many of these images will be the official ones now available for free viewing and downloading on the Fold3 site. Many first appeared in Roger's Mighty Eighth trilogy. The really interesting photos will be the ones that Roger acquired from former airmen. He was kind enough to lend me some of them for use in various magazine articles. What a great and generous chap he was!

Yes, but one hopes they too will attribute them correctly and digitise them for on-line viewing. Joe Public can then re-display them subject to the IWMs attribution conditions. But, I sympathise with your feelings. (or should that be empathise?)