Air 20/7584 to 7 AIR 14/3563

I paid a quick trip to TNA yesterday morning (Quick? it's a 2 hour journey each way!) and as I thought the files I wanted to view would probably not yield anything useful I included a wildcard or two. In this case it was AIR 20/7585 & 6 and if you have never viewed these they are full of airfield plans and aerial photos to go with them. There are 6 large folders, each larger than A3 (old Imperial size?) and the plans are usually dated 1944 or 1945 whereas the AP's are mainly from 1942/3 and coverage of airfields I would say is around 60% - it took me over two hours to go through the whole lot!. The only downside with these is that you have to view them in the map room and all the documents are preserved in very shiny plastic wallets sealed all round except the binding end. I found it impossible to photograph them without getting the camera and myself reflected in each photo and also the light reflecting off the plastic, no matter what angle I propped them at.

The plans are all very clean but lack the building descriptions although the buildings are numbered, possibly a reduced or edited version. There are many plans that I found interesting, Boscombe down for instance, showed spectacle or loop hardstands which also appeared on the AP, and they didn't look concrete! I didn't realise they had any. Marham and Sculthorpe both showed the old layouts overlaid with the VHB layout in dotted lines.

The AP's showed many airfields under construction and some in their pre-runway layout, examples were Chilbolton and Langham.

These files have obviously been a source for a number of illustrations as many were familiar but the fact that photography is very difficult means that you will probably have to order scanned copies unless anyone knows how to photograph high gloss finished without reflections? If anyone gets a quote for the whole lot I would be curious to know the cost

If there is any interest I could pull together a list of the contents so that you can place orders if required? Some of these are available in the TNA Image library online but copies via this route are £25 each.

One final thing, a lot of the AP's were marked as C.I.U. (yes I know what it stands for) but does anyone know if these are also stores at NMR Swindon?

Did the copies you ordered look okay?

There seemed to be three main sources of the aerial photos :-

CIU
7th PG (USAAF)
RAF training units (a lot from 8 OTU)

Others have no date or frame information. I gather the 7th PG photos may also be held at Swindon (usually including "LOC" in the sortie reference) as I have already a number from there. The trouble is that a lot of the ones that I want copies of have no info. The one of Ibsley, for example, includes the area of the Ibsley bombing range but has no info on it so will require an order from TNA. I have also noticed that some prints are not of good quality so enlargement would be of no use for finding smaller features.

I have attached a PDF file containing a the list of Airfields in the first set, AIR 20/7585 (Parts 1-3). These cover A-I and I have noted the part number, airfield name, drawing number and date of the AP if available.
All the plans state "Based on Drawing Number XXXXXX" and do not contain the building list reference. All the plans are clear and clean and are slightly larger than A3. The aerial photographs include some that have been enlarged and the frame references are therefore missing and I have noted these. Some Airfields did not have an aerial photo and these have an "N/A" in the AP column. It should be noted that a lot of the AP's pre-date the plans and include many in the process of construction and extension and also some in their pre concrete runway days.

Hope this is of use.

ATTACHMENT UPDATED AND NOW AVAILABLE IN A LATER POST