United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) reconnaissance aircraft flew hundreds of sorties over England during the Second World War. The Historic England Archive holds a USAAF collection of over 20,000 photographs that records airfields, military bases, towns and countryside in England between 1943 and 1944.
Today Historic England made over 3600 of these photographs available on its website, together with a clickable map and some background material on the USAAF collection.
The photograph here shows Market Harborough and Little Bowden, with south at the top. The striking thing is how few of the roads to the north of the town centre - which made up my old council ward - had been built by this date.
You can see the canal coming in from the right and the canal basin clearly, as well as the prisoner of war camp in the Farndon Road (on the far right of the photo a little above the centre). And Welland Park is laid out for us, but what is that large oval? A long-vanished cycle track?
I can see my own house among a jumble of cottages, most of which are no longer there.
And it's notable how the railways dominated the town at this time. The line from Leicester (having been joined by lines from Melton Mowbray and Peterborough north of this photo) comes in at the bottom and departs to St Pancras in the top left-hand corner.
The line to Northampton leaves the picture at the top, but further to the right, and the line to Rugby leaves from the right-hand side of the photo.
There's hours of fun to he had from these photos.
They must surely have covered South Wales and lowland Scotland as well, considering the strategic importance of those regions. Is there access to those photos, do you think?
ReplyDeleteJust follow the Historic England link in the post.
ReplyDelete