There was an article in my local newspaper about the RAF putting all of the aerial reconnaissance photos from WW II on the web at this site:
Anybody else heard of this? It may not be up quite yet, but it really sounds interesting to be able to look at it.
Our local paper had the same info. The writer also said he hadn’t been able to access it yet.
It was noted on Yahoo Saturday night. Tried it then, Sunday and today but no luck
I tried it tonight… I sit here and wait, and wait, and wait, as it just tries to load. Since it made Yahoo! News I’m sure a ton of peeps are checking it out.
Was also in papers over here, haven’t tried to access the site yet.
It gave me a message to try later due to a high volume of inqueries.
Supposedly there are lots of hits there…but I thought I’s post this for others who were unaware of it:
Saturday, January 17, 2004 Posted: 9:11 AM EST (1411 GMT)
LONDON, England (Reuters) – More than 5 million detailed aerial photographs from World War II go onto the Internet from Monday, giving the public their first views of some of the most dramatic and grisly moments of the conflict.
From the smoke billowing from the incinerator of the Auschwitz concentration camp in which millions of Jews were murdered by the Nazis, to the U.S. landings on Omaha beach on D-Day, June 6, 1945, the pictures tell dramatic stories.
“These images allow us to see the real war at first hand,” project head Allan William said. “It is like a live action replay.”
“They were declassified years ago, but it takes days to find an individual image. Now they have been digitized and will be on the Internet, it takes seconds,” he told Reuters.
The pilots who took the highly detailed pictures were some of the most daring in the skies, flying unarmed, unprotected and alone often at very low level to fulfill their missions.
In the Auschwitz pictures for instance, prisoners can be seen queuing up for roll call, and in the D-Day pictures bodies can be seen floating in the sea.
Apart from these gripping images – some of more than 40 million taken over the years and lodged in the National Archives – there are also pictures of the German battleship Bismarck hiding in a Norwegian fjord.
Seven days after the picture was taken in May 1941, a combination of Royal Navy bombardment and Royal Air Force attacks had sunk the most feared German surface raider of the war.
There is also a picture showing in stark detail the devastation wrought by the mass bombing raids on the German city of Cologne.
Other pictures show gliders next to Pegasus Bridge, stormed by British airborne troops before dawn on the morning of D-Day in the first action of the Allied invasion to liberate France.
But the images are not just of historic interest. They are still used to this day in the frequent discovery of unexploded bombs left over as deadly mementos of the war.
“We are often contacted when an unexploded bomb is found. We see if we have aerial reconnaissance photographs of the area and send them over so they can see if there may be any more,” Williams said.
The images will be available on the Internet from Monday, January 19 at www.evidenceincamera.co.uk, but Williams said the Web site was already under siege.
On the news service that I watched they also said that eventually up to 2 1/2 million Luftwaffe PR shots of Eastern Europe would be on that site too. apparently they were used during the cold war by the ‘intelligence’ types. Just shows what we’re up against!
Pete
Tried going there and couldn’t get in. Got a message saying "Thank you for accessing our new website, we are currently experiencing a high volume of enquiries at www.evidenceincamera.co.uk
Please try again later"
Maybe after the hype dies down it will be accessable. You would think they would have done something to prep for high traffic volume though. Oh well, maybe next time.