The Special Collections department of Wageningen UR Library houses two collections of aerial photographs.
The Netherlands in World War II by the RAF, 1943-1947
The first collection comprises of approx. 94,250 photographs made by the Allied Air Force (RAF) flying over the whole of the Netherlands. The flight dates range from April 14th 1943 until June 18th 1947, but most are in 1944 and 1945. The scale varies for each flight from 1 : 5,000 to 1 : 73,500, common is 1: 7,600 to 18,000. Besides detailed information about the situation during the war they contain valuable information about land use, archeology and topography.This photograph showing the bridges over the Maas in Rotterdam was taken on April 13th, 1945 (RAF337-06-4034). In the top left corner, the empty lots of the bombarded inner city are clearly visible.
Finding aids & document delivery
- 1. The serie of index maps is the geographic access to the aerial photographs outlining the areas of flights that are available. From some areas there are several index maps. Make a selection of relevant collection numbers.
- 2. The flight data contain the scale, dates and time, squadron or task, pilot, sortie number and other data. If relevant you can refine your selection of collections by date or scale.
- 3. Look at the relevant sortie maps to see if you have the right flight. Select the relevent range of photo numbers by runs noted with Roman numbers.
- 4. Take a look at the sample images in 150 dpi of all our 94.250 photo's at Dotka Data.
- 5. Dotka Data is the reseller of reproductions of our RAF photographs through their webshop according to this tariff and discount agreement (both in Dutch).
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The second collection consists of several hundreds of photographs taken by the Survey Department
of Public Works and Water Management in September 1939.
They cover the defence line 'Grebbelinie' in the Dutch provinces Gelderland and Utrecht on a scale of 1 :
10,000.
This defence line became the decisive battlefield less than a year later, when the German army invaded the Netherlands in May 1940. With hindsight, it is easy to detect flaws in the defence line, such as an orchard lying in the line of fire in this picture (MD1717). |
Other collections of aerial photographs from the Netherlands
- International collections:
- The National Collection of Aerial Photography contains several collections of aerial photography and is part of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS). It contains also the TARA collection (The Aerial Reconnaissance Archives) which was formerly housed at Keele University (UK); a collection of over 10 million aerial photographs, from images of Second World War Allies (including RAF) and German aerial reconnaissance of Europe, to aerial photography around the world up to the 1990s.
- Google Earth down load the free version of Google Earth which combines satellite imagery and maps.
- Aerophotostock the international network in aerial photography
- Kadaster at Zwolle (formerly the Dutch Topographical Survey at Emmen) has several collections from before, during and after WWII
- Aviodrome at Lelystad owns among other and older collections the photo-archive from KLM Aerocarto. It concerns the birds eye view aerial photography started in 1921, a large photo archive of about 300.000 photos
- Research institute Alterra of Wageningen UR has a digital collection of aerial photographs from 2000
- Aerophoto Schiphol was established in 1968, specialising in aerial photography
- Aerophoto Eelde working from 1963 and the photo-archive of the North Dutch Aircraft Company (1950-1960)
Dutch collections:
Wageningen Digital Library, 8 November, 2011
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