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Mapmakers: Aerial recon photos


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Oddly enough, the lands inland from the beaches for 5-10 kilometres in the 1945/7 and 1950 images have a lot of open fields and very few places to hide. I grabbed one from the Fontaine-Henry area and was shocked at the remarkable lack of small closed fields.

Coastal, bigger fields, drainage ditches , marshy in areas. Higher ground smaller fields bocage edges.

I looked at the village you mentioned in Google Earth and there is plenty of rise and fall in the land as you can see by the way the fields and woods flow to the contour around the river. : ) Its fascinating to look at the hundreds of photos offered and check the landscape - though not taken for military appreciation !

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Sergei says:Very cool!

Let me make sure I understand here. In your example showing intervals from 30m to 50m, you'd draw five different polygons over the same area with altitude settings of 30m, 35m, 40m, 45m, and 50m?

Which Google Earth altitude setting do you use? Is the draw order significant?

Do you set the polygon's properties/altitude tab to "absolute," or something else?

Also, when I type an altitude into the window, like "5m" and then click OK, it defaults back to zero or to the little instructional type about the acceptable range.

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Map overlay Belgium ww2 era using Google mapping and British GSGS survey maps.

http://geo.nls.uk/maps/belgium/index.html

A blurb from site:

Belgium - Second World War military mapping - geo-referenced mosaics

These maps were created by the Geographical Section of the General Staff (GSGS) and were used by the Allies during the Second World War. These georeferenced and mosaiced layers were created as part of a project on military aerial imagery held by The Aerial Reconnaissance Archives, based at RCAHMS.

GSGS 4042 (1:250,000) - 1937-42. This series is a revised version of a First World War map. The information gathered from aerial reconnaissance imagery was added to most areas. In the remaining areas, alterations were based on the best available French, Belgian and Dutch maps.

GSGS 4336 (1:100,000) - 1942-43. This series is a revised version of a First World War map. Information was mainly gathered from French 1:80.000 and Belgian 1:40.000 map series. Particular attention was paid, using aerial reconnaissance imagery, to the revision of railways and roads.

GSGS 4040 (1:50,000) - 1943-44. This series was first prepared in 1938-1939. The sheet lines of this series are unlike other 1:50.000 series and have no relationship to any local series either French or Belgian. The sheets which cover Belgium were compiled from local 1:20.000 and 1:40.000 series maps.

GSGS (1:250,000 - 1:50,000) - 1937-42. This is a user friendly visualization and shows all three series as listed above in one application. Every series is visible at a different zoom level.

http://geo.nls.uk/maps/belgium/index.html

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  • 2 years later...

In post #10 of this thread there are some detailed instructions for obtaining photos from the 1947 aerial survey of France from the IGN site, starting at http://loisirs.ign.fr/accueilPVA.do

However, it seems that in the last couple of years IGN have dramatically revamped their site and, since I don't read French, I have no idea how to get to those photos now. Is anyone able to help out a poor monoglot?

(RCAHMS doesn't quite over the area I'm interested in)

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  • 3 weeks later...

Updated instructions for the French Geoportail:

1) go to http://www.geoportail.gouv.fr/accueil

2) zoom in to the area of the main map that you're interested in

3) click on 'Catalogue de donnees' (on the left) to expand that menu

4) click on 'Cartes' to expand the maps menu

5) click on 'Cartes IGN' to get the modern 1:50k or 1:25k topo maps - you'll need to zoom right in to get the contours to show

6) click on 'Photographies' then 'photographies aeriennes' to get the aerial photos

7) make sure the 'eyeball' in 'Ma selection de donnees' (on the left) is crossed (turned off) for 'Cartes IGN', and on for 'Photo aeriennes'

8) click on 'Remoter le temps' (high right) to select a date range for the aerial photos

9) click the drop arrow in the box that pops up (next to 'Que soulhaitez-vous consulter?') and select 'Les prises du vues aeriennes'

10) use the sliders in the box to narrow down the date range, then click on one of the date boxes underneath the slider

11) hover over the cross-hair-targety thingamabobs that appear on the map to see the area encompassed by each photo. You might need to zoom out a bit, and scroll around a bit to find the nearest cross-hair-targety thingamabobs. Also, try the different date sets. Each mission has different coverage.

12) when you've identified a cross-hair-targety thingamabob that you're interested in, click on it

13) click on 'Telecharger l'image' to download that photo. It'll be *about* 17MB, and in JP2 format, so you may need something like Irfanview to open and view it.

14) make great maps and scenarios!

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