CMN: What did Europe look like in 1944

[dieseltaylor]

Having seen the picture bones thrown by BF it struck me that most people who might design scenarios would be unfamiliar with what Northern Europe, particularly Normandy, looked like in 1944.

I thought it would be handy to have links to collections of photgraphs etc that would be relevant to making believable terrain. In case you wonder what I was mulling over - the wooden railings, the width of the road/square in the village shot, and the idea that a railroad would run through a village.

I know BF have scenery tweaks to do - particularly the changing of the railway gauge from 7 ft to smaller : ) - but mostly this is aimed at the scenario/map makers.

[dieseltaylor]

http://www.past-to-present.com/showcountry.cfm?country=France&fp=0

5500 photos and I have looked so far 1930 -1955.

There are perhaps a dozen town shots showing narrow streets but several showing the typical sort of paling fence where the fence is about a metre tall with chestnut palings an inch in diameter held upright every 4 or 5 inches by wire running along at top and bottom. Sufficient to keep chickens etc from straying. Not suitable for cattle horses!

The site does seem to have a large number of nude women photos but I have fought my way past them. Now perhaps from the beginning to 1930.!

http://www.past-to-present.com/photos.cfm?reference=S12556

http://www.past-to-present.com/photos.cfm?reference=G14136

wire fence with small uprights around airfield

http://www.flyingpioneers.com/pixsm/g15505_t.jpg

town

http://www.past-to-present.com/photos.cfm?reference=S17098

[TheVulture]

Here are some nice aerial recce shots of Villers-Bocage from about 2 weeks after the famous battle there. Also includes some in-place shots of destroyed Cromwell tanks and where they are in the aerial shot.

http://www.airrecce.co.uk/WW2/imagery/Villers-Bocage/vb.html

[dieseltaylor]

Nice -not much town left but instructive to see the houses spaced and hte area they had for growinng their own food.

Here is one of a series of travel videos:

Old Towns of Normandy

[dieseltaylor]

Excellent site for Pont-Farcy though modern pictures probably show the benefits of 50 years of French subsidised farming with larger fields. I talso states the larger farms would have been 10-12 hectares in older times. [25-30 acres] Note that is not a field that is the the whole farm.

http://www.christopherlong.co.uk/pont-farcy/index.html

the author has also a site relating to the saving of a WW2 Bailey Bridge

http://www.christopherlong.co.uk/baileybridge/index.html

on one of his sites is this overhead

Which is very useful for showing the road density. If you look very carefully in the bottom left hand field you can see the old hedge lines that divided it into three. If fact the small fields you can see are probably what the whole area was covered in.

The use of ditches to drain raods and to demarcate fields was common when it was arable crops. Do BF do a ditch tile?

[JonS]

Nice - not much town left ...

Yeah ... that's what happens when Mr Lancaster and his buddy Mr Halifax pay a visit.

30 June 1944

266 aircraft - 151 Lancasters, 105 Halifaxes, 10 Mosquitos - of Nos 3, 4 and 8 Groups to bomb a road junction at Villers Bocage through which the tanks of two German Panzer divisions, the 2nd and 9th, would have to pass in order to carry out a planned attack on the junction of the British and American armies in Normandy that night. The raid was controlled with great care by the Master Bomber, who ordered the bombing force to come down to 4,000ft in order to be sure of seeing the markers in the smoke and dust of the exploding bombs. 1,100 tons of bombs were dropped with great accuracy and the planned German attack did not take place. 1 Halifax and 1 Lancaster lost.

The image TheVulture linked to is from the day after that raid, probably as part of the BDA Recce Mission.

[Scipio]

The terrible ugly houses I've seen in the screenshots can't be anything else as placeholders. So I think we should be a bit more patient.