The 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.
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The Historic England Archive's USAAF Collection comprises over 20,000 photographic prints taken by USAAF photographic reconnaissance (PR) aircraft during the Second World War. Nearly 19,000 frames have been catalogued.
Most of the photographs are vertical aerial photographs measuring 8 x 7 inches, 9 x 9 inches and 18 x 9 inches. Additionally, over 400 oblique 9 x 9-inch aerial photographs have been catalogued.
The photographs are a part of the Archive's M Series Collection, including thousands of aerial photographs taken by the Royal Air Force (RAF) between 1938 and 1945. The ‘M' stands for M section at the Allied Central Interpretation Unit, which was based at RAF Medmenham in Buckinghamshire. The section was responsible for photographic coverage of the United Kingdom.
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