WWII Aerial Images Unearthed

[v2]

My personal favourite are number 17 showing nine Do 335 wrecks on an airfield in Bavaria and number 20 showing B-17 over the Alps...



WWII Aerial Images Unearthed: US Pilots' Snapshots Reveal Extent of Germany's Post-War Devastation - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

[Thorlifter]

Cool! Very nice V2.

[timshatz]

Great find. Thanks for posting.

[evangilder]

Very interesting photos. Excellent find!

[vikingBerserker]

Wow, that's amazing - great find!

[RabidAlien]

Excellent find!

[GrauGeist]

Excellent find!

In photo #2, there looks like a burned out Me262 to the right of the picture. Photo #30 is really interesting, too...showing the Mistel and a pretty interesting camo on the Ju88 in the foreground...

[Aaron Brooks Wolters]

Excellent find V2. Thank you for sharing sir!!

[Wayne Little]

[Park]

Very interesting, thanks !

[wheelsup_cavu]

Missed this the first time through. Cool find.


Wheels

[BikerBabe]

Great find, thanks for sharing.

Thank you very much for sharing.

The one pic that gets to me, is the one of the concentration camp Buchenwald.

An old colleague of mine - he passed away a couple of years ago - spent time in Buchenwald from September 1944 until the camp was liberated. He and approx. 8000 of his colleagues were arrested and brought to Buchenwald.
They were fairly lucky, though - most survived, mainly due to the fact that they were treated marginally better than the other prisoners, because my colleague and his friends were "aryans", and because of the Red Cross packages that they were allowed to receive once a week.
Their crime?
They were police officers.

Ther germans didn't dare to have 8000 armed men walking around freely in Denmark back then, particularly not when things started to go pear-shaped for Germany, and so all of the danish police officers who didn't co-operate with the germans, were rounded up and shipped off to Buchenwald via Auschwitz.
Most of the police officers from the Copenhagen area and Northern Zealand were sent off on the ship M/S Cometa from Copenhagen. It was later discovered that the captain had been ordered to sink the ship mid-sea with the prisoners aboard. He refused outright to do so, God bless his soul.
The captain of the ship escaped when the ship arrived in northern Germany, but he was caught, and he "disappeared", not to be heard from ever since. I just hope he died quickly and painlessly, but knowing the Gestapo, I'm afraid the poor man didn't.
My colleague and many of his colleagues survived when many others didn't, thanks to the Red Cross and because they stuck together and supported each other mentally and physically.

That's why that photo moves me so much.

[BikerBabe]

Great find, thanks for sharing.

Thank you very much for sharing.

The one pic that gets to me, is the one of the concentration camp Buchenwald.
The first:
An old, then retired colleague of mine - he passed away a couple of years ago - spent time in Buchenwald from September 1944 until the camp was liberated. He and approx. 8000 of his colleagues were arrested and brought to Buchenwald.
They were fairly lucky, though - most survived, mainly due to the fact that they were treated marginally better than the other prisoners, because my colleague and his friends were "aryans", and because of the Red Cross packages that they were allowed to receive once a week.
Their crime?
They were police officers.

Ther germans didn't dare to have 8000 armed men walking around freely in Denmark back then, particularly not when things started to go pear-shaped for Germany, and so all of the danish police officers who didn't co-operate with the germans, were rounded up and shipped off to Buchenwald via Auschwitz.
Most of the police officers from the Copenhagen area and Northern Zealand were sent off on the ship M/S Cometa from Copenhagen. It was later discovered that the captain had been ordered to sink the ship mid-sea with the prisoners aboard. He refused outright to do so, God bless his soul.
The captain of the ship escaped when the ship arrived in northern Germany, but he was caught, and he "disappeared", not to be heard from ever since. I just hope he died quickly and painlessly, but knowing the Gestapo, I'm afraid the poor man didn't.
My colleague and many of his colleagues survived when many others didn't, thanks to the Red Cross and because they stuck together and supported each other mentally and physically.

The second:
My best friend's father barely avoided getting caught when the germans started rounding the danish police up and sending them off.
He was a Copenhagen police officer too, and the reasons why he managed to avoid getting sent off, was because he got delayed in meeting in at the police station.
Y'see, on September 19th, 1944, the germans set off a fake air raid alarm, and then the police officers all over the country were supposed to meet in at their local police station.
My friend's father got delayed, and on his way to the police station, the people in the streets warned him that the germans were up to something, storming the police stations.
He promptly turned his bicycle around and took off. And since he wasn't able to go home - the germans checked the personnel lists and went to get people on their home adresses - he joined the Resistance movement and helped fight the germans. He has never told anyone about his experiences during the war - it hurts too much, he can't.

That's why that photo moves me so much.

[RabidAlien]

Thanks for sharing their stories, Maria.

[Frantish]

Thanks for sharing their stories, Maria.

100% agree.

So much idolizes the big symbols, the P-51, B-17, that everything else is, dare I say it, forgotten.

If we do not endeavor to record what we can no, it will be lost forever, and the horrors and unsung heros will never be acknowledged.