Internet History: Google Earth's WWII aerial images

Aerial photographs of European cities during World War II have been made available on Google Earth, giving internet users a real glimpse of the smashed-up landscape of war.

 

Taken between 1935 and 1945, the snaps record a series of chilling views: Warsaw's ghetto and bombed-out old town; the decimated Renaissance bridge in Florence; and bomb craters in Berlin.

 

The Royal Air Force and United States Air Force took the photographs, primarily for reconnaissance but also for post-bombing damage assessment, and the images were then stitched together by hand and kept as a record of the devastation.

 

Images of the 39 cities can now be compared with modern day Google Earth pictures, charting what a spokesperson for the Historic Centre of Warsaw described as "a near-total reconstruction of a span of history covering the 13th to th 20th Century".

 

 

 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/internet-history-google-earths-wwii-aerial-images-1889708.html