The Luftwaffe's Wiltshire

German reconnaissance aircraft photographed Wiltshire repeatedly between August and December 1940, and once more in August 1942. The prints and the Luftwaffe's target dossiers were captured in 1945 and are now in the US National Archives, scanned and free to use. This post explains what survives and how to read it. An interactive map plots every Wiltshire frame and dossier, with a link to each scan.

CLICK HERE to open the map: Luftwaffe Wiltshire

Avebury - an example photo: click it to expand

Avebury henge (top centre) and Silbury Hill (left, beside the A4), 4 September 1940. GX 10004 SG, R, exposure 95, scale about 1:26,000. The titling strip reads GB 1060 R 4.9.40. NARA RG 373, NAID 220881704.

Where the photographs come from

The US National Archives (NARA) holds about 1.2 million Luftwaffe aerial photographs in a series titled German Flown Aerial Photographs, 1939–1945, part of Record Group 373. They are known as GX prints, from the GX numbers that identify each box. The captured material was duplicated and shared between Britain and the United States, and the British holdings are now in the National Collection of Aerial Photography (NCAP) in Edinburgh.

Allied teams found caches of German photographs, maps and target dossiers across Europe in 1945. The material was flown to the Allied Central Interpretation Unit at RAF Medmenham in June 1945 and sorted there until 1949. It later passed to RAF Brampton and, after declassification in the early 1990s, to Keele University. In 2008 it was transferred to what is now Historic Environment Scotland, as part of NCAP. NARA and NCAP have since worked together to scan the prints, and the scans appear in NARA's online catalogue.

A GX citation names the box, the camera and the exposure: GX 10004 SG, R, Exposure 95. NARA describes SG, SK and SD as camera position identifiers. The L, R and S letters within a sortie are not explained in NARA's guidance. In the Wiltshire prints, L and R frames at the same scale run in parallel lines, and S frames are at a smaller scale.

Wiltshire: 129 frames from ten sorties

A search of the NARA catalogue for Wiltshire in the German Flown Aerial Photographs series returns 129 frames. Every one is digitised and listed as unrestricted for use. NARA gives each frame a centre point and the nearest named place in its gazetteer, and the map plots those centres.

Date	Box	Frames	Scale	Coverage (NARA place names)
17 Aug 1940	GX 10096	1	1:57,000	Buttermere
18 Aug 1940	GX 10134	10	1:15,200; 1:38,000	Grimstead, Whiteparish, Landford, Redlynch; Devil's Ditch, Bulford
18 Aug 1940	GX 10135	38	1:23,500; 1:76,000; obliques	Mere and the Knoyles, the Wylye valley, Winterbourne Stoke, Normanton and Lake, Salisbury, Downton
4 Sep 1940	GX 10004	15	1:26,000; one oblique	Purton and Leigh south through Clyffe Pypard, Avebury and the Vale of Pewsey to Bulford and Downton
29 Oct 1940	GX 10238	8	1:15,000	Winterslow, West Dean, Whiteparish, Landford
29 Nov 1940	GX 10484	44	1:20,500; 1:52,000	Winsley and Bradford-on-Avon east along the scarp to West Lavington, across the Plain to Amesbury, then to Clarendon and Redlynch
5 Dec 1940	GX 12048	1	1:8,500	Bradford-on-Avon
11 Dec 1940	GX 11961	7	1:10,000	Box, Kingsdown, Monkton Farleigh, Colerne, Biddestone, Malmesbury
15 Dec 1940	GX 11935	1	1:15,000	Yatesbury Field, Cherhill
28 Aug 1942	GX 12060	4	obliques	Whiteparish, Landford, Redlynch

Two sorties crossed the county on 18 August 1940, the day of the large raids on RAF airfields later called the Hardest Day. GX 10135 alone produced 38 Wiltshire frames, running from Mere across the Wylye valley and the Stonehenge landscape to Salisbury.

The place name in each catalogue entry is the nearest gazetteer entry to the frame centre, not a description of the subject. Exposure 95 of GX 10004 is catalogued at West Kennett Long Barrow. The print shows Avebury henge, with the village inside its bank, and Silbury Hill beside the Bath road. A later hand has written on the back, in English, Avebury Stone Circle – Silbury Hill.

Reverse of the same print. NARA RG 373, NAID 220881704.

The target dossiers

A second NARA series, Target Dossiers Pertaining to the British Isles, 1938–1945 (Record Group 242, records seized from Germany), holds the Luftwaffe's target files. Thirty-six digitised dossiers cover twenty-nine places in Wiltshire, dated 1939 to 1942. A dossier is a set of sheets, usually three:

• an annotated vertical photograph with the target outlined in red, a scale bar, the coordinates and height, and the date of the information (Stand);
• an extract from a 1:50,000 map with the target outlined;
• a printed target card, the Zielstammkarte, filled in by typewriter.

The Alton Barnes dossier (GB 10 391) is typical. The photograph sheet, marked N.f.D. (nur für den Dienstgebrauch, for official use only), outlines an airfield of 1,000 × 850 m. It notes probable administration and accommodation buildings and is dated October 1940. The map sheet is dated November 1940 and carries the stamp of Luftflotte 3 (Lfl. Kdo. 3).

Target sheet GB 10 391 b c, Alton Barnes, Flugplatz, Stand X.40. NARA RG 242, NAID 240794047.

Click to embiggen

The target card records, among other entries:

• Location: 12 km SW of Marlborough; 1° 51′ W, 51° 21′ 30″ N; 136 m above sea level.
• Target: Flugplatz (airfield), compared with the army camps at Marlborough, Chisledon, Yatesbury and Devizes by their own target numbers.
• Significance: Als E-Hafen geeignet, suitable as an Einsatzhafen or operational airfield.
• Description: Woodborough station 3 km S; landing ground about 850 × 1000 m; a few smaller buildings, probably quarters, in the south-east corner.
• Recognition points: the Kennet and Avon Canal along the southern edge; the railway fork of the Newbury–Bath and Newbury–Warminster lines 5.5 km SW.
• Neighbouring airfields: eleven, each with its target number, distance and bearing, from Boscombe Down (GB 10 22, 23 km SSO) to Marlborough (GB 10 887, 9 km NO); O is Ost, east. A red typed addition adds Clyffe Pypard, 14 km NNW, as an Einsatzhafen.
• Information as of: November 1940.

Zielstammkarte (L) for Alton Barnes, Bearbeitungsstand November 1940. NARA RG 242, NAID 240794047.

What the Luftwaffe listed

Each target number begins with a country code and a category. The Wiltshire dossiers fall into four categories, and the type names below are the ones printed on the sheets:

Code	Category	Wiltshire dossiers
GB 10	Airfields (Flugplatz)	Alton Barnes, Boscombe Down, Clyffe Pypard, Colerne, Durrington, High Post, Larkhill, Lyneham, Marlborough, Netheravon, Old Sarum, South Marston, Tilshead, Upavon, West Overton, Wroughton, Yatesbury, Zeals
GB 14	Army camps (Truppenlager, troop camp; Barackenlager, hutted camp; Zeltlager, tent camp)	Bulford, Chisledon, Corsham, Devizes, Durrington, Heytesbury, Marlborough, Melksham, North Tidworth, Porton, Tilshead, Warminster, Yatesbury
GB 20	Air force supply and depots (Luftpark, Nachschublager)	Colerne, Hullavington, Lyneham, Wroughton
GB 22	Ammunition depot (Munitionslager)	Chilmark

Some sheets date their photographs. The Colerne airfield sheet cites a photograph of 30 November 1940, the Zeals sheet one of 21 November 1940, and the Tilshead camp sheet one of 13 December 1940. None of those dates matches a sortie in the Wiltshire photograph list, so the dossiers drew on cover beyond what is catalogued here. The Tilshead and Zeals sheets were reissued in a later, plainer format dated 1941 and 1942.

Catalogue notes

Searching the NARA catalogue by county misses some Wiltshire dossiers, and a few entries need correcting:

• Colerne (GB 10 866 and GB 20 43) is catalogued under Gloucestershire.
• South Marston (GB 10 373) is catalogued under "Berwicksire".
• North Tidworth (GB 14 51) is catalogued under Hampshire.
• Zeals is catalogued under Wiltshire, but its file unit places it in Somerset.
• Boscombe Down has the local identifier GB 10-21. The sheets, the scan file names and the Alton Barnes card all give GB 10 22.
• The Wroughton airfield dossier (GB 10 867, 27 scans) sits under the file unit for Dumfries.
• Chippenham has a file unit in the series but no digitised dossier.

The photograph search covered frames whose catalogue entry names Wiltshire. Frames catalogued under a neighbouring county are not on the map.

Using the map

Photographs are coloured by sortie, in shades of pink from pale (August 1940) to deep (December 1940). Open rings are oblique views. Gold squares are dossiers, lettered by category: A for airfields, C for army camps, S for supply and depots, M for the ammunition depot. Click any point for the record, a preview of the scan and links to the full-size images. The key can switch sorties and categories on and off.

Photograph positions are NARA's frame centres, not footprints. Dossier positions are the coordinates printed on the sheets, to the nearest minute (about ±1 km). Where the sheet could not be read, the position is the station or camp itself.

Sources

• National Archives and Records Administration. German Flown Aerial Photographs, 1939–1945. Record Group 373, Records of the Defense Intelligence Agency, series NAID 306065. catalog.archives.gov/id/306065
• National Archives and Records Administration. Target Dossiers Pertaining to the British Isles, 1938–1945. Record Group 242, National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized, series NAID 3371016. catalog.archives.gov/id/3371016
• GX 10004 SG, R, Exposure 95, 4 September 1940. NAID 220881704. catalog.archives.gov/id/220881704
• Target Dossier for Alton Barnes, Wiltshire, England, GB 10-391. NAID 240794047. catalog.archives.gov/id/240794047
• National Archives and Records Administration. RG 373 GX Foreign Aerial Photography (research guide). archives.gov
• National Archives and Records Administration, The Unwritten Record (2019). Researching Foreign Aerial Photography: Captured German Aerial Prints. unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov
• National Collection of Aerial Photography. German Air Force (GX) collection. ncap.org/image-collection/gx
• Luftwaffedata Wiki. Target Codes. luftwaffedata.co.uk

All images: NARA, listed as Use: Unrestricted. The map uses NARA catalogue data; basemaps © OpenStreetMap contributors, CARTO, Esri and OpenTopoMap.