D-Day from the Air

6 June 2013

Images from the RCAHMS National Collection of Aerial Photography (NCAP) are featuring in a major new BBC One documentary on the D-Day landings.

D-Day: The Last Heroes explores how two years of meticulous planning, espionage and the analysis of millions of 3D aerial photographs helped the Allied Forces gain a foothold in northern France. Broadcast in two parts, the first episode will be on BBC One at 9.10pm on Sunday 9 June, with the second following at 9pm on Monday 10 June.

To coincide with the documentary, over 10,000 aerial photographs of Normandy, taken in the weeks before and after D-Day, are being released on the NCAP website on Monday 10 June. Included in this release are over 3,500 images taken on D-Day itself, showing troops, tanks and trucks fighting their way ashore on the five invasion beaches, as well as the gliders and parachute canopies of the airborne landings. Website subscribers will be able to zoom in on these images in fine detail, allowing them to see individual landing craft and bunkers, as well as vehicles and men fighting on the beaches and advancing inland along coastal roads.

The imagery is also featuring in a new documentary on the Discovery Channel broadcast in the USA. D-Day in 3D, shows how the stereoscopic reconnaissance photography now held by RCAHMS was once used to create a three-dimensional map of Normandy's coastal defences – a line of landmines, blockades, barbed wire and steel fences known as the “devil’s garden”. 

To find out more about D-Day: The Last Heroes, visit the BBC One website.