D-Day: The Last Heroes
NCAP images feature in new, two-part BBC One documentary
Aerial photography of Normandy, uncovered for the BBC through the research of Allan Williams - with the assistance of Sam Martin - are featured in a major new BBC documentary series. D-Day: The Last Heroes explores how two years of meticulous planning, espionage and the analysis of tens-of-thousands of 3D aerial photographs helped the Allies 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 co-incide with the documentary, over 10,000 aerial photographs of Normandy, taken in the weeks before and after D-Day, have been released on this website. 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 gliders and parachute canopies of the airborne landings. Website subscribers can 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.
NCAP imagery has recently been featured in a production by the Discovery Channel - D-Day in 3D - which was broadcast to over 100 million households in the USA. The documentary reveals how stereoscopic reconnaissance photography was used to create a three-dimensional map of Normandy coastal defences - a line of landmines, blockades, barbed wire and steel fences known as the "devil's garden".
View images from 6 June 1944 in Google Earth
