German Aviaton Maps - 3

[JohnC]

Somewhat delayed from my original post, shown here is Germany's attempt to produce a specialist aviation map for the Western Front. The pre-war 1:200,000 series which covered Germany didn't extend to the front, and the 1:300,000 maps which did cover France and Belgium were too small. Hence in 1916 this series was produced in 1:200,000 to extend coverage across Belgium and France, as far as Normandy. The sheet lines coincided with the pre-war 200,000s to create continuous mapping at this scale from the Western Front to the Eastern, albeit with different cartography.

The notations at the top translate roughly as 'Field produced flying map' and 'For Service Use Only'. The first doesn't quite make sense: they were produced by the General Staff in a uniform style across a broad area, which isn't what I'd think of for field production. Perhaps a reader can suggest a better interpretation?

Personally I think these maps are horrible to read. The only optimisation for flyers is to emphasise railways and main roads. The key navigational features of woods and water are distinguished by colour but not further emphasised. Otherwise the makers have included a mass of superfluous and distracting detail, including the near-useless depiction of relief by hachures. Remarkably, no airfields are shown. I wonder if the maps were in effect future-proofed by only printing the unchanging topographic detail and expecting the users to add their own mission markings at the time of use.

These seem to be quite rare survivors. The only ones that I've found are in unused condition. I suspect they were single-use items which were marked up for a flight then discarded afterwards. The paper is very thin, quite fragile.

The full set is shown on this web site https://maps.hungaricana.hu/hu/HTITerkeptar/23748/view/?pg=0&bbox=-690%2C-4337%2C5221%2C350

 

[Marian2]

Many thanks for your post and for the link to the Hungaricana website: what a terrific resource.  I was especially glad to find map #15 (St. Quentin) in the Feldmaessig hergestellte Fliegerkarte collection, which shows in one map the entire area of the Montdidier-Noyon offensive (Battle of Matz, June 1918), which tends to get divided over two or three maps in the French map collections I've been able to find (and which does not appear as part of the British trench map collection as it took place on the French army front).  

 

---Marian 

[fetubi]

Hi Marian,

Any pointers to the French map collections you mention would be very interesting - I've struggled to find them.

Thanks in advance.

Trevor

[JohnC]

Hello Marian2,

I haven't explored the Hungarian website thoroughly yet, but I'm pleased that it's helped you to make a breakthrough.

Best wishes,

John

[Marian2]

Hello, Trevor,

 

Nothing to get excited about, I'm afraid:  I've just been poking about at the BNF Gallica site, which you probably already know.

 

https://gallica.bnf.fr/services/engine/search/sru?version=1.2&operation=searchRetrieve&query=dc.type adj "carte" sortby indexationdate/sort.descending

 

best,

---Marian 

[fetubi]

Thank you for this Marian.  Really appreciated.  Just seen this!

Best Regards,

Trevor 

[fetubi]

I got an error message on this link, but will definitely explore more.  Thanks again.

[Marian2]

Try 

 

https://gallica.bnf.fr/

 

and go to the bottom of the page, where you can select "maps."  

[fetubi]

Marian, Thank you!