The previously blogged Wiltshire run is the second half of a much longer sortie. NARA holds 254 prints from the two cameras under box GX 10484, and the item records place them on a single loop. The aircraft crossed the Devon coast at Sidmouth (L 1), flew north past Honiton to the Blackdown Hills, then north-east by Taunton, Bridgwater and the Levels to Cheddar, the Mendips and Bristol. North of Filton it turned east and south, and came back by Doynton and Keynsham to Bath and Freshford, where the Wiltshire frames begin at L 109. After Wiltshire it crossed the New Forest and left the coast at Barton-on-Sea (L 148): some 255 km on the long-lens camera alone.
The film above joins the long-lens frames from Cheddar to Freshford, L 56 to L 108. Fair-weather cumulus covers much of the Mendips, Dundry and Bristol (L 62–88); the ground still matches between the clouds, so the frames join, but the clouds sit far above the ground and shift between exposures. Exposure 86 and exposure 91 are not in the NARA set. L 86 is bridged by a small overlap between 85 and 87; L 91 leaves a short break in the film.
Over Bristol the frames come closer together. Over the Mendips successive frames are about 1,000 scanned pixels apart, over the city about 600, and the camera clocks agree: roughly one exposure every 20 seconds from L 56 to L 76, against one every 10 seconds from L 76 to L 85 (minute-hand readings by eye, good to about half a minute). NARA lists L 87–92, north of Filton, as obliques, although at least L 88 appears near-vertical; the label may reflect the aircraft banking into the turn. No record found names a target.
Bath is clear. On L 105 the Royal Crescent and the Circus stand out above Royal Victoria Park, seventeen months before the air raids of April 1942.
Bath on L 105, 29 November 1940: the Royal Crescent (centre) facing Royal Victoria Park, with the Circus above it. Turned to read roughly north-up. Luftwaffe, NARA RG 373, GX 10484.
Bristol through broken cloud, Bedminster to Ashley Down, L 76–84.
Notes on the film
The landscape film runs at about four times real speed and is turned so that the aircraft flies left to right. Each frame is captioned with its exposure number, NARA's nearest place name and its clock reading. The Cheddar to Bath film is a director's cut, without captions, and ends where the Wiltshire film begins. The music is original.
Sources
National Archives and Records Administration. German Flown Aerial Photographs, 1939–1945. RG 373, series NAID 306065; file units GX 10484 SG. catalog.archives.gov/id/306065
National Archives and Records Administration. Target Dossiers Pertaining to the British Isles, 1938–1945. RG 242, series NAID 3371016. catalog.archives.gov/id/3371016
National Collection of Aerial Photography. German Air Force (Luftwaffe), GB 551 NCAP/4. ncap.as.atlas-sys.com
All photographs: Luftwaffe, 29 November 1940; US National Archives, RG 373, GX 10484, listed as Use: Unrestricted. Frame matching, measurements and film: T. Daw. Methods and scripts: github.com/TimDaw37/wessex-films.
This is a side-hustle from my Ramson Cliff erratic post. While I was looking through the 1940 German reconnaissance photos for that, I wondered whether we could show the effect of rising sea levels on the beaches at Woolacombe and Saunton.
To make it fair, we matched the position in the tide cycle as closely as we could with modern satellite photographs, then overlaid them. Matching the tide height alone isn't enough. On a flat beach, where the water's edge appears also depends on:
Time after low water. The 1940 photos were taken about 90 minutes after low water.
Rising or falling. A falling tide leaves wet sand and pools behind it, so the edge seen from the air lags the real water level. A rising tide pushes in over drier sand.
The size of the tide. 1940 was a mid-sized tide (6.8 m range at Ilfracombe). Big spring tides move faster and push the waves further up the beach.
For example, a Sentinel-2 image from 27 September 2018 caught the sea at almost exactly the 1940 height. But the tide was falling, 100 minutes before low water, on an 8.3 m spring tide. It looks similar, but it isn't the same moment. So I kept only modern images taken on a rising tide, within 20 minutes of the 1940 timing, and with a tide range within 1.5 m of 1940's.
How the photographs were matched
The photographs were matched in the following manner:
Time. Each German frame shows the camera's clock. It ran on German summer time (CEST), one hour ahead of British Summer Time, so the Woolacombe photos were taken at about 12:44 BST. A tide model for Ilfracombe, checked against Newlyn's real 1940 record, gives the tide at that minute.
Tilt. The camera wasn't pointing straight down. It was tilted about 12°, from roughly 8 km up. I worked out the camera's position and tilt and laid each photo over the Environment Agency LiDAR ground heights, so that hills and cliffs fall in the right place.
Pinning. Each photo was then pinned to thousands of features that haven't moved since 1940: roads such as Marine Drive at Woolacombe and the Saunton road, buildings, and hedge and field corners.
Accuracy. On fixed features the 1940 photos typically sit within 2–3 m of today's imagery. Marine Drive lines up within 3 m. Among the Saunton dunes, where there is little to pin to, it is about 10 m.
Modern images. These are Sentinel-2 and Landsat scenes from 1985 to 2023, each timed against the same tide model.
What we'd expect to see
Newlyn, the gold-standard tide gauge, shows about 20 cm of sea-level rise since 1940. On Woolacombe's gentle beach, 20 cm moves the waterline only about 8 m. On the flatter sand at Saunton the LiDAR puts it at around 20–30 m.
Conclusion
On these sorts of beaches it's invisible. Sand moving about and the natural spread of the waterline swamp it. On 1940 film, wet sand and shallow water look alike, so the 1940 edge alone can shift by up to 50 m depending on how it's read. Of 106 modern Landsat and Sentinel-2 readings, 27 match the 1940 tide. On those, the water's edge sits a median of −0.08 m from the predicted tide at Woolacombe and +0.16 m at Saunton. Neither shows a trend that stands out from the noise. The rise is real, but you measure it with a tide gauge, not on a sandy beach.
The Ramson Cliff boulder has had me hooked for over a year now (the mystery, the 2025 visit, the second thin section and last month's post), and the full story is in the paper in Quaternary Newsletter 167. One question kept nagging at me. The stone was found in 1969 at SS 4356 4070, out in the field on Baggy Point, and moved to the field edge in the early 1970s. Was it already sitting there in 1940, and would a wartime aerial photograph show it?
So I flew in to have a look, using a Luftwaffe reconnaissance photograph taken over North Devon in the summer of 1940.
How I made it
The photographs come from Luftwaffe sortie GX 10006 SD, flown on 31 August 1940. Each frame has the camera's clock photographed in the corner. The clock in the neighbouring frame reads 12:45 BST, which puts the frame over the find spot at about the same moment. I lined the frames up against the modern map, tightening the fit around Baggy Point using the field banks that show on the Environment Agency LiDAR. Then I stitched them into a mosaic and flew a virtual camera in from the south over Croyde, descending and tilting down until it looks straight down on the target.
On the approach: the 1940 fields of Baggy Point, built from sortie GX 10006 SD.
The limit is resolution. The National Archives scans of these frames come out at about 1.5 m per pixel on the ground. The boulder is 105 x 55 x 38 cm and weighs 378 kg, so it is smaller than a single pixel. I never expected to see the stone itself. What I was looking for were the things a big stone in a field does to the land around it: livestock tracks converging on it, a trampled or poached patch, ploughing that bends round it, or an unploughed island left where the plough couldn't go.
Over the target: the circle marks the 1969 find spot, SS 4356 4070, on the 31 August 1940 photograph.
What it shows
Honestly, nothing. In 1940 the find spot lies in a strip of grass inside the cliff-top boundary. With the contrast pushed up there are no tracks running to it, no worn patch, and no sign of cultivation avoiding it. The other photographs I have looked at, GX 11967 (23 March 1941) and RAF 106G/LA/132 (14 February 1945), are no clearer. That doesn't prove the stone wasn't there: a stone smaller than a pixel in a grass field could easily leave no trace. But the wartime air photos can't settle it either way.
The film ends on the LiDAR, which picks out the cliff-top field edge where the stone sits today.
Mae LiDAR Lens Ynys Môn yn dangos Môn gyfan mewn LiDAR 1 m, mewn gwyliwr cyflym am ddim sy'n gweithio cystal ar ffôn mewn cae ag ar gyfrifiadur. Mae LiDAR Llywodraeth Cymru yn cwmpasu'r ynys gyfan bron, ac mae pob teil yn cael ei gadw gyda'r lens, felly mae'n llwytho'n gyflym ble bynnag yr ydych. Mae Bryn Celli Ddu i'w weld yn ei dirwedd, Barclodiad y Gawres ar ei bentir, strydoedd a muriau Caergybi yn dod i'r golwg, a'r cytiau crwn a'r hen gaeau ar Fynydd Tŵr yn neidio allan o lethrau'r mynydd. Mae'r enwau lleoedd yn Gymraeg yn gyntaf, gyda'r Saesneg mewn cromfachau, ac mae pob un o 147 heneb gofrestredig Cadw ar yr ynys wedi'u marcio, gyda dolen i'w hadroddiad. Does dim angen mewngofnodi, dim cyfrif a dim hysbysebion.
Sut mae'n gweithio
Symudwch a chwyddwch ar draws yr ynys, neu defnyddiwch y blwch Go to i neidio i le neu gyfeirnod grid. Ar ffôn, mae Use my location yn eich rhoi ar y map yn y fan lle rydych yn sefyll, sy'n ddefnyddiol yn y maes. Daw'r 146 enw lle o restr Comisiynydd y Gymraeg o enwau lleoedd safonol, er enghraifft Biwmares (Beaumaris) a Llangefni. Cliciwch ar heneb gofrestredig i agor ei hadroddiad gan Cadw, a dilynwch y dolenni i Archwilio a Coflein am y cofnod amgylchedd hanesyddol ehangach.
Defnydd teg
Nid oes unrhyw ddata o'r cofnod amgylchedd hanesyddol wedi'i gopïo i'r lens; mae'n cysylltu ag Archwilio a Coflein, sy'n parhau i fod y lle i chwilio. Parchwch dirfeddianwyr, a chofiwch fod henebion cofrestredig wedi'u diogelu gan y gyfraith. Nid yw gweld rhywbeth yn y LiDAR yn rhoi caniatâd i fynd i edrych arno.
Cydnabyddiaeth
LiDAR: DTM 1 m Llywodraeth Cymru (MapDataCymru), Trwydded Llywodraeth Agored f3
Enwau lleoedd: Comisiynydd y Gymraeg, rhestr o enwau lleoedd safonol Cymru
Henebion cofrestredig: Cadw, Trwydded Llywodraeth Agored
Am Gymru a Lloegr gyfan, a'r lensys eraill, ewch i lidarlens.sarsen.org. Mae'r cod ar GitHub. Croeso i chi adael sylwadau, ac unrhyw beth diddorol a welwch, isod.
LiDAR Lens Ynys Môn puts the whole of Anglesey in 1 m LiDAR into a fast, free viewer that works as well on a phone in a field as on a desktop. The Welsh Government's LiDAR covers essentially the entire island, and every tile is stored with the lens, so it loads quickly wherever you are. Bryn Celli Ddu sits in its landscape, Barclodiad y Gawres crowns its headland, the walls and streets of Caergybi (Holyhead) show through, and the old hut circles and fields on Mynydd Tŵr (Holyhead Mountain) leap out of the hillside. Place names are Welsh first, with English in brackets, and all 147 of Cadw's scheduled monuments on the island are marked and linked. There is no login, no account and no adverts.
How it works
Pan and zoom across the island, or use Go to box to jump to a place or grid reference. On a phone, Use my location puts you on the map where you are standing, which is handy in the field. The 146 place names come from the Welsh Language Commissioner's list of standardised Welsh place names, such as Biwmares (Beaumaris) and Llangefni. Click a scheduled monument to open its Cadw report, and follow the links out to Archwilio and Coflein for the wider historic environment record.
Fair use
No historic environment record data is copied into the lens; it links to Archwilio and Coflein, which remain the places to look things up. Please respect landowners, and remember that scheduled monuments are protected by law. Seeing something in the LiDAR is not permission to go and look.
Credits
LiDAR: Welsh Government 1 m DTM (DataMapWales), Open Government Licence v3
Place names: Welsh Language Commissioner, list of standardised Welsh place names
Scheduled monuments: Cadw, Open Government Licence
For England and Wales as a whole, and the other lenses, see lidarlens.sarsen.org. The code is on GitHub. Comments and anything interesting you spot are welcome below.
This post is the companion to the short film Twice into the guns. The film follows the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry through the two attacks it made at the Second Battle of El Alamein, over the ground as it lies today. The sources, figures and maps behind it follow.
The regiment
The Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry was raised in 1794 and kept its horses until 1941. Converted to tanks, it went to Egypt in May 1942 with the 3rd Hussars and the Warwickshire Yeomanry as 9th Armoured Brigade (Brigadier John Currie), placed under the 2nd New Zealand Division (Lieutenant-General Bernard Freyberg) for the coming offensive. For Operation Lightfoot the regiment, under Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Sykes, held 10 Shermans, 14 Grants and 13 Crusaders; six of the Crusaders were detached to go forward with the 21st and 22nd New Zealand Battalions (US Army 2006, App. J, from the regimental war diary).
The ground
The Alamein line from the air: the Axis minefields as mapped at daybreak on 24 October 1942, Miteiriya and Ruweisat Ridges, the Qattara Depression on the horizon.
Copernicus GLO-30, heights × 8.
The northern Alamein position is close to flat. Most of it lies between 15 and 45 m above sea level, and Miteiriya Ridge, the New Zealand objective on the first night, stands only 5 to 6 m above the desert around it (US Army 2006, App. H). The terrain views in the film are rendered from the Copernicus GLO-30 elevation model, with heights exaggerated eight times so that the ridges show at all. The model records the ground surface today, so modern roads, pipelines and coastal building appear in it.
Both armies lay behind deep belts of mines and wire. The Axis belts shown in the film are those drawn on the New Zealand official history's map of 30 Corps at daybreak on 24 October (Walker 1967), transferred to the modern terrain by matching the map's trig points and stations to the elevation data. The fit is good to roughly a kilometre, and every position in the film should be read at that resolution.
The first attack: 23–24 October
First light, 24 October: the regiment behind 22 NZ Battalion, and elements beyond the final objective, from 2 NZ Division's map of the sector (Pitt 1946, Map No. 5).
The barrage opened at about 9.30 pm and, in Major Hubert Blount's words, "continued to fire rapid without a break until about 4.30 in the morning" (letter, in Keoghane 2021, p. 131). New Zealand sappers cleared lanes through two Axis minefields: all four lanes through the first were open by 2.30 am and the second by 5 am (US Army 2006, App. K). "There was a good moon during the early part and in the leading tank it was quite easy to see the markings of the lane," Blount wrote.
B Squadron, in Crusaders, was reduced to two tanks by mines (Keoghane 2021, p. 129). A Squadron, with the new Shermans, and C Squadron, in Grants, came up on 22 Battalion's route, where the battalion commander had his men search and mark a mine-free track through their positions. "Not long after six o'clock, tanks of the leading squadron had been guided over the ridge," and the second heavy squadron followed, making the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry "the first, and only, regiment to break out beyond the infantry's final objective on this first morning of the Alamein battle" (Walker 1967, p. 274). 2 NZ Division's own map of the sector at first light shows the regiment just behind 22 Battalion and "Elements R. Wilts Yeo" beyond the final objective (Pitt 1946, Map No. 5).
The counter-attack came in the morning. "We set the first line of six on fire when they were about 1500 yards from us," Blount wrote (p. 132). The Commanding Officer was wounded. Tanks immobilised on mines drew fire onto the New Zealand infantry, and shortly after midday the four remaining runners were withdrawn into cover. Casualties to that time were 10 killed or missing and 32 wounded, including the Commanding Officer and seven other officers (Walker 1967, p. 302). Next day the regiment was taken out of the line and its last tanks were handed to the other two regiments (Walker 1967, p. 305).
Rebuilt
Over the following week the regiment took over repaired replacement tanks, "in a shocking state" (Keoghane 2021, p. 130). The brigade, down to 36 runners on the evening of 25 October, was built back to 80 Shermans and 52 Crusaders before the second attack (Walker 1967).
The second attack: 1–2 November
2 November: the regiment's route to the start line (the 863 grid line) and across the Rahman Track. Positions from the official history's map of Operation Supercharge.
Operation Supercharge gave 9th Armoured Brigade the hardest task of the offensive: to cross the infantry's new line and break the last anti-tank gun line along the Rahman Track, so that 1st Armoured Division could pass through. Montgomery said he was prepared for heavy casualties in the brigade (Walker 1967, pp. 391–2).
The brigade formed up near El Alamein station with 105 tanks and set off at about 7 pm on 1 November. The night was moonless and the tracks had been ground to powdery dust (p. 392). The Wiltshires followed the Hussars along Sun track and Boomerang track, halting to refuel at 1.45 am (pp. 392–3). On the way a field of British mines, laid irregularly, held them up until 6 New Zealand Field Company cleared it; the brigade's report praised the sappers' work as "beyond all praise" (US Army 2006, App. L). The New Zealand engineers marked the route with green lamps every tenth of a mile.
The attack was put back half an hour. At 6.15 am the regiment crossed the start line with 33 tanks: the twelve Crusaders of B Squadron in the lead, and C, Headquarters and A Squadrons level in line a short way behind (Walker 1967, pp. 393–4). The Crusaders overran gun pits and crossed the Rahman Track, marked by its line of telegraph poles, into heavier guns sited further west. The heavy squadrons came under fire as they reached the track and were ordered hull-down; A and C Squadrons engaged on the flanks (Keoghane 2021, p. 130). With wireless contact to B Squadron lost, the commanding officer had the two heavy squadrons lay smoke to cover its withdrawal. According to survivors, all but one of B Squadron's Crusaders went up in flames, after which the enemy switched his fire to the heavy squadrons (Walker 1967, p. 394). By about 8 am the regiment had nine tanks (p. 396).
Together the 3rd Hussars and the Wiltshires were credited with overpowering some 35 anti-tank guns, mainly Italian 47 mm and German 50 mm (p. 395). The brigade began the day with 94 tanks across the start line and ended it with about 24 fit to fight; the tank regiments had 163 casualties (p. 401), among them Trooper Herbert Daw of C Squadron, the film-maker's father, captured that morning after his tank was knocked out. The gun line, manned mainly by German gunners and short of ammunition, was close to breaking. On 4 November Tell el Aqqaqir was occupied unopposed and the Axis army was withdrawing (pp. 418–22). On 5 November the Commanding Officer wrote to all ranks: "This action will be recorded in the annals of regimental history, and the epic of B Squadron will live for all time" (Keoghane 2021, p. 130).
The fernleaf
Under 2nd New Zealand Division the regiment painted the Division's fernleaf on its vehicles. When it left Italy for England in September 1944, Lieutenant-Colonel Ian Lloyd wrote to General Freyberg asking whether it might go on wearing the emblem. Freyberg replied from Headquarters, 2 N.Z. Division, on 22 November 1944: "we will be very proud to know you are continuing to wear the fernleaf as a reminder of Alamein days together." No association in the war, he wrote, "was happier than that between the Officers and men of the 9th Armoured Brigade and ours in the difficult days at Miteiriya Ridge and in the battle to break out." Of 2 November he added: "Your gallant advance that morning, though at great cost, broke the gun line and was the turning point in one of the most decisive battles of the war." He called the brigade's men "honorary New Zealanders" (letter printed in Pitt 1946). The Wiltshire squadrons of the Royal Wessex Yeomanry, B and Y, still wear the fern on their parade uniforms (Royal Wessex Yeomanry).
What is not settled
Times. Walker has the regiment's four runners pulled into cover shortly after midday on 24 October; Keoghane has Major Gibb ordering the remaining tanks back at 6 pm. On 2 November Walker gives permission to withdraw at 9.10 am; Keoghane has the regiment withdrawn at 4 pm with four tanks. These may be different moves; no source says so.
Positions. All are taken from 1942 maps drawn at small scale and fitted to modern elevation data; treat them as good to about a kilometre. The lanes in the film are a diagram, after 2 NZ Division's own diagram of its routes.
"100 per cent casualties." The often-quoted order to accept them appears in the New Zealand engineers' history but has not been traced to a primary document, and is not used.
The war diary. The regiment's war diary for 1942 (The National Archives, WO 169/4501; a copy at the Tank Museum) has not yet been read for this post.
Sources
R. Walker, Alam Halfa and Alamein, Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939–45 (Wellington: Historical Publications Branch, 1967). NZETC text.
US Army Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate, Breaching the "Devil's Garden": Operation Lightfoot, the Second Battle of El Alamein, 23 October 1942 (Appendices), AMSRD-CER-NV-TR-220A (Fort Belvoir, 2006).
S. Keoghane, Primus in Armis: An Illustrated History of the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry (2021), ch. 6 and "Yeomanry Tales".
P. W. Pitt, Royal Wilts: The History of the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry 1920–1945 (1946), maps, including 2 NZ Division Map No. 5 and the route of the regiment in Operation Supercharge.
The Eighth Army, September 1941 to January 1943 (HMSO, 1944).
M. Carver, El Alamein (London: Batsford, 1962), maps by Arthur Banks: the mined and defended areas of 23 October and the line of Miteiriya Ridge, redrawn on the terrain.
