The Great War Seen from the Air: In Flanders Fields, 1914–1918

About this book

A remarkable photographic record of World War One its relentless progression and the destruction it wrought as seen from the skies above Flanders Fields Aerial photography was a relatively new technology at the onset of World War I and was embraced as an indispensable tool of wartime intelligence by all nations involved in the conflict. As a result thousands of photographs taken from the air over the battlefields of the Great War have survived in archives throughout Europe Australia and the United States. These pictures present the war from a unique perspective clearly showing the developing trench system artillery batteries bunkers railway lines airfields medical evacuation routes and more. They reveal the expanding war in Flanders Fields as the hostilities spread kilometer by kilometer devastating the environment and resulting in the complete destruction of the landscape at the front. This illuminating volume the results of a collaboration between the In Flanders Fields Museum Ypres the Imperial War Museum London and the Royal Army Museum Brussels features hundreds of photographic case studies illustrating in unprecedented detail the physical extent of World War I and the shocking environmental damage it left in its wake. Supplementing aerial images with maps documents and photos taken from the ground this one-of-a-kind visual record stands as an important contribution to World War I history revealing the wartime landscape of Flanders Fields as rarely seen before. Distributed for Mercatorfonds in cooperation with the In Flanders Fields Museum Ypres; the Imperial War Museum London; and The Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and of Military History Brussels