Andreas Aviation History: Keeping an album together

19.01.2013

Keeping an album together - Sola airfield April 1940

For a researcher, historian or archaeologist for that case, it is of major importance to be able to establish a link between time, object and location.

Over the last years thousands of WWII images have been traded off on the major online (and offline) auction sites - the source often being albums created by ordinary soldiers keeping a photographic record of their service time. The number of crystal clear images of the technology of warfare - tanks, aircraft and marine vessels of good quality - are few and far between, while the daily life of the common soldier, showing army, navy or airforce buddies, living quarters and panoramic sights are plentiful.

The result is of course, due to the fact that the commercial value of the few technical images (in lack of a better designation) often seem to be several hundred or even thousand times the value of the rest of the images in an album, that the commercially oriented trader will split the album and sell of the good stuff - and as I have seen in several instances - simply let the rest end up lining a trashcan.

I though i should use this space to show one of the albums in my collection, where most of the images would I believe been worth next to nothing in any respect if the album had been split up and traded off - I would guess most of the photographs would have been trash by now.

Together - they form a whole which tell a story - the story of a common soldier in a Flugbetriebskompanie - airfield operating unit (anyone got a better word, please comment and I will update!) - in a foreign location in time of conflict.

Enjoy! And please comment if you like to add information that I can enter into the captions.

Title page

Daily life of a common soldier

Transport from Germany to Norway

First view of Norway

Overview of Sola airfield with aircraft from different units

Top left a Ju 52 destroyed in a strafing attack on April 10th 1940, and bottom right Norwegian Caproni Ca 310 ´507´

Top right a Bf 109 of II./JG 77 scrambling. Bottom left the smoke from a damaged German aircraft in the background with two He 111 of KG 26 and a Ju 52 in the foreground. The leftmost He 111 carry the individual aircraft letter ´C´.