R.A.F. maps found in attic

[poimier]

Hi,

I must say, Big Ned, you know a lot about the subject for a FeldWebel !

The maps (or charts as we would have called them) are very interesting. You know, I believe they might just have been used on WWll bombing missions. Navigators used the Mercator projection, which was used to plot various items and was used for rather than plotting and calculating wind velocity etc but these are on the Lambert’s Conical Orthomorphic projection, which were also used, but would have been for map-reading, maybe by the Observer or bomb-aimer. Hence their appearance. Not much chance maybe for in-flight markings.

I’d say they come from quite a few different missions. The red circles might be flak possies ?

The RAF officers cap seems authentic, it’s a King’s crown, not a Queens’s crown. Looks in good nick, can’t have seen many missions ? I think it’s a Bates cap, they were (are ? - does the RAF still wear caps ?  ) Bates was always my favourite, as well as for many others.

The above comments are based on my RAF service as a Nav, although I flew in rather faster aeroplanes than the ones these charts were used for.

Nice site, I came upon it when searching for prices for RAF WWll maps, as I have some to sell.

Thank you Adrian Stevenson for the link too.

Cheers

[Hans Mandy]

[alexanderhistorical]

Nice work, Ned. They're still quite uncommon and indeed fascinating.