Military and Civilian Aircraft wreck research and exploration
Great web site for research: HistoricAerials.com
Ok, hopefully I'm not the last one to find out about this site, historicaerials.com
They do what their URL says, they have an archive of historical aerial images for many metro areas dating back to the 30's they say, but most of the areas I searched only went back through the 40's. The map can be zoomed in on and panned, or have roads overlayed or get lat/long or distances, it's similar to Google maps/earth.
For research purposes, I checked out the area where the Resolution went down near Kings Mountain in San Mateo County in 1953. The aerial image taken in 1948 shows the crash site pretty much untouched, there are no hints of a road or trail near the area where the Resolution crashed 5 years later. The aerial image taken in 1956 is another story. There are lots of (bulldozed?) roads or trails visible in the area. In fact I think there are more there in 1956 then there are now. Some of those roads or trails may be ones that exist now, others are probably long overgrown, in fact on the 1968 image, many are already tough to spot. That being said, two of those lead right to the coordinates of the impact site of the Resolution. Some of those were probably made to fight the fire, but in crashes where fire was minimal, those roads were probably for recovery efforts.
Looking at a few other aerial images near various reported crash sites gave me some really good clues as to where the aircraft went down, or barring that, at least where vehicles accessed the crash site. Either way, they're really good clues for starting a ground search, if the wreckage was recovered. I'm sure some sites that have gone unrecovered, i.e. the Banshee near Highway 35 at Highway 9 will still have to be found the old fashioned way.
They do have their little image on the map in the four corners so you can't save it untouched, however, by panning and zooming you can see the area you want too clearly. I uploaded a few cropped images below of the crash site of the Resolution to give you an idea of what the site has, the first aerial image is before the crash in 1948, then 3 years after the crash in 1956, and 15 years later in 1968.
Hopefully I'm not the last one to find out about this site, but in case I'm the first I thought I'd share it.
Jeff
They do what their URL says, they have an archive of historical aerial images for many metro areas dating back to the 30's they say, but most of the areas I searched only went back through the 40's. The map can be zoomed in on and panned, or have roads overlayed or get lat/long or distances, it's similar to Google maps/earth.
For research purposes, I checked out the area where the Resolution went down near Kings Mountain in San Mateo County in 1953. The aerial image taken in 1948 shows the crash site pretty much untouched, there are no hints of a road or trail near the area where the Resolution crashed 5 years later. The aerial image taken in 1956 is another story. There are lots of (bulldozed?) roads or trails visible in the area. In fact I think there are more there in 1956 then there are now. Some of those roads or trails may be ones that exist now, others are probably long overgrown, in fact on the 1968 image, many are already tough to spot. That being said, two of those lead right to the coordinates of the impact site of the Resolution. Some of those were probably made to fight the fire, but in crashes where fire was minimal, those roads were probably for recovery efforts.
Looking at a few other aerial images near various reported crash sites gave me some really good clues as to where the aircraft went down, or barring that, at least where vehicles accessed the crash site. Either way, they're really good clues for starting a ground search, if the wreckage was recovered. I'm sure some sites that have gone unrecovered, i.e. the Banshee near Highway 35 at Highway 9 will still have to be found the old fashioned way.
They do have their little image on the map in the four corners so you can't save it untouched, however, by panning and zooming you can see the area you want too clearly. I uploaded a few cropped images below of the crash site of the Resolution to give you an idea of what the site has, the first aerial image is before the crash in 1948, then 3 years after the crash in 1956, and 15 years later in 1968.
Hopefully I'm not the last one to find out about this site, but in case I'm the first I thought I'd share it.
Jeff
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Resolution1948.JPG, 32 KB -
Resolution1956.JPG, 29 KB
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Resolution1968.JPG, 43 KB
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