Targeting the Reich: Allied Photographic Reconnaissance over Europe, 1939-1945

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Summary: A World War Two Eye in the Sky
Review: Certainly this is not a book for everyone, but I have a considerable liking for aerial photographs. I like the unconventional perspective such photographs give to places and events. Algred Price's "Targeting the Reich: Allied Photographic Reconnaissance Over Europe, 1939-45" provides a succinct text overview of British and US aerial reconnaissance techniques and technology, but the main focus of the book is the more than 150 photographs taken during reconnaissance missions, startling in their clarity and drama. We see bombing raids in progress, Nazi warships and airfields, camouflaged factories, V-1 launch sites ... Some of the photographs display what I can only call artistic merit, especially those with features casting sharp, dark shadows or those with extraordinary patterns of water wave action or land tracks. The terror and destruction of war is transformed into a harsh beauty.