Kingstanding and Perry Common photographed by an American reconnaissance aircraft, May 1944

A US Army Air Forces camera looked straight down on Kingstanding and Perry Common in late May 1944, nine days before D-Day. The frame runs from Witton Lakes and Witton Cemetery up to Kingstanding Circle and Warren Farm Road.

One frame of a vertical air survey (sortie US7/LOC/88, exposure 2022). The negative is printed with south at the top, so turn it 180 degrees to read it with north up. With north up it shows: Witton Lakes (the two reservoirs) and Witton Cemetery in the south-east; the large allotment grounds north of the cemetery; College Road curving across the frame; the Burford Road/Oundle Road oval of the Perry Common estate; Kingstanding Road running north to the junction at Kingstanding Circle; Warren Farm Road running east from the Circle through the Danesbury/Aylesbury Crescent circle; Hawthorn Road running south-east; and the circular green at Witton Lodge Road. The film edge carries the handwritten note '2022 Birmingham 28 May 44 24" 18000' (a 24-inch lens at 18,000 ft, which gives a scale of roughly 1:9,000).

Notes

Evidence for location: NARA's record gives the frame centre as 52.5355, -1.8799 ('Upper Witton, Birmingham District'). I compared the frame with modern OpenStreetMap mapping. Witton Lakes, Witton Cemetery, College Road, the Burford Road oval, the Kingstanding Road/Warren Farm Road/Hawthorn Road junctions and the Danesbury Crescent circle all match. Evidence for date: NARA gives 27 May 1944, but the handwriting on the negative reads 28 May 44. Evidence for who took it: the sortie prefix US7 is the one NCAP uses for the USAAF 7th Photographic (Reconnaissance) Group, based at RAF Mount Farm, Oxfordshire. The Birmingham run is part of a single sortie that also photographed Leicester, Nottingham, Liverpool/Wirral and Cheshire the same day, so it looks like a training or mapping flight ('LOC' probably means local), not an operational target. Caveats: this is not a photograph of GIs on the ground. It is Kingstanding seen by American airmen. The northern half of the estate (Hurlingham Road beyond Danesbury Crescent, and the Pheasey camp) is outside this frame. The next frame in the run jumps to Leicester, so no US frame of Pheasey exists in this sortie. Shown here turned north-up for easier reading; the original frame is printed with south at the top.

About this place: Kingstanding Circle · Warren Farm and Lodge Pool