Photo Gallery Documenting Destruction
On the left side of this 1945 photograph is the destroyed St. Nicholas Church in Hamburg, one of the city's five main churches. This is one of thousands of pictures taken during the US Army's little-known "Trolley" mission.
The mission ran from May 7 to 12. A total of 2,013 US bomber flights surveyed the damage, each carrying military personel and photographers. This aerial photograph shows the destroyed Naunhof Airport, near Leipzig. The ground is also dotted with destroyed aircraft.
This rare image shows the airfield at Eschwege. On the ground, US troops can be seen in the background and an American P-38 fighter. The American code name for the airport was "R-11."
Here, a low-flying plane photographed central Berlin's Victory Column. The former East-West Axis (now Strasse des 17. Juni) looks strangely like a runway.
Pictured is the Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimar, where more than 50,000 people were murdered by the Nazis. The camp was liberated on April 11, 1945.
This image shows thousands of German prisoners of war near Bad Kreuznach.
Bremen's inner city, as recorded by one of the flights on the US Air Force's "Trolley" mission.
Halle an der Saale: This shot shows downtown Halle an der Saale in May 1945. The city remained comparatively intact: The allied forces bombed it until March 1945, but it suffered less destruction than many other large settlements.
The airport at Speyer-Ludwigshafen, which sits alongside the Rhine river. This picture was taken in May 1945.
Images of the oil depot at Deggendorf following a raid by Ninth Air Force bombers.
This picture taken May 12, 1945 shows an area near Osnabrück. It also shows the shadows of the planes which always took off in groups of three during the mission.
Rare shot of Bernburg airfield, taken by a low-flying B-24.
The devastated city of Siegen. In the middle of the photograph are the ruins of the city's train station.
This railyard near Limburg was also hard hit. Up to two dozen people were on board the larger planes used during the mission. The crews often included professional photographers.
A picture of a railway viaduct at Bielefeld. The bridge was previously destroyed by British "Grand Slam" bombs.
This picture shows the site of the completely levelled train station in Dortmund, photographed on May 12, 1945. The bombers flew over northern, western and southern Germany, circling above the destroyed cityscape of Berlin and the Ruhr area which had formed the Nazi state's economic heart.
This is an airfield in Oberpfaffenhofen, Bavaria. Several DO 335 aircraft are parked on the site.
The western German city of Münster, as it was on May 12, 1945. This picture includes the ruins of three churches.
B-17 and B-24 bombers were used on the "Trolley" mission which aimed to chronicle the Allies' impact on Germany.
Bernburg airfield: Here the shadow of the plane indicates how low the pilots flew to capture the photos.
Three kilometers from the town of Obertraubling (north of Regensburg), the Nazis constructed an airfield to train young pilots. From 1940, Messerschmitt aircraft were mass-produced there -- using forced laborers and prisoners of war. The US Air Force bombed the site several times, eventually putting an end to production.
This is how the Dortmund-Ems Canal looked after it was bombed by Allied forces.
The bomb-damaged Reich Chancellery in Berlin. The date of the photo is unknown.
A low-flying snapshot of Köthen, north of the city of Halle. The city was battered by bombs in 1944.
A low-level aerial photograph of the Nordhausen airfield. At the time of the photograph the building was already in the hands of the US Army.
Cologne Cathedral: Near the bottom of this picture, taken on May 7, 1945, you can see the shadow of a US bomber.
Photo of the Hermann-Göring steelworks in Braunschweig.
Two US B-17 bombers fly in formation over the Alps. In addition to the B-24 and B-26 bombers, this aircraft was also used in the "Trolley" mission between May 7 and 12 1945.
This picture taken from a B-24 bomber, flying just 100 meters above the ground, shows manufacturing facilities on the outskirts of Aschersleben.
A Junkers Ju 88 and a German Mistel plane, as photographed at the airport in Bernburg.
The airfield in Paderborn is seen in this photo, taken on May 12, 1945.
The destroyed hydrogenation plant in Gelsenkirchen-Scholven, as seen in May 1945. Because the factory produced gasoline, it was a prime target of Allied bombers.
