EXCLUSIVE
by Gerry Warrengwarren@thekmgroup.co.uk

Wartime snaps showing how the Luftwaffe targeted Whitstable and Canterbury's historic cathedral have been sold on eBay.

Local historian Godfrey King, from Blean, spotted the two aerial photographs and bought them for £25 each.

He's added them to his growing collection on wartime memorabilia and will put them on show at his Blean at War exhibition in the village hall on Saturday.

They were being sold by a specialist dealer of dispersed archives from former Wehrmacht military bases and units which included German intelligence and military planning material.

Described as "scarce items", they were issued in Berlin in the early 1940s by the German Department of War Maps and Surveying and marked "for Official Use Only!" and "Secret!"

Canterbury was identified high up on a list of so-called "Baedeker" targets in retaliation for the RAF’s attack on Cologne, and was battered with thousands of bombs and incendiaries in the early hours of June 1, 1942.

Godfrey, 81, who is this paper’s correspondent for Blean and the village’s unofficial historian, regularly scours the internet looking for local memorabilia and previously found a cup awarded to the village home guard in the early 40s.

He said: “I just thought they were fascinating photographs which had been very professionally produced and marked and probably came out of a book issued to the Luftwaffe.

“In fact, written on them in German was, 'to be used - you are allowed to take these photographs with you on raids’.”

He added: “The Cathedral is clearly identified as a target as is the old cavalry barracks in Sturry Road, now Leros Barracks, and the road/rail crossing on the old Elham Valley line, presumably because it was linked to Dover.

“The second photo is of Whitstable and the Swale Estuary, which was perhaps a target for shipping.”

Godfrey, whose own house was commandeered by the Canadian army during the war and had a anti-aircraft gun in the back garden, has amassed a collection of more than 1,100 pictures of Blean, going back to 1860.

Many of them, including A2 enlargements of his newly-acquired aerial photographs, will be on show at the village hall between 9am and midday on Saturday along with other wartime memorabilia and artifacts from the village.