Great site for maps

[Jon G.]

The University of Texas in Austin has a great many maps in its Perry-Castañeda Library, all freely available for download.

The U.S. Army topographical maps are some of the best maps I have ever come across online. All maps are 1:250,000, and there are enough maps to keep your download manager busy for most of the day. All maps are zoomable to very high degrees of detail.

The maps were drawn postwar, but they are based on WW2-era-data, save for some oceanographic data which is not likely to have changed anyway.

Just to give you an idea of the scope and breadth covered by these excellent maps, here is the index of areas covered by the P502 series:



There are also a few 1943-vintage Libyan town maps of Derna, Homs, Misurata and Tripoli here.

[David W]

These are map heaven!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Only one problem. How do you stop the map from shrinking down to useless, once it has fully downloaded?

[Jon G.]

David, you should be able to zoom in and out with your mouse scroll wheel once a map file has fully loaded. Or simply save the file ('save as...' tab) and open with your picture viewer of choice.

Beware, these images are quite slowly loading, even with a fast internet connection. But the wait is worth your while - the maps are incredibly detailed. They maintain crisp and clear detail even at 10x zoom.

[Oasis]

Great, Jon !!!!!

Oasis

[Petho]

Utterly brilliant!

Thanks, Jon!

Take care and good luck
Jason Petho

[Jon G.]

There's a whole host of useful maps on this site. Here are the direct links to some collections of town maps, sorted by nationality:

Tunisian town plans

Tripolitania town plans

Moroccan town plans

Algerian town plans

There are also maps of other parts of Africa. These maps are however slightly younger (from the 1950s) and thus may not be as useful for students of WW2.

Southern Africa

Index:



West Africa

Index:



I've also decided to sticky this thread for ease of reference.

[Fallschirmjäger]

Yes a little late,but i dont check all the sections realy,so are these maps just for north africa or there are ones for the rest of europe,west,east,north,sth etc...fronts.I will have to take a look for shure closer at these maps and its fine to make copie sof them aswell?.

[dgfred]

I really enjoy looking over maps. Thanks Jon G.

[PVOGT1967]

THANK YOU JON G FOR ALLOWING ME TO FINALLY FIND WHAT I HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR FOR THE LAST SEVENTEEN YEARS. PAUL

[henryk]

I presume this thread is to collect links to map sites for convenient reference. I have mentioned this link before, but am repeating for that reason.
Map Archive of Wojskowy Instytut Geograficzny 1919 - 1939
http://english.mapywig.org/news.php

There are many websites on the Internet with scanned old topo maps, but resources related to Poland are limited. Polish Military Geographical Institute (1919-1939) developed and printed topographic maps which, in the 1930s were rated among the best in the world. Nowadays these maps are a fountain of information about pre-WW2 Poland and, at the same time, can be still used in the field to locate villages which have long disappeared from the ground and can not be found on modern maps. For these reasons we believe these maps should be made widely accessible and what better way than through the Internet? Although a daunting task we are positive we will manage to collect and present scanned images of all WIG maps and other geographic materials the Institute published.

In addition to the Polish military maps, there are many others such as German and Soviet/Russian. Maps include WWII, interwar, WWI and pre-WWI.
It is more efficient to download and save maps directly on your computer, rather than on the browser. It is faster, and enables a variable zoom, rather than the minimum / maximum available with the browser.
Here is the Table of Contents.

Introduction
About the Project
Copyright
Authors & Contact
FAQs

Active Indexes
WIG 1:25 000
WIG 1:100 000
WIG 1:300 000

WIG Maps
WIG maps 1:10 000
WIG maps 1:25 000
WIG maps 1:100 000
WIG maps 1:300 000
WIG maps 1:500 000
WIG maps 1:750 000
Other WIG maps
Original WIG index sheets

Non-WIG Maps
Other Central European maps
Allied maps
German maps - 1919
German maps 1919-1945
KUK (Austro-Hungarian) maps
Russian and Soviet maps
Town plans

Other Material
Literature
Web Links
Polish --> English Map Key