512 Field Survey Company Royal (3 results)

No Binding. Condition: Good. Colour printed paper map 57x80cm. Good, neatly folded, with closed circular tear to the image, spotted, and lightly creased, rubbed along the outer fold. This edition of 8 June 1941 was drawn and reproduced by 512 Advanced Field Survey Company from a French Map dated 1938, updated from the 1 January 1941 edition with roads revised June 1941 from intelligence reports, corrected marginal notes, and tables reconciling French and Palestine Grids. This dates to the first day of the Syrian-Lebanon Campaign led by British, Commonwealth and Free French forces against the Vichy French (Operation Exporter). On 8 June, Australian forces crossed from northern Palestine into Lebanon and began their advance on Beirut. Initially they made good progress until temporarily held up in fierce fighting at the Litani River (9 June). There followed a series of battles during advances along the coast and inland via Merdjayoun. These culminated in the Battle of Beirut (12 July), which established the Allied occupation of Lebanon, and Beirut as an important Allied naval base. Bounded by the Mediterranean from Nahariya in northern Palestine (SW) to Beirut and Djounieh (N), and inland to Rayak (NE), this covers the above theatre of operations including locations along the coastal and inland advances. Details include roads (2 classes), tracks (4 classes from passable all seasons to fit for cart traffic only), rail (2 gauges), remains of Roman roads, mosques, tombs, towers, forts, telegraph, pipelines, wells, camps, gardens, airstrips etc, with contour lines and spot heights. Rare.

No Binding. Condition: Good. 2nd Edition. Colour printed paper map 115x86cm. Good, quite neatly folded, and apparently displayed with pinholes, some rust residue, paper repair, short closed tears, and loss to corners (not affecting images). An impressive Middle East Forces (MEF) planning chart for Mechanised Transport (M.T.) with 14 local insets, road surface information, mileages, the incidence of malaria, and other practical information about staging posts, cities and towns en route. This was drawn and reproduced by 512 Field Survey Company, Royal Engineers in December 1944, from information supplied by Movements and Transportation, GHQ MEF. The main map covers a significant part of the Middle East Theatre, bounded by Matruh on the Mediterranean (W), Aqaba (SE), and Aleppo (NE), with onward details for Baghdad and elsewhere. It presents a dense colour coded network of routes on a 1/1M scale, supported by a table describing and assessing the quality of road surfaces between several locations, including combinations of metalled, mud, and desert tracks. Other tables give mileages for the region, and more specifically for Alexandria and Baghdad. Details include principal towns, and staging areas with colour coding to show what facilities to expect at each from among water, petrol, D.I.D. (these were Detail Issue Depots responsible for supplying units in forward areas), signal communication, or nothing at all. "Highly Malarious Areas" shaded pink include pretty much all of the Nile Delta, Suez Canal and Jordan Valley, with several long stretches beyond. The inset sketch maps show how to get through Cairo, the Amiriya area, Suez area, Ismailia area, Gaza area, Damascus, Beirut, Jerusalem, the Haifa area, Lydda area, Marjayoun, Tulkarm, Palmyra (including part of the course of the IPC Pipeline), and routes to Baghdad via Abu Kemal. The city plans include locations of practical interest. Beirut for example appears to be very well equipped with sub-area HQ, transit camps (with geographically separate British and Indian Wings), a leave camp, petrol, DID, marshalling yards, railway facilities etc, and a warning that some streets are one-way only. Very rare with 5 copies of this edition located on Worldcat and Library Hub (BL, Oxford, and the National Libraries of Israel, Australia, and New Zealand). They also record the 1st edition (1943) at BL. No other editions are recorded.

Fifteen lithograph maps, monochrome (brown) template with main roads overprinted in red with additional overprinting of military intelligence (depending on specific sheet) in green blue and black. Measuring 915 by 650mm and 620 by 455mm. Some sheets featuring contemporary manuscript annotations, plus wear and soiling from use in the field. [Cairo,] [Middle East Drawing and Reproduction] and 13 C.Fd. Survey Coy., R.E., May and June, Rare and important: this substantial, annotated group of maps provide a vital record of a key turning point of the War in Europe.   Classified as ?Secret? or "Not to Be Published" the maps were issued in only a very limited print run for the exclusive use of the most senior commanders of Operation Husky. These maps were evidently heavily used during the mission itself, as 6 of the works feature manuscript additions, generally in indigo pen, with most marking the locations of British troop landings and positions, being top secret real-time information that could only have been added in situ by British commanders. Moreover, the maps feature the type of wear and staining consistent with military field use.   After the success of the North African Campaign, Churchill and Roosevelt turned their attention to Europe. Sicily appeared the obvious gateway, with the added advantages of destabilising Mussolini and diverting Axis resources from the Balkans and the Eastern Front. As such, Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily, launched from bases in Malta and North Africa. Under the ultimate command of General Dwight David Eisenhower, the plan called for two massive separate but coordinated amphibious landings on Sicily. The Allied armies during Operation Husky had a combined strength of 467,000 men, while the Axis powers in Sicily could muster only 300,000 troops (250,000 Italians and 50,000 Germans).   Operation Husky was launched on July 9, 1943, with a series of attacks along the Sicilian coast. American and British corps were assigned targets to seize, notably key cities and airfields, etc., while severing Italo-German communication and transport lines.   In preparation, the 512 Field Survey Company of the Royal Engineers of the British Army, based in Cairo, published a series of interconnecting maps of southeastern Sicily. The maps were largely predicated upon high-quality aerial photography undertaken by numerous Royal Air Force and U.S. Air Force low-altitude reconnaissance missions. Most of the required intelligence was gathered through these, especially Axis defenses and infrastructure, as well as southeastern Sicily?s natural topography, and vegetation, so troops were guided reliably. While the original complete set was comprised of 29 maps, forming a complete view of South and Eastern Sicily, the maps would've been distributed to officers as partial sets on a need-to-know basis.   Using a standard but accurate brown-scale topographic template, with major roads overlayed in red, elevations are expressed as contour lines at 10 metre-intervals. The symbols note details such as different types or roads/paths and railways/cable ways, as well as electricity infrastructure, canals, factories, wells, etc. The maps have varying levels of coloured overprinting of information of ?life or death? importance. All have green overprinting, including of their ?SECRET? classification, and descriptive terms (Jagged Hill Country, Walls / Rocky, etc.) and the locations of ravines, manmade obstacles (ex. canals, walls) and rough terrain that might affect the movement of tanks and armoured vehicles. Also noted, in green, is the vegetation/agrarian land use ("Cultivation and Orchards", "Scattered Trees").   Furthermore, the maps feature overprinting in blue, as marked, in the upper margin, as "Defenses Overprint dated 17.6.43," conveying vital recent intelligence on the locations of Axis military infrastructure: pill boxes, anti-personal and anti-tank barricades, artillery positions, camouflaged facilities, oil tanks and the like. Two of the maps (Maps #5B. Lentini, Edition IV and #7. Catania [South]) have an additional layer of information - "Black Overlay dated 27.6.43" which was late-breaking intelligence acquired within the final two weeks' prior to the mission launch. These correct erroneous intelligence as well as make additions.   These maps were evidently heavily used during Operation Husky itself, as six of them [maps #1, 2, 3, 5B, 7 and 8] feature manuscript additions, with most marking the locations of British troop landings and positions, being top secret real-time information that could only have been added in theatre by British commanders.   The 512 Field Survey Company maps are as follows:   1. 512 FIELD SURVEY COMPANY, ROYAL ENGINEERS. 16 17 Avola / Naval Collation Map / Sheet 10 / Edition III / SECRET / "Defenses Overprint dated 17.6.43" / [Cairo, Middle East Drawing and Reproduction], June 1943. The most important of the set, it depicts the sites of the initial British amphibious troop landings on the night of July 9-10, 1943, on the coastline near the towns of Avola and Fontana Bianche, just south of Syracuse. Upon landing, the troops moved to seize preplanned targets slightly inland and up the coast, while paratroopers and troops on gliders (although many of these craft did not successfully reach their destinations) landed to secure various points, the most important of which was the Ponte Grande, a bridge over the Anape River, near Syracuse.   Ms. annotations sugggest it was used as a guide during the British landings and associated operations. These note landing sites and many named rendezvous points (marked as circles) in the near interior, around the town of Avola, for the troops once they successfully landed, code-named after various trees and plants, ex. ?Cherry?, ?Date?, ?Cypress?, ?Deodar?, etc., while ?Mistletoe? marks an offensive target site, being the location of Axis howitzers.   2. 512 FIELD SURVEY COMPANY, ROYAL ENGINEERS. Noto / Naval Collat.