Wartime Archive launches with 223,575 photos and maps

The Wartime Archive has launched at wartimearchive.com with more than 223,000 wartime photographs, maps and military documents spanning before World War I through Korea. The collection is searchable, downloadable and licensable, with prints and subscriptions aimed at researchers, schools and publishers.

Why it matters: - The Wartime Archive puts a wide slice of military history in one searchable place. - The collection combines photographs, maps and documents that were previously spread across different sources. - The archive is built for research, publishing, education and print use.

What happened: - The Wartime Archive opened at wartimearchive.com with 219,834 photographs, 3,741 maps and 4,977 military documents. - The material covers the period from before World War I through Korea. - Every image can be searched by unit, aircraft, ship, place, date or name. - Paul Fearn runs the archive. - Fearn said he wanted the material in one place where anyone could search it and download it straight away.

The details: - American material includes 35,293 photographs taken by the American air forces, filed by theater from England and Italy to Burma, China and the Pacific. - That set includes 4,960 B-17 Flying Fortress images and 2,280 B-24 Liberator images. - The archive also includes 16,587 photographs from the U.S. Army Signal Corps, organized by division and place. - Signal Corps material covers armored and airborne divisions, the Philippines, Korea and Vietnam. - The 12th Army Group's daily situation maps run from Normandy in June 1944 to July 1945. - German material includes 16,732 photographs from the German press house in occupied Poland. - The archive also holds 2,699 German situation maps drawn by wartime staffs, with one set for each campaign from 1939 to 1945, including Stalingrad. - British, French, Canadian, Italian, Japanese and Russian sources round out the collection. - The archive includes tanks, ships, airfields, nose art, propaganda posters, insignia and aerial reconnaissance photographs. - The documents total 577,607 pages and are available as complete PDFs. - Those documents include division, regiment, battalion and squadron histories and after-action reports. - The archive also includes field manuals and finding guides to German military records captured at the end of the war. - 112 documents are free to download. - Any picture can be ordered as a print, with buyers able to draw their own crop and choose a size. - Each print size is labeled for print quality. - Photographic prints start at $6. - Fine art prints on Hahnemühle paper and framed prints are also available. - Prints ship to the United States and 50 other countries. - Personal-use downloads start at $12.99. - Pictures can be licensed at full resolution for books, magazines and video. - Schools and universities can subscribe to the full archive by the year.

Between the lines: - The archive is using public-domain originals as the base material. - What the archive sells is the reproduction of each image and the attached research. - The business model blends access, licensing and physical products, which broadens the audience beyond historians. - The depth of the catalog suggests the archive is aiming to become a reference platform rather than a simple image storefront.

What's next: - More photographs, maps and documents are being added. - Wartime film footage will follow. - The archive may become more useful over time as the collection expands and the search index grows.