VIVID wartime scenes of prison camps and bombing raids were revealed to the public for the first time today with the launch of an online archive of aerial photographs.

The pictures, taken during secret reconnaissance flights by pilots in unarmed planes, show details such as prisoners in the yard at Colditz, vehicles leaving landing craft on D-Day and craters left in the ground from bombing raids on a German weapons testing site.

During World War II, highly-skilled photographic interpreters studied the pictures using 3-D equipment to provide crucial intelligence.

Until now the images, which were declassified by the Ministry of Defence and include photos taken by Allied aircraft and the Luftwaffe, have been kept behind closed doors.

The Aerial Reconnaissance Archives (Tara) contain more than 10m declassified photographs, many of which were originally analysed by MI4 teams based at the Allied Central Interpretation Unit, at RAF Medmenham, in Buckinghamshire, during World War II.

They were stored for more than 50 years at Keele University before Tara was moved to Edinburgh last year.

Around 4,000 images from the archive will go online initially, with more to be added as research continues.