The Allied Mapmakers of World War II: Army Map Service, Ordnance Survey and Beyond

NavWarMap No. 4, The North Pacific Area, U.S. Navy, 1944

The Maps of World War II · Chapter 6 of 9 · The map factories

Allied mapmakers

No war consumed maps like the Second World War. Behind the front stood an industry of surveyors, draftsmen, photographers and printers on three continents.

The Army Map Service

In 1942 the U.S. Army reorganized its engineer mapping offices in Washington into the Army Map Service. Its job was to supply every American force in the world with maps, and it did so on an industrial scale, compiling new sheets from aerial photographs, copying captured and foreign maps, and printing them by the million. In the field, engineer topographic battalions carried presses in trucks and trailers so that sheets could be revised and reprinted within hours of a new reconnaissance. Many of the plain, practical sheets in this collection carry the line “Prepared by the Army Map Service.”

Britain: the War Office and the Ordnance Survey

Britain’s military maps came from the War Office’s Geographical Section, General Staff, whose series numbers, “GSGS,” appear in the margins of sheets from Norway to Burma. Its 1:50,000 map of France, GSGS 4250, was the map of the Normandy campaign. The Ordnance Survey printed much of the output; its Southampton offices were badly damaged by bombing in 1940, and production moved and carried on. For the invasion of Europe, the Inter-Services Topographical Department in Oxford gathered topographical intelligence on every coast the Allies might land on, including millions of holiday snapshots and postcards sent in by the public after a 1942 appeal.

Strategists and teachers

Not every Allied map was made for the front. In Washington, the Office of Strategic Services had a map division whose cartographers included Arthur H. Robinson, later famous for the Robinson projection. The U.S. Navy issued large wall maps for training and orientation, such as the 1944 NavWarMap series in this gallery, each a full theater of the naval war with explanatory text. The Allied armies of Britain, Canada, Australia, India and the Soviet Union all ran their own survey services, and the Free French and the governments-in-exile drew on prewar national surveys of their occupied homelands.

Allied maps and mapmakers

U.S., British, Commonwealth and Allied maps, NavWarMaps and the work of the map factories. Filter by maker, type and year. 99 maps in 5 groups: Made in United States, Other and unattributed makers, Made in Britain and the Commonwealth, Made in Soviet Union, Made in Germany.

Made in United States (1 of 2) 27 maps

Made in United States (2 of 2) 18 maps

Other and unattributed makers (1 of 2) 26 maps

Other and unattributed makers (2 of 2) 3 maps

Made in Britain and the Commonwealth 13 maps

Made in Soviet Union 10 maps

Made in Germany 2 maps