Hello,

Does anyone know of a place/site that has topograpical maps of Europe or Russia? Please let me know if you have seen or purchased any of these and if you think they could be used to make PB/PL maps!


Thank you

The larger university librarys have map archives. Usually in a colection sponsored by one of the geoscience studies. If you re lucky they will have some of the military style maps.

Most of your good topo maps will be post 1945. The US and British Armys did make up a partial set of Europe during 1942-45 but finding exactly the terrain you need is problematic.

There are a variety of maps on line, made from recent satilite surveys. The few I have found are not much good for WWII terrain at the PB scale. But I have heard remarks about better sources online.

Find a library that is listed as a repository site. The Detroit Public Library is one such library. My experience has been excellent. I found a 1944 topo map of the See-Selune Plain where the 30th ID made its stand at Mortain. I'm currently making a scale PL map to recreate the battle and potentially study for CGSC (now ILE - intermediate level education).

Jerry
I have not run across your name before. Have you done much with PB maps? Or other variant things?

Carl S

Carl,
I've enjoyed playing PL/PB since the early 80's. I have not developed any variant products to date but as an Army Reserve officer am interested in history. I have read extensively about warfare on the Eastern Front in order to reap the benefits of that forgotten portion of WW2.

As I stated, I am developing a 4 hex to kilometer map for the Battle of Mortain. In so doing, I researched topo maps and found that repository libraries are required to maintain maps, including historical maps. I found a map of the Avranches - Mortain - St. Hilaire - Ger area circa 1944...great find.

Though not 100% realistic, PL/PB have been useful in instructing the concepts of combined arms which leads naturally to the current era of jointness in the US military; kind of AirLand Battle to Shock-And-Awe

Jerry

Jerry
be nice to see the finished map. I did a few of these back in the 1990s, and am trying to make time to do more.

good luck