During the four-year period, 1941-1945, the AMS prepared more than 40,000 different maps of all types, covering approximately 400,000 square miles of the earth’s surface. The total production of maps by the AMS during World War II was approximately 500,000,000 copies. If placed one on top of another, these maps would reach a height of 31.5 miles.
The Army Map Service (AMS) produced hundreds of millions of maps for the war effort during World War II. A small number of the output were city plans of which Stanford's map library holds around 400 either made directly by them or reprinted from work done by the Great Britain War Office, General Staff, Geographical Service (GSGS). Three regions are covered: Far East Asia (248 maps), North Africa (88 maps), and Europe (54 maps). The maps cover a very narrow date range from 1942 to 1948 with the earliest imprints in Algeria and Morocco and the latest from France. They range in scale from 1:5,000 to 1:14,000, with the most detailed maps tending to be the ones originally produced by the GSGS. This exhibit highlights these maps allowing one to examine these cities at a detailed scale as they would have been reviewed during wartime.