OK, here is my favourite story about air photos used for mapping purposes.
At the end of WWII the Americans had a huge number of personnel still in uniform and quite a lot of equipment that cried out to be put to good use. Much of both could be used for aerial photographic mapping and some heavy suggested "Why don't we do something that's never been possible before? Let's map Antarctica!"
You've got to hand it to Americans; even with the current disasters their hearts are definitely in the right place. So Operation Highjump was on its way. Fleets of aircraft (probably DC3s) were used to take simultaneous verticals and obliques to port and starboard. From recollection it was all on 5" square B&W negatives (and prints) with perfect 60% endlap for the verticals and 30% sidelap for the obliques. The whole continent was flown, with all the piccies filling a huge hangar "somewhere in America".
Trouble was, if you intend using airphotos for topographic mapping you need what surveyors call "Ground Control". This isn't Houston conversing with Dr Tom; this is prominently marked points on the ground that have had their positions on the earth's surface carefully recorded by surveyors. As far as the antarctic was concerned, the amount of it that had any (let alone good) Ground Control was 3/5 of 5/8 of FA. And 90% of the lanscape consisted of sastrugi which changed shape and position every time the wind blew.
C'est la vie!
Some good came of it all, however! The Americans, being good sports, made the piccies available to allies. The Australians had been operating scientific stations (ANARE) at both Macquarie Is. (technically part of Tasmania) and Heard Is. (an Australian Territory that has allowed more than one bar bet to be one with the question "What is the highest Australian mountain?" Most answer Koszciuzko -at a smidgin over 7000'- instead of "Big Ben" at double the height) since 1947, when Operation Highjump was at its height. [Sorry! Couldn't resist.]
The Australians got copies of the prints displaying Antarctica's coasts near Australia and found one displaying an almost perfect harbour. The next year, after the Kista Dan had finished with Heard Is. it sailed due south until it got to the antarctic coast. They took a punt on which way to turn (I forget whether it was "Port" or "Starboard") and two days later they entered the harbour, now named Horseshoe Harbour from its shape. In 1954 it became the base for the oldest continuously occupied station in Antarctica; it was where I spent 1969, along with 23 other Australians as well as four Americans working on the Pageos program. Enabling me to claim, with a completely straight face, "I'm a 69er!"