The US National Archives in Washington contain about 1,100,000 wartime aerial photos, among them some 600 of Kiev, including Babi Yar. They were taken during 20 or more flights over the area. The first photos, taken at 12:23 pm on May 17, 1939, reveal such details as cars and even the shadows of the lamp posts on the streets of Kiev. Every large bush and small tree is visible on the slopes and at the bottom of the Babi Yar ravine. The last aerial photo coverage of Kiev (and Babi Yar) took place on June 18, 1944, about nine months after the city's "liberation" by the Red Army.
This series of reconnaissance photos demonstrates that the flora and the ground cover of the ravine remained undisturbed throughout the two years of German occupation. When the early and late photos are compared, it is obvious that the scattered trees grew and became slightly larger. No evidence of human or large animal activity in the ravine can be discerned on the many aerial photos of Babi Yar taken repeatedly in different seasons of the years 1939-1944.
In November of 1943, a group of Western journalists, including New York Timescorrespondent William "Bill" Lawrence, himself Jewish, were invited to Kiev by the Soviets. This occurred two weeks after the city's fall to the Red Army. The reporters were told that this was only six weeks after the Germans had completed the dynamiting, disinterment and open-air cremation of 70,000 corpses, followed by the crushing and bulldozing of the unburned bones into the soil of the ravine.
But the Western journalists were hard pressed to find any convincing physical evidence at the site of the alleged massacre.