A stands for aeroplane

A stands for aeroplane

My first hobby was aeromodelling, a result of reading just about every single Biggles book by the time I was ten. Making (and regularly breaking) balsa and tissue aircraft only receded when I discovered developing and printing, which was less generally destructive…

Consequently, I read a story about a particularly fine lens made for photo-reconnaissance well before I had any way to appreciate the technicalities: a single, especially high-definition lens offered the possibility of a military advantage to the nation possessing it in First World War France: and Captain Bigglesworth’s efforts to acquire it for the Royal Flying Corps were notably complex, involving extensions to the upper wings of his Sopwith Camel to enable it to climb to the altitude of the German aeroplane using it.

The problem, of course, was not only to reach the aircraft, but to force it down without damaging the camera it carried. I’ll leave the story up in the air – so to speak – and head on to the second leg of my blog’s tripod of strands, which is a book that I picked up somewhere for £4, and then forgot about – it’s called Camera in the Sky, by Charles A Sims.

Sims worked for The Aeroplane magazine, and had excellent access to both aircraft manufacturers and the British forces, and the book records incidents that would horrify current aviators: the Fairey Swordfish disappearing from view as it left the flight deck of a crowded aircraft carrier, having not QUITE achieved airspeed, and subsequently seen a few feet above the sea and climbing slowly isn’t untypical.

Early in his working life, Sims was an RAF photographer in Iraq, and later in Egypt, where photo-reconnaissance work included regular images of the Sphinx to record how the routine sand-clearing was going, and other work for archaeologists. It appears that – in those days – such things were seen as normal, good practice and good fun, and not invoiceable.

My own experience of air photography is limited – three helicopter flights, and what I could snap out of the window from commercial flights. Of these, the second, flying back from Rhodes from our first holiday abroad, was the most fun, because my wife had broken her ankle, and spent the second week of the holiday in Rhodes hospital. As we’d been on the island for the Orthodox Easter, our departure was on the first day of the main tourist season. Consequently, we flew home on a 360-seater aircraft with 60 passengers, allowing my wife the two seats she needed with an ankle in plaster, and giving me freedom to take pictures from any window I wanted, more or less.

My wife’s ambulance journey to the airport had delayed our departure, but this didn’t matter much, because there were several flights that day - and we crossed the Alps in evening sunshine. I think the pilot had some fun just before we landed: in a holding pattern for 15 minutes, he executed the tightest turns I’ve experienced – though nothing to compare with Mr Sims’ high jinks!