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15 October 2014
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NIGHT PHOTO RECONNAISSANCE TRIAL AND ERROR

by KEITH GLANVILL

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Archive List > Royal Air Force

Contributed by
KEITH GLANVILL
People in story:
K.B.GLANVILL
Location of story:
ROYAL AIRCRAFT ESTABLISHMENT FARNBOROUGH HANTS EUROPE
Background to story:
Royal Air Force
Article ID:
A5658627
Contributed on:
09 September 2005

NIGHT PHOTO RECONNAISANCE Trial and Error.

Early in 1940 I applied to join the RAF as aircrew, and attended a selection at Uxbridge where we had to undergo a long series of tests, during which they did not like what they found medically and I was turned down for flying duties. Thus it was with the inverted logic of the times that I found myself doing a great deal of night flying.
Whilst there discussing what happened next, I was told that they where interviewing for people to restart an expansion of the neglected branch of aerial photo reconnaissance, and I went straight down for an interview for this, along with a number of film camera crews, fleet street photographers, specialists from Kodak and Ilford etc. A small number of us eventually arrived at the RAF School of Photography at Farnborough Hants. as AC2s the lowest form of life in the RAF, expecting to be faced with highly complex and advanced reconnaissance equipment, and we where amazed to find that the RAF had the most primitive of cameras and processing equipment, and the level of training and expectation was appallingly low. The level of training was so low that very quickly the school was turned around so that the ‘pupils; gave the lectures to each other in their specialities and to the staff. After a short time the course was closed, and we where dispersed to various branches, and I was sent down to the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) also at Farnborough, where I joined a small civilian unit, and largely left to my own devises. I found that an ongoing problem was the poor quality films and film jamming in the G45 cine cameras used alongside the guns in fighter aircraft, and by running these on vibrating tables in freezing conditions using a high speed camera on the open gate I was able to gain some quite good improvements by simple methods of spring adjustments. RAE at this time was being run by the RAF with civilian personnel but Mr Churchill the PM decided that the RAF should concentrate of flying and leave development and manufacturing to the new Ministry Of Aircraft Production. (MAP).So no sooner was I in RAE than it taken away from the RAF and giving to MAP. Since I was living in civilian accommodation and had nothing to do with the RAF I seem to have been lost in the cracks of the admin system, and worked with some 3000 civilians involved with everything from aircraft, guns, armaments, radio and radar and anything else.
At this time the necessity for a great jump in the range and quality of photo reconnaissance was realised, and our unit was greatly expanded by more civilians from the commercial research departments and new premises., and I was teamed with a civilian, C.J.Duncan late of Kodak, and we two formed the brand new Night Reconnaissance Division.
We related to the RAF by a series of subcommittee meetings, with Duncan and I representing RAE at MAP Millbank, attended by the RAF, who talked from an operational requirement brief, the Heads of research of Kodak (Dr Spencer on emulsions) and Ilford ( Dr Harrison on lenses, mounts, shutters etc.,) and ourselves as co-ordinators, practical trials, and relationships with the explosives branches for illuminants and manufacturers. To a large extent CJ Duncan ran the office, whilst I used the laboratory, flew all trials, and attended to outside visits .Thus whilst turned down unfit for flying, I finished up doing a great deal.
At this period of the war there were a great shortage of operational aircraft, and all those we had for trials where operationally unserviceable, and this lead to many hair raising experiences. When at RAE, we flew only with a pilot and myself and I had to fill in for anything from petrol leaks, to jammed bomb doors, although on some visits to squadrons, introducing equipment, some where more operational trips. A typical exercise would be testing a new camera mount for low altitude high resolution trials, flying over a railway line where we had had painted the sleepers white to test our resolution, on one occasion we had an old Blenheim, but to try to get the speed of a Mosquito we had to fly in high and dive over the lines, at which point part of the canvas fuselage covering aft peeled back , a very draughty trip. We had many adventures, from wheel collapses, jammed bomb doors, bombs left hanging out of the doors on release wires, failed engines etc..
Since RAE did not have an ‘establishment’ and I had been forgotten by the RAF I remained an AC2 for most of the war, although it had little effect since I seldom came in contact with RAF personnel- apart from car drivers- and the RAF representative at the sub committee meetings which where largely technical and thus it was no problem. With the approach of D Day, somewhere it was clearly decided that there was little point in further development since further improvements would not filter through in time to be of use. And I was shunted to Regional Technical Publications at Milbank, charged with writing the technical instruction manuals for the new equipment which was entering service. At this point I must have swum back into the RAF orbit, although everyone was still civilian and I lived in a private flat in Bayswater, for suddenly I was promoted to Sgt.I discovered this one day having coffee with DR Harrison at Ilford’s, it appears ‘they’ could not find me but knew I visited there and asked him to let me know.
After a few months of writing, checking proofs and publications, I entered a period of chaos. To start with they, they had decided, that to speed processing and printing thousands of recce photos in the field, to build a train of five semi articulated lorries, containing offices, stores, generating lorries, a large continuous film processing machine, capable of the continuous processing of 5” and 10” wide film in 250 and 500 exposure lengths, along with a further lorry with a semi automatic continuous printing and processing plant, ready for front line distribution. What they did not have was anyone in the RAF who knew anything about the equipment, and I was sent down to work out an operating procedure, and to train the first crew. I was about to leave this when D Day happened and another crises arose. The aircraft of the recce wing flew out, and the engineering and support transport went, but the photo train stayed where it was because they had insufficient drivers for it. I was put in a lorry and told to drive, and 15 minutes later they made it legal by giving me a licence, and by these methods drivers where found and we set off that day for the Channel and the fun of backing my lorry down a sea wall and into a landing craft in the dark. Much rushing about, setting up for a few hours and then moving on as the front moved forward. I was lifted from there quite quickly, and teamed with Freddie Morgan in ‘Operational Research’ (ORS) at TAF Main HQ. where we concentrated on trying to improve the intelligence take from mainly night reconnaissance photographs, and we inevitably got involved in many aspects in the chain from requesting the operation to the use of information gained and losses involved. At the end of the war I was with TAF Main HQ in Germany helping to write the final summing up reports and eventually flew home to Farnborough and then to home.
In the early stages of work at RAE we where largely concerned to improve the quality of night photographs for bomb damage assessment and target confirmation in a wide variety of weather conditions. This involved work on cameras, lenses, emulsions, camera mountings, flare trials and fuse and in aircraft electronics. This gradually became more sophisticated with systems of shutter control by photo-electric means. With the approach of D Day the needs of close support for the army rose in importance, with their need for low level high resolution pictures, from fast aircraft, and this required again new types of equipment and methods.
In view of the new equipment arriving so late it clearly made sense to send me to 34 wing, and then to TAF 2 HQ to take part in the evaluation of the results.
At the end of the war I was asked if I would like to run the Photo School at Farnborough, but my life in the cracks between the RAF and civilian environment, had made me wary of the forces structured systems, I did not feel that this was where I wanted to be.

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