RAF School of Photography

[Ian Melville]

Many years ago I acquired a small number of photos that were publicity/propaganda from the Second World War. Bored, I scanned some into the PC. Some of them are not the best quality originals, some have also sustained damage that would indicate that they had been discarded.

This set appear to originate from the RAF School of Photography at Farnborough. There are a mix of several sets. Many captions are missing, but some are quite detailed so I have included them here.

"OPTICAL GLASS
A rough piece of high quality optical glass intended for lenses."


"OPTICAL GLASS
Craftsmen, using hardened steel hammers, trimming amd splitting the rough chunks to remove flaws and fractures and to reduce the glass to suitable shapes"




No caption but the dial under the thumb is annotated "Interval in Seconds" I would guess the camera control box in a Mosquito?


"An aerial camera being place in position in the fuselage of a plane. The hand operating handle of the camera, and the meter which drives the camera are both on the left." The absence of the rear fuselage would indicate an instructional airframe. Hawker Hind/Audax?


"Photo shows scene in film room."


"At the Royal Air Force School of Photography these pictures were taken, men undergo a six months course of training. They finish up there course by going up in Anson aircraft and taking there own pictures, and on landing they carry on with the developing, printing etc, and make there own mosaics."(sic)



Bomb at far left has the word "fused" on it, I'm sure the Germans will find out sooner rather than later.




Again this looks like a Hawker Hind or Audax



Not sure how this one fits in? Though not aviation it is an interesting enough photo to include. Looks like the signals section.

[Neil MacG]

Ian,

Really interesting stuff. Personally - I find it difficult to work out how they got decent lenses from those piles of glass!

Neil

[Ian Melville]

Not only that but there is a lot of swarf under the lathe like machine in the third picture. Certainly not a clean room for assembling lenses, which looks like what is happening.