Air Reconnaissance Conservation and Curatorial Policy

Over the years, the failure of several extensive searches for the photographs recalled by Brian Urquhart or any documentary evidence of their existence has led to suggestions of a systematic cover-up. This is unlikely, but an understanding of RAF air reconnaissance conservation and curatorial policy since the Second World War can help to explain certain aspects of this strange story.

RAF conservation policy was weighted towards the preservation of strategic reconnaissance imagery and interpretation reports. The rationale for this is not hard to understand. It was presumably considered that strategic material was more likely to be of lasting significance, whereas tactical intelligence would have only a limited, short-term importance. Consequently, while master copies of images taken by the strategic squadrons of 106 Group (including 541 Squadron) were preserved, the overwhelming majority of tactical reconnaissance photographs taken by the squadrons of Second Tactical Air Force were not. Equally, a very high proportion of tactical interpretation reports fell victim to routine destruction.

At odds with this general policy was the postwar decision to bequeath a significant quantity of 106 Group photographs to the Dutch to assist with a range of governmental and geographical functions. Among them was the imagery from 106G/2816 that pictured Panzers near Arnhem shortly before Operation Market Garden. As an enormous number of air photos were taken over The Netherlands, particularly during the protracted and laborious search for V2s in 1944 and 1945, the British authorities may perhaps have reasoned that they had plenty to spare.

The preserved photographs themselves were single full-size prints. As such, they bore little resemblance to the tools of the RAF’s wartime PIs, which were highly enlarged sub-sections of the full-sized pictures produced directly from negatives. Sadly, few of the enlargements actually generated during the war have survived, and the negatives were not retained.

It is impossible to know what curatorial standards were applied to the RAF’s imagery archives while they remained under government control, but they may well have left much to be desired. After government jurisdiction over the archives ceased (from the 1960s onwards), they were deposited at Keele University. However, The Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre (JARIC) retained the authority to call back films from Keele, and it is clear that this facility was used (or misused) to further the private research of serving and former members of the air intelligence community over a considerable period of time. Wartime films were also sometimes employed for training purposes.

When the Keele holdings were transferred to the National Collection of Air Photographs (NCAP) at Edinburgh in 2008, their curators found that numerous films were missing: they had been recalled by JARIC and not returned. Predictably enough, the missing photos included many taken in the Arnhem area in September 1944.

After a time, the imagery still held by JARIC was transferred to NCAP. It was substantially intact, but some key photographs had been lost, including frames known to be of considerable historical value. Among them were some of the best shots of V2 rockets on the ground in The Hague. This is the context within which we must understand the disappearance of the 544 Squadron photograph taken over the Deelerwoud on 12 September 1944 (frame 4023). All the other images obtained by the RAF Mosquito that afternoon are held by NCAP, but the one shot with the ‘A’ marking has vanished. It was probably removed from the archive before it was opened to the public, or during the period when it resided at Keele.

Efforts to establish the possible significance of the marking have been inconclusive. All frames shown in the plot overlays were numbered in black pen, and occasionally frame numbers were followed by an ‘A’. These were usually end-of-run frames, the location of which had been amended in complex plots numbering dozens of frames. Presumably, this was to improve the accuracy of their location on the map. Hence, if a frame was originally numbered 1234, and number 1235 had already been allocated to another frame, the amended plot would be numbered 1234A. However, the ‘A’ was always added in black pen and always followed the original frame number. The ‘A’ on frame 4023 is completely different: it precedes the frame number and appears to have been marked on the map before the frames were added by the plotter.