Wartime photographs.

It was illegal to take photographs anywhere near a military installation. Every public access route was posted.

Neither film nor processing was available to the general public. Some Aircrew were able to get some military film and cut it to the correct size to fit their cameras and then get the Photo Section to process it, but for the enthusiast, no film, no pictures and it was even illegal to make sketches!

When the Americans joined in they had access to film through the PX but you had to know an American who was willing to buy the film for you and get it processed.

I managed to get one roll of Geavert (Belgium or Dutch) film at the end of war but the local chemist messed up the processing, either due to his lack of skills or due to his lack of suitable developer!

As I’ve mentioned on other posts, my dad was a photographer in the Polish Air Force. He used, what I think was, gun camera film in his Leica to take many photos of aircrew etc.,downed and flying planes, German and allied. I have several tins of negatives that one day I will get round to looking at( if they are still ok) as well as his albums.

Watched a program last night on sky about life during the war from both sides it showed evacues but also some very nice cine film footage(think thats what it is) video camera now!, so they got the film from somewhere & lots of other camera photos.

So they had film before the war and bought it from the americans, if caught taking pictures of allied down aircraft what was the result?

The propaganda bureau, the Ministry of Information, made sure that there was adequate film made available to the Press and the Movie News folks but it just was not available to the general public.