Imperial War Museum Camera Gun films

[RecklessRat]

Dear all,

Until Dennis Burke <a href="http://www.rafcommands.com/forum/showthread.php?t=966">pointed this out</a>, I had no idea these films still existed. I found the Collections Online database difficult to search effectively, so I have produced what is hopefully a useful resource for others.

The results generated for the search term "Camera Gun" in Collections Online have been compiled into a searchable, filterable spreadsheet available in Openoffice (281 KB) and Excel (2067 KB) formats.

<a href="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/laurieburley/jeff/ccgfilmindex.ods">Click here for the Openoffice version (.ods)</a>

<a href="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/laurieburley/jeff/ccgfilmindex.xls">Click here for the Excel version (.xls)</a>

All rights belong to the Imperial War Museum, I just did some compiling. If someone can offer a more permanent home for hosting these, please drop me a PM.

Regards,

Jeff

<i>Mods; I am a little unsure of of where this stands with respect to the terms of use on here; if you have a problem with this post, please delete and/or send me a PM.</i>

[Mikkel Plannthin]

Jeff,
Thank you for sharing this piece of work. Excellent reference!

Mikkel

[Steve Brew]

Hi Jeff

Excellent resource - almost 160 Combat Reports for 'my' Squadron (41 Sqdn.) alone!

Thanks for sharing this; I was also unaware of their existence, and had often wondered if they were not still 'hidden away' somewhere.

Cheers
Steve

[Mikkel Plannthin]

Does anyone know how to access them?

Mikkel

[Errol Martyn]

Jeff,

"Thank you for sharing this piece of work. Excellent reference!"

Ditto!

Errol

[SteveBrooking]

Jeff

As others have said another very helpful contribution. If Ross is not interested I wonder if Malcolm Barrass at http://www.rafweb.org/Index.htm might consider hosting your spreadsheets?

Mikkel

I believe you access these films through the Film Archives at IWM, London. A lot of this film/newsreel material is stored at Duxford so it is not possible to simply drop in at Lambeth. You have to order the films you want to view, then make an appointment and the material is brought into London for that day. I have asked before whether it is possible to go to Duxford (which is much easier and cheaper to get to) but no luck!

Steve

[Mikkel Plannthin]

Steve,
Thanks for this introduction.

I'll have to move to London one day to have the opportunity to visit all those nice archives. It is a bit long from Copenhagen :-)

Mikkel

[RecklessRat]

Gents,

Thanks for those kind words; I fancied a break from another little project (Transcribing 263 Sqn's ORBs) and foolishly thought "Well, this won't take long...". Yeah, right!

I started on this after finding footage of my grandfather's attack on a goods train in 1943. Having transcribed that part of the ORB and, in particular, the SURFAT report from that sortie, I knew that there was footage "sent in" to 10 Group, but I didn't expect it to still exist! He also took part in an attack on the Munsterland and, again, his film was sent in but doesn't appear in the online catalogue. According to the IWM this catalogue is only about 40&#37; of their film records, so one day I may go down to London and have a shufti through their card indices.

Regarding the films themselves, there are contact details for the film archive here

<a href="http://www.iwmcollections.org.uk/contacts.asp">http://www.iwmcollections.org.uk/contacts.asp</a>

and I spoke to a helpful chap called Matthew Lee. For about &#163;30 I was able to order a copy of the relevant master reel on DVD, although this process takes about 8 weeks to convert from 16mm film. I've no idea what the quality is like, but it's cheaper than heading down to London, etc. etc.

Regards,

Jeff

[Franek Grabowski]

Jeff, let us know about the quality, please.
By the way, there are numerous spelling errors on Polish names. I may correct them if you like, but should I include Polish accent marks?

[RecklessRat]

Hi Franek,

Thanks for the offer of help; spelling and so on is a bit of a problem. There are numerous typographical errors or strange spellings of names in there, but in the end I decided that except for the blindingly obvious (e.g. Flihgt (Flight) Lieutenant, Browing (Browning), Dormier (Dornier) 210 etc.) I would leave these alone. My rationale was that these spellings may actually be as they appear on the titles of the film; I can't check that. Whether the RAF bloke who originally made up the film titles got names and ranks correct, I couldn't possibly tell and, as such, I decided not to change anything.

Obviously, this creates a problem for people searching the index but I decided it was better that way than to start guessing at what I thought the names ought to be.

Regards,

Jeff

[mhuxt]

I recently attempted the same feat (ran out of motivation very rapidly) and can assure everyone that "All entries were then manually checked and adjusted to ensure the correct layout" is a very modest description for what is a terribly time-consuming exercise.

Many thanks for this Jeff.

[Franek Grabowski]

Thanks for the offer of help; spelling and so on is a bit of a problem. There are numerous typographical errors or strange spellings of names in there, but in the end I decided that except for the blindingly obvious (e.g. Flihgt (Flight) Lieutenant, Browing (Browning), Dormier (Dornier) 210 etc.) I would leave these alone. My rationale was that these spellings may actually be as they appear on the titles of the film; I can't check that. Whether the RAF bloke who originally made up the film titles got names and ranks correct, I couldn't possibly tell and, as such, I decided not to change anything.
Jeff
Titles of films were prepared on Squadron level, before submitting them to higher level. High number of spelling errors in Polish names indicates, they were made during making of catalogues at IWM.
BTW
How about quality of those DVDs?

[Micky]

Hello All,

Congratulation first to Jeff for his brillant work, this is the most welcome.

For those who would be interested to hear on the quality of these footage, I can share my experience on having ordered one of these compilation on DVD. Well I have to say that you would have a 50/50 chance to find the combat film you are interested in to be of reasonnable quality. Unfortunately for me the one I was interested in was overexposed and very short, as well as some other footages of my order, but I have seen some amazing shipping attacks that are of very good quality; air combat could also be deceiving as the enemy aircraft is sometime very far; but I repeat it, this is only for one film! The compilation I ordered is mostly for the year 1941, maybe the film quality improved over the war years and you could have better footages. This is also quiet expansive, expect around £50 I guess for one compilation.
Cheers,
Micky

[Franek Grabowski]

I mean rather quality of digitisation rather than quality of original films, of the latter being well awared.