A Royal Flying Corps Wireless Section Photograph Album c1917-18

Royal Flying Corps Wireless Section: Photograph album, IV Wing, Netheravon, c.1917–1918
 
Photograph album compiled by a member of the Wireless Telegraphy section attached to IV Wing of the Royal Flying Corps, later Royal Air Force, stationed at Netheravon aerodrome on Salisbury Plain during the First World War.
 
The original album contains 164 original photographs mounted on dark card leaves with contemporary manuscript captions throughout. Photos typically 55 x 80mm, a few larger, binding worn with a partial split along the spine but holding. Internally sound. Photographs generally well preserved, with a small number faded. Two photographs lacking from their mounts.
 
The photographs document aircraft, wireless equipment installations, technical personnel, and daily life at Netheravon. Numerous images show wireless apparatus fitted to aircraft and members of the wireless section identified by name and rank including corporals and air mechanics responsible for the installation and maintenance of airborne wireless telegraphy and direction-finding equipment.
 
Aircraft types recorded include examples of the Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5 fighter, De Havilland aircraft in flight, Bristol and Sopwith machines, and several photographs of Handley Page bombers, one caption noting an aircraft fitted with twin 320 h.p. Cossack engines. The presence of these machines suggests the wireless section was supporting bomber squadrons forming or training at Netheravon, including aircraft associated with No. 97 Squadron which was formed there in 1917 before deployment to France.
 
The album also includes a photograph of the experimental “Harlequin” camouflage aircraft, an unusual and rarely recorded attempt to develop disruptive paint schemes intended to confuse enemy observation.
 
A rare contemporary record of the technical personnel responsible for early airborne wireless communication within the Royal Flying Corps during the Great War.