Flights, camera, action
James Crawford uncovers the nation’s secrets from the sky after spending 10 years studying aerial images stretching back to the early 20th century. Here he tells the story of his TV series and book, entitled Scotland from the Sky
Scotland’s National Collection of Aerial Photography offers a unique opportunity to study how our country has changed since the early 20th century.
And while many images stand out – Hampden Park in the 1920s; the Queen Mary under construction at John Brown’s shipyard in the 30s; the photograph of the Bismarck from 1941, captured by a Spitfire flown out of Wick airfield – the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts.
The earliest aerial photos were taken from giant airships in the years before – and during – World War I.
These airships patrolled the areas around the east coast from where they were stationed at East Fortune Aerodrome.
It was feared Germany would try a seaborne invasion of Scotland and that the East Lothian coast, with its long stretch of beaches, would make an ideal landing site. The airships were photographing these sites so that their defensive and strategic effectiveness could be assessed.
The pilots would have been the astronauts of their day – dashing, glamorous risk-takers. Few were as dashing and courageous as Douglas Hamilton – a champion boxer and RAF squadron leader.
In 1932, he was approached by John Buchan – an MP and, more famously, the author of The 39 Steps – to lead an expedition to photograph the summit of Mount Everest from above. This was the last great challenge for aviation on the world’s surface.
Two aircraft made the flight in 1933, piloted by Scotsmen – Hamilton and David McIntyre. They succeeded, and the expedition was captured in the 1934 documentary, Wings Over Everest.
Twenty years later, their photographs were used by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay to plot their route to the summit on foot.
Aerial photography was also instrumental in planning a new Scotland. While the nation had avoided mass destruction in the war, it emerged far from unscathed.
Overcrowding, squalor and inadequate infrastructure were the norm. Scotland’s cities were ill- equipped to deal with the demands of the present, let alone the future.
There was an urgent need to assess every inch of the nation. In 1944, a handful of RAF squadrons were tasked with making a complete photographic map of all of Scotland.
The same planes, pilots and photographers who had helped plan and carry out the bombing of Europe were now instrumental in rebuilding on the home front.
They carried on for six years – 500 flights taking nearly 300,000 photos. They were used to plan hydro schemes, bringing electricity north of the Highland line, and plot the locations of new forestry and farmland. And they were used to redesign our cities.
In 1945, Glasgow’s chief engineer Robert Bruce recommended levelling the centre of the city almost in its entirety and starting again.
Central Station, the City Chambers – even the Charles Rennie Mackintosh-designed School of Art – were all marked for demolition.
Bruce called it “surgical” planning. Anything old was like a tumour to be cut away. The plan was approved in 1947 but then shelved because of the costs involved.
Instead, it was a plan for new towns on greenfield sites which won out.
Again, it was the 1944-50 RAF aerial survey which identified the best locations for the creation of East Kilbride, Glenrothes, Irvine, Cumbernauld and Livingston.
It’s also been responsible for an important archaeology dig. In 1976, an aerial team photographed a field east of Banchory in Aberdeenshire. One photo revealed dark, regularly spaced dots running in a straight line.
When archaeologists excavated the site decades later, they found 12 circular pits filled with traces of burnt flint, nuts and bone, which turned out to be 10,000 years old.
Here was evidence of huntergatherers maintaining an elaborate landscape monument for some four millennia. One theory is that these pits were a primitive calendar, which hunters used to work out when it was time to chase the migrating deer. ● Scotland from the Sky starts tomorrow on BBC1 at 9pm. A book to accompany the series is published by Historic Environment Scotland
(RRP £25).