Mike Chapman
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mikethechapman.bsky.social
Mike Chapman
@mikethechapman.bsky.social
150 followers 360 following 25 posts
Former barrister, now occasional law tutor.
Devote my spare time to researching obscure aspects of naval and military history, which hopefully may one day see the light of day!
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mikethechapman.bsky.social
Cotton and the Electra feature in Keith Jeffery’s authorised history of SIS (MI6)
APPROACHING WAR 323 SIS played an important part in the development of clandestine air photography. Towards the end of 1938 Winterbotham’s Section II set up an Air Photographic Unit. This was an Anglo-French joint SIS-Deuxième Bureau venture with business cover as the Aeronautical Research and Sales Corporation. An American Lockheed plane was purchased by the French, and SIS engaged an Australian pilot, Sidney Cotton. Cotton and his team developed cutting-edge photographic techniques for air reconnaissance which provided better results than ever before. By the end of 1938 clandestine photographs were being taken of Italian bases and air-fields. The Air Ministry paid for a second Lockheed and assistance was given by the RAF Experimental Establishment at Farnborough. Cotton proceeded round Europe, flying at very high altitudes over Germany and Italy, photographing large numbers of airfields and other military intelligence targets. Indeed, so successful was he that by mid-1939 there was a bottleneck in the production of this material through a shortage of trained photographic interpreters. Shortly after the outbreak of war Cotton's organisation was taken over by the Air Ministry, but SIS could claim with some justification to have been the initiator of modern high-altitude, high-speed photo-reconnaissance.
March 30, 2025 at 4:08 PM
mikethechapman.bsky.social
Here’s the window as preserved at the NMM
A photograph of the stained glass window formerly at the Baltic Exchange in London. It shows figures standing in porticoes.
March 21, 2025 at 12:17 PM
mikethechapman.bsky.social
Seconded for the HGM

Plus there are several awesome flak towers
Photo of an old car in a museum. Old photographs behind it, showing that it was the car Franz Ferdinand was in when he was shot in 1914
February 19, 2025 at 8:57 AM
mikethechapman.bsky.social
It must be Pill-Box-ing Day!
A stone pillbox above a beach in Devon, England, with a cliff behind it
December 26, 2024 at 1:48 PM