Photographic Collection

The Photograph Collection of the RAF Museum covers the history of British military aviation. It contains about 250,000 images in a variety of formats but most are black & white prints.

• RAF Museum Photographic Collection
  The collection covers the history of aviation in Britain from the 19th Century to modern times. The earliest photographs show the Royal Engineers' ballooning activities from 1890 to 1893.
• Charles Brown Collection
  The aviation photographer, Charles Brown, was active from the 1920's to the 1960's. His collection of aviation photographs is one of the largest compiled by a single photographer.
• British Aerospace Kingston Collection
  The British Aerospace Kingston collection covers the history of the Sopwith, Hawker and Hawker-Siddeley companies especially at the former factory in Kingston-on-Thames.
• Aerial Photographs
  The Royal Air Force Museum has a number of small collections of aerial photographs.
  

Some of the photograph collection is available online using the Navigator database. A proportion of these listings have scanned images attached.

• Visit Navigator

You can view and buy prints of some of the Museum's best-loved photographs at the online photograph store.

• Visit RAF Museum Photograph Store

We have a number of small collections of aerial photographs. Most are held by the Photographic Collection but some are in archive collections within the Department of Research & Information Services. A leaflet is available giving details of other collections holding relevant material.

• Aerial Photographs (Adobe Reader Document, 12kb)