The Cine Technician (1943 - 1945)

74 THE CINE-TECHNICIAN July— August. 1043 used the contraption for the next four raids but in the meantime worked on a more permanent device which I now use. This camera mount also assists me to stay attached to the floor of the ship and so to the camera, should the pilot have to employ evasive action at any time ; my legs fit in behind the mount and I can hold myself in position by hooking my toes under it. I have also a special belt which I strap across my back and hook to the floor on either side of my body ; in this way I become a definite fixture in the aircraft (this is absolutely necessary if I am to keep the centre of the target in the middle of the screen). My next problem was to construct a different view-finder for the camera. The target looks small enough as it is from 30,000 feet without reducing it further, so I asked my very good friend, Arthur Kingston, to make a very special view-finder for me which now makes the job much easier. Then the question of what type of lens to use had to be considered. Obviously a telephoto lens was called for. I woidd have liked to use the 50-inch lens Paramount have, specially made for the King George VI Coronation ceremony, though probably it would be next to impossible to keep the target centred up with so much movement in the aircraft, but I will try it out one day. Remember the old horse operas, when Tom Mix leapt through the screen into the auditorium, or the Chicago Flyer doing likewise? I think you'd get the same effect with the 50-inch lens focussed on a power house or submarine slipway, when it went sky-high from the effects of a block-buster. A 1-inch wide angle lens gives the best impression of the enormous height at which the ship is flying, but all detail is really too small, so I finally tried a 4-inch lens which at certain altitudes gives the best all-round results. I used a 2J-inch F1.3 lens on one raid because we flew at a lower altitude than usual. What type of filter to use was my next worry. I found when flying in the sub-stratosphere that one's sense of light values went by the board, and the reading on an exposure meter did not tall}' with my own judgment. For instance, the sky gets more intensely blue the higher you go, and sometimes after I had stared at it for a while it seemed to get really dark, yet everything against it was actually crystal clear. The main problem, however, was to penetrate the ordinary haze ; there is ([uite a lot of it between the aircraft and the ground and its extent is not always apparent. I found I obtained best results with No. 15 or 23a Wratten filters, according to the climatic conditions prevalent. My first mission turned out to be a nice quiet comfortable ride to llannn, right on the end of Goering's Happj Valley, the Ruhr. Being a " new bo\ " on the job, I didn't know enough to be able to duck this one, so alter being wrapped up like an Eskimo with all sorts of electric wires attached to me, plus oxygen tubes, etc.. we set off on what was to have been one Hell of a big raid. We had taken off, and were climbing steadily before I had disentangled the heater cord attached to my electrically heated clothing, oxygen tidies and various paraphernalia, this with the good-natured help of the radio-operator, Sgt. Taliercio, more generally known as " Turk," who was to be my companion on many subsequent "missions." We finally achieved some sort of order and I set up the camera which was then snugly wrapped up in an electrically heated suit — then I started to take stock of the situation. I listened to the laconic voices of the crew as they called to each other on the inter-com. "Turk" was again helpful here, as I was not yet used to the American intonation and nearly everything said was completely unintelligible to me then. I don't miss a word now ! The problem of keeping a movie camera warm so that it would run freely at such extreme altitudes Over the target was one which we had to solve by various hit-and-miss methods over several missions. For this one we had, as I have said, wrapped it in an electric suit, tied it into position and hooked it up to the ship's power circuit. Unfortunately, these electrically heated suits are made to fit the human body and are not meant to go around a movie camera. It was, however, all we had at the time. Later we made a special heated jacket to fit snugly round the camera, but this made the camera too hot — so hot. in fact, that the gelatine filter half-melted. The' solution to this particular problem only became apparent after trial and error efforts over four raids. The answer was to keep the camera just cold enough not to interfere with its proper functioning or to make the film brittle. This I found out to my cost on a raid over Rennes, France, when the camera became so cold that the film snapped after 60 feet had run through. I now use an electrically heated bag which encloses the whole camera, its motor and the gyro-head. I have a small temperature gauge, similar to that used in motor-ears, attached to the camera casing inside the bag. There is no set drill for using this heated hag. From time to time I ask the navigator or co-pilot to tell me the temperature, and as soon as it reaches 30° below, I slip on the bag, turn on the heat, and wait until the temperature of the camera is up to 40° C. when I switch off. When the temperature starts to fall again, I switch on once more. I keep up this procedure until we are about twenty minutes from the target, when I turn the heat on fully for about 10 minutes, before starting actual shouting preparations. The whole of the camera, including the film in the magazine, is now at an equal temperature, which it retains for more time than is necessary to enable me to secure my film record. After that the whole works can freeze solid for all I care ;