by Faith Eckersall.

Showing off your work, either in print or to an admiring audience in a gallery, is one of the pleasures of being a photographer.
But, for Ringwood man Robbie Forrester-Addie, none of this was allowed – as his photographs were all taken for the Ministry of Defence.

As an MoD cameraman at what was known as the Aircraft and Experimental Establishment at Boscombe Down airfield, it was Robbie’s job to photograph ‘almost anything aircraft and armament-wise’ being used by UK forces.
“I started aged 17 and joined the Ministry of Supply as it was known than in 1958,” says Robbie, who is now 83.
“You had to pass exams and get to a high professional status for the kind of work required,” he explains
“This meant everything, from learning all the processing techniques used in the on-site film lab, to shooting 1,000 pictures a second cine footage from jets.

Other work included setting up filming on the ground, as well as going up in aircraft to film their – or the weapon’s – performance.
The complicated work often involved the use of four-foot long lenses and kinetheodolites – equipment for capturing trajectory data.
“If, for instance, they are dropping a bomb or firing a rocket, a trials officer wants to see exactly what’s happened as it leaves the airplane in all kind of conditions, from snow and ice, to heat, wet, and at different heights and with different G-force,” he says.
Robbie’s job was to accurately capture this first time, then process the film immediately afterwards, readying it for inspection by military staff.
“It gave me some marvellous experiences; I flew in the Victor bomber, we went to Canada to film cold-weather performance, and I even went parachuting,” he says.
Of all his amazing experiences, he cites the flight he took in a two-seater Harrier jump-jet, at Catania airbase in Sicily, as it tested the aircraft’s performance in hot weather. “I really enjoyed that one, it was an extraordinary thing to be part of,” he says.
After his retirement in 1997, Robbie pursued an active life – he even ran the Race for Life ‘against’ his son, in 2021 and now gives talks about his former work to raise money for Cancer Research.

He’ll be giving a talk to Fordingbridge u3a on Wednesday, February 15, in the Avonway Centre, starting at 2pm.
Along with his photography talk, Robbie speaks on his RNLI fundraiser: ‘Paddling Round the Isle of Wight in an inflatable canoe’ which he completed in 1980 and his tandem parachute jump, completed when he was 79.
More details from rforresteraddie@btinternet.com.