Warbird Information Exchange

Today my son went to the South African Military Museum and was surprised .. no shocked ... that all photography has been banned
Apparently their reasoning is that some valuable medals etc have been stolen by people who have opened the display cases ... and replaced the items with replicas ... after presumable having photographed the items first.

The Museum is justifying the ban on photography by saying that this is becoming the international norm ... and is quoting the RAF Museum Hendon as an example. Anyone know whether this is indeed the case? My last visit to Hendon was two years ago and I had no problems with photography. Are there other museums that have this policy?

The statement about the RAF Museum is false. Here is their policy:

http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/london/comm ... policy.cfm

Moving into more subjective matters, the concept of the developing international norm, I believe, also is incorrect. If anything, museum photography policies are being liberalized, including in nondemocratic countries like China.

The reasons are that the powers that be have realized that personal photography poses no serious threat to the facility's security, intellectual property rights, visitor safety, or whatever other interests they formerly sought to protect through restrictions. And, with the proliferation of high quality cameras integrated in phones and other personal devices, it is futile to try to stop photography and increasingly difficult even to try to regulate the quality of pictures that people can take.

This story about the medals, if it is true at all, sounds like an inside job and one that could not have been made more difficult by any anti-photography policy. If the thieves went to the trouble of obtaining fake medals, they would certainly have gone as far as to obtain a phone with a decent camera in it for taking pictures to case the joint.

Photography has, since late 2001, become an inherently suspicious activity to people of a certain mind-set, even as it becomes more widespread and difficult to control.

August

Do they sell photos of their aircraft in the giftshop and are possibly justifying increasing sales?

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Rich Palmer

Remember an Injured Youth
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I do remember reading in Flypast of a small UK museum that banned photography on the grounds that they feared theft. It was in the south of England, on what remained of a BoB fighter station, and may or may not have included any full size aircraft, just exhibits. Some of our UK members might know the museum mentioned.

They were either the victims of theft, or just feared theft. I think the rational was if no pics could be taken and posted of the museum contents, then there would be less temptation for potential thieves to target said museum. But as August mentioned, smart phones with built in cameras are proliferating rapidly, (the iphone5 will have an 8mp camera) what are you going to do? Follow people around to make sure they are only texting or talking and not snapping? Or make visitors leave their phones at the counter?

While museum break-in's in the US are relatively rare, they have happend but it seems to be a bigger problem in Europe where there's a higher conscienciousness of history and culture, and the perceived value of items. Over here it seems the thefts are related to items that have scrap metal value, such as copper or brass from a railroad museum, or piping etc...

I was at Hendon 1 week ago, took almost 200 pics. Hadn't thought about theft, but maybe I can use my pics to duplicate the Typhoon and swap it out.

Chunks

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Jack McDonnel

T-6/SNJ Hoarder

Its a pity ... the museum contains some real really special aircraft ... including:
A nightfighter ME 262
Two ME-109's ..an E and an F
A FW-190
An original, complete and unrestored DH Mosquito
Spitfire, Hurricane, DH-9, SE-5A etc etc

They have a similar policy regarding the U505 at the Museum of Science and Industry. "No pictures or filming of the Interior". It was explained that personal footage taken of U505's interior had been used in numerous documentarys over the years without the Museum's consent or without being compensated.

Shay
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Semper Fortis

You could make a life size standee. It's gonna be tough to get it into the car, though...

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What is red, furry and on your six?

U505 Policy must be in the last few years. I was there maybe 3 years ago and there were no problems taking pictures. Over the years, I've taken a LOT of pictures of the inside of the sub........

Well.... City of Chicago, what do you expect?

Mark H

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Fly safe or you get to meet me .......

I was there Christmas before last. Got there too late to get a ticket to go inside (huge disappointment, since it was only an hour or so after opening), but do remember seeing the prohibition sign.

@ P51Mstg ~ This would have been around May 2008 when i was there.

@ Garth ~ That's exactly what happened to me. A coworker and I were in town for a conference and we took off a lil early to burn on down to the museum only to miss the last tour. We'll one of the security guards took pity on us and told us to stick around til closing and he'd give us a private tour if were promised to leave a "good" donation in the drop box. Definately the best tour I've ever had. No rush to get through the sub and got a lot of info that isn't in the regular tour (Such as the Captain didn't commit suicide and was shot by his senior officers through a pillow over his face while in the Capt's quarters to silence his mental breakdown screaming during a depth charge attack). The guy was a real class act. Anyways he was the one who told us all about the whole debacle surrounding filming and documentaries.

Shay
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Semper Fortis

Ban on photography.

Not the 'Battle of Britain Museum' at Hendon, part of the RAF Museum complex, but the 'Kent Battle of Britain Museum'.

PeterA

http://www.kbobm.org/

Wow! The Kent museum doesn't even allow you to take notes!

The ultimate in anti-educational museum policies?

August

Kent Museum SUCKs.............

Brits are a strange group they say that 98% of the people that go there are courteous and seem to imply that the rest get ejected.... USA Museums... In all my time going I've never seen anyone ejected, probably 99.9999999999999% are great people. Maybe we got on the wrong side in WWII.

Mark H

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Fly safe or you get to meet me .......

WOW! That is the first museum website I have ever visited that did not list a single item they have on display.

I did find this list of their "aircraft" on another website.

Displayed I.D. Aircraft Type Real Identity Condition Status
‘G-AAAH’ de Havilland DH.60G Moth ? Complete Displayed
‘D-3-340′ DFS Grunau Baby 2 glider ? Complete Displayed
- Fieseler Fi 103 ‘V-1′ BAPC.36 FSM Displayed
’425/17′ Fokker Dr.I BAPC.133 FSM Displayed
‘N2532′ Hawker Hurricane - FSM Displayed
‘P2921′ Hawker Hurricane - FSM Displayed
‘P3059′ Hawker Hurricane BAPC.64 FSM Displayed
‘P3208/SD-T’ Hawker Hurricane BAPC.63 FSM Displayed
‘P3679′ Hawker Hurricane - FSM Displayed
- Messerschmitt Bf 109E BAPC.66 FSM Displayed
- Messerschmitt Bf 109E BAPC.67 FSM Displayed
- Messerschmitt Bf 109E BAPC.74 FSM Displayed
‘N7033′ North American Harvard IIB ? Complete Displayed
‘K5054′ Supermarine Spitfire prototype ? Reproduction Displayed
‘N3289′ Supermarine Spitfire BAPC.65 FSM Displayed
‘N3313′ Supermarine Spitfire BAPC.69 FSM Displayed
‘X4255′ Supermarine Spitfire - Fuselage FSM Displayed
‘X4321′ Supermarine Spitfire - Fuselage FSM Displayed
‘MK356′ Supermarine Spitfire IX - FSM Displayed
FSM = Full Scale Model.