Old Photo Albums of Baghdad and Habbaniya

Jasmin Soliman, Archivist at the Akkasah Centre for Photography (NYU Abu Dhabi) recently invited me to look at several photograph albums that have been digitised and made available to the general public. The photographers were mostly RAF servicemen who too photographs of their time, mostly in Iraq and Egypt but also Palestine and Aden. The time periods range from 1910 through to the 1940s and the albums contain both interesting and unique photographs, well worth an hour or so of inspection. By pasting the following link in your browser you will be able to choose which album you would like to look at.

https://akkasah.org/en/page/frontpage~2Fcollections/photo-albums

There are also several photographs of RAF aircraft crashes. Below is an example, the lower photograph featuring a Royal Aircraft Factory RE8 that had turned over on its nose after the pilot tried to force-land in the desert.

Crash of a Royal Aircraft Factory RE8 in the Iraqi desert