In search of a photographer

By Tim Martin24 May 2022

In 1955 a gentleman by the name of Wilf White established the Prestwick Spotters Club as a way of bringing together like-minded people who were interested in aircraft and photography. Not long after, a young enthusiast joined in and started collecting and taking photographs of aircraft at Prestwick. Over the next five years he amassed over 1000 negatives taken at a variety of locations, then abruptly stopped in late 1961. A total of 929 unspoiled negatives have now been processed and uploaded to AirHistory and provisionally attributed to 'McIntyre', but who really was the photographer and where is he now?

This article is a quest to find out what happened to the person who took the above photo, and ideally make contact. The reason for this is I've recently finished uploading 929 aircraft photos taken and collected from 1956 to 1961 by the person who photographed these lads and I'd like him to know that. The 929 photos are viewable on the AirHistory.net website and show many aircraft types and operators that will be new to those who are more recent enthusiasts.
Click here to enjoy this mysterious photographer's historic collection of photos.

A bit about this photo and the people in it. Shackleton Aviation held an event at Baginton over 29 and 30 April which was called the Sales Weekend. This was a public event and seems to have acted like a magnet for aircraft enthusiasts. The Prestwick Spotters Club organized a bus trip on the 29th and six of their members are shown in the photograph here taking a break. On the negative envelope the photographer refers to them as "The Men" and he may have traveled with them on a charter bus from Prestwick.
They are, left to right, John Whittle, Stewart Dunlop, Gordon Macadie (back), Michael Owens (front), David Farrer & Kerr Stirling. Apart from Gordon they went to Ayr Academy near Prestwick. Stewart and Gordon have provided some memories, but nothing conclusive, so now we are hoping to hear from any of the others or from anyone who knows them or the photographer.

Using various personal recollections and the photographs themselves, a biography of the photographer can be built and this may be useful to help identification. He left school and started work for Scottish Aviation as an apprentice aircraft technician at Prestwick. In that time period the school leaving age was 15 for someone wanting such a career, so the sudden appearance of Pioneer and Twin Pioneer aircraft in the collection taken on Scottish Aviation property in 1958 suggests he was born in 1943.

In 1959 he started to venture farther afield to Renfrew, Kirkbride, Perth and Leuchars. He will have had the income from work and, being 16, might have bought a motorbike. Having caught the travel bug, he then in 1960 visited Fairoaks, Biggin Hill, Southend, Redhill, Denham, Stapleford, Heathrow and Kidlington, in a blitz from 1 August to 6 August. To achieve all that in six days he could have used his own transport or more likely was on a bus tour organized by the spotters club, in which case someone who was there might remember him.

Come 1961 he was travelling again, this time the Shackleton Aviation Sales Weekend on 29 April where the above photo was taken.

Going back to 1960, on 31 August to be precise, he visited Rearsby, Luton and Panshangar all in one day and then took some more photographs back at Prestwick on 1 September. There must have been an important reason to travel about 600 km and return in one day and yet only visit minor airports. Perhaps he was impressed by southern England during his six day blitz there a few weeks earlier, and this resulted in a job hunting excursion. Apprenticeships were either for three years or five so his would have ended in 1961 or 1963 and not far from Panshangar were Hawker Siddeley Aviation at Hatfield and Handley Page Aircraft at Radlett.
The connection is purely conjecture, but facts are that the latest date we have for the photos he took himself is September 1961, and he was working as an airframe electrician on the Trident production line at Hawker Siddeley Aviation when my best friend met him around 1965.

My best friend (Willy Manning) is no longer certain of the name. Probably first name Dennis and last name was thought to be McIntyre - maybe - is about as good as he can remember from that far back. However they met at Hawker Siddeley Aviation as two aircraft enthusiasts. Willy estimates he was in his early to mid-20s in age and was married. 'McIntyre' was about to move to Germany and gave Willy a shoebox filled with his collection of aircraft negatives. I owned an enlarger back then and we picked out some of the negatives for printing. The shear quantity of negatives was overwhelming and being a teenager, I soon got tired of that game. Fast forward 55 years and the potentials of digitization became an incentive for me (with a few hundred negatives) and Willy (with several hundred negatives) to work together and arrange to make the amazing collection available via AirHistory.net, and that is now complete.

It is hard to believe that someone who was such an avid enthusiast that he amassed over 1000 negatives in five years would drop out completely. At the Shackleton Sales Weekend alone he took 130 photos – that's 11 rolls of 120 size film which was a huge amount for those days. Surely he must since have thought back to those early days and taken up photography again after moving to Germany, especially when digital cameras came on the scene.

Sir, if your are out there please make contact with us via this website, using the Contact option at the bottom of this page.
Similarly, anyone who thinks he recognizes this person from the biography, please do likewise.