6th December 2025

Nikon F801, Nikon MF-21 Data Back, Fisheye-NIKKOR AF 16mm f/2.8D and airborne rig

During the 1990s I was shooting a vast amount of work for the UK airborne forces, particularly in the field of parachute delivery of heavy equipment. This was, of course, long before either digital or the arrival of cameras like the GoPro, which would have made my life significantly easier.

One of my self-imposed tasks was to photograph what in the British Army are termed Medium and Heavy Stressed Platforms (MSP and HSP). MSPs, capable of carrying 18,000lbs of stores, and the much rarer HSPs that could carry 36,000lbs of equipment, were designed to deliver heavy equipment like Land-Rovers and Light Guns on a Meccano-type platform suspended under parachutes. The HSP was designed along similar lines, but capable of carrying a Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance (Tracked) (CVRT) like the Scimitar - a Jaguar-powered light tracked armoured vehicle. Only six HSPs were constructed I believe and I was lucky enough to be present at two of the trials, one at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and one on Salisbury Plain in the UK.

Photographing the parachute delivery from the ground was relatively easy, but photographing it from the air, specifically from a remote camera mounted on the MSP, was much harder. Two loaded MSPs, or a single HSP, were carried aboard RAF C-130 Hercules, sitting on a fuselage roller delivery system and extracted rearwards by drogue parachutes which pulled the MSPs out the rear of the aircraft before the main cluster of canopies deployed and the MSP floated safely (usually) to earth.

My idea was to fit a Nikon F801 with a Fisheye-NIKKOR AF 16mm f/2.8D, into a specially designed frame mounted on an MSP, that would be automatically triggered as the MSP was deployed from the rear of a Hercules. I bought two Nikon F801 bodies - a cheap but efficient version of the Nikon F4 in effect and able to be written off in the event of an accident - each fitted with a Nikon MF-21 Data Back and Fisheye-NIKKOR AF 16mm f/2.8D lens. These were each fitted to a custom designed frame (what today would be termed ‘bodge it’ engineering) that held a battery and a solenoid, allied to a circuit that was held open until a plug, connected to a hard point on the Hercules, was pulled out by the rearward movement of the MSP completing the circuit and starting the intervalometer on the MF-21 back, triggering the camera to fire at 2 frames per second. The security and safety of the system had to be cleared by the Joint Air Transport Evaluation unit (JATE, later to become JATEU) before it was allowed to be carried on a mission, which it passed with flying colours, although it took many months of hard work before everything worked as intended.

The system wasn’t installed when I photographed the first trial of the rare HSP at Fort Bragg in 1996, and it’s use was delayed many times, but I used later in anger for the first - and only time - to photograph the delivery of a Scimitar of the Household Cavalry Regiment (HCR), part of the newly formed 16 Air Assault Brigade, in late 2000 onto Everleigh Drop Zone (DZ) on Salisbury Plain. Like all the best laid plans of mice and men this was the one time when things went wrong big time! My assistant was aboard the Hercules to make sure that the triggering was set up properly, while I was on the ground to photograph the extraction using a pair of Nikon F5 cameras. As the drogue deployed from the rear of the Hercules at 800 feet above the DZ it pulled the heavy HSP from the rear of the plane and the main canopies started to deploy. Halfway through the sequence the parachutes in the inner cluster failed and the HSP swung nose down, impacting on the DZ with a thump that could be heard a mile away! It then rolled over upside down, crushing my camera but amazingly only resulting a bent gun barrel on the Scimitar! The camera and lens took the full force of the impact, bursting the back open and fogging the film! That was the one and only time my system was used and the complete spare system was put away and forgotten until last week when I found it in my attic.

The accompanying photos show the Nikon F801 rig, the inside of a Hercules with the roller delivery system, an MSP being loaded on to a Hercules, the deployment of both the smaller MSPs (including one photo where the Land-Rover broke free from the MSP and fell to earth with spectacular results as it was loaded with live 81mm mortar rounds!), the initial successful drop of the HSP at Fort Bragg and ending with the failure of the HSP on Salisbury Plain.

20251206

Nikon F801 airborne rig