Although operational orders for Bloody Sunday indicate that the British army had 10 photographers, a cine camera team and possibly a video camera team deployed on the day with orders to provide maximum photo coverage, only a fraction of their work has been traced.
There was considerable surprise at the inquiry yesterday when it was told that no ground-level photographs taken by the military appear to have been used in the 1972 Widgery Inquiry into Bloody Sunday. All the surviving main participants in that inquiry are now being contacted to try to shed light on this.
The media, civilians, the RUC and the military all took photographs on the day, and about 377 images from these sources were exhibited at Widgery, but the only military content in this series consisted of eight aerial photographs apparently taken afterwards to provide a geographical overview of the location.
The Public Record Office at Kew holds a set of the exhibited photographs, and copies of these have been circulated at the present inquiry. In a report on the intensive search for relevant photographs, Mr Donny Scott, assistant solicitor to the tribunal, comments that this EP (Exhibited Photographs) series contains only a selection of the photos taken on Bloody Sunday.
The deputy head of the army's historical branch, Mr Harding, has told the inquiry he believes the bulk of the photographic material was destroyed, probably in 1972 or shortly afterwards, except for the EP series in the Public Records Office. In a letter, Mr Harding told the inquiry that in 1972 there was no established policy or instruction on the permanent preservation of army photographic and film material. Mr Harding's letter adds: "I am aware that a statement taken from a soldier in 1999 suggested that a lever arch file of photographs was retained by the Parachute Regiment. Our inquiries have failed to find such a file." Yesterday, however, several minutes of cine film taken from an army helicopter on Bloody Sunday was shown at the inquiry. The inquiry also heard of investigations concerning the fate of the rifles fired on Bloody Sunday. Mr Christopher Clarke QC, counsel for the tribunal, said that, on evidence given to Widgery, 28 soldiers had fired weapons on the day.
These soldiers were interviewed by the army's investigation branch and military police, who took statements and also took the rifles, which were then sent on in three batches to the department of industrial and forensic science.
However, records of the Department indicate that 29 rifles were submitted - 28 were described simply as 7.62mm SLR rifles, but one was described as 7.62mm converted. The MoD has told the tribunal that this rifle might be a 7.62mm L42A1 sniper rifle, rather than a standard SLR.
Mr Clarke said the key difficulty about the rifles was that nowhere apparently was there a definitive record of which soldier used which particular rifle.