Photograph showing a Royal Aircraft Factory RE8 reconnaisance aircraft, right view, standing on a grass airfield with it?s crew in the cockpits, 1917-1918 (c). The pilot sits, while the observer stands in his cockpit leaning with his elbow on the fuselage. From an album containing 96 photographs relating to Lt William Charles Carter who served in the Artists? Rifles The London Regiment from 1913 and 13 Sqn Royal Flying Corps 1917-1918. The RE8 was one of the standard British reconnaissance and artillery spotting aircraft from mid-1917 to the end of the war. Over 4,000 were built and they were armed with a synchronised forward-firing . 303 inch Vickers machine gun and a Lewis gun on a Scarff ring in the observer's cockpit.