How to Find Archived USAF Photos?

[Ken]

Most USAF units are supposed to have a unit historian and a Public Affairs office that routinely take photos. Then there's Combat Camera and the old MAC Audiovisual Service.

Can anyone here share insight on where & how to research photos that are, until now, unseen by the public? I always assumed that the Maxwell AFB HRA would be a depository, but they seem to store mostly documents. Is there a photo-centric storage organization somewhere else?

Can a person search by date, location, unit, topic, etc? How does this differ for USAAF 1941-47 vs USAF 1947-today?

Experts please share your knowledge!

Ken

[jmkendall]

To the best of my knowledge this is one area that is still firmly in the 20th century. Most historical records and photographs are kept by the National Archives, to the best of my knowledge. This is true of WW2 bases and units that shut down after the war; this I know to be true. I am not sure when that practice stopped or if it did.

I do not know if there is a central Air Force Photographic unit such as the old Army Signal Corps that is their repository.

But in any event I would think that one would have to physically go to the repository and go through the files; page by page.

That is one of the reason that so few books were written "in the old days"; that had new pics or source material. The author had to do a lot of traveling. Still; it is a lot of fun for some of us to go to various archives "and get dirty". Touching photo's and documents that have not seen the light of day in decades or centuries is quite a rush.

Good luck

[JohnB]

Generally speaking, the base Public Affairs office wouldn't have anything old.

The base historian might, but it wouldn't be online.

In my career in USAF Public Affairs, I rarely saw nice airplane photos of the type we see in books.
Those that might be (accidents, new weapons, interiors, etc) were occasionally classified.

[CWBuff]

On the subject of photos held by the NARA, you can find a ton of their USAAF photos online at Fold3.com.

Their search function is useful to a point, but I'd recommend simply going through it all image by image... I've found far more groovy stuff that way than by doing searches. You can save images you find to an on-site gallery and, although I haven't used it much, I think you can set up various sub-galleries to organize things. I personally grab stuff when I find it, but the on-site gallery thing is handy if you're in a rush and wanna go back to find something without having to wade through a bazillion images again.

Although a paid membership is required to view much of what they offer, their USAAF photos are free to view and download so long as you register at the site. They also have MACRs, but those are 'premium' documents and you have to have a paid membership to see them.

However, they do offer a 7-day trial during which you have access to everything, and their monthly rate is something like 12 bucks, I think... not too awful bad.


Fade to Black...

[Ken]

I mention PA & Combat Camera as examples of the variety of organizations tasked with taking photos and I was also wondering what the AF protocol was for saving those photos - was it centralized or were many of those simply lost?

Anyone here spent much time at the Archives? Is it visitor friendly or a frustrating experience?

I'd like to go and, among other things, see what photos are available from USAF Skyraider units in Vietnam & Thailand, 1964-1972.

Ken