Stateside AAF Photos question

[RyanShort1]

It has recently occurred to me that while it's fairly easy to find overseas USAAF pictures it's often quite hard to find anything from a specific base such as the base in Brownwood that I posted about last week. Do any of you guys know of good repositories of pictures or other records for fields such as Lamesa, Brownwood, etc...? Surely there must've been official US Gov. pictures taken at these bases as well.

Ryan

[SHAEF1944]

Sometimes the Freeman website has pics of abandoned airfields


http://members.tripod.com/airfields_freeman/

[res6kgcr]

Hi Ryan,

Yes there are of photos out there but most researchers were more interested in a persons or unit combat record so most of the training photos where just lightly touch on and then the editor would cut off the base photographers’ margins’ notes so that you can’t tell where photo is taken.

A good source of photos are field “class books” that are done like a high school year book but they are limited to Training Command fields. The number Air Force fields are like Brownwood seen to be limited to crew or personal photos like you have posted on your friend or crash photos but most of them are poor reproductions from microfilm.

Just to add to the frustration here is a L-5 in markings very close to what you have posted, but I can’t make I.D. it for sure.

The L-5 has to be from a base, say may be a 100 miles or so from the Convair factory at Ft. Worth, TX where the B-32 where built which could be possibly 4 or 5 fields, including Brownwood.







Tom

[RyanShort1]

Wow. Nice picture there. Thanks!

Ryan

[wendovertom]

I have a few from Wendover - I'll see what I can easily post here if anyone is interested. Most of them are official photos - seems like very few individuals had the access to a camera and film let alone the $$ to have the film developed. Maybe thats just my take though.

Tom P

[Second Air Force]

To add a little to the discussion--the Base Photography Sections at many fields threw away or burned literally pickup and truckloads of photos and negatives at a lot of 2AF stations when they were shut down. Most of the photographs were of little value since the war was won and the men would be either separating from the service or moving on to new assignments.

You're mostly right about the use and possession of cameras on military posts, Tom. It seems that "non-official" camera gear did occasionally sneak on the bases but was not as widespread as we'd have liked!

If you know how to frame your search parameters there are LOTS of original photos at AFHRA. If you have a microfilm copy of a picture it is a good bet that the original is in a file at Maxwell, it's just hard figuring out the file it is hiding in.

Scott

[Obergrafeter]

That L-5 was sent to ferry the crew back when they left the B-32 on the moon.