Chapter 13: Photo by U.S. Army Signal Corps (January 1942–Mid-1943)
North Africa provided the first major testing ground for numerous photographic services which constituted an important part of the Signal Corps’ mission throughout World War II. The military value of photography had not been fully recognized in the prewar years. Policy planners gave little thought to its many uses and applications.
The general evaluation seemed to be that photography was a luxury—nice enough if it could be arranged, but of little military value.1 That conception changed rather rapidly in the emergency period, when Army training officers were suddenly confronted with the problem of converting thousands of selectees into an army. The Chief of Staff, General Marshall, became an advocate of the training film as a method of mass teaching and indoctrination. Other high-ranking officers soon recognized the versatility of photography as an aid in solving many an administrative or production problem, large and small. After Pearl Harbor photography could no longer be regarded as only a sidelight to the Signal Corps’ larger responsibilities. Army regulations charged the Signal Corps with the provision of still and motion pictures for information, historical records, training, identification, photomail service, and other purposes. In addition the Signal Corps was responsible for providing combat photographic service for the Army Ground forces; for producing and distributing military training films, film strips, and orientation films for all agencies of the War Department; for custody of all foreign military and naval motion pictures; and for the development, coordination, standardization, procurement, storage, issue, and repair of all photographic supplies and equipment except for certain activities reserved to the Air Forces. A catchall requirement—responsibility for all photographic work for the Army not otherwise specifically assigned to other arms or branches—provided authority flexible enough to cover new requirements as they arose.2
Carrying out their allotted duties sent Signal Corps cameramen and technicians on a great variety of assignments, some of them glamorous and exciting, but many more of them tedious, dull, and exacting.
They labored in V-mail stations in faraway corners of the world, in headquarters administrative stations in the United States, in training units in the field and at home, and in the major combat areas. Combat cameramen parachuted down behind enemy lines with the airborne troops, and
A wounded signal corps cameraman waits to be taken to an aid station
landed in the first waves of the big invasions. They made a full pictorial record of the way the United States trained an army of eight million men, and of how those men lived, fought, and died on the African desert, in the mountains of Italy, on the Normandy beaches, in the Aleutian wastelands, and in the tropical jungles. Their hundreds of thousands of still photographs and their multimillions of feet of motion picture film provide an extremely valuable record for the deliberate scrutiny of student and historian.
In its more immediate uses in war, photography was of direct and incalculable worth to staff officers for strategic planning. In the supply field, pictures of equipment could reveal deficiencies, good or bad packaging, and so on. Photographs supplied legal evidence for use in war crimes trials. Photography had such a vital role in troop training that training officers called it their “secret weapon.” It was invaluable in public relations, in building morale, and in hundreds of administrative jobs. Throughout the war, so frequently that it became almost as well-known as a commercial trademark, this caption was seen: “Photo by U.S. Army Signal Corps.”
Organization and Facilities
This full and effective photographic coverage of World War II was achieved despite the initial handicap of exceedingly meager resources in men and facilities which existed
within the Signal Corps when war began.3 The Photographic Division of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer discharged its primary responsibilities through three widely separated and inadequately housed activities. They consisted of a photographic laboratory at the Army War College in Washington and two training film production laboratories, one at Fort Monmouth and the other at Wright Field. Each of the activities had a specialized function. The Signal Corps Photographic Laboratory at the Army War College was supposed to be the still picture center, although actually it performed a great variety of photographic duties. The Training Film Production Laboratory at Fort Monmouth specialized in producing training films for the various elements of the ground forces and the Training Film Production Laboratory at Wright Field produced training films exclusively for the Army Air Forces. Photographic training was conducted formally in a photographic school in the Signal Corps replacement training center at Fort Monmouth, but also informally on a learning-by-doing basis wherever technicians worked.4
Had these constituted the sole reservoir of photographic skills and facilities available to the Signal Corps, they would have been unable to keep up with the enormous expansion of Army-wide demands which followed the declaration of war. Fortunately, the Signal Corps was able to draw also upon the huge productive capacity and personnel resources of the motion picture industry. The benefits to the Army of the long-standing association between the industry and the Signal Corps had been amply demonstrated. Between 1930 and 1939 eight Signal Corps officers (including one from the Philippine Army) had received training in motion picture techniques in Hollywood without cost to the War Department. In 1940 the industry had accepted sponsorship of certain photographic units under the Affiliated Plan. In the same year, the industry had begun making training films for the War Department on a nonprofit basis. For the last two activities, the designated coordinating agency for the motion picture industry was the Research Council of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.5 Although certain aspects of the arrangements with the Research Council were to come under Congressional scrutiny in 1943, there was no criticism in the early months of the war. On the other hand, there was widespread appreciation of the industry’s assistance, expressed by Secretary of War Stimson and others.6
The Signal Corps own production facilities expanded rapidly in the first year of war, but for some months the Army’s photographic needs grew even faster. By midyear 1942 the widening scope of responsibilities had raised the Photographic Division of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer to the organizational level of a “service,” designated the Army Pictorial Service (APS) on 17 June.7
Pearl Harbor brought to an abrupt close the debate over whether or not the Signal Corps should purchase the Paramount Studio at Astoria, Long Island, which was on the market. For months, Col. Melvin E. Gillette, commander of the Signal Corps Training Film Production Laboratory (SCTFPL) at Fort Monmouth, had argued for the purchase. It would provide an up-to-date plant where all training film production, processing, and distribution could be consolidated, leaving the Signal Corps Photographic Laboratory (SCPL) at Washington free to concentrate on still picture production.8 On 12 December 1941 the Chief Signal Officer urged that the studio be bought without delay. By this time Paramount was less eager to sell, fearing to concentrate all its production on the west coast lest the Japanese attack that area. After some hesitation the firm consented and the property was acquired.
In February 1942 the War Department authorized the Chief Signal Officer to activate the plant as the Signal Corps Photographic Center (SCPC), an exempted activity under his control.9 After alterations had been made to provide accommodations for troops, the Photographic Ceriter opened in May, with Colonel Gillette in command. The modest Fort Monmouth Training Film Production Laboratory moved over to Long Island. The replacement training center’s courses in still photography were transferred also and consolidated with the motion picture courses of the laboratory to form the Training Division of the new Signal Corps Photographic Center.10 After six months of war the Signal Corps had an up-to-date plant for producing films and for training photographic technicians.
Once established, SCPC rapidly outgrew its quarters, a performance it was to repeat several times before the war ended. A requirement to rescore the Army’s films in other languages made it necessary to seek more space, and resulted in the first expansion, the purchase of a building across the
The Signal Corps Photographic Center at Astoria, Long Island
street from the studio.11 For some time the Army had been exchanging master positives and duplicate negatives of training films with the British, and early in the summer the Deputy Chief Signal Officer, the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, and the Inter-American Defense Board outlined a program for extending this service by translating and rescoring an indefinite number of training films into Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese. Later the service was made available to the Navy for rescoring its films in Spanish and further extended to include rescoring in the Russian, French, and Turkish languages as required.12
The task of putting Chinese words into the mouths of American drill sergeants for the enlightenment of Chinese troops had already begun at the Signal Corps Photographic Laboratory at the Army War College in Washington. When the Chinese Government asked for American military training films and the rescoring work began with the aid of translators provided by the Chinese Embassy, SCPL crowded the technicians and translators into its third-floor film strip and animation rooms. The laboratory had outgrown its facilities even before
war came. Once overseas troop movements began, SCPL was snowed under with identification and passport pictures; in the early months of 1942 it was handling a daily load of 300 to 400 prints. No longer able to keep pace with the flood of news pictures, SCPL had some of them processed in a one-room laboratory, set up temporarily in the Munitions Building and operated by the Bureau of Public Relations. In June 1942 the major portion of the Army Pictorial Service, which had been quartered first in the Munitions Building and then in a temporary building, moved into the partly completed Pentagon. By December the still picture section and the still picture files joined the parent organization. In the first months of 1943 a still photographic sublaboratory was opened in the Pentagon. There the most urgent photographic work could be done, but the bulk of the still picture work was still handled by SCPL at the Army War College. The Army Pictorial Service also acquired in the Pentagon an auditorium seating 300 and four small projection rooms for official showings.13
While the Washington and Astoria plants took on new life and flourished,14 the Training Film Production Laboratory at Wright Field was rapidly growing into an organization which in size, number of personnel, and facilities was comparable to a commercial studio.15 The Army Air Forces, however, remained unsatisfied. What it really wanted was complete control of its own motion picture activities, as General Arnold made clear in June when he originated a recommendation to that effect. In a staff study on the subject, the AAF argued that giving it authority to make its own training films would avoid duplication of effort, delays, and confusions, and would result in better service.16 Without waiting for approval the AAF organized the First Motion Picture Unit, which promptly set up for business in Hollywood.17
The Chief Signal Officer, commenting to General Somervell on the AAF staff study, reiterated the Signal Corps’ desire to perform all the photographic services required of it by law or regulation, for the AAF as well as for other segments of the Army. He emphasized that no inherent difficulties existed that could not be solved by cooperation on both sides, but he indicated that in his opinion the AAF had not always provided such cooperation. The AAF, he said, had dealt directly with motion picture producers without going through channels, and had thus “jeopardized War Department relations within the motion picture industry.” He cited as an example a training film on the subject of meteorology, to be made for the AAF by the Walt Disney Studios, which would cost five times the
amount the Signal Corps paid for training reels produced by commercial studios. AAF photographic problems were not unique, he said, and what the AAF proposed would actually duplicate efforts, waste scarce materials, and cost more. The Chief Signal Officer countered Arnold’s suggestion with one of his own—to eliminate Army-wide confusion generated by divided responsibility for photography by creating a War Department Photographic Service under the control of the Chief Signal Officer.18
To consider the issues raised by Arnold’s proposal and Olmstead’s counterproposal, Signal Corps and Army Air Forces representatives met in General Somervell’s office on 16 June 1942 and brought forth an agreement that delineated the areas of responsibility between the two services. It was agreed that special Signal Corps photographic units would be organized as an integral part of the AAF, and under its command, to serve each unit of air force size or larger. A photographic laboratory, or laboratories, to operate under the AAF, but to be manned by the Signal Corps, would produce training films for the AAF. In brief, at the Wright Field Training Film Production Laboratory, the AAF would give the orders; the Signal Corps would continue to provide the money and the men to carry out the orders. For its part, the AAF agreed to assist the Signal Corps by providing technical assistance and equipment for air sequences in films which the Signal Corps might have to provide for other branches of the Army, and to conduct all transactions with motion picture production agencies through the Chief Signal Officer.19
The harmony created by this agreement did not last out the summer.20 Bickering and friction between the two services continued during the late summer and autumn. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the AAF did engage in an organized campaign to wrest control of AAF training films from the Signal Corps. Certainly the Signal Corps officers who served at the Wright Field laboratory and in the Washington headquarters at the time were convinced of it, and have put themselves on record to that effect.21 At the end of the year, on the recommendation of Col. Kirke B. Lawton, the Chief Signal Officer withdrew signal personnel from the Wright Field Training Film Production Laboratory and left it wholly to the AAF. The Signal Corps retained only “such general technical control as for other technical services assigned to the Army Air Forces.”22 The Signal Corps personnel scattered; many of them went to Astoria and
those who wished to remain at Wright Field were transferred to the AAF.
Training Cameramen
From the date of the first Selective Service induction until Pearl Harbor, the principal method of procuring Army photographers was to screen the ranks of the newly inducted men for those who had been professional photographers in civilian life and to bring them into the Signal Corps. This procedure was adequate for the time being, particularly since school facilities were too meager to absorb any large number of cameramen. By early 1942 any hope that Selective Service might bring in enough trained photographers to fill the wartime needs for combat cameramen had been dispelled.23 Selective Service yielded few photographers, and of those few, not all came to the Signal Corps. Partly this was the result of the classification system used at the reception centers, but it was also true that the average age of competent professionals was so high as to eliminate most of them from the draft. Motion picture photographers and scenario writers were especially scarce.24
Lacking enough ready-trained men, the Signal Corps had to enlarge its facilities for training the unskilled. Until the Signal Corps Photographic Center was organized, the training facilities had been scanty indeed. By the end of June 1942 SCPC and its predecessor training activities at Fort Monmouth had trained and made available for assignment within the year 361 still and motion picture men.25 Many more were needed. Qualified instructors were scarce, since even experts from the commercial field had to learn to adapt their skills to military use before they could teach others. There was a vast difference between commercial publicity pictures and tactical, logistical, and technical pictures for a heterogeneous audience—heterogeneous in the sense that the elements comprising the military machine all had specialized and dissimilar interests. Some of the techniques to be mastered were as simple as learning to load a camera in the dark. Others were so difficult and complex that only the battlefield could provide the final testing ground of proficiency. Meanwhile, men who had little enough skill with a camera at a field parade were hurried overseas to attempt combat photography because the calls for cameramen, as for other technicians, increased in direct ratio to the accelerated activation of troop units. The assignment system in effect in 1942 operated to the disadvantage of the combat units of the Army Ground Forces and the Army Air Forces. The commanding general of the Army Service Forces presented requisitions for replacement personnel for units under his control directly to the Office of the Chief Signal Officer. All other requisitions went through the AGF or the AAF directly to The Adjutant General. When photographic technicians graduated from the SCPC and were reported to the Adjutant General’s Office as available for assignment, the Office of the Chief Signal Officer requisitions were chargeable against the men available. Thus the ASF requisitions were filled first; any photographers left over were assigned by the Adjutant General’s Office against AGF and AAF requisitions. Since at that period there were never enough graduates to fill all needs, the Adjutant General’s Office filled out the
AGF and AAF requisitions with replacement center selectees. This procedure did nothing to assure that the best qualified photographers reached the combat organizations, a fact the Signal Corps pointed out repeatedly in its unsuccessful attempts to have the combat photographic units put on a priority basis.26
It was the goal of Col. Richard T. Schlosberg, chief of Army Pictorial Service at the time the SCPC was organized, to achieve a pool of 100 photographers to provide thoroughly trained men for emergency assignment to task forces. Instead the best some of them got were men who had crammed a 60-hour course into a single week. In some areas Army units could get no soldier photographers at all. A photographic center established at Cairo to serve the United States Army Forces in the Middle East had to be manned by civilians and supervised by an officer and two enlisted men of a radio team on detached service from Karachi.27 Frequently it was necessary to place Signal Corps officers with no photographic background at all in command of photographic teams. The results were about as bad as might have been expected.
But after July 1942, when the officer situation in general became better, all officers assigned to photographic duties were given intensive training. First, they were sent to Washington to observe the methods of the Army Pictorial Service and the Bureau of Public Relations. Then, at the Signal Corps Photographic Center at Astoria, they received brief but remarkably effective instruction in news coverage. The New York press photographers cooperated with the administration at Astoria to solve the problem of injecting photographic news sense into the novice. The professional photographers of Acme Pictures, the Associated Press, International News Service, the Daily Mirror, PM, the New York Times, and the New York World-Telegram volunteered their services for this purpose. Students in the final stages of their training at Astoria and officers about to command photographic units all had the experience of working side by side with the professional press photographers on actual press assignments. Each professional took one officer or enlisted student along with him on assignments. The novice took pictures of his own and later compared his results with those of the professional, learning what was faulty in his own approach and what factors determined quality and made for general news interest. Above all, the student came out of this period of supervised practice with a better sense of composition and emphasis and with a better capacity for making split-second decisions. After graduates of this course reached theaters of operation, improvement in the quality of pictures was noticeable. Even so, these men were not polished professionals, and still lacked experience in combat photography.28
Motion picture training at Astoria began with an 8-week course which later was lengthened to 12 weeks and finally to 17 weeks. The training was intensely practical. It included a short period of instruction in the mechanical details of photographic
equipment. Next the student began to learn “story coverage,” which SCPC considered to be the very heart of his training. After that the student made a series of phantom shots out of doors on a controlled problem, under close supervision. Then he was given live film to shoot. Supervision tapered off until he worked independently, but he received detailed criticism when his material was shown on the screen. The next phase covered simple daily assignments around New York. The student sized up his assignment, planned its coverage, and filmed the story. A critique preceded the next assignment. Instruction on 16-millimeter cameras and color film followed; then came more complicated assignments, editing, and finally working on the actual press assignments. Still picture instruction observed much the same routine, plus classes in darkroom and laboratory work. Little theory was involved and little training literature of any sort was used until late in the war.29
Throughout the specialized training, students continued their military training, with special attention to the aspects of field conditions they might encounter. They built hasty fortifications after long marches over difficult terrain, made overnight bivouacs, learned how to use and to protect their equipment under extremes of weather and temperature, and practiced shooting pictures from moving vehicles. They learned the techniques of setting up and using field processing laboratories. They spent a great deal of time mastering map reading, for combat photographers were usually strictly on their own at the front. Since combat photographers would carry weapons at all times, the men learned practical ways to accommodate themselves to the carbine, the 45-caliber automatic, and the Thompson submachine gun while packing and using their camera equipment.30
Another practical institution for training men in photographic work, a contribution of the Hollywood industry, was a school established by the Research Council in June 1942. There the studio employees who were selected for assignment to affiliated units received additional instruction in still and motion picture subjects. Fifty-nine of the industry’s best men donated their services as instructors. The major studios of Hollywood, Culver City, and Burbank provided the facilities. The courses included work on the training and educational films which the Research Council was sponsoring for the Army.31
Combat Photography: Early Units and Problems
The Army originally conceived the role of photography in combat to be that of support for tactical units. Field photographic units were intended to fill in-the-field requests by unit commanders for pictures of terrain, weapons, and general intelligence information. Accordingly, war plans were drawn to provide each field army with a
signal photographic company as a part of its organic complement. These companies contained assignment units for distribution to elements down to and including the division. Gradually the concept of the role of combat photography broadened to include information on personnel, matériel, conditions, and technique for staff agencies of the theater and of the War Department; news films and pictures for release to the public; historical records; and other assigned projects. Thus not all overseas photography was necessarily combat photography in the strictest sense. This was an important distinction not always thoroughly understood.32
At the beginning of 1942 only two Signal Corps Photographic Companies had been activated, the 161st and the 162nd, both in the continental United States, except for two detachments which had been sent to Hawaii. Before the end of January a team from each company sailed for Northern Ireland. Thereafter, as other detachments were sent out, the 162nd was quickly denuded of practically all of its skilled men. The photographic companies were under the jurisdiction of the Army commanders, Army corps, and G-3 until March 1942, when they became a part of the newly organized Army Ground Forces, which trained them and directed their operations in the field. Special photographic units and teams were composed of the best men available, selected from the photographic companies, the Signal Corps Photographic Center, and Signal Corps mobile photographic laboratory units.33
Panama, Puerto Rico, and Trinidad each received a team from the 162nd. A detachment left for Newfoundland. Other units moved out to Iceland and to China. Usually the groups consisted of a lieutenant and six enlisted men—one still picture and two motion picture cameramen, two chauffeurs, and a clerk.34 Such a detachment sailed with the first large convoy to reach Melbourne. This group, in charge of 1st Lt. W. L. Van Ness, then went on to New Caledonia, arriving in March just in time to photograph for G-2 the dramatic but bloodless revolt of the citizens against the Free French Commission.35 On 10 April the 163rd Signal Corps Photographic Company was activated at Fort Sam Houston, Texas.36 In May a ten-man combat camera unit which had been recruited and organized through the Research Council in Hollywood received a month’s training with the 162nd, and was then transferred with an administrative cadre to Camp Crowder to form the 164th Signal Photographic Company.
In early August this detachment of experienced motion picture and still cameramen sailed for the United Kingdom. There they joined the rapidly expanding Army Pictorial Service organization in London, whose nucleus was the pioneer unit of the 162nd Signal Photographic Company originally landed in Northern Ireland in January. In June this unit had transferred to
London to set up the APS Laboratory in the basement of a bombed-out building.37
From that headquarters the men covered spot news and newsreel assignments in England, Ireland, and Scotland. Early in September, S. Sgt. Waldo V. Thrasher photographed the Dieppe raid. Since that was entirely a British engagement, the British naturally wanted complete control of the sole Signal Corps cameraman’s coverage of it. Later, however, Thrasher’s material was made into a special newsreel, released through the Allied pool to all newsreel companies. The excellence of Thrasher’s pictures won him a commendation from Vice Adm. Lord Louis Mountbatten, who had led the raid.38
Photographic Coverage in North Africa
Meanwhile, all planning in late 1942 was concentrated upon the imminent invasion of North Africa. On 17 September the Chief of Staff approved the Chief Signal Officer’s plan for still and motion picture coverage, designating Col. Darryl Zanuck as the War Department representative to coordinate all photographic phases of the entire operation. Two groups of photographers were to be provided, Group A to accompany the Western Task Force, and Group B to be attached to Allied Force Headquarters. Each group would consist of a field grade officer, two noncommissioned officers, and four camera teams, each made up of one officer and three motion picture and two still cameramen.39
Maj. Anatole Litvak, on duty with Special Services, was detailed for 90 days to command Group A. Lt. Elton P. Lord of the 163rd Signal Photographic Company, Fort Sam Houston, began interviewing photographic personnel from his own organization, from the Signal Corps Photographic Laboratory at Astoria, and from Camp Crowder, to select men for the camera crews. On 26 September the selected men assembled at A. P. Hill Military Reservation, Virginia, to begin their preliminary training and receive instructions for their mission. Meanwhile, the Chief of Staff had directed General Eisenhower to select eight officers and thirty enlisted photographers from photographic units in the United Kingdom for immediate amphibious training so that Colonel Zanuck might organize them into special photographic detachments to cover the assault landings and land action in North Africa for AFHQ.40
Early in October Zanuck arrived in London, bringing with him a ton of photographic equipment by air priority shipment.41 There was much to be done. Zanuck would be attached to AFHQ as nominal commander of Group B. With the assistance of Lt. Col. William W. Jervey, director of the Army Pictorial Service on General
Rumbough’s staff,42 and Capt. William H. Rivers, who was slated to accompany Zanuck to North Africa for an assignment to AFHQ as photographic officer, plans quickly took form. They provided for two combat assignment units from the 162nd Signal Photographic Company to accompany the troops embarking from Great Britain. In addition, Zanuck selected several individual photographers, cameramen, and directors from the United States for special missions, to be distributed at various places throughout the invasion groups.43
From the Army Pictorial Service Laboratory in London, Sergeant Thrasher and Cpl. Earl Zeigler, a still photographer, were assigned to General Eisenhower’s headquarters and moved to Gibraltar early in October. They set up photographic facilities in the signal center deep within the Rock. As staff photographers, Zeigler and Thrasher had a vantage point for the many important events that followed in the next few weeks. They made the first photographs ever taken inside the fortress of Gibraltar; they photographed the first Flying Fortresses and the first P-38’s to land on the Rock; the first paratroopers to land there; pictures of General Eisenhower and his staff when they arrived; and, most significant of all, the takeoff on D Day for the invasion of North Africa.44
On 5 November Colonel Zanuck accompanied General Eisenhower and his staff who crowded into six Flying Fortresses and headed for Gibraltar to await D Day. On 8 November 1942 the battle for North Africa began, and the signal center in the fortress tunnel, the hub of a giant communications network, became the scene of frenzied activity.
Photographers went ashore with the first assault waves. Some of the cameramen came in under fire from enemy batteries in the early dawn of 8 November, literally tossed on to the shore by waves which rolled eight to twelve feet high along the coast. Lieutenant Lord, for example, commanding a group which came ashore at Fedala with the Western Task Force, was in a Higgins boat which overturned in the heavy surf. Lord swam in, bearing his equipment on his back, but salt water and sand seeped into his camera, and it stopped functioning after only twenty feet or so of film had been run through. Another cameraman was the fourth American to step ashore at Safi from the destroyer Bernadou. Still another attached himself to an infantry group detailed to knock out a machine gun nest. One was caught behind Fort du Blondin in a barrage laid down by the United States Navy. By that time it was light enough to take pictures, and he photographed the taking of the fort.45 Photographing their way eastward, the cameramen joined Colonel Zanuck in Algiers and turned over their pictures of the amphibious invasion. All together, Zanuck sent 5,000 feet of war film back to London.
Zanuck’s mission was twofold in that he was charged not only with initial coordination of photographic coverage of the invasion, but also with gathering material for the second film of the War Department historical series, At the Front in North Africa. Although he had authority to distribute his men as he wished, the scarcity of
Signal Corps cameramen film an action scene in North Africa
photographers was a thing that could not be overcome by directives. He dropped his cameramen off in pairs along the 600-mile front as the Allied drive toward Tunis began; thus the entire front had equal, if sparse, coverage. From Algiers through Bougie, Djidjelli, Philippeville, Bône, Souk Ahras, Chardimon, Souk el Arba, Béja, Medjez el Bab, Tébourba, and close to Tunis the cameramen moved with the major fighting units.
The Allied drive stalled short of Tunis in December. Zanuck drove back to Bône, then flew to Algiers, arriving on 5 December. In conference with Army Pictorial Service officers stationed there, he mapped out plans for future photographic coverage of the campaign, then went on to Oran, where he collected more film footage, then back to Gibraltar, and on to the United States to edit the picture. His comment foreshadowed the lack of enthusiasm with which At the Front in North Africa was received: “I don’t suppose our war scenes will look as savage and realistic as those we usually make on the back lot, but then you can’t have everything.”46 Problems of Organization North Africa provided a testing ground for photographers no less than for other Signal Corps specialists. In the weeks and months that followed, cameramen learned much and applied the lessons so well that eventually the Signal Corps combat photographers earned hearty praise on almost
every front.47 There were, however, certain elements inherent in the organization and operations of photographic companies that needed changing, as the first months of combat indicated.
As it existed in 1942, a Signal Corps photographic company was composed of four elements, or general assignment units, as they were called. The type A camera unit took still and silent motion pictures of military operations in combat areas for news use. The type B, or newsreel unit, with the same mission, was equipped with a single-system, sound-recording, motion picture camera for recording interviews, sound effects, and so on. Then there were two laboratory units, A and B. The first was designed to operate at or near corps headquarters in the forward areas to provide camera and developing service for military intelligence, supply, and like purposes, while the type B laboratory unit provided similar service near army headquarters in forward areas. Neither developed news pictures, but sent them to the rear area laboratories by the fastest means.48 Wherever military laboratories for processing film were not available, it was rushed to the Signal Corps Photographic Laboratory at Washington or to the Signal Corps Photographic Center on Long Island. Commercial laboratory facilities were used in some theaters where they were available.
When Colonel Zanuck surveyed photographic needs and operations in the United Kingdom in the summer of 1942 he became convinced that such companies could not perform satisfactorily. Better results, he believed, could be accomplished by a few photographic technicians organized into units consisting of not more than five still and five motion picture cameramen dispersed to areas of action with full authority to carry out their particular missions. He had recommended the organization of such units for immediate dispatch to England, and for use in other theaters as well.49 His experience in filming At the Front in North Africa had demonstrated the advantages of flexibility in the deployment of photographic troops. The tables of organization for photographic companies remained fixed during the first year of the war, however, and it was not until well into 1943 that a move for a more flexible photographic troop structure gained impetus.
In the meantime, in actual practice company strength was scattered far and wide in small teams and detachments as needed. The cameramen found almost immediately that in combat they could not work advantageously in larger groups. For one thing, they duplicated coverage; for another, it was a useless risk of life. Photographic officers in North Africa therefore split their detachments into teams of one still and one motion picture technician, two men to a jeep when they could get such a vehicle. For mobility in covering a battle, jeeps were far superior to panel trucks and carryalls. Weapons carriers proved to be the ideal supply vehicles.
The cameramen found that when commanders were cooperative and briefed them on where and when a battle might be expected, they could often set up their equipment in what they hoped would be an advantageous spot and wait for the
fighting to come to them. They learned not to move with convoys, which were favorite targets for strafing, but to stand off to one side and photograph the strafing. In mountainous regions where vehicular travel was impossible, they scaled cliffs or followed goat trails for miles to get their pictures, often shooting their way out of tight spots with guns, not cameras.
They learned by experience what was needed in the way of equipment, and calls began to come into the Army Pictorial Service from all areas for more Eyemos, Bell and Howell 16-millimeters, Speed Graphics, and especially Leica or Contax cameras. Lacking the ideal, they improvised. “To give us 50 feet of extra film and to make a long shot and a close-up possible when time is so valuable, we have taped two B&H 16’s together with the three-inch lens on top and the one-inch lens on the bottom. ... This makes loading with the mags possible and the extra 50 feet is a Godsend.” With a one-inch lens they had to get in the middle of a battle to picture it, but with the larger lens they were able to film it from the fringes. Tank action was particularly difficult to picture effectively because of the distances between tanks, which ranged from 2,000 to 5,000 feet.50
In contrast to the U.S. Army’s photographic organization, the German Army’s photographic troops operating in North Africa were in reality propaganda groups which operated in teams of one still and one motion picture photographer, a radio commentator, one or more reporters, and so on. Much of the action recorded was staged behind the lines. German soldiers in captured uniforms might enact the parts of Allied troops, and stock scenes be released in lieu of fresh battle coverage. The false impressions which such scenes created usually caused only amusement when shown to the troops, although there were times when they drew bitter comments; for example, when pictures playing up assured supply lines were shown to soldiers on short rations. Nevertheless, there were at least two features of the enemy photographic organization which appealed to American cameramen. The most pleasing element was the prominence accorded the German photographers, who, regardless of their rank, were in command of their groups during operations and who were completely free to photograph any scene or object they desired. Also, German photographers seldom remained long on one assignment under the theory that a fresh viewpoint resulted in better pictures, and some U. S. Army photographers held this same view. Moreover, under the German scheme for portraying the war, it was easier for an inexperienced photographer just out of training school to turn in acceptable material than it would have been had he been required to record authentic combat action.51
The United States Army expected more from its cameramen but gave them less freedom of action. Many U. S. cameramen found that more spectacular scenes occurred in training areas than in actual combat, where too often a photographic vantage point was occupied by the enemy and infantrymen were forced to hide and dodge behind bits of cover, advancing as they could, man by man. Dispersion was a
safer if not photogenic tactic. Soldiers no longer made massed charges as they had in the days of San Juan Hill. Like Colonel Zanuck, who had voiced misgivings as to how At the Front in North Africa would be received, many cameramen overseas learned that filming a staged battle not only brought fewer harrowing experiences but it produced a picture which would probably have more reality on the screen than the real thing. The Army’s combat pictures had not caught the elusive something which General Marshall had wanted when he had sought Colonel Zanuck’s advice on how to make training films more realistic. Genuine war scenes were not the answer.
Problems of Command
Like other specialists, photographic technicians assigned to troops were subject to the orders of field commanders. Understandably, photographic coverage of the war occupied a very secondary place in the interest of commanders charged with combat responsibilities. The Chief Signal Officer observed that “the provision of combat films for publicity and staff study purposes was seriously impaired by the fact that signal photographic companies, when transferred overseas, passed to the complete control of theater commanders.”52 Until the value of photography in tactical operations was proved, commanders tended to regard cameramen purely as publicity agents, and assigned them to the staff public relations officer. Hence, complaints were heard that the cameramen lacked news sense, and were too often dominated by public relations officers intent on making news of the commanding general instead of the war.
Much of the difficulty lay in the fact that the duties of photographic officers had not been spelled out clearly for their own information, or for that of the commanders under whom they served.53 Both needed to know why the pictures were being made, what should be photographed, what use would be made of the pictures, how they should be shipped, and so on. A direct flow of information back and forth between the Army Pictorial Service and camera units overseas could have eliminated many difficulties, but there were many intervening headquarters between Washington and the combat cameraman, and “channels” were unknown quantities which the cameramen dreaded. “The channels in between would naturally get it all screwed up,” voiced a common attitude. A young photographic officer at an overseas headquarters wrote to the APS in Washington to say: “Before I left the U.S.A., ... I had heard the term, but that was all. ... If you can give me some good straight dope on what Washington expects us to do, you can bet I’ll appreciate it.”54
The Army Pictorial Service headquarters in Washington also believed that the unsatisfactory performance of cameramen overseas could be attributed in part to a lack of both the general and specific direction necessary to do a good job. APS was much concerned over the relatively poor showing its combat cameramen were making. Over a 40-day period in early 1943, APS had received from theaters of operation some 95,000 feet of 35-mm, and 37,000 feet of 16-mm, film, of which only 10 percent was considered to be of sufficient
interest to warrant requests for prints. APS contended that the specialized nature of photographic activities called for “specific continuity of directions, clearly defined coverage, proper transportation for camera crews and equipment, and advance information on important and outstanding events to be covered.”55 It recommended that specific channels of command in theaters of operation be established, specifically that a qualified ranking officer be assigned to the general staff of theater commanders, charged with responsibility for photographic activities in that theater.56 This recommendation bore fruit a few weeks later when the War Department directed the overseas commanders to designate a staff officer, to be assigned to the staff of the theater commander and charged specifically with the staff functions connected with photographic activities.57
In addition to establishing a more clearly defined chain of command in overseas theaters, the APS believed that it was necessary to bring specialist training of photographic companies, units, and individuals to a higher standard through joint action by the Army Ground Forces and the Army Pictorial Service. The specialist training which the Signal Corps gave at Astoria, argued APS, ought to be coordinated with the later mobilization training which the AGF gave photographic companies. Methods, courses, and doctrine should be consistent. When ordered to theaters of operation, instructor teams should accompany the Signal photographic companies to train secondary personnel and replacements.58
Desirable as it might be, such a program even if accepted by AGF could not be expected to produce results immediately. In the long-range applications, many of the APS recommendations were accepted eventually, with good results. Meanwhile for some time there continued to trickle in reports such as the one General Somervell passed along to the Signal Corps in August 1943. It stated that at one base, out of 4,000 pictures, more than 2,500 were of the commander “eating lunch, picking roses ... or what have you”; the rest of the 4,000 pictured the public relations officer.59 Maj. Gen. Harry C. Ingles placed that complaint in proper perspective. If that were true, he said, “it calls for the reprimand of the commanding general, as he certainly has the authority to stop this practice any time he sees fit.” Nearly all commanders and their staffs were ignorant of the function a photographic section was to perform, as established by law and regulations, said Ingles, adding that he knew of but one directive that had ever been issued controlling photographic activities, and that one he himself had issued when he was chief of staff of the Caribbean Defense Command. “I do not believe that either you or I, or anyone else in Washington can satisfactorily decide what pictures should be taken in England, Africa, Sicily, Middle East, Persian Gulf or India ... the respective commanding generals have ample staff machinery to do this, but they turn the matter over to a public relations officer, and he interprets his duty to be the collection of all possible pictures for publicity purposes.”60
This problem, like others, yielded to time and experience. The greatest single improvement in this matter came as a result of the appointment of the staff photographic officers mentioned above.
Photographic Security
A problem which affected the operations of combat cameramen overseas concerned security. In the field, before exposed film was processed, it was automatically regarded as “confidential,” unless it was known to contain shots of material which would warrant a higher classification. After film was processed, prints were sent to Washington, where, a month after Pearl Harbor, the Secretary of War had established the War Department Photonews Board. Its duties included the review of newsreels and stills from all war theaters, and the selection of materials, subject to the approval of the Bureau of Public Relations, for release to the public. Still pictures were classified overseas at the point where they were processed.61
The cameramen’s difficulties with security reached further back in the chain of operations. It was not always possible to reconcile photographic objectives with the security provisions imposed by commanders. The Army Ground Forces wanted pictures with training value. To have training value, they must show precise situations. If they showed precise situations, they told too much.62
More and more secret equipment was being placed in the hands of troops and the cameramen had no way of knowing what was secret and what was not. Often unit commanders themselves did not know. A tank spitting fire at the enemy on unrecognizable terrain was a good combat shot, and from the cameraman’s point of view there was nothing about such a scene that could give aid or comfort to the enemy. But Dr. Vannevar Bush, Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, pointed accusingly to just such a picture which had appeared in a large daily newspaper early in the war. It revealed, he said, that infra-red equipment was being used and anyone familiar with the uses of infrared might deduce from the position of the equipment quite a little as to what was under way on a classified Army project.63
If pictures were innocent, often the captions told too much. There were many ways in which pictures could violate security. For example, At the Front in North Africa contained a scene which showed a burning plane. A label on the cap of the fuel tank revealed the brands of German and Italian gasoline which might safely be used in it, thus giving an inkling of the nature of the plane’s engine. As this was a German plane, the scene might be shown, but had it been an Allied aircraft, the danger of publishing the picture is obvious.64
The stress on maintaining military secrecy made commanders nervous about photographic activities. Their tendency was to restrain cameramen from taking any pictures which might conceivably violate security. Often the signal officer on a commander’s staff was not without blame in restricting the photographic unit’s activities. The cameramen bewailed the restrictions,
contending that the classification of the pictures later could govern their use. Indeed, the War Department pointed out to theater commanders that the act of photographing did not, of itself, violate any military safeguards as long as the release of pictures was controlled by the War Department Photonews Board and by the G-2 sections in the field and in the War Department General Staff.65 Nevertheless, restrictions continued to harass both the cameramen and the Army Pictorial Service, which received less coverage than it expected and chafed at delays in receiving the amount that did come in. Overseas clearances were delayed. In joint action with the British, where British troops, equipment, and censorship were involved, these difficulties multiplied.66
This conflict between full, factual pictorial presentation and the necessary demands for reasonable security was never completely resolved, but as cameramen gained experience and began receiving better supervision, the problem grew less acute.
Field Units in Mid-1943
By mid-1943, six photographic companies had been activated,67 with three more scheduled for activation before the end of the calendar year. The 161st Signal Photographic Company was on duty in the Southwest Pacific theater, and also had units in Iceland, Ireland, China, and Hawaii. In North Africa there were ten units, five each from the 162nd and the 163rd Signal Photographic Companies. Large detachments of the 162nd were on duty at various points in England. In addition the 162nd had units serving in Hawaii, Ireland, Newfoundland, Greenland, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Trinidad. One unit of the 164th was in Alaska, but the rest of the company, along with the 165th and most of the 164th was training in the United States. The 196th, composed of four units derived from the 161st, was on duty at the Desert Training Center with the Second Army.68
Thus although the number of photographic companies in being had increased threefold during the first eighteen months of war, there were still not enough to fill the need for them. The simple fact was that there were not enough photographic technicians, and therefore not enough photographic companies.69 Moreover, it could be expected that, as the number of campaigns increased, the need not only for combat coverage but also for photographic coverage of base activities would multiply. As the fiscal year ended, plans were in progress to organize “commando” photographic units—units which would approximate Colonel Zanuck’s teams assigned to the North African operations.70
The Widening Range of Photographic Activity
The expansion of facilities for photographic work in the first year of war merely reflected the widening scope of the Signal Corps’ responsibilities in the various phases of photography. Some of these responsibilities—for example, the provision of training films, still and motion pictures for public relations purposes, and identification photographs—were not new, but were greatly expanded because of the rapid expansion of the Army. Others, such as the provision of orientation films and films of the historical series, constituted new applications and extensions of basic responsibilities. Still others were wholly new—services never supplied before, but now deemed necessary. One of the most important of these was a photographic mail service.
V-Mail
Inaugurated in the summer of 1942, as personal mail and war supplies competed for cargo space in ships and airplanes, V-mail provided a welcome means of reducing personal correspondence to a minimum bulk without restricting the volume of the letters. For some years microfilming had been used extensively for reducing voluminous office and library files to small rolls of film in order to save storage space. In the spring of 1941 the British adopted the technique for their “Airgraph” photographic mail system, developed by the Eastman Kodak Company and used by both the British public and its armed forces. The U.S. Army postal service, deeply interested, asked the Signal Corps to prepare a plan for a similar system for use of the American Army. By the summer of 1942 a plan drawn up by Maj. Kenneth B. Lambert had been approved, funds had been allocated, and the services concerned were ready to launch the project. It was a responsibility shared by the United States Post Office Department, which handled domestic distribution of incoming mail, and by the Army and Navy postal services, which transported mail between military and naval units and the U.S. postal service. The Signal Corps was assigned responsibility for the microfilming and developing processes and for establishing photographic mail stations.71
Originally it was anticipated that each processing station would be operated by the Signal Corps. But after all the possibilities, including a plan for complete commercial operation, had been explored, a compromise was settled upon. Where conditions permitted, stations would be operated under contract with the Eastman Kodak Company of the United States or with the British firm, Kodak, Limited. The Signal Corps would supply the service in active theaters and in other areas where the employment of civilians was not feasible.
The first Signal Photo Mail Company was activated on 1 July 1942. Already detachments of men trained at the plant of the Eastman Kodak Company had scattered over the globe, just as other Signal Corps technicians had done. One detachment had embarked for Suva in the Fiji Islands to organize the service in the South Pacific Area. One went north to Iceland, another to India, and still others moved out to serve the troops in Africa. The Eastman Kodak Company continued to train Signal Corps men in this specialty until autumn, when the Signal Corps established an Official Photo Mail Station in the Pentagon and thereafter conducted its own training.
V-mail service grew rapidly. From 35,000 letters sent overseas from the United States in June 1942, the number increased to 11,935,000 within a year.72 The number processed overseas for transmittal to the United States showed a corresponding increase—from 18,000 in June 1942 to 7,673,000 in June 1943. The total peak volume was handled in April 1944—63,638,405 letters.73 Within the first year the number of stations increased from 1 (opened in June 1942) to 8 contract and 6 Signal Corps stations. By the end of the war 9 contract and 19 Signal Corps stations had been activated.74 Outgoing letters could be fed into the recording machines at an average rate of 1,200 per hour. Not only did V-mail move rapidly but it saved an enormous amount of space and weight. The weight of 150,000 ordinary one-sheet letters was estimated to be 2,575 pounds. Recorded on film they weighed only 45 pounds. One 100-foot roll of 16-mm. film, weighing less than seven ounces and occupying only 16 cubic inches of space, carried 1,800 letters.75
Procurement of Photographic Supplies
As its range of photographic services widened, the Army’s requirements for photographic equipment and supplies became greater. Actually, prewar procurement planning had almost overlooked the problems of photographic supply. As a result, the war was nearly over before complete and accurate requirement data were compiled. Although standard commercial products were used almost exclusively, there was seldom an adequate supply of even these on dealers’ shelves. For many months private owners were being urged to sell appropriate items to the Signal Corps. Persons from forty-four states made offers and more than 1,000 purchase orders were placed early in the war for privately owned cameras, such as Mitchell, Bell and Howell, Akeley, and Eyemo 35-mm. motion picture cameras; Cine-Kodak Special and Filmo 16-mm. cameras; and still picture cameras such as Speed Graphic; also for tripods, exposure meters, range finders, pack adapters, and so on.76
V-mail being processed by members of a Signal Photo Mail detachment in Iceland in October 1942
The Speed Graphic was a good fair-weather camera, although with its open range finder and exposed cut-film and filmpack holders, it became water soaked very easily in heavy rains and then failed to function. The Army Pictorial Service was working with manufacturers on the design of a small, still picture camera with interchangeable short and long focal lenses, which combat photographers had found to be essential for the best results, although immediate requirements necessitated the use of any suitable substitute, such as the Leica and the Contax cameras. These made 1½ by 1-inch pictures on 35-mm. film, supplied in cartridges of 18 or 36 exposures, black and white or color.77 Although most of the calls from the field were for standard commercial equipment, occasionally there was a request for a unique item, as, for example, a camera for use behind the enemy’s lines to photograph documents for G-2, one small enough so that the cameraman might “stick it underneath his shirt, with his shirt-tail hanging out so it can’t be seen.”78 Not only equipment but stocks of sensitized paper and photographic film were scarce. Film was officially classified as a scarce
commodity and as such it was controlled and allocated by the War Production Board.79
But whatever the item or its nature, before it could be issued to troops in quantity it had to find a place on tables of equipment through the usual tortuous route of concurrence and approval. Tables of photographic equipment were as rigid as tables of organization, and troop strength alone proved to be a poor basis for issue, particularly for such items as projectors, because the dispersion of troops upset calculations based entirely on troop numbers.80 Also, the mortality of equipment, in transit and in use, was higher than expected. For example, in the field the delicate mechanism of a camera was constantly subjected to excessive dust or moisture. Jolting over rough roads jarred small parts loose or broke them. Lens turrets became bent when cameramen dived into ditches or foxholes under fire. Cameras were too few to permit sending them to base signal repair shops, and there their low priority would shove them aside. The small repair sections of the photographic and service companies were therefore obliged to maintain not only the company’s photographic equipment but also that of other arms—the Engineer Corps, Ordnance, Military Police, and so on. And the repairmen had to do what they could without spare parts, for which tables of allowances made no provision. These and minor commercial accessories were scarce. Without spare parts, cannibalization was often practiced in order to keep the photographic service going, but it was neither an economical nor a practical solution to the repair problem.81
A factor in the shortage of photographic equipment and supplies was the conversion of many manufacturing plants to the production of other war equipment. For example, Eastman stopped making cameras in 1941-1942, and began again only in a limited way in 1943. Ansco stopped soon after Pearl Harbor and throughout the better part of the war produced no photographic material except paper and film. The Mitchell camera people began making spotting sets and resumed the manufacture of cameras only after an expansion had been made in their plant. The big Bell and Howell plant was devoted largely to orders from the Army Air Forces and the Navy. Lens-making facilities were particularly small, and late in 1942 the Army-Navy Lens Board was set up to effect a fair distribution of the small supply.82
None of the limited funds available to the Signal Corps for equipment research in the prewar period had been devoted to photographic equipment. There were too many other more important or more pressing needs. By early 1943 it was evident that standard commercial cameras and photographic equipment designed for civilian use could not be expected to perform satisfactorily all the specialized tasks of military combat photography. In March 1943 General Somervell specifically charged the APS with research responsibility for photographic equipment.83 On 11 April the APS
directed the Signal Corps Photographic Center to establish the Pictorial Engineering and Research Laboratory (PERL) at Astoria.84 Its responsibilities would include conducting tests and experiments on all types of photographic material, preparing and revising specifications for new and existing equipment, submitting military characteristics for, and standardizing, photographic equipment and supplies, and preparing the necessary instruction publications and manuals.
PERL began operations in one small office room at the Center. Its staff of three officers and two secretarial assistants concentrated at first on making procurement tests of equipment and on writing procurement specifications and technical literature. This first organized attempt to test and procure photographic equipment for purely military uses soon branched out into studies of maintenance problems, incidence of failure, and the procurement of replacement parts. Thereafter, throughout the war, the Signal Corps possessed a laboratory devoted to the specialized job of research into photographic equipment problems—a laboratory that eventually became a major center of research and development in this field.85
Although general responsibility for procurement of photographic supplies rested with APS, the procurement districts of the Signal Supply Service handled the actual contracting. APS’s contracting activities extended only to the purchase of still and motion pictures and raw film stock.86
Still Pictures
The production of the Army’s official still photographs constituted an important portion of the work of the APS. This duty, like the others, increased enormously during the first eighteen months of war, although the staff to accomplish it did not swell proportionately. For example, the figures for Signal Corps Photographic Laboratory personnel—civilian, enlisted, and officer—stood at 157 on 30 June 1942, and at 222 on 31 May 1943.87 Included in these figures were the enlisted men of Company B of the 846th Signal Service Photographic Battalion, which had been activated at Astoria on 11 September 1942 to perform various headquarters photographic duties.88
Before war struck, the volume of still photographs coming in to the still photograph library had shown a decided upward trend. As Army inductees poured into training camps all over the country, newspapers and magazines clamored for pictures showing how the men lived and trained. These pictures swelled the files of the still photograph library. The first pictures received in World War II were of the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, and showed the bomb damage to Hickam Field and a small Japanese one-man submarine that was washed up on the shore.89
Thereafter the volume of overseas pictures increased steadily. By the close of the fiscal year on 30 June 1942, the still library had received 16,000 new negatives. The number nearly doubled during the next twelve months as the tempo of the conflict quickened; 28,000 new negatives for the twelve months ending 30 June 1943.90 By then the library’s collection numbered altogether about 190,000 negatives. So many pictures were coming in from overseas that the Still Picture Library Branch established a temporary overseas picture file for official reference use, to serve until the pictures could be classified and filed in the permanent collection. Putting captions on pictures and issuing them promptly to the appropriate service—AGF, AAF, or ASF—required a great deal of routine work, but it was important that prints be furnished for technical study and training to Army activities all over the country. An additional service that the Still Picture Branch instituted at this period was a critique on the news value and technical quality of the negatives received from overseas. This was of great value to the cameramen overseas, who as often as not had no opportunity to see their own pictures or to learn what their mistakes or successes might be.91
When in mid-1942 the corps areas (later called service commands) were authorized to establish photographic laboratories and sublaboratories to provide photographic developing and printing facilities at posts, camps, and stations, the Still Picture Branch of APS acquired an additional duty—staff supervision of the laboratories.92 It was a job that quickly grew to major proportions, for 123 new still laboratories were established before the end of June 1943. APS arranged to admit a limited number of service command photographers to the Signal Corps Photographic Center at Astoria for advanced training and instituted a still photographic laboratories production report, which showed the number of pictures made and the material used, in order to be able to estimate future equipment and supply requirements.93
Meanwhile, the Signal Corps’ own Photographic Laboratory, particularly the new sublaboratory for still pictures in the Pentagon, acquired new and improved equipment to help handle the work load expeditiously. The Casablanca conference in January 1943 furnished an opportunity to demonstrate this fact. The Still Picture Section received 226 4x5 negatives, two reels of 35-mm. negatives, and 85 kodachromes of President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, and other notables at Casablanca. The laboratory’s technicians developed the negatives and delivered 900 prints to the Bureau of Public Relations for release, all within the record time of seven hours.94 Publicity pictures of special events like this spotlighted the work of the laboratory, but it was the thousands of day-to-day, routine tasks that spelled the real measure of accomplishment.
Distribution of Training Films
The Signal Corps distributed the Army’s training films, film strips, and film bulletins
through a system of central film libraries in the corps areas and sublibraries in designated posts, camps, and stations.95 When a new training film was approved by the initiating agency for distribution, the Chief Signal Officer consulted the appropriate training division to find out exactly how and where the film would be used, where it would be shown, and the number of troops for whom it was intended. On the basis of this information the Signal Corps printed the required number of copies of the film and distributed them to the libraries through its Film Distribution Branch.96
At the onset of war the Signal Corps had been drawn into the twilight zone between two disparate but closely related functions: that of providing training films, a supply function, and that of the use of films, a command function. The training film was a relatively new device and very little use had been made of it either inside or outside the military establishment. Therefore the War Department felt that some agency had to be designated to demonstrate how motion pictures could be used in training. Soon after Pearl Harbor the Signal Corps had been instructed to furnish personnel to demonstrate effective techniques in the use of visual training aids.
Although a great deal was accomplished during the first year of war, a joint survey conducted by the Control Divisions of the SOS and the Office of the Chief Signal Officer in late 1942 indicated that training films still were not being used as effectively as they should have been. There were several reasons. Neither the APS, nor the Training Division, SOS, nor the corps areas had enough officers to assign a sufficient number to the work of promoting the Army’s training films. Usually an officer assigned to a film library had other duties as well. FM 21-6, which listed the available films, was published only twice a year and fell badly behind schedule at that, so that the lists it contained were seldom up to date. There was also an acute shortage of projectors, which were controlled items and as such issued only on priorities. Film libraries had no such priorities. Furthermore, there was no relationship between the issue of films and the means for showing them. Projectors were issued according to the tables of basic allowances, whereas the distribution of films and film strips to libraries was covered by AR 105-260.97
In March 1943, therefore, the War Department transferred to the service commands Signal Corps’ responsibility to provide consultant and advisory services on the utilization of training films.98 This responsibility included operating the film libraries, which by this time numbered some 200, supplemented by at least 100 auxiliaries attached to post libraries at the larger installations.
During the following months the APS and SOS kept a constant check on the
A class in projector repair
operations in the service commands.99 A visual aid Coordinator in the Eighth Service Command made an intensive study of conditions in that command. By May 1943 the APS was ready with recommendations which it presented to representatives of the nine service commands, the AAF, and the AGF at a two-day conference held at Toledo, Ohio, 28-29 May. The recommendations were aimed at two principal objectives—to arouse in service command officers a greater sense of responsibility for the proper utilization of training films, and to set up a uniform system of procedures in film libraries.100 At the same time APS moved to reorganize its own distribution facilities in order to provide better and faster service. The new arrangement, effective 1 July 1943, consolidated distribution operations in the Signal Corps Photographic Center. The Film Distribution Branch of APS in Washington was responsible for staff supervision and policy matters only.
Orientation Films
Orientation films were training films of a special category. When war came the Bureau of Public Relations, War Department General Staff, had a corps of speakers busy traveling over the country delivering
lectures to troops on the general theme of why they were being called upon to fight. The background of world events which led to war was a fascinating subject to historians and students of world politics, but to soldiers bone-tired from their initial encounters with basic training it proved baffling, bewildering, or just boring. In any event, lectures were too slow, too limited, to meet the demand for mass indoctrination.
The Chief of Staff, General Marshall, already enthusiastic about the technique of training through the medium of motion pictures, was eager to extend the project to include orientation films for troops. On 9 December 1941 Brig. Gen. F. H. Osborne, Chief of the Morale Branch of the War Department (later designated Special Services ), called Colonel Schlosberg of the Army Pictorial Service to discuss the matter with him, and Schlosberg agreed to try to find a qualified person from the motion picture industry to be commissioned in the Signal Corps to direct a series of orientation films.101
Frank Capra, a successful Hollywood producer-director, agreed to undertake the work. Capra was commissioned as a major in the Signal Corps on 14 February 1942 and placed on duty in the Morale Branch as chief of its film production section.102 By the end of April Hollywood writers under Capra’s guidance had completed a series of scripts based primarily upon the Bureau of Public Relations lectures. About 80 percent of the film footage was obtained from newsreels and other library sources; the remainder comprised animated maps and staged scenes. Film from the files of Fox Movietone, Pathe News, the Allied embassies, the Museum of Modern Art, impounded enemy film, and privately owned collections went into the making of these reels.103
Prelude to War, the first of the Why We Fight series (in French and Spanish versions also), was issued in October. Others followed at intervals throughout the war: The Nazis Strike (in French also), Divide and Conquer, Battle of Britain, Battle of Russia, Battle of China, and War Comes to America.104 On 6 June, at the direction of the Commanding General, Services of Supply, the 834th Signal Service Photographic Detachment, a highly efficient unit comprising initially eight officers and thirty-five enlisted men drawn from the various technical fields of the motion picture industry on the west coast, was activated especially for the purpose of producing the orientation films in the Why We Fight series. This detachment, commanded by Capra, operated at first, not under the Chief Signal Officer, but under the jurisdiction and direct control of the Chief of Special Services, the Signal Corps’ responsibility being limited to supplying the technicians and to assisting upon request.105 On 1 September 1943 the memorandum assigning the 834th Signal Service Photographic Detachment to Special Services was rescinded, and thereafter the Signal Corps produced films for the Special Services Division upon its request in the same manner as
for other agencies in the Army Service Forces or for the Army Ground Forces.106
The orientation films were highly successful, and were shown not only to soldiers, but at special showings to other groups including some of the individuals who had been leading participants in the events portrayed.107 Capra’s group soon undertook a second series, closely related to the orientation films, the Know Your Enemies and Know Your Allies series. John Gunther, William L. Shirer, John Whittaker, Leonard Spigelglass, and Eric Knight wrote the scripts for Know Your Enemy Japan, Know Your Enemy Germany, and Know Your Ally Britain. The last-named film was so effective from the British point of view that Prime Minister Winston Churchill had it shown in all the British theaters.108 All together, Capra produced seventeen excellent feature films, at the rate of one about every two months, during the approximately three years he was assigned to this work.109
The Historical Series
The first of the War Department historical record series of feature films, designed to be shown to the civilian public, was Report from the Aleutians.110 In mid-summer of 1942 Colonel Zanuck flew to Umnak, the springboard for launching aerial and ground action against the Japanese on Kiska. His mission was to plan the coverage and make the arrangements for the film. The work of completing the film he left to the direction of Lt. John Huston, assisted by Lts. Jules Buck and Rey Scott and two enlisted men. One of the greatest obstacles to filming action in the Aleutians was the weather. Before leaving Umnak, Zanuck made one unsuccessful flight over enemy-held territory, an experience duplicated several times by Scott and Buck before they succeeded in getting over Kiska on a clear day.111
The Aleutians picture, which ran to some 1,680 feet of 16-mm. and 4,200 feet of 35-mm. film, was shown officially just as the cameramen made it. But before its release for public showing some of the scenes had to be deleted for security reasons.112 Scenes of the landing on Adak had been returned to the United States for editing before the Japanese were believed to be aware of the occupation of the island by United States forces, the Canadian customs officials having agreed to pass the shipments of film without examination of the packages.113
The Report, in Technicolor, recorded in unforgettable detail how American men occupied Adak, the American outpost farthest out and closest to the enemy, barren of life, except for its grotesque scavenger ravens. It showed what ingenuity had gone into the conversion of Adak for use as a military post—a lagoon became a steel-surfaced airfield in eleven days, ready for American
bombers to take off to raid Kiska. It showed how weather dictated the terms of life and action and how it affected the labors of the two photographers who landed there in a slashing rainstorm. It showed the daily bombing missions against the enemy; bombers landing in blinding spray on a field flooded with a foot of water; returning with wings made filigree by flak and with holes in their sides large enough for a man to put his head through; a crash landing, with the ambulance crew going into action; a funeral, bleak scene in a bleak land; Sunday church services in the open. The exact details of a bombing mission were filmed: briefing and loading, the flight to Kiska, the formation of the bombing run that permits exact bombing, the attempts of the enemy to throw the planes out of their run, three bombing flights at different altitudes above Kiska with the cameraman’s plane rocking with the impact of antiaircraft fire, and the safe return of all nine bombers after the destruction of Kiska’s hangars. These were the elements of Report from the Aleutians. Absorbing as the best fictional dramas, this picture carried exact information and the cameramen had caught the very texture of war.
The second of the series, At the Front in North Africa, was not so well received. It was compiled from combat film footage taken by groups of Signal Corps photographers under Colonel Zanuck’s direction during the first weeks of the North African campaign. At best, it could show only a fraction of the effort expended in a campaign, and for that reason was open to charges of superficial or inaccurate coverage.114 It incorporated no dramatized material; no studio effects were employed to enhance its appeal. Its war scenes were real, but they did not look real to the public. A British film being shown at about the same time contained studio-filmed scenes of night attacks, and scenes patched together from captured enemy reels which had no connection with the subject campaign. These professional tricks resulted in a more dramatic picture. The policy of the War Department, however, was to use no such studio aids unless the artificial or re-enacted scenes be edited in such a manner as to segregate the staged from the actual scenes, with explanatory titles defining clearly the line of demarcation. The Signal Corps believed that such explanations would detract from the continuity of a film to such an extent as to be unworkable and therefore held to the policy of showing only authentic scenes.115
Throughout the war campaign reports and historical films were made available through the Office of War Information and the War Activities Committee of the Motion Picture Industry for showing in commercial theaters. Eve of Battle, the story of the invasion of Europe, was an example of this sort of film. It was shown throughout the country within a few days after D Day in Normandy. A general letdown in war production in the summer of 1944 was met by the release of the film, This War Speeds Up. The Liberation of Rome, released about the middle of 1944, also received wide public showing. The Enemy Strikes followed the German counteroffensive in December 1944.116
Industrial Incentive Films
Still another film series, which the Signal Corps produced for the Office of the Under Secretary of War, was intended as an aid to stimulate war production. In February 1942 the Labor Consultant to the Under Secretary of War had suggested that a film be prepared which would dramatize the Army’s desperate need for equipment and the responsibilities which the war placed upon “our soldiers of production.” Capt. Richard W. Maibaum of the Army Pictorial Service prepared the script and served as technical adviser to 20th Century-Fox during its production. Before the end of June this picture, The Arm Behind the Army, had had more than 700 showings to an estimated one million workers assembled in factories, union halls, and at plant and community rallies. It had won general commendation from workers and management officials alike. Under Secretary of War Patterson was deeply impressed by it. He considered it a “highly successful dramatization of the Army’s production message,” and requested General Somervell to direct the Signal Corps to produce one such film every month.117
To comply with the directive, a special subsection was set up within the Army Pictorial Service, eventually becoming the Special Projects Branch. Three more films were produced before the end of the year: Combat Report, made by Pathe, and Firepower and Attack Signal, both by 20th Century-Fox. The Signal Corps Photographic Center dubbed in Spanish and Portuguese titles for South Central American audiences, and the Office of War Information distributed prints of the films in Allied and neutral countries through its Overseas Film Division.118 Navy representatives saw Combat Report, and requested the Signal Corps to change the title to read “Produced by the Signal Corps for the Army and Navy.” This was done, and thereafter each film in the series contained at least a few shots of the Navy in action.119
The Training Film Program
The biggest of all the wartime photographic chores centered around the training film program. In the broad sense, almost every sort of film, except those designed purely for entertainment, could be considered to be a training film. A narrower concept limited the definition to a film that presented a portion of the established curriculum of a service school. In that sense, providing training films for the various arms and services had been an accepted part of the Signal Corps’ duties for many years. Even before Pearl Harbor the demand for training films was paralleling the growth of the armed forces. After war came the rate of demand rose faster than the rate of growth of the Army, because mass training of large numbers of men could be accomplished most effectively through the medium of films. For fiscal year 1942 the sum of $4,928,810 was appropriated for Army Pictorial Service, of which $1,784,894 was for motion picture production and $1,304,710 for motion picture distribution, chiefly of training films. More than four times that sum, $20,382,210, was appropriated for the next fiscal year, 1943, and half went for training films and for training of officer and
enlisted personnel in photographic specialist courses.120
The actual production of a training film was always the result of a request from some arm or service. Throughout 1942 the details incidental to approval of film projects varied as organizations and command channels changed, but the essential elements of procedure remained the same. The arm or service decided what part of its school curriculum should be presented on film, and prepared a picture plan, a general outline of the material to be presented. This plan, when approved by the chief of the appropriate service (by way of the service training division) was the basis for the scenario, prepared either by the Signal Corps (for SOS) or by the service itself (for the AGF). The Army Pictorial Service within the Office of the Chief Signal Officer determined whether the picture would be produced at the Signal Corps Photographic Center or by the west coast film industry. Technical advisers assigned by the requesting arm or service assisted in the actual production in either case. When the finished film was approved and accepted by the requesting service, the Signal Corps distributed it as instructed by the service.121
To the extent possible with the facilities available, the Signal Corps had always produced training films in its own film laboratories, but until the middle of 1942, when the SCPC became operative, the facilities had simply not been adequate to cope with the volume of requests. Thereafter SCPC produced a progressively larger and larger percentage of films. The demand, however, continued to outrun the ability of the laboratory to produce the films, and the Signal Corps continued to place contracts for commercial production of such films with the west coast film industry. Until December 1942 the contracting agency with which the Signal Corps dealt was the Research Council of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
It was this aspect of the Signal Corps’ contractual relationships which received the most attention in a series of investigations during the latter half of 1942. They culminated in hearings before a special committee of the United States Senate which was investigating the entire national defense program. In August 1942 this committee, headed by Senator Harry S. Truman, presented the War Department with a list of questions pertaining to the Signal Corps’ training film program. Rumors had reached the committee that the Research Council was assuming a dominant role in the training film program to the exclusion of small producers who were not members of the council; that the operation of the Affiliated Plan put Hollywood’s favorite sons into safe berths at Astoria for the duration of the war; and that Colonel Zanuck, by virtue of his three positions as chairman of the Research Council, as an official of 20th Century-Fox, and as a Signal Corps officer
A motion picture set at SCPC
on active duty, was exerting undue influence.122
The questionnaire, recognized as the harbinger of a Congressional investigation, touched off a series of independent investigations of the photographic program by the Services of Supply. The first was conducted by Lt. Col. A. M. Sims of the Control Division, SOS, in and about Washington during August and September. It culminated in a seventeen-page Interim Report on 2 October. The report charged that production of urgently needed training films had been “exasperatingly slow”; it protested against cumbersome procedures, disputes between those responsible for training film doctrine and those responsible for production, lack of definite assignment of duties among Army elements participating in the program, and the lack of production scheduling. It charged that “contractual arrangements with Hollywood” had made the Army “peculiarly impotent” in obtaining the kinds of films required, and that proper controls over the expenditure of federal funds had been lacking.123
The report listed ten recommendations, six of them directed toward the Signal Corps. Most of these actually related to staff supervision and coordination of training film activities, which were not the
responsibility of the Signal Corps, but of the Training Division, SOS, as the Director of Training, General Huebner, and the Deputy Director, Colonel Weible, quickly pointed out.124 Weible said, “The writer was apparently not entirely conversant with the responsibilities or authority of an operating agency as contrasted with a staff unit. This has resulted in unfair criticism of the Signal Corps.” Huebner also remarked that most of the criticisms submitted had been appreciated prior to receipt of the report, and that steps had already been taken to remedy them. One of the steps involved a directive to all the preparing arms and services to submit a complete list of all approved projects and a list of projects for which approval would be requested during the fiscal year 1942-43. This would permit the Signal Corps to be given a production schedule, with priorities set up, on which an orderly production program could be based.125
The Army Ground Forces, commenting on the Interim Report, not only reflected the opinion that the report had been written under a misconception of responsibilities amid a confusion of terms, but also noted that many of the statistics it contained were erroneous, and the allegations incomplete and misleading. For example, although the report alleged that only three training films had been completed and distributed for the Army Ground Forces and the Services of Supply between 1 January and 15 September 1942, AGF asserted that actually seventy-five had been released for the Ground Forces alone, and probably as many more for the SOS. AGF also pointed out that the regulations covering the production of training films were inadequate and obsolete and urged the revision of AR 105-260.126
Following the submission of the Interim Report, Colonel Sims, accompanied by three officers from his division, and by Lt. Col. Charles T. Lanham, chief of the Visual Aid Section, AGF, and Col. Kirke B. Lawton, chief of the Army Pictorial Service, departed for Hollywood to investigate training film activities in that area. On 30 October the Sims investigators submitted their final report to General Somervell who immediately sent a copy of it to The Inspector General for further investigation. At the same time he directed the Chief Signal Officer to comply with the dozen recommendations embodied in the final report, aimed at Signal Corps relations and operating procedures with the Research Council.127
General Olmstead at once began reorganizing APS procedures to comply with the pertinent recommendations. The effect was to decentralize operations and to give the Signal Corps Photographic Center at Astoria a good deal more authority. He gave the SCPC responsibility for scheduling and producing all training films whether produced there or in Hollywood. He converted the Liaison Office in Hollywood into an operating office, as the Western Branch of the SCPC, in quarters separate from those of the Research Council. He also directed the SCPC to prepare a production plan for
training films, in the form of a report to the Commanding General, SOS, establishing the relationships of the Signal Corps with motion picture companies, writers, producers, and directors, and to prepare standards by which to examine budget estimates.128
The second significant feature of Olmstead’s reorganization involved the breaking off of the long-standing arrangements between the Signal Corps and the Research Council. The Research Council was permitted to finish the work it had in progress, but all new production projects would be handled by the Western Branch of SCPC on a contract basis worked out with the individual studios. Production costs were to be figured exactly—that is, as exactly as they could be, considering the unknown contingencies that could arise in producing a film. The possibility that some of the producers might not continue the practice of making films on the basis of “out-of-pocket” costs, as they had been doing, induced General Olmstead to retain the Research Council in an advisory capacity in dealing with the companies it represented, although it would no longer handle War Department funds.129
The ink was barely dry on the directives establishing the new procedures when further administrative changes erupted. Early in 1943, before the Inspector General’s Department had completed its investigation of the Army’s photographic program, the Truman Committee followed up its questionnaire of the preceding August by beginning hearings at Washington on the activities of the Army Pictorial Service. The early questioning took place during General Somervell’s absence overseas, and moved his chief of staff, Brig. Gen. Wilhelm D. Styer, to recommend to him upon his return that a change be made in the supervision of the Army Pictorial Service. Specifically, he recommended that steps be taken “to effect any reorganization” of this “large and important activity ... very much in the spotlight.” He suggested that “some very capable officer” be selected to supervise the organization, and noted that Brig. Gen. William H. Harrison could be made available for the post.130
A few days later General Somervell received a preliminary report of The Inspector General’s investigation and sent it to the Chief of Staff, U. S. Army, with his recommendations for reorganizing photographic activities. The Inspector General’s report, like those of the Control Division, disclosed overlapping and a lack of coordination in the motion picture activities of the Army as a whole. It listed eleven agencies engaged in producing motion pictures, all competing for scarce materials and skilled manpower. Actually, this number was in error, since three of the organizations listed were AAF units, responsible for their own training film production under War Department order, and of the remaining eight, only two were engaged in activities which duplicated or overlapped those of the APS.131
The report recommended that a central and unified photographic organization—such as the Chief Signal Officer had pressed for—be set up, but that it be separate from
the Signal Corps. Noting that the Signal Corps had already revised its procedures for the commercial production of films, the report recommended that these new procedures be continued. It was full of criticisms of past performances by the Signal Corps, other elements of the Army, the Navy, and civilian government agencies, but since most of these had already been corrected by the agencies concerned, the report probably merited the term “anti-climactic,” which the Acting Chief Signal Officer, General Colton, applied to it.132
General Somervell’s recommendations to the Chief of Staff for reorganizing the Army Pictorial Service followed those of The Inspector General’s report. Although they embodied the Chief Signal Officer’s own ideas for centralizing control of Army photography in one agency, Somervell proposed to withdraw control of the activity and lodge it in his own office, under an officer of his own choosing. At the same time he proposed to leave the Chief Signal Officer with the responsibility for the details of administration. Somervell’s recommendations also provided for the organization of an Army Pictorial Board, to be composed of the chief of APS, as chairman, and representatives of the AAF, AGF, SOS, Bureau of Public Relations, and Special Services Division. Its function would be to establish photographic policies for the Army and to coordinate programs.133
Within a few days the G-4 Section of the General Staff offered a substitute plan. It provided for a board under the chairmanship of the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-4, and recommended that no further action be taken toward reorganizing the Army Pictorial Service pending the completion of The Inspector General’s investigation. General Somervell took issue with the G-4 proposal to defer the reorganization he had recommended. “It is sheer sophistry to state that facts are not known and are controversial. The subject matter is under investigation by the Truman Committee, and it is highly desirable that the War Department not be kicked into taking some action.”134 The upshot of the matter was that, although he was denied authority to reorganize the whole program, on 13 March Somervell named General Harrison to take charge of the APS, under Somervell’s direct supervision. Two days later the Secretary of War issued an order setting up the Army Pictorial Board recommended by G-4 to integrate photographic policies and activities generally,135
Within a month the Truman Committee resumed its inquiry into Army photographic affairs. It heard Under Secretary of War Patterson, General Harrison, Colonel Lawton, and a number of other officers. No new evidence was brought out, although much of the questioning concerned past relations with the Research Council. Testimony confirmed the practical impossibility of comparing costs of training films produced commercially with the cost of those produced at Astoria, where topflight directors and other
specialists who received enormous salaries in civil life had been acquired through the draft. Comparative costs were discussed, but the figures had little meaning. At no time, however, did the committee or the men it heard intimate that Hollywood had produced inferior films or that it had overcharged for its services. To the contrary, suspicion seemed rooted in the fact that the Research Council had not charged as much as it might have.136
Many of the committee’s questions centered around Colonel Zanuck and his status and duties as an officer. The matter had also figured prominently in The Inspector General’s report, which had devoted one entire section to the Zanuck matter. Essentially, the criticism was based upon the fact that from the time Colonel Zanuck was called to active duty in early 1942 until August 1942, he had continued to hold his position as chairman of the Research Council and his corporate connection with 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation, although he had drawn no salary as an Army officer and although his status had been known and approved by the Chief Signal Officer. There was no suggestion that Colonel Zanuck had in any way influenced the selection of military personnel, or the business relations of the companies doing business with the Signal Corps, by virtue of his position with the Research Council. On the contrary, as Secretary Patterson testified, there had been wide agreement that Zanuck’s expert services had been of immense value to the War Department, both before and after Pearl Harbor. The chairman of the committee suggested that he might well have performed the same services as a civilian, but Secretary Patterson pointed out that Zanuck’s duties in the combat areas could not have been performed by a civilian.137
The hearings came to a close. No formal report of findings was made, and on the whole the committee seemed satisfied that the matter might well be dropped. As to the Zanuck affair, a spokesman for the committee told the Deputy Chief Signal Officer that the committee members were completely satisfied, did not care to interview Colonel Zanuck, and were “sorry that they had bothered the Signal Corps in the first place.”138 Chief of Staff Marshall personally wrote the Truman Committee, giving Colonel Zanuck “a fine boost” and expressing himself as believing that Zanuck had received unjust treatment.139 On 1 June 1943 the War Department approved Zanuck’s request for relief from active duty.
Early in July General Somervell relinquished his direct control of the Army Pictorial Service and it reverted to its original status as a part of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer, with Colonel Lawton again in charge.140 There had been no understanding that the transfer out of Signal Corps was temporary, but it can be inferred that Somervell had made the arrangement for at least two reasons. For one thing, he may have been convinced that the move would forestall further criticism from government investigating committees. Furthermore, Secretary Patterson testified before the Truman Committee that the organizational level which the Signal Corps occupied did not give it the necessary authority to deal decisively with other services on the same or higher echelons.141 In the case of day-to-day
operations, this argument would seem to have little weight, but when fundamental policy decisions involving other services were at stake it assumed validity. It was particularly pertinent because General Olmstead was out of the country during most of the period, on an overseas inspection trip involving important supply matters. In other words, this was a situation where “big brother” could command attention more effectively.
During the three months General Harrison as chief was responsible only to General Somervell, Harrison applied himself intensively to the problems of APS. Reporting to the new Chief Signal Officer on 2 July, Harrison outlined what he had accomplished. “Internal administration of the Army Pictorial Service and responsibilities of the individual groups have been spelled out,” he said. He mentioned also the revision of distribution and library service which had taken place under his direction, the beginning of a program for improvement of overseas operations, the setting up of a long-range program for improvement of V-mail operations, a review of the status of items of equipment and supply and steps taken to expedite procurement, and a review of training films scheduled by AGF and ASF to determine their essentiality.142 Harrison concluded by saying that he believed APS was “now on a going basis,” that the staff was capable, and, in effect, that all that was required was to continue the present policies.
Summary: The Status of APS at Mid-Year 1943
The administrative upheaval that followed the various investigations of late 1942 and early 1943 neither wrecked the Army Pictorial Service nor altered its basic design very drastically. Nevertheless, it served to focus attention upon weaknesses and deficiencies which in the year that followed were corrected to bring the Army’s photographic service to a high peak of efficiency. The strong, centralized control of Army photography was still lacking, but APS officers were beginning to achieve the desired results by closer cooperative relations between initiating and producing agencies. Several of the measures taken in 1942 were definitely helpful to the Signal Corps—for example, the SOS directives of October and December which required all services to prepare lists of their film projects, with priorities desired, and estimates of the time each would require, so that the Signal Corps could establish reasonably accurate production schedules. The same directives forbade all services except the Signal Corps to enter upon negotiations with any commercial motion picture producer.143 Decentralization of production scheduling from the APS headquarters within the Office of the Chief Signal Officer to the SCPC at Astoria was a step toward better control of production. The SCPC soon established a series of status reports and a system of rigidly controlled fiscal and accounting policies which also served to regulate training film activities. Several of the reforms accomplished during General Harrison’s tenure, especially the consolidation and standardization of distribution and use procedures, were definitely beneficial.
Most of the difficulties that beset the Army’s training film program in the first eighteen months of war were the result of two factors common to many other Army activities. First of all, the demand was too big and came too suddenly to be absorbed without some mistakes and frictions. In the second place, both the using and producing agencies lacked experience. Men from the commercial field were new to Army doctrine and procedures and to the use of films as training aids. Instructors and educator-advisers knew the effectiveness of visual aids but did not know the techniques needed to create effectiveness. Old line Regular Army officers knew what they wanted their men to do and to learn but did not know the limitations and the possibilities of films as training aids.144 By mid-1943 requesting agencies had learned from experience a great deal about the intricacies of training films and the Signal Corps’ problems in producing them and were cooperating at every step, to the mutual benefit of all concerned.
The period of greatest productivity in the Army Pictorial Service still lay ahead, particularly in the field of combat photography.145 Nevertheless, already a substantial record of achievement could be pointed out. During the fiscal year 1943, approximately 135,000 16-mm. prints and 24,000 35-mm. prints of training films were made available to film libraries in the United States and overseas. There were 200,000 bookings of forty-four subjects filmed for the Corps of Engineers alone. Some 655,600 still picture prints were distributed for technical and publicity use.146
The APS had grown from 154 officers, 531 enlisted men, and 667 civilians, at the end of June 1942, to 414 officers, 909 enlisted men, and 1,661 civilian employees by the end of June 1943. Appropriations for the photographic service had increased during the same period from less than five million dollars to more than twenty million dollars. V-mail costs alone now amounted to almost four million dollars, and within the year 273 enlisted men and 33 officers had received training in the operation of stations at the Official Photo Mail Station at Washington.147 During the calendar year 1942 the School at the SCPC graduated 525 men, and, in 1943, 101 officers and 652 enlisted men. The Army Pictorial Service was well on its way toward the fine record of accomplishment with which it was widely credited at the end of the war.148