The father of naval
photography, Walter Leroy "Dick" Richardson, enlisted as a ship's cook on 1 November 1911. In 1914, he transferred to
Naval Air Station Pensacola, where his hobby of photography earned him the designation of
Official Station Photographer. Richardson reenlisted as an
Aviation machinist's mate in 1915 and, after attending the Army school of
aerial photography at
Langley Air Force Base, organized the Navy's photographic section of
Bureau of Navigation. In 1918, Richardson was commissioned as an officer of the
Naval Reserve Flying Corps at the first Navy photo school at NAS
Miami, Florida. When
World War I ended
Lieutenant (junior grade) Richardson and a few enlisted personnel opened a school at
Anacostia training navy photographers for still photography, aerial photography,
motion picture photography,
developing and printing. The school moved to NAS Pensacola in 1923, and the first navy photographic training textbook was published in 1927. As
World War II unfolded in Europe, a Navy officer was sent to England to observe and adopt British
photo interpretation methods. He returned to set up the Navy's first photographic interpretation school. As the war expanded, Navy photographers were trained by
Movietone News,
Kodak, and
Fairchild Camera and Instrument company. Many civilian photographers fulfilled their military obligation by serving in combat photography units (CPUs). The war saw 1,500 naval officers and 5,300 enlisted men trained at the Navy photography school. The Navy Photographic Science Laboratory established in
Washington, D.C. in 1943, was later renamed the Naval Photographic Center. In 1948, the photographer's mate abbreviation changed from PHOM to PH, and the symbol of the camera on the rating badge was replaced by divergent light rays passing through a lens. As jet aircraft appeared, the old film width was replaced by and then film in larger cameras. The
RF-8 Crusader was replaced by the
RA-5 Vigilante aboard super carriers equipped with a chute from the
flight deck to a photo darkroom so film packages detached from the aircraft upon landing could be fed into developing machines to be available for debriefing when the pilot reached his ready room. Navy photographers were sent to the
University of Southern California to study motion picture production techniques, and to
Syracuse University for
photojournalism training. ==Sources==