Slideshows

Zuan, Pham Jim Wold Day 2May15 On the Ramp

The Don Englebreston Collection

On the ramp at the Tennessee Museum of Aviation, veterans, pilots, and volunteers gather around the preserved A-1 Skyraider "Lieutenant America" during the 2 May 2015 Jim Wold Day reunion, including attendees Phil and Lisa Wold, Susan Pham, and pilot Lt. Randy Scott. The photographs capture cockpit portraits, group gatherings, and close friendships among the A-1 Skyraider Association members who honor the aircraft's Vietnam War legacy.

Z RAW SCANS

The Don Englebreston Collection

Unprocessed slide scans from Don Engebretsen's Vietnam-era collection, including two A-1E Skyraiders taxiing circa 1969, a pilot doused with water beside his "AF 39" Skyraider, a serviceman in an embroidered souvenir shirt, and a mountain-ringed bay seen from a screened porch. Straight off the original slides, these frames pair flight-line moments with the off-duty scenes that filled the hours between missions.

Xuan, Pham Jim Wold Day 2May15 Meeting

The Don Englebreston Collection

Veterans and family members gather inside the Tennessee Museum of Aviation for a recorded reunion meeting and discussion session honoring Vietnamese Air Force A-1 Skyraider pilot Xuan Pham and USAF advisor Jim Wold. Photographs show speakers addressing the group, a digital photo archive review, and attendees surrounded by museum exhibits from the World War I, World War II, and Vietnam eras, preserving firsthand wartime recollections.

Xuan, Pham Jim Wold Day 2May15 Lunch

The Don Englebreston Collection

Veterans and guests fill their plates and mingle at a buffet lunch inside the main hangar of the Tennessee Museum of Aviation during the 2015 Jim Wold Day reunion. The candid photographs capture attendees such as Lois Cavender and Don Engebretsen sharing stories, honoring Vietnamese and American A-1 Skyraider veterans decades after their wartime service.

Xuan, Pham Jim Wold Day 2May15 In the Museum

The Don Englebreston Collection

Reunion attendees browse the museum gift shop during the 2015 Jim Wold Day event, including Vietnamese Air Force veteran Xuan Pham, "Sandy" rescue pilot Jim Wold, and retired USAF veteran Mel Swanson. The candid photographs capture friendly reconnections and embraces among American and Vietnamese airmen who once served together flying A-1 Skyraiders during the Vietnam War.

Xuan, Pham Jim Wold Day 2May15 Dinner

The Don Englebreston Collection

Veterans and guests gather for an evening reception and banquet inside a warbird museum hangar during the 2 May 2015 Jim Wold Day reunion, mingling beneath displays like the P-51 Mustang "Frenesi" and an F-104 Starfighter. The images capture warm reunions and portraits, including retired USAF veteran Mel Swanson, honoring the bonds between Vietnamese Air Force A-1 Skyraider pilots and their American advisors.

Xuan, Pham Jim Wold Day 2May15 In the Air

The Don Englebreston Collection

A sequence of air-to-air photographs captures a restored Douglas A-1 Skyraider, marked with US insignia and the identifier "TC 665," banking and climbing through the sky during the Jim Wold Day commemorative flying event on 2 May 2015. The images highlight the aircraft's wartime configuration and markings, honoring its combat service with American and South Vietnamese Air Force pilots during the Vietnam War.

Xuan, Pham

The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow follows VNAF pilot Lieutenant Pham Minh Xuan and his A-1 Skyraider (Tail 014) of the 530th Fighter Squadron "Jupiters" at Pleiku Air Base in 1972. Images include cockpit portraits before and after a sortie and a flight-line scene with ground crew, highlighting the aircraft's ordnance load and the teamwork behind South Vietnamese Air Force combat operations.

Wolf 06

The Don Englebreston Collection

An aerial reconnaissance photo captures the Ban Phanop Valley in Laos, a heavily targeted segment of the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the Vietnam War. Bomb craters scarring the hillsides bear witness to repeated U.S. air strikes aimed at cutting North Vietnamese supply lines through the jungle corridor.

Wold Photos

The Don Englebreston Collection

A USAF aircrew stands for a formal group portrait in front of their aircraft, numbered "535." Squadron portraits like this one preserved the identities and camaraderie of the men who served together, often taken just before or just after a combat deployment.

Watermarked Maps

The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow displays an annotated topographic map from the Joe Parnar Collection marking air support strike coordinates called in during Operation Tailwind, the September 1970 MACV-SOG raid into Laos. Red markings trace the close air support that helped cover the Hatchet Force company's fighting withdrawal and extraction under heavy enemy pressure.

VNAF Classes

The Don Englebreston Collection

A class photograph of South Vietnamese Air Force student pilots standing before the A-1 Skyraider they trained on at Hurlburt Field, Florida. Part of the U.S. Air Force's Vietnamization training programs, these VNAF airmen learned the Skyraider alongside American instructors before returning to fly combat missions in South Vietnam.

Vietnam Sorted Photos 90% Watermarked

The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow shows a Vietnam War-era pilot inspecting ordnance beneath the wing of an A-1 Skyraider before a mission, with red "Remove Before Flight" safety streamers visible as a critical pre-flight check. The image reflects the daily routine of Skyraider crews preparing for combat sorties over Vietnam.

Vietnam Slides

The Don Englebreston Collection

Don Fulton's Vietnam slides range across the 6th Special Operations Squadron's hand-painted "Home of the Spads" sign, A-1 Skyraiders banking over jungle mountains, a B-52 clawing for altitude, Cessna O-2 Skymaster FAC aircraft on the ramp beside UH-1 Hueys, a KC-135 tanker in flight, a VF-161 Phantom launching from a carrier deck, and two green-bereted servicemen at a radome installation. The collection assembles the full cast of the Southeast Asian air war, from Arc Light bombers and Yankee Station carrier operations to the low-and-slow Forward Air Controllers who marked targets for the Skyraiders overhead.

Vietnam Proprietary

The Don Englebreston Collection

A blank PACAF Form 20b "General Purpose Worksheet" from November 1967, the standard mission-logging form used by Pacific Air Forces combat units during the Vietnam War. Though unfilled, it illustrates the detailed record-keeping used to track sorties, FAC call signs, flying time, and bomb damage assessment.

Vietnam Patches

The Don Englebreston Collection

Embroidered squadron patches associated with A-1 Skyraider pilots who flew the "Sandy" rescue-escort role during the Vietnam War, providing close air support and protecting downed airmen. Included is a "Spad" patch comparison of a reproduction against a worn original marking 200 completed missions, reflecting the intense operational tempo these pilots endured.

Vietnam lower resolution files A-1

The Don Englebreston Collection

Color photographs of A-1 Skyraiders in Vietnam show shark-mouthed "628" on search-and-rescue alert, air-to-air views framed by rocket pods, a battle-damaged fuselage, and squadron buildings at a Southeast Asia air base. Alongside the aircraft are glimpses of life around the war, from Vietnamese women carrying shoulder-pole baskets in November 1969 to a portable reel-to-reel recorder of the kind families used to send spoken letters home.

Vietnam Files

The Don Englebreston Collection

A memorial roster compiled and shared within the Skyraider veteran community honors the U.S. Navy and Air Force airmen lost during A-1 operations in Southeast Asia. Paired with it is a 1965 view of the bomb storage dump at Qui Nhon Air Base, where rows of aerial ordnance behind sandbag revetments show how quickly American air operations expanded in the early years of the Vietnam War.

Vietnam Documents

The Don Englebreston Collection

A scanned AF Form 1098 Personnel Action Request dated January 1970, assigning 1st Lt John W. Weinig as an Operational Fighter Pilot flying the A-1E Skyraider with the 56th Special Operations Wing. The caption frames it as an example of the administrative bureaucracy behind combat flying duty, marking the start of a Vietnam-era Sandy pilot's assignment.

Vietnam

The Don Englebreston Collection

A Bureau of Aeronautics three-view line drawing of the Douglas AD-4 Skyraider, a carrier-based propeller-driven attack aircraft. Later redesignated the A-1, it became renowned in the Vietnam War for close air support and 'Sandy' combat search-and-rescue escort missions.

VIETNAM

The Don Englebreston Collection

1Lt. Jim Seith of the 1st Special Operations Squadron taxis his shark-mouthed A-1J Skyraider, serial 142053, past F-4 Phantom pilots at Da Nang Air Base. Wearing a vintage leather helmet, goggles, and scarf, Seith gave his Skyraider a touch of old-school warbird flair, a playful nod to the aircraft's WWII lineage in the jet age of Vietnam.

Untitled Export

The Don Englebreston Collection

Four airmen pose together in their barracks quarters during a quiet off-duty moment of the Vietnam War era. A reel-to-reel tape recorder, a stereo receiver, and a unit flag in the background hint at daily life away from the flight line, and at the camaraderie squadron mates built far from home.

Unkn Photog

The Don Englebreston Collection

The shoulder patch of U.S. Air Force Tactical Air Command, the major command behind America's tactical fighter, attack, and reconnaissance forces. Among them were many of the A-1 Skyraider units that flew close air support and rescue-escort missions during the Vietnam War.

Unkn Photog

The Don Englebreston Collection

A close look at the Douglas A-1 Skyraider in Southeast Asia: manual cutaway and ejection-seat diagrams, underwing loads of cluster bomb dispensers and rocket pods, formation shots of the RESCUE-marked 'Miss Aileen,' and a static memorial example wearing tail code 'TC.' Also here are the hazards of the job — a captured Soviet-pattern 37mm anti-aircraft gun and an emergency touchdown on a foam-treated runway — rounding out the story of the 'Spad' and its Sandy rescue-escort crews.

TWD Don Engebretsen

The Don Englebreston Collection

Don Engebretsen's photographs move between warbird fly-ins, where a restored T-28 Trojan taxis the apron and pilot Neal Melton sits in the cockpit of trainer No. 129, and the restaurant tables where Operation Tailwind veterans and families gather for dinner. Together they document the reunion life that has grown up around the 1970 MACV-SOG raid into Laos, honoring the aircraft that flew in support of it and the bonds among those who lived it.

TW docs

The Don Englebreston Collection

Scanned pages of the Operation Tailwind after-action report join an annotated reference map of MACV-SOG's operating area along the Laos/Vietnam border. The typewritten narrative recounts a helicopter shootdown and rescue, a night held off with bamboo clicks and an AC-130 Spectre gunship, and an assault on a fortified enemy base camp, while the map locates the Ho Chi Minh Trail passes, the NVA's "Oscar Eight" headquarters, and the Bolovens Plateau where it all unfolded.

Tom Stump Tailwind Testamony

The Don Englebreston Collection

A Douglas A-1 Skyraider in Vietnam-era camouflage, nose art reading "Charlene" and engine running on the display ramp, paired with a Vietnam veteran seated once again in a Skyraider cockpit, reaching for controls he once knew by feel. The pairing links the aircraft still preserved in flying condition to the men who flew it on "Sandy" rescue escorts and covert cross-border missions, in a moment of the kind captured for oral history work surrounding Operation Tailwind.

Tom Stump JPEGs WM Med

The Don Englebreston Collection

From the personal collection of Tom Stump, these Vietnam War photographs range from a Sikorsky CH-3/HH-3E "Jolly Green Giant" resting on the ramp to the hand-painted "Home of the Spads" sign that marked the 56th Special Operations Wing's revetments at Nakhon Phanom RTAFB in Thailand. Alongside the aircraft and airbase scenes, a street-level view of a South Vietnamese city — storefronts, motorbikes, and a pedestrian-safety banner overhead — captures the civilian daily life that carried on beside the war.

Tom Stump JPEG's

The Don Englebreston Collection

A U.S. Marine Corps A-4 Skyhawk of VMA-311, the "Tomcats," cruises above the clouds over Vietnam in a rare air-to-air view taken from a fellow pilot's cockpit. Flying from bases such as Chu Lai and Da Nang, VMA-311's Skyhawks delivered close air support to Marine and Army ground forces throughout the war.

Tom Stump Final No WM

The Don Englebreston Collection

Two Vietnam War photographs of A-1 Skyraider men and machines: an airman beside the "Home of the Spads" sign marking the 56th Special Operations Wing's revetment area, and a portrait of pilot Tom Stump standing with his aircraft. Details like the underwing gun pod and the yellow "RESCUE" arrow near the cockpit show the propeller-driven "Spad" as its crews knew it, flying close air support and rescue escort well into the jet age.

Tom Stump FINAL JPEG LG w WM

The Don Englebreston Collection

Vietnam War images from the personal collection of Air Force veteran Tom Stump: a remote jungle airstrip seen from the air, an airman perched atop a bomb on a munitions trailer, another geared up beside the nose of an A-1 Skyraider, and a South Vietnamese town street busy with civilian traffic and a passing military truck. Together they move between the operational and the everyday, from airstrips supporting covert resupply and reconnaissance to the lighter moments and local scenes that filled the spaces between missions.

Tom Stump

The Don Englebreston Collection

Photographs by airman Tom Stump follow the A-1 Skyraider "Tiny Tim," tail-coded TT-056, as it banks over the jungles of Southeast Asia with a minigun pod and ordnance slung beneath its wing. Back on the ground, an airman perches atop a loaded munitions trailer — the unguarded, everyday side of wartime service between close air support missions.

TN Museum of Avition Photos

The Don Englebreston Collection

A restored P-47 Thunderbolt named 'Wicked Wabbit' on display at the Tennessee Museum of Aviation. One of the most rugged and heavily armed American fighters of World War II, the Thunderbolt's powerful radial engine and legendary ability to absorb battle damage carried it into every theater of the war on bomber escort and ground attack missions.

Tilt thumb drive Copy

The Don Englebreston Collection

A group of servicemen huddles close around a comrade mid-briefing, absorbed in final instructions or an after-action account somewhere in the Vietnam field. This candid, film-captured moment reflects the tight bonds and constant communication that defined life within Special Forces teams during the war.

Tilt Meyer

The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow features a MACV-SOG reconnaissance team group portrait near Phu Bai alongside images of veteran Gary "Tilt" Meyer revisiting a preserved UH-34 "Kingbee" helicopter cockpit. It also includes a veterans panel session on Operation Tailwind, reflecting ongoing efforts to preserve firsthand accounts of the 1970 MACV-SOG mission into Laos.

Texas A-1 Trip, Ed, Bob, Dean Jun 2013

The Don Englebreston Collection

Two men pose together during the June 2013 "Texas A-1 Trip," a reunion visit shared by Ed, Bob, and Dean. Decades after their Vietnam War service, gatherings like this one continue to draw veterans and associates of the A-1 Skyraider community back together.

Terry Bolstad Form 5_s No 20b

The Don Englebreston Collection

An official Air Force Form 5, Pilot's Individual Flight Record, documenting Captain Terry Bolstad's flying for June 1970. The record logs 31.1 hours that month against a career total of 1,493.2 flight hours including 449.0 hours of combat time, offering a precise, quantifiable window into the operational tempo of Air Force pilots in Vietnam.

Terry Bolstad Form 5's No 20b

The Don Englebreston Collection

Temp or Discard

The Don Englebreston Collection

Discarded and working-variant files from a Special Operations Association Reunion banner project, including alternate tonal passes of the OLAA mascot pig, a sharpened billet interior, squadron office and formation shots, and heavily upscaled or retouched Skyraider images. Each file was set aside for being duplicate, low-resolution, over-processed, or otherwise unsuitable for the finished banner, though the underlying Vietnam War subject matter is genuine.

Temp JWD for OLAA Email

The Don Englebreston Collection

Scenes from "Jim Wold Day," the May 2, 2015 reunion that filled a hangar and airport ramp with veterans, families, and a restored A-1 Skyraider "Lieutenant America" banking overhead. Between the buffet line, the panel discussion, and the group portrait of unit ballcaps on the ramp, these images capture how Air Commando and special operations veterans keep their history and their friendships alive.

Temp Holding

The Don Englebreston Collection

Ground crew prepare the Douglas A-1 Skyraider "Lieutenant America" (TC-665) with its wing folded, a routine sight at airfields throughout the aircraft's long service life. The Skyraider was the rugged, propeller-driven attack aircraft flown by U.S. Air Force "Sandy" pilots in Vietnam to escort search-and-rescue helicopters and cover downed airmen and special operations teams.

Tailwind Master pics

The Don Englebreston Collection

American servicemen identified as Bustamante, Picone, and Howard gather informally outside barracks at a forward base during the Vietnam War. Their tiger-stripe fatigues and the improvised camp architecture around them reflect the unconventional world of SOG operations along the Laos-Cambodia border, preserving the everyday camaraderie behind Operation Tailwind's covert missions.

Tailwind Documents

The Don Englebreston Collection

A commemorative collage banner titled "SPADS for MACVSOG" pays tribute to the A-1 Skyraider pilots and ground crews of the 56th Special Operations Wing. Their close air support and rescue cover protected MACV-SOG's covert reconnaissance teams throughout the Vietnam War, including during Operation Tailwind.

Tailwind Day Redux

The Don Englebreston Collection

Scenes from the "Tailwind Day Redux" reunion, where veterans including A-1 pilot Roger Youngblood gather beside preserved Skyraiders "America" and a "Sandy"-marked airframe, and engraved "BOB" memorial bracelets are worn in tribute. The gathering honors the men of Operation Tailwind, the classified 1970 MACV-SOG mission into Laos, and the rugged Skyraider that covered search-and-rescue and special operations forces deep in hostile territory.

tailwind

The Don Englebreston Collection

An aerial photograph looks out over the rugged, forested mountains of the Laotian panhandle, likely the Bolovens Plateau region. Captured from a supporting aircraft, the view shows the remote and difficult country MACV-SOG reconnaissance teams crossed during the September 1970 Operation Tailwind mission along the Ho Chi Minh Trail corridor.

T-28

The Don Englebreston Collection

A static-display view of a North American T-28 Trojan at the Tennessee Museum of Aviation, the primary U.S. military flight trainer of the 1950s. The caption notes that armed T-28D variants went on to fly close air support and counterinsurgency missions in Vietnam and Laos.

Symposium Final JPEG Sm

The Don Englebreston Collection

Symposium Final JPEG Med

The Don Englebreston Collection

Symposium Final JPEG Lg

The Don Englebreston Collection

Symposium Final JPEG Ex Lg

The Don Englebreston Collection

Ten extra-large final images from the 2014 SOAR Symposium, showing veterans such as Larry Warren, Levy Rentz, Jackson Roberts, and Dan Wall speaking and interacting during panel sessions. Captions describe unit patches like "SPADS" and "Yankee Air Pirate" that trace the airmen's Vietnam-era special operations service.

Susan Kasbeer Mel SOA Video Audience

The Don Englebreston Collection

Attendees watch a video presentation during the Mel Swanson Day ceremony, seated among the static aircraft displays of a museum hangar. The image captures how gatherings like this one carry the personal stories of veterans forward to new generations of visitors.

Steve Moore RT Vermont

The Don Englebreston Collection

Shows two MACV-SOG recon soldiers, identified as Franklin D. "Doug" Miller and Edward Wolcoff of Recon Team Vermont, photographed together in camp in South Vietnam. Unlike their sterile cross-border fatigues, their in-camp uniforms display full insignia, name tapes, and chevrons, along with hand-lettered team identity items such as a cap stencilled "RECON."

Special Forces Charitable Trust MOH Reception

The Don Englebreston Collection

Scenes from the Special Forces Charitable Trust reception of October 23, 2017 show Captain Gary "Mike" Rose embracing a fellow veteran, addressing the room while wearing the Medal of Honor, guests arriving and posing for group portraits, an officer offering a toast, and a commemorative painting of the mission held up by the men who carried it out. Also on view is Tom Nielsen's signed limited-edition print "The Last Patrol," bearing the signatures of numerous Medal of Honor recipients gathered to mark Rose's long-overdue recognition for Operation Tailwind in Laos.

Spads for Sog Website

The Don Englebreston Collection

Photographs, mission logs, and rescue records trace the A-1 Skyraider pilots who flew close air support and rescue escort for MACV-SOG's covert cross-border operations in Laos. Highlights include a shark-mouthed "Spad" banking under a full bomb load, a handwritten account of a "Blind Bat" crewman who survived a 3,000-foot night fall, the 13 January 1970 sortie log recording his recovery, and a commemorative Prairie Fire SAR patch.

SOAR, Portland, Wold Trip Pictures

The Don Englebreston Collection

Travel photographs from a Special Operations Association Reunion road trip to Portland, spanning snowy mountain passes, high desert highways lined with blooming sagebrush, sweeping Death Valley overlooks, and a fog-shrouded Multnomah Falls. Alongside the scenery is a memorial of three retired T-38 Talons in Thunderbirds colors, and together these images record the personal journeys that ran beside the Air Commando and Special Operations history preserved in this collection.

SOAR XL

The Don Englebreston Collection

Ten photographs from the SOAR XL (40th) Special Operations Association Reunion, held in Las Vegas in October 2016, spanning casino corridor and skyline shots, emotional embraces between veterans, and exhibit hall scenes with unit memorabilia. Highlights include the "SPADS for MACVSOG" signature banner honoring A-1 Skyraider pilots, a "21st Kingbee" cap referencing MACV-SOG helicopter crews, and a panel discussion at The Orleans Hotel & Casino.

SOAR Banner Pic Files ATTEMPT 1

The Don Englebreston Collection

Working scans and processed source images gathered for a Special Operations Association Reunion banner, spanning battle damage, armed and loaded A-1 Skyraiders, a hose-down mission celebration, a MACV-SOG ladder extraction, and the OLAA mascot hog. The set also includes cockpit and crew portraits, a munitions trailer photo, and a hand-painted "56 SOW SPADS" emblem, all documenting Skyraider support of MACV-SOG reconnaissance and rescue missions.

SOAR BANNER 2013

The Don Englebreston Collection

A small, low-resolution working copy of a Vietnam-era photograph showing A-1 Skyraider 628, with its sharkmouth nose art, starting its engine on a Southeast Asian ramp. The file is one of several sizing tests made while preparing the image for a Special Operations Association Reunion banner and is too small for display-scale printing.

SOAR 2018

The Don Englebreston Collection

Six photographs, several in sideways or inverted orientation, from the 2018 Special Operations Association Reunion (SOAR), capturing a signing table of wartime photographs, an affectionate reunion embrace, and a formal recognition ceremony before the American flag. Other images show veterans posing with a Tennessee Museum of Aviation A-1 Skyraider banner, a close-up of a wartime photo album being signed, and attendees mingling near vendor tables.

SOAR 2015

The Don Englebreston Collection

Ten photographs from SOAR XXXIX, the 2015 Special Operations Association Reunion in Las Vegas, showing speakers and panelists identified by aviator wings, U.S./Thai flag patches, and A-1 Skyraider caps and shirts. Additional images show a Special Forces Vietnam veteran's cap, POW*MIA and MACV-SOG-style insignia among attendees, and a panel session held beneath the Budweiser-sponsored SOAR XXXIX banner.

SOAR 2014 Symposium

The Don Englebreston Collection

A veterans panel discussion at the 2014 SOAR Symposium, where Air Force Special Operations veterans share stories and answer questions. The reunion preserves firsthand accounts of Vietnam-era special operations missions and honors the units these veterans served with.

SOAR 2014 Pro Photos

The Don Englebreston Collection

Ten photographs from SOAR XXXVIII, the 2014 Special Operations Association Reunion in Las Vegas, centered on the SOG/SPAD Symposium panel sessions where A-1 Skyraider aircrew and MACV-SOG reconnaissance veterans compared firsthand accounts. Images capture badge-wearing attendees, open-microphone discussion, and Don Engebretsen's signature orange Skyraider "party suit" amid panelists bearing Yankee Air Pirate, SPAD, and unit insignia.

SOAR 2014 AAR

The Don Englebreston Collection

Ten images from the 2014 Special Operations Association Reunion covering the vendor hall, the "SPADS for MACVSOG" banner display, and the SPAD symposium, alongside informal social gatherings of veterans and guests. Captions identify individuals such as Don and Linda Engebretsen, Neal Melton, Larry Warren, and John Waresh, and describe the orange flight party suits and MACV-SOG insignia worn throughout the reunion.

SOAR 2014

The Don Englebreston Collection

Veterans gather and reminisce at the 2014 SOAR reunion beneath a banner reading "Spads" and "MACVSOG," surrounded by memorabilia from both communities. The display honors the A-1 Skyraider pilots and Studies and Observations Group personnel behind clandestine Vietnam War operations, and reunions like this keep alive the bonds formed between aircrews and the special operations teams they supported.

SOAR 2014

The Don Englebreston Collection

Photographs from the 2014 Special Operations Association Reunion, featuring hotel ballroom panel sessions and the completed "SPADS for MACVSOG" banner honoring A-1 Skyraider crews of the 56th Special Operations Wing. Attendees including John Waresh, Doug Carmichael and Larry Warren are shown in matching Skyraider group shirts, gathered around unit displays that commemorate MACV-SOG's cross-border reconnaissance support.

SOAR 2013 Pictures

The Don Englebreston Collection

Photographs from the 2013 Special Operations Association Reunion in Las Vegas, showing the ballroom floor, registration and merchandise tables, code-name reference sheets, and militaria and archive displays. The images capture veterans of MACV-SOG and allied units researching records, browsing memorabilia, and gathering for panel discussions and conversation.

SOAR 2013

The Don Englebreston Collection

Veterans of Vietnam-era special operations units gather for a group portrait at the 2013 Special Operations Association Reunion. Bringing together former SOG, Air Commando, and Studies and Observations Group personnel, reunions like SOAR are where old comrades reconnect, share memorabilia, and keep the history of their service alive.

SOAR

The Don Englebreston Collection

An advertisement for the Tennessee Museum of Aviation in Sevierville, Tennessee, features a camouflaged A-1 Skyraider named "TC 665" among the museum's collection of historic warbirds. The ad promotes the venue for tours, reunions, and living history events honoring Vietnam-era aviation.

smallcockpit

The Don Englebreston Collection

A close look inside an A-1H Skyraider cockpit at the right-side console and armament panel, densely packed with switches and controls. Skyraider pilots managed an enormous variety of ordnance and systems by hand, and this detail view shows the workload built into one of the most rugged attack aircraft flown over Vietnam.

Skyraider

The Don Englebreston Collection

Close views of a restored A-1 Skyraider on static display at the Tennessee Museum of Aviation, taking in the radial engine cowling, original nose and cockpit stenciling, and the armament selector switch labeled for rockets and bombs. The surviving data blocks and mechanically direct cockpit controls show exactly what pilots and ground crews worked with on close air support and rescue escort missions over Vietnam.

SGT Miller1.el6.Data

The Don Englebreston Collection

A scrapbook page from the SGT Miller Vietnam War photo collection documenting the Dak To/Kontum border region of South Vietnam in 1969, with images of the Dak Blah river, a stretch of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and a captured 12.7mm heavy machine gun. Hand-written captions referencing a "Hatchet Force" seizure near a reconnaissance company's orderly room tie the page to MACV-SOG's covert cross-border operations against North Vietnamese infiltration routes.

SARTapes

The Don Englebreston Collection

A single hand-annotated Search and Rescue planning map of the Hanoi approach corridor in North Vietnam, marking a helicopter "Jolly Green Orbit Point" and terrain feature "Banana Valley." The map reflects the planning behind dangerous missions to recover downed American aircrew from deep within North Vietnam's most heavily defended airspace.

RT Vermont Google Earth Pro

The Don Englebreston Collection

Present-day Google Earth Pro screen captures used by researchers to pinpoint the disputed wartime location of Recon Team Vermont near the Vietnam-Laos-Cambodia tri-border, with placemarks for the team's position and a supporting Hatchet Force. Annotated views trace the international boundary and terrain to reconcile MACV-SOG after-action reports and memory with the ground as it looks today.

Rick Chorlins

The Don Englebreston Collection

A museum exhibit case honoring U.S. Air Force officer Richard D. Chorlins, displaying his Air Force Academy uniform, orange flight suit with Tactical Air Command patch, service cap, and First Lieutenant shoulder boards. His decorations, including the Purple Heart, Bronze Star, Air Medal, and Distinguished Flying Cross, sit alongside period photographs documenting a career from the Academy through Vietnam War service.

Rhonda Melton Tailwind Day Photos

The Don Englebreston Collection

Decades after their 1970 mission, veterans of Operation Tailwind reunite for a group photo at their "Operating Location Alpha Alpha" gathering on April 30, 2016. The former MACV-SOG comrades stand together before a preserved A-1 Skyraider, the very type of aircraft that once flew cover for their operations.

Reunion Event Photos

The Don Englebreston Collection

Restored warbirds gather at a veterans reunion, from the folded-wing A-1 Skyraider "Lieutenant America" and P-47 Thunderbolts "Wicked Wabbit" and "Hun Hunter" to the P-51D Mustang "Ain't Misbehavin'" being readied for flight. Shot largely at the June 2014 fly-in at Gatlinburg-Pigeon Forge Airport, these images catch the working side of warbird preservation too, with avgas trucks, volunteer maintenance crews, and close details of a radial engine and Hamilton Standard propeller.

Redacted JPEG

The Don Englebreston Collection

A single official USAF Form 5 flight record for 1Lt Donald L. Engebretsen, dated January 1970. The document accounts for his A-1 Skyraider combat sorties and flight hours during the Vietnam War.

PRP Photos

The Don Englebreston Collection

A set of images from Skyraider Association reunion and tribute events, featuring veterans and enthusiasts gathered at an airfield, a man posing on a restored warbird's wing, and a Douglas A-1 Skyraider taking off in period camouflage. Also included is an official USAF Brigadier General portrait, tying the collection together through shared Vietnam War-era Air Commando and Special Operations history.

Proud American

The Don Englebreston Collection

A flight-line photograph from Vietnam featuring the Douglas A-1 Skyraider "The Proud American" in the foreground, with a second Skyraider taxiing on perforated steel planking behind it. The caption describes the rugged, propeller-driven A-1's distinguished service in close air support and search-and-rescue escort roles.

Pictures Walgreens

The Don Englebreston Collection

A 6th Special Operations Squadron A-1 Skyraider banks low over mountainous jungle at dusk, a camouflaged Skyraider flies in formation with a full bomb load, and barbed wire and a guard tower stand silhouetted along an airbase perimeter. Taken by pilots from neighboring aircraft and around the base itself, these images offer a firsthand view of Air Commando strike and rescue-support operations during the Vietnam War.

Pictures

The Don Englebreston Collection

A mixed group of images spanning a reunion banquet under a skull-and-wings special operations banner, a "Spad Symposium" panel at the 2014 SOAR reunion, an aerial view of Vietnamese triple-canopy jungle, and a handmade brass "Mech Man" sculpture on a family dining table. Together they trace the long afterlife of Vietnam-era special operations service, from the terrain that made close air support so difficult to the veterans still sharing their recollections decades later.

PHOTOSHOP TEMP

The Don Englebreston Collection

A nature photograph showing a great blue heron, mallard ducks, and basking turtles sharing a log along a riverbank. The image captures everyday wildlife coexisting near a quiet waterway.

Photos from family

The Don Englebreston Collection

Keepsakes from the DeTar family collection: a sepia-toned portrait sketch of Dean DeTar smiling from his cockpit, and nine airmen posed before their aircraft under hand-painted "Iron Horse / Maiden Lane" nose art. Hand-drawn portraits and group photographs taken in front of an assigned aircraft were cherished traditions of wartime service, holding onto both the camaraderie of squadron life and the identity crews gave their machines.

Photos

The Don Englebreston Collection

Photographs from Lt. Col. Gene McCarley's MACV-SOG collection: the Operation Tailwind ground commander briefing his team, an indigenous SOG reconnaissance member with a bayoneted rifle at a staging area, candid compound life, and a crate of captured RPG-2 rounds. The images offer a rare look inside the Studies and Observations Group, the classified unit whose Montagnard, Nung, and South Vietnamese irregulars carried out cross-border missions into Laos and Cambodia.

Photos

The Don Englebreston Collection

Presents two modern Google Earth screen captures annotated with placemarks proposing locations tied to RT Vermont, including a suspected booby-trap site. The images show how veterans and historians use present-day satellite imagery to relocate wartime MACV-SOG grid coordinates on the ground.

Photos

The Don Englebreston Collection

A formal studio portrait captures Air Force officer Glenn R. Manning in service dress uniform, pilot wings and ribbons proudly displayed. Such portraits were a common rite of passage, taken before deployment or upon completing flight training during the Vietnam War era.

Phil Wold 02May15 Photos

The Don Englebreston Collection

Phil Wold's photographs from 2 May 2015 follow the "Jim Wold Day" reunion from the museum hangar to the ramp, taking in the A-1 Skyraider "Lieutenant America" (TC 665) in Southeast Asia camouflage, the "Wicked Wabbit" nose art of a restored WWII fighter, luncheon gatherings beneath preserved warbirds, and a flyover overhead. Candid portraits of attendees such as Fred and Dwight, along with a street view from nearby Gatlinburg, round out a personal record of the friendships and travels surrounding the tribute to Brigadier General James W. Wold.

OV-10

The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow depicts an OV-10 Bronco awaiting restoration in a museum hangar at the Tennessee Museum of Aviation. It highlights the twin-boom aircraft's Vietnam War role marking targets and coordinating airstrikes as a favored low, slow forward air control plane.

Other

The Don Englebreston Collection

A single image showing eight members in conversation in the reunion display room at the Special Operations Association Reunion XXXVIII, Las Vegas, 2014. The scene features the orange A-1 Skyraider "party suit" and a hall banner marking MACV-SOG's 50th anniversary.

OLAA Slide show WM

The Don Englebreston Collection

Vietnam War photographs of A-1 Skyraiders and the men who flew them — pilots posing beside bomb- and rocket-laden aircraft, air-to-air views of Skyraiders in formation over Southeast Asian terrain, and a busy South Vietnamese town street. Drawn from the Tom Stump, Gary Hawes, and Jax Roberts collections, these aviator-shot images reveal both the firepower of Air Commando close air support and the civilian life that carried on alongside the war.

OLAA Orders

The Don Englebreston Collection

Official 1970 Permanent Change of Station orders reassigning 1st Lt. Charles I. Kasbeer to OL-AA, 56th Special Operations Wing, PACAF. The document reflects the routine paperwork that sent airmen into Vietnam-era special operations assignments.

OLAA Missions

The Don Englebreston Collection

A newspaper clipping titled 'Three Win DFCs For Air Action' reporting on three A-1 Skyraider pilots of the 56th Special Operations Wing at Nakhon Phanom RTAFB. Capt. Richard P. Kent III, 1st Lt. Richard L. Engel, and 1st Lt. Thomas K. Stump were honored with the Distinguished Flying Cross for 1970 combat rescue and close air support missions.

OLAA

The Don Englebreston Collection

Scrapbook and publication pages centered on Operating Location Alpha Alpha, including a composite page from the Don Engebretsen collection pairing A-1 Skyraider "TT 779" in flight with ordnance loading and a squadron reunion. Special Operations Association material rounds out the set, from the 2013-2014 Board of Directors roster to the SOAR XXXVII report cover honoring the shark-mouthed Skyraiders that flew clandestine support for MACV-SOG teams in Laos and Cambodia.

O-1

The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow shows a Cessna O-1 Bird Dog, civil registration N10714, undergoing restoration at the Tennessee Museum of Aviation in civilian yellow livery. It highlights the aircraft's Vietnam War role as a forward air control plane prized for its slow-flight ability to mark enemy positions for strike aircraft.

My Pictures UCMC

The Don Englebreston Collection

The tribute graphic "Once a Marine, Always a Marine" shows an elderly veteran whose shadow becomes the young combat Marine he once was. Widely shared as a symbol of the lifelong bond service members carry with their branch and their brothers-in-arms, it was saved here among the collection's Operation Tailwind commemorative materials.

My Pictures D Drive From PS Class

The Don Englebreston Collection

A small collection of striking outdoor scenes, from a whimsical sculpted figure appearing to float on a still garden lake at dawn to a lone gull surveying a wave-battered Pacific coastline. Together these images pair quiet artistry with the raw beauty of the rugged coast.

Museum Newsletter

The Don Englebreston Collection

Two communities mark "Jim Wold Day" on 2 May 2015: a hometown tribute crowd in Hatton, North Dakota, and a Tennessee aviation museum audience gathered for a presentation and veterans panel discussion in the WWII gallery. Between the exhibit cases of flight jackets and uniforms and a relaxed post-event meal, A-1 Skyraider Association members in "We Fly - We Fight" apparel reconnect and keep the stories of the legendary A-1 alive.

MSD from Kasbeer

The Don Englebreston Collection

Friends, family, and fellow veterans gather in a moving group salute during the "last flight" tribute honoring Mel Swanson. Captured at Mel Swanson Day, the image reflects the bonds of service and remembrance shared among those who knew him.

MSD from Jax

The Don Englebreston Collection

A mounted display plaque holding a fragment of original skin from A-1 Skyraider BuNo 139665, photographed at the 'MSD from Jax' gathering on 19 May 2017. Passed among veterans and enthusiasts, small relics like this tie today's reunions directly to an aircraft that flew combat missions in Vietnam.

MSD from Cavender

The Don Englebreston Collection

Scenes from 'Mel Swanson Day': saluting veterans beneath a low Skyraider flyover, warbirds pressing through storm clouds, smoke-trailing formation passes, the restored A-1 'TC 665' taxiing out, and a panel of aircraft skin signed by friends and family in 2017. Together they capture how the aviation community honors its own, from the time-honored formation salute to a daughter's handwritten message reading 'I Love You Daddy Fly High!'

MSD for AAR

The Don Englebreston Collection

A mounted and labeled fragment of original fuselage skin from A-1 Skyraider serial 139665, brought out for display at a veterans' reunion gathering. Small relics like this tie attendees directly to a specific aircraft and the missions it flew, serving as tangible touchstones of squadron history.

Model Pic and Info

The Don Englebreston Collection

A precision-built scale model of the Douglas A-1 Skyraider under a display dome, carrying tail code 'TC 665' and the camouflage worn by U.S. Air Force Skyraiders over Vietnam. The rugged, propeller-driven A-1 could loiter for hours with a heavy ordnance load, making it a mainstay of close air support and Air Commando search-and-rescue escort missions across Southeast Asia.

Misty 50 A and B

The Don Englebreston Collection

Scanned pages 417 and 418 from the "Misty" chapter of a memoir, telling a first-person account of a Vietnam War combat search and rescue mission. The narrative follows the Forward Air Controller, the A-1 Skyraider "Sandy" pilots laying down covering fire, and the "Jolly Green" helicopter crew whose Pararescueman brought the survivor up on a jungle penetrator and hoist.

Misc. Photos from SOG men

The Don Englebreston Collection

A Vietnam War-era aerial photograph capturing smoke and dust boiling up from an airstrike on jungle terrain in Southeast Asia. Shared among MACV-SOG veterans, the image reflects the tactical air strikes SOG reconnaissance teams called in along infiltration routes like the Ho Chi Minh Trail, flown by USAF Air Commando and fighter-bomber crews.

Misc. JPEG's

The Don Englebreston Collection

A U.S. Air Force A-1 Skyraider bearing its distinctive shark's-mouth nose art roars to life on a Vietnam-era flight line as ground crew stand poised to signal the pilot. Preserved in multiple prints within this collection, the image reflects a moment memorable enough to be captured again and again.

Misc. JPEG's

The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow offers a close-up view of an aircraft component marked with a red "Remove Before Flight" safety streamer. The image highlights the meticulous ground procedures that kept Vietnam-era combat aircraft safe for takeoff.

Misc. Interesting Shots

The Don Englebreston Collection

A four-engine C-130-family transport skims low over open water in a classic special operations flight profile. Hercules variants like this one supported Air Commando infiltration and airdrop missions during and after the Vietnam War.

MISC

The Don Englebreston Collection

From the Gene McCarley Collection, an indigenous member of a MACV-SOG reconnaissance team packs his gear at a forward operating base before a cross-border mission. Teams like his, drawn largely from Montagnard, Nung, and other indigenous soldiers under American Special Forces advisors, carried out some of the most dangerous reconnaissance operations of the Vietnam War, including Operation Tailwind.

Misc

The Don Englebreston Collection

A Vietnam War-era reference table of TACAN channel data for airfields and remote sites scattered across Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. Aircrews — including A-1 Skyraider pilots working the Ho Chi Minh Trail — leaned on beacons like these for en-route navigation, target bearing, and the flight home.

Misc

The Don Englebreston Collection

First Lt. James F. Seith taxis his shark-mouthed A-1 Skyraider along the flight line at Da Nang Air Base, decked out in a vintage leather flying helmet and goggles. The nose art and old-fashioned gear were a good-humored nod to the propeller-driven Skyraider's WWII-era lineage, aimed at the base's F-4 Phantom pilots.

Misc

The Don Englebreston Collection

Pilot Al Dziuba is pictured on the flight line and seated in the cockpit of an F-4 Phantom II, fully suited for flight with helmet in hand. These photographs capture the personal side of fighter aviation, documenting aircrew alongside the aircraft they flew.

Mel USAF

The Don Englebreston Collection

A family photo album page and a set of hand-tinted studio portraits document the Air Force service of Lt. Col. Melvin G. Swanson, from his early days as a young officer in khaki service dress to his 1970 tour with the 56th Special Operations Wing. Newspaper clippings recording his Distinguished Flying Cross sit beside candid snapshots of rescue-marked aircraft and fellow airmen at Nakhon Phanom RTAFB, Thailand, one of the busiest special operations and combat rescue hubs of the Vietnam War.

Mel Swanson Pictures Military

The Don Englebreston Collection

A 1967 portrait of Jerry Grant in the green beret of U.S. Army Special Forces is paired with a jet fighter silhouetted against a blazing sunset sky. Drawn from the Mel Swanson collection, the two images span the personnel and the imagery of Special Operations and reconnaissance units during the early buildup years of American involvement in Vietnam.

Mel Swanson Personal Photos

The Don Englebreston Collection

A personal photo from Mel Swanson's collection of a traveler posing at the 'Standin' on the Corner' park in Winslow, Arizona, in October 2014. This Route 66 landmark commemorates the Eagles' song 'Take It Easy' with a bronze statue and trompe l'oeil mural.

Mel Swanson Family Photos

The Don Englebreston Collection

Scrapbook pages and contact sheets from the Mel Swanson family collection capture the everyday side of a veteran's life: holiday visits, card games, birthdays, reunions, and portraits spanning several generations. Mounted on stars-and-stripes paper, these snapshots show how military service and civilian family life were woven together in the same personal archive.

Mel Swanson Day from Frances

The Don Englebreston Collection

A great-granddaughter sits in the cockpit of a preserved vintage military aircraft during an event honoring Lt. Col. Mel Swanson. It is a quiet moment of connection, showing how younger generations discover the aviation legacy and service history that these collections keep alive.

Mel Swanson Day

The Don Englebreston Collection

Family portraits taken beneath the nose of the restored Douglas A-1 Skyraider 'Lieutenant America' — tail code TC-665, marked 'AMERICA' with a stars-and-stripes emblem — alongside a ramp view of the aircraft with its wing folded in classic carrier-deck configuration. Flown by Air Force 'Sandy' pilots and Air Commando squadrons for close air support and combat search and rescue in Vietnam, the Skyraider remains a gathering point where veterans' families keep that service in living memory.

Mel Family USAF and Later

The Don Englebreston Collection

A scanned album page from a veterans' reunion at an aviation museum — a group photo before a preserved gull-wing fighter and a panel discussion among displays of flight suits and period uniforms — joined by a birthday portrait of Lt. Col. Mel Swanson in later life. The pairing shows both sides of a service story: the shared remembrance of comrades and the quiet family milestones that followed a USAF career.

Mel CCN Plaques

The Don Englebreston Collection

An engraved brass plaque presented to Lt. Col. Mel Swanson "from the guys on the ground, CCN," praising him in the blunt, admiring language of the MACV-SOG reconnaissance teams. Tokens like this one speak to the deep trust between air support crews and the ground teams they protected during the covert cross-border operations of the Vietnam War.

Mel Before USAF

The Don Englebreston Collection

Hand-tinted studio portraits of Betty and an unidentified young man, taken around 1949 and predating military service. Delicately colored for a lifelike effect, keepsake portraits like these were commonly exchanged among family members in the years surrounding World War II, adding everyday life to the collection's military photographs.

Mechanical Man

The Don Englebreston Collection

Two views of "Mechanical Man," a whimsical trophy figure handcrafted from salvaged hardware, showcase the inventive spirit of a Vietnam-era Air Force squadron. More than a mascot, this personal artifact captures the camaraderie and humor airmen forged in ready-room culture far from home.

McCarley Slides

The Don Englebreston Collection

MACV-SOG personnel gather beneath the tail of a Marine helicopter at a forward staging area supporting Operation Tailwind. Drawn from the Gene McCarley Collection, the photo documents the men and machines behind a secretive 1970 cross-border mission into Laos.

McCarley Finals

The Don Englebreston Collection

Hatchet Force troops in tiger-stripe camouflage file aboard a CH-53 helicopter under a crew member's direction, caught in the moments before a mission launches. Drawn from the Gene McCarley Collection, the image records the men and machines behind MACV-SOG's clandestine ground operations, including the September 1970 raid into Laos known as Operation Tailwind.

Marine Spad Pictures

The Don Englebreston Collection

Two preserved Skyraiders on static display in the markings of Marine Attack Squadron VMA-332: a restored Douglas AD-5 with its wings folded in period paint, and an A-1 lettered "MR-31." Marine Skyraiders, set apart from Air Force examples by their squadron markings and dark blue-grey finish, flew close air support for Marine and allied ground forces in Vietnam, and these warbirds keep that piston-engine attack legacy in front of the public.

Maj. Woody

The Don Englebreston Collection

Two squadron group photos of Vietnam War airmen posed with their A-1 Skyraiders, "Playboy Spad" and "Woody's Express" (aircraft '460'). The images commemorate the crews who flew and maintained these Skyraiders in close air support and combat search-and-rescue missions.

LW Photos

The Don Englebreston Collection

A pilot's-eye tour of the Vietnam War air campaign, from A-1 Skyraiders banking over the coastline and parked wingtip-folded on the ramp to cockpit views through the gunsight pipper, a Cobra gunship lifting off, and the control tower at a busy USAF airfield. The Larry Warren A-1 collection pairs these flying images with the texture of squadron life — a hallway at Da Nang in 1969, the 'Zorro' Air Commando hooches, and a Snoopy Flying Ace comic clipping kept as a keepsake.

Lt America A-1 Model Pictures

The Don Englebreston Collection

A modeler's build of the Douglas A-1 Skyraider 'Lt. America,' from unassembled wing, gun bay, and engine components to the finished aircraft bristling with rockets, bombs, and external tanks. The builder's reference photographs document the structural detail behind an accurate recreation of a Skyraider that flew close air support and downed-airman rescue missions with Air Commando and Special Operations squadrons in Vietnam.

Lt America A-1 Model

The Don Englebreston Collection

A finely detailed scale model recreates the Douglas A-1 Skyraider "Lieutenant America," tail code TC-665, in full camouflage markings with underwing ordnance. Built to preserve the look of a Vietnam-era combat aircraft down to its markings, models like this keep the Skyraider available for study and display long after the originals left service.

Lovebug 208 Pictures

The Don Englebreston Collection

Photographs tied to the "Lovebug 208" mission during the Vietnam War, including a celebratory shot marking a pilot's 100th combat mission over North Vietnam. The set also includes a memorial portrait of 1st Lt. Michael Breeding in his flight gear, honoring his service after he was killed in action on 12 February 1970.

Lloyd TN Air Museum Small JPEG

The Don Englebreston Collection

Flight-line and in-flight photography from the Lloyd TN Air Museum air show, where a camouflaged A-1 Skyraider lifts off against the Great Smoky Mountains, P-51 Mustangs and P-47 Thunderbolts carve through the sky, and yellow T-6 Texans break formation trailing smoke. Static and flying displays put WWII fighters and Vietnam-era attack aircraft on the same tarmac, a rare side-by-side look at two generations of American military aviation still airworthy today.

Lloyd TN Air Museum Pics

The Don Englebreston Collection

A full day at the June 7, 2014 Lloyd TN Air Museum air show, from A-1 Skyraiders taxiing with mock underwing ordnance to T-28 Trojans diving in smoke formation and a trio of P-47s and a P-51 holding tight formation overhead. Crowd and ramp views round out the flying, including veterans and visitors gathered beneath the nose of a restored Skyraider, the propeller-driven "Spad" that flew close air support and rescue escort throughout the Vietnam War.

LF Delta Point TIFF Map Scans

The Don Englebreston Collection

Scanned reference materials from a "Misty" Fast FAC pilot's personal papers, including a Vietnam highlands tactical map, a Navy ordnance card, a TACAN rendezvous table, and a hand-annotated "Delta Points" map covering Laos and the Thai border. These were the working tools of forward air controllers who flew high-speed F-100F missions over the Ho Chi Minh Trail, using precomputed rendezvous coordinates and standardized codes to direct airstrikes during Operation Commando Hunt.

LF Delta Point Maps Refined

The Don Englebreston Collection

A refined tactical chart from the Lynn Farnsworth Delta Point collection traces a hand-drawn network of roads and trails through Vietnam's Central Highlands along the North-South border. This working map reveals the meticulous groundwork behind Misty Forward Air Controller missions tracking enemy supply routes on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Larry Warren Photos

The Don Englebreston Collection

A unit sign for the 56th Special Operations Wing "SPADS," from the Larry Warren collection, displaying the nickname carried by the wing's A-1 Skyraider crews in Vietnam. The 56th SOW flew close air support, interdiction, and search-and-rescue escort missions across Southeast Asia, and this hand-lettered marker stood as the everyday emblem of that work.

LARRY WARREN FILES

The Don Englebreston Collection

A January 1971 letter from A-1 Skyraider pilot Larry Warren to fellow pilot Don Engebretsen discusses their squadron's award records as the unit stood down from combat. It also somberly notes the loss of three fellow pilots during the squadron's final months flying from Danang, offering a personal window into the costs of the Vietnam War.

Larry Cavender L JPEG WM

The Don Englebreston Collection

The A-1 Skyraider "The Ragin' Cajun" banks low over the river lowlands of South Vietnam in this air-to-air photograph by L. Cavender. Its hand-painted nose art carries on a long tradition among American combat aircrews, giving individual character to the rugged Skyraiders that shouldered close air support throughout the war.

Larry Cavender Awards and Decs

The Don Englebreston Collection

The Distinguished Flying Cross citation honors First Lieutenant Larry L. Cavender for extraordinary heroism near Ben Het, South Vietnam, on 27 February 1970. Leading a flight of two A-1H Skyraiders, he made repeated low-level passes under heavy fire to protect a besieged reconnaissance team after two rescue helicopters had already been downed.

Larry Cavender 20b Forms

The Don Englebreston Collection

A page from Larry Cavender's personal flying log, kept on a standard PACAF Form 20b, recording his missions over the Republic of Vietnam from 3 to 6 July. The "SPAD" call signs mark Cavender as an A-1 Skyraider pilot, and the entries — a ferry flight, a functional check flight, and search-and-rescue sorties flown with a Forward Air Controller — preserve the everyday rhythm of a combat pilot's career in granular detail.

LarrisonPics

The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow features a veteran-made tribute graphic honoring the A-1 Skyraider alongside aerial views of Bien Hoa Air Base, South Vietnam, captured in 1965. Together the images highlight both the emotional bond pilots felt for their aircraft and the scale of the bustling wartime airbase that supported them.

LarrisonPics

The Don Englebreston Collection

Two postwar tribute graphics honor the A-1 Skyraider, nicknamed the "Spad," pairing an image of a tail-coded aircraft with an Ernest Hemingway quotation on flying and a humorous "Round Engines" page dedicated to radial-engine warbirds. Both pieces, created by veterans, reflect the lasting affection Vietnam-era pilots and mechanics held for their propeller-driven aircraft.

LANE+4

The Don Englebreston Collection

Helicopters dominate this Operation Tailwind sequence: CH-46 Sea Knights ferrying troops into Laos, a CH-53 hauling a sling load, and UH-1 Hueys crowding a dusty forward airstrip beside transport aircraft. Wrecked aircraft along a cratered runway measure the intensity of the September 1970 MACV-SOG raid, a heavily classified operation later recognized through the Medal of Honor awarded to Captain Gary "Mike" Rose.

LANE+3

The Don Englebreston Collection

Aerial and ground views of the Laotian battlefield show shattered forest clearings, a fortified circular encampment with a helicopter, and NVA artillery positions abandoned on cratered, defoliated hilltops. These photographs record the terrain and aftermath of Operation Tailwind, the September 1970 MACV-SOG raid against North Vietnamese Army logistics along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

LANE+1

The Don Englebreston Collection

A camp dog rests in the sand beside a sandbagged bunker and pallet walkway at a Vietnam-era forward operating base. Part of an album connected to Operation Tailwind material, this quiet scene reveals the daily life and improvised infrastructure of remote camps that rarely appear alongside the era's combat and aviation imagery.

LANE+0

The Don Englebreston Collection

Three Vietnam War images range from a base perimeter of concertina wire, bunkers, and a busy motor pool to a hand-painted H&MS-16 avionics shop sign and an AH-1 Cobra gunship banking through hazy Southeast Asian skies. Drawn from the Operation Tailwind collection, they capture both the logistics infrastructure and the barracks humor behind the cross-border missions into Laos that Cobra gunships and Air Commando aircraft supported.

Lance Sijan Memorial WI 19Aug18

The Don Englebreston Collection

A visit to the Captain Lance P. Sijan Memorial in Wisconsin on 19 August 2018, from the F-4 Phantom II gate guardian and memorial plaza with its American and POW/MIA flags to a replica of the headstone the North Vietnamese Army placed at his gravesite, and wildflowers beside the path. The Milwaukee native and Air Force Academy graduate was shot down over Laos in 1967, evaded capture for six weeks despite severe injuries, and died in captivity in 1968, becoming the first Academy graduate awarded the Medal of Honor.

Ken Brown Pictures

The Don Englebreston Collection

A formal group portrait of an A-1 Skyraider squadron at Nakhon Phanom (NKP), posed beneath one of their aircraft with a printed caption naming all twenty-three airmen. The image preserves the identities and camaraderie of a squadron that flew strike and search-and-rescue escort missions from Southeast Asian bases during the Vietnam War.

Ken Brown 20b OLAA Only No Form5

The Don Englebreston Collection

Handwritten pages from an A-1 Skyraider pilot's personal PACAF Form 20b mission log detail dozens of "Sandy" and search-and-rescue combat sorties flown from Da Nang and Pleiku. Spanning strike missions, bomb damage assessments, and a successful rescue pickup, the log closes with a poignant final entry marking the end of this pilot's Skyraider combat tour.

Ken Brown

The Don Englebreston Collection

Two pieces of personal ephemera from A-1 Skyraider pilot Lt. Kenneth J. Brown Jr., USAF: a squadron Christmas card featuring the nose art of "The Proud American," and a novelty calling card trading on Air Commando gallows humor. The card's "Zorro" and "Sandy" call signs point to the night interdiction and search-and-rescue escort missions A-1 squadrons flew, showing how deployed airmen mixed military pride, holiday warmth, and dark wit to cope with the war.

Kasbeer

The Don Englebreston Collection

Veteran aviators take part in a panel discussion at an aviation museum reunion on May 2, 2015, surrounded by period flight gear and warbird memorabilia. Attendees view projected archival photographs as they recall and share memories of their military service.

JW VIETNAM SCANS JPEG 2

The Don Englebreston Collection

Bomb-laden A-1 Skyraiders on the flight line and taxiing out for strike missions, paired with candid portraits of Air Force personnel off duty and at work in a squadron office. Drawn from the Larry Cavender collection, these Vietnam War images balance the Skyraider's legendary firepower against the everyday camaraderie and paperwork that kept flying operations running.

JW JPEG

The Don Englebreston Collection

Airmen and aircraft of the "Home of the Spads" — Douglas A-1 Skyraiders taxiing out, a radial engine coughing to life amid ground crews and rocket pods, and servicemen posing beside unit signs and base buildings. Likely photographed at Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base with the 56th Special Operations Wing, these images capture the close air support and rescue-escort world of the Air Commandos, down to hand-painted nose art and shirtless crews working in Southeast Asian heat.

JW Final JPEG WM Sm

The Don Englebreston Collection

A candid Vietnam War snapshot of servicemen unwinding at a Pleiku party, complete with an improvised drinking gag involving an oversized syringe. Moments like this reveal the human side of life at Pleiku, a forward base that served as a key staging area for MACV-SOG operations into Laos and Cambodia.

JW Final JPEG WM Med

The Don Englebreston Collection

Two USAF airmen, one in OG-107 jungle fatigues and one in Air Commando flight gear, pose beside a hand-lettered sign for Lt. Col. J.W. Wold, a Special Operations Wing commander at a Southeast Asia air base. The photograph documents the people and improvised facilities of USAF special operations bases, where Skyraider and other Air Commando squadrons flew unconventional warfare and rescue missions during the Vietnam War.

JW Final JPEG WM Lg

The Don Englebreston Collection

Images from the John Weinig collection, including the raucous "last Spad party" marking an A-1 Skyraider squadron's farewell at Pleiku Air Base, a pilot portrait in flight suit and survival vest, and an airman crossing the ramp in camouflage fatigues. Taken against the slatted metal revetments that shielded Southeast Asian air bases from mortar and rocket attack, these personal snapshots record both the gear of American aircrew and the bonds forged among the pilots and ground crews who kept the "Spad" flying.

JW Final JPEG Lg

The Don Englebreston Collection

A Vietnam War-era portrait of U.S. Air Force pilot John Weinig, photographed in the flight suit and survival vest worn by aircrew on combat sorties. The vest he wears was a downed airman's lifeline, carrying radios, signaling devices, and first aid supplies to sustain him until rescue arrived.

JW 100% Watermarked

The Don Englebreston Collection

U.S. Air Force personnel pose beneath a hand-painted "Home of the Spads" sign at a Vietnam War-era airbase, its artwork depicting a World War I SPAD fighter biplane. That WWI aircraft lent its name to the nickname aircrews later gave the Douglas A-1 Skyraider, and squadron signage like this reinforced unit pride and identity for men serving far from home.

JW

The Don Englebreston Collection

Spectators photograph a bare-metal A-1 Skyraider taxiing on the ramp at a 2015 warbird reunion, and veterans pose for a group portrait before a beautifully restored Skyraider at the Jim Wold Day gathering. Among them are "Spad/Sandy" pilot John Weinig and fellow veteran Chuck Koehler in a "Save the A-10" shirt, a reminder that the Vietnam-era attack aircraft found a spiritual successor in the A-10 Thunderbolt II.

JPG w WM

The Don Englebreston Collection

Six watermarked photographs, credited to S. Kasbeer, from SOAR XLII, the 2018 Special Operations Association Reunion in Las Vegas, showing veterans signing photo books beside Tennessee Museum of Aviation Skyraider "Lieutenant America" prints and posing with the restored aircraft's banner. Additional images show attendees at the registration table, a leadership group portrait before the American flag, and socializing in the hospitality room.

JPEG WM

The Don Englebreston Collection

Three Vietnam War photographs from the Doc Blanchard Collection: airmen unwinding on a Vietnamese beach, a USAF pilot strapping into his cockpit before a mission, and a flier soaked with water in the traditional "fini-flight" celebration beside an A-1 Skyraider. Together they trace the rhythm of an Air Commando tour, from hard-won rest and pre-mission ritual to the squadron milestone that marked a final combat sortie.

JPEG WM

The Don Englebreston Collection

A restored radial-engine helicopter of the H-19/S-55 type on display at an aviation museum, its nose cowling opened to show the engine. The rotorcraft is shown alongside a vintage military support truck and other warbirds, highlighting mid-20th-century military aviation.

JPEG WM

The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow presents a striking image of a burned helicopter wreckage lying in the highlands, tied to Operation Tailwind, a covert 1970 incursion into Laos during the Vietnam War. The photograph documents the harsh realities faced by U.S. forces during this clandestine military operation.

JPEG w WM

The Don Englebreston Collection

Close details of a preserved Sikorsky CH-34 helicopter at the Tennessee Museum of Aviation, from its tail rotor assembly to a bullet hole still ringed with stress fractures in a cabin window. The CH-34 flew transport and search-and-rescue missions in the 1950s and 60s and into the early Vietnam War, including VNAF "Kingbee" variants that carried MACV-SOG reconnaissance teams in and out of hostile territory.

JPEG SM WM

The Don Englebreston Collection

Scenes from forward bases in Southeast Asia during the Operation Tailwind era: a C-123 Provider taxiing past staged UH-1 Hueys, a row of rocket-armed AH-1 Cobra gunships on a dirt airstrip, a pilot beside the hand-lettered "Dak To Officers Club" ammo-crate bunker, and reconnaissance soldier Sorsby holding a python. From the Barry Pencek collection, the set pairs the aircraft that sustained covert MACV-SOG missions along the Ho Chi Minh Trail with the improvised humor and moments of levity that got airmen through the days between them.

JPEG SM for OLAA GROUP EMAIL WM

The Don Englebreston Collection

A Douglas A-1 Skyraider "Lieutenant America" fires up its engine on the flight line at an OLAA reunion. This Vietnam-era warbird, once flown on search-and-rescue and close air support missions, remains a beloved performer at veteran reunions and air shows today.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Three moments from "Jim Wold Day" on 2 May 2015: conversation among guests outdoors, a museum gallery presentation surrounded by WWII Army Air Forces flight jackets, a parachute, and a period helmet, and a volunteer seated in the cockpit of a preserved A-1 Skyraider. The Skyraider's nose stencil crediting Pilot Lt Randy Scott and Crew Chief Sgt Mike Long reflects the wartime practice of naming both pilot and maintainer on single-seat combat aircraft, tying the day's remembrance to the Air Commando service history it honors.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Ten reduced-size renditions of professional event photographs from the 2014 SOAR reunion symposium, featuring named veterans including Doug Carmichael, Levy Rentz, Don Engebretsen, and Larry Warren in Skyraider party suits and unit patches. Captions also note guests such as Linda Chapman-Henry taking part in the question-and-answer sessions.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Ten photographs from SOAR XXXIX, the 2015 Special Operations Association Reunion, capturing panelist Q&A exchanges, floor-microphone questions, and a wide view of the banquet hall. Personalized caps and patches, including one nicknamed "GIBBER" and a portrait of "Doc Blanchard," reflect the camaraderie among Air Commando and special operations aviation veterans.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Personal Vietnam War photographs pairing A-1 Skyraiders on the flight line, fully armed engine run-ups, low takeoffs past parked C-130s, and an HH-3E "Jolly Green Giant" rescue helicopter with candid squadron parties, cockpit preparations, and champagne celebrations. Drawn from the Doc Blanchard and Bob Karre collections, these snapshots show both the strike and rescue missions flown by Air Commando squadrons and the off-duty camaraderie that sustained the men who flew them.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Helicopter photographs from Operation Tailwind, the September 1970 MACV-SOG operation into Laos: a haze-shrouded formation crossing open water, an AH-1 Cobra escorting Hueys over mountainous jungle along the Laotian border, and a row of Cobra gunships staged at a forward airfield. Shot from within the formations themselves by participants in the Barry Pencek collection, these images convey the scale and coordination needed to insert, protect, and extract reconnaissance teams deep in contested territory.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A perpetual Julian date calendar served as a standard U.S. Air Force reference chart during the Vietnam War era. It was used to convert calendar dates into three-digit day-of-year codes for logistics, maintenance, and message records.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

An aerial look down on Pleiku Air Base in Vietnam's Central Highlands, home to Air Commando and Special Operations squadrons during the war. Revetments line the runway to shield aircraft from rocket and mortar attack, while a nearby salvage yard holds the wreckage of those lost to enemy action or accident — photographed by Don Dineen.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Ten reduced-size images of symposium speakers and audience members at the 38th Special Operations Association Reunion in Las Vegas, 2014, held to mark MACV-SOG's 50th anniversary. Don Engebretsen appears repeatedly in his orange A-1 Skyraider party suit alongside other named attendees such as Doug Carmichael, Dan Wall, and Larry Warren.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Ten photographs from SOAR XXXIX, the 2015 Special Operations Association Reunion, documenting the general session ballroom, breakout gatherings, and podium remarks beneath the Association's skull-and-green-beret emblem. Close-up insignia details include a Skyraider cap, a shirt referencing "Spad," and a sleeve patch combining an American flag, Thai flag ribbon, and Air America horse emblem.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A USAF ground crewman poses beside an A-1 Skyraider loaded with 2.75-inch rocket pods on a South Vietnam flight line, paired with two servicemen in tiger-stripe camouflage and berets before a large radome installation. The Skyraider was prized by Air Commando and 'Sandy' rescue-escort squadrons for its heavy ordnance load and long loiter time, while the taped rifle magazines in the second image reveal a field-expedient technique common among Special Forces and reconnaissance troops.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Three USAF reference and record documents include a cause-of-loss code sheet, a status/movement card tracking A-1H Skyraider serial 52-139665 across Southeast Asian air bases, and a Julian Date Calendar used to decode military date codes. Together they illustrate the administrative systems the Air Force used to track aircraft fate, basing history, and record-keeping during the Vietnam War.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A USAF pilot poses proudly before a mission with his A-1 Skyraider, personalized with the nose art name "Sweet Betty Lou," during the Vietnam War. The image reflects the tradition of personalized nose art common among Air Commando aircrews, tying squadron identity to personal connections back home.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Personal Vietnam War snapshots including a RECON-hatted Army Staff Sergeant named Sorsby holding a python at his forward operating base, a candid moment between two young servicemen, and a Cobra gunship pilot posing on the skid of "VT 25" at a Central Highlands airfield. From the Barry Pencek collection tied to Operation Tailwind, the September 1970 MACV-SOG raid into Laos, these images capture both the camaraderie of camp life and the aviation muscle behind a high-risk cross-border mission.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A Montagnard soldier of a MACV-SOG force walks to safety laughing despite a fresh head wound, photographed during or just after Operation Tailwind. Part of the Gene McCarley Collection assembled for the historical record of the September 1970 cross-border raid into Laos, it stands as a striking testament to the courage and human cost borne by the indigenous troops who fought alongside American Special Forces.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A contact sheet of Kodak prints dated June 1970 and processed in Thailand, documenting daily life around A-1 Skyraider attack aircraft during the Vietnam War. Frame by frame it shows ground crews servicing the planes, aircrew in flight suits, and a lei-and-fire-hose celebration marking a pilot's completed combat tour, a tradition common to Southeast Asia-based squadrons.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

From a pilot training class posed before a North American T-28 Trojan to a triumphant "fini flight" hose-down, these photographs trace the Air Force career of Major Mel Swanson. A family portrait of Swanson in service dress holding his young daughter Frances rounds out the set, placing the traditions and milestones of military aviation alongside the family life that continued beside them.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Three Special Orders issued by Headquarters 7th Air Force in 1970 and 1971, awarding and amending Air Medals, Oak Leaf Clusters, and Distinguished Flying Crosses for airmen serving in Southeast Asia. Preserved in the Mel Swanson collection, including the order crediting Major Melvin G. Swanson with a 1st Oak Leaf Cluster to his Air Medal, these papers are primary-source proof of the recognition earned mission after mission.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

From the Byron Hukee Collection, a U.S. Air Force A-1 Skyraider -- affectionately nicknamed the "Spad" -- banks through the sky laden with fuel tanks and ordnance during a Vietnam-era sortie. The photograph captures the enduring toughness of an aircraft prized by Air Commando and Special Operations squadrons for close air support and rescue-escort missions.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A close-up photograph from the Jax Roberts Collection showing severe structural damage to a military aircraft. The damage likely resulted from combat or a crash landing during the Vietnam War and was documented for maintenance and investigative purposes.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow features a close air support aircraft banking low over the jungle canopy, photographed from the ground during Operation Tailwind. Aircraft such as the A-1 Skyraider provided vital protective fire for MACV-SOG reconnaissance teams operating deep in hostile territory.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Four Vietnam War Air Commando veterans sign books and photographs for visitors at a June 2014 reunion event at the Tennessee Museum of Aviation, with a banner referencing the 56th Special Operations Wing's covert Operating Location Alpha Alpha. A second, unrelated snapshot shows a handmade folk-art figure crafted from repurposed brass hardware, photographed in a home dining room.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A veteran climbs into the cockpit of a lovingly restored A-1 Skyraider named "Marlene," its nose art proudly declaring it "Uncle Ho's Nightmare." Reunion events like this one give former Skyraider pilots a rare chance to sit again in the aircraft that carried them through some of the most demanding combat missions of the Vietnam War.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A restored A-1 Skyraider banks low across the airfield with the Great Smoky Mountains rising behind it, its unmistakable silhouette recalling the close air support missions that defined the type in Vietnam. Jim Wold's photograph keeps the sound and spectacle of these historic warbirds alive for a new generation.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Two pages of a September 1970 commendation letter honor Forward Air Controllers of the 20th Tactical Air Support Squadron for a perilous three-day rescue under enemy fire and severe weather, tied to the classified Operation Tailwind incursion into Laos. Signed by unit commanders, the documents highlight the dangerous, often under-recognized missions FACs flew directing close air support over the Pleiku Highlands.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Airmen unwind in a wood-paneled barracks day room decorated with squadron mementos, a framed helicopter citation, a guitar, and a reel-to-reel tape recorder. From the Larry Cavender collection, this Vietnam War-era view reveals the personal spaces servicemen built for themselves far from home.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

From the Bob Karre personal collection, this slideshow documents leisure travel through the British countryside, featuring sheep and cattle at English agricultural shows, an ornately iced celebration cake, and moorland landscapes. It also includes scenes from a British showground military field display, with spectators watching a field gun towed past the grandstand, sitting alongside the collection's broader military and rural travel photography.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A close detail photograph from the Jax Roberts collection documenting severe damage to a combat aircraft's wing spar structure, likely inflicted by flak or ground fire during a mission over Vietnam. Images like this one served maintenance crews assessing whether an airframe could be repaired, and they remain a stark illustration of the punishment military aircraft absorbed while still bringing their crews home.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A restored Douglas A-1 Skyraider makes a low pass during a reunion flyover event on 2 May 2015. The flight carries on the legacy of the aircraft's service as a rugged, heavily-armed close air support platform during the Vietnam War.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

"Mechanical Man," a handmade Vietnam-era squadron trophy assembled from repurposed metal fittings, a leather flying helmet, a playful wig, and a playing card. Improvised keepsakes like this one served as informal mascots and presentation trophies, evidence of the humor and morale-building traditions that bound Air Force aircrews together.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Family photographs from the years before Mel Swanson's Air Force career: a 1930s-era portrait outside a modest frame house, the boy and his brother Earnie on the running board of the family car and posing with the family dog, formal studio sittings of the two brothers, and portraits believed to show their parents from the late 1920s or early 1930s. Long before he flew A-1 Skyraiders as a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, this was the small-town family life that shaped him, and these images ground the collection's military record in the ordinary childhood that came first.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Restored A-1 Skyraiders take center stage at a May 2019 aviation heritage event, from "TC 665" on the ramp in its Vietnam-era camouflage to a pair of the aircraft being repositioned by volunteers inside a museum hangar. A veteran seated in a Skyraider cockpit and a visitor studying a warbird's reflector gunsight show why these reunions matter, reconnecting former Air Commandos and their families with the aircraft that carried them through the Vietnam War.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

An official U.S. Air Force Form 5 flight record logging Lt. Col. Melvin G. Swanson's A-1 Skyraider combat sorties in September 1970. Part of a career exceeding 3,500 flying hours and over 354 hours of combat time, this document offers precise, verifiable evidence of the pace and intensity of Skyraider operations in Vietnam.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Douglas A-1 Skyraiders dominate this Tailwind Day Redux gallery — wings folded on the Museum of Aviation ramp, engines running with rocket pods slung underwing, climbing head-on under a full ordnance load, and flying formation in a commemorative flyover — alongside a camouflaged T-28-type Trojan, the quiet event airfield, and a veterans' reunion dinner from April 2018. The "Spad" and its Air Commando crews flew the close air support that shielded the ground force during the 1970 MACV-SOG raid into Laos, and these restored survivors let veterans and enthusiasts honor that mission in the air decades later.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Air Force combat search-and-rescue airmen share a lighthearted off-duty moment, their 'Jolly Green Giant' and skull-and-crossbones 'Air Pirate' patches on full display. Those patches mark the crews of the HH-3E and HH-53 rescue helicopters and the irreverent squadron culture that helped them cope with recovering downed airmen from deep in hostile territory.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Vietnam War-era snapshots of two USAF airmen posing beneath a Special Operations Wing sign bearing the name of their commander, Lt. Col. J.W. Wold, and a pilot standing beside his A-1 Skyraider and its underwing ordnance. Keepsake photographs like these, taken between missions, give a rare human glimpse of the Air Commando airmen who flew unconventional warfare and close air support sorties over Southeast Asia.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

An aerial photograph by Cobra gunship pilot Robert Denlinger captures smoke rising from a coordinated air strike across a jungle valley in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. The strike targeted enemy infiltration routes, supply caches, and troop concentrations along the Laos-Cambodia border, part of MACV-SOG operations.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Three Vietnam-era images from the Jax Roberts collection: battle damage inspection on an aircraft, a decoration ceremony for pilot Roberts, and an indoor portrait of a young serviceman in a flight suit. Together they portray the risks, honors, and personal moments of Air Commando and Special Operations aircrews during the war.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Images from the Gene McCarley Collection document the Operation Tailwind area of operations in Laos, with aerial views of airstrike smoke rising along a jungle river, a soldier crossing a bomb-scarred clearing, a MACV-SOG ground team pausing in the jungle, and reconnaissance troops posing with a captured portrait of Ho Chi Minh. Preserved by the officer who led the September 1970 raid, these photographs give a rare, unfiltered view of the terrain and daily risk of one of the Vietnam War's most highly classified ground operations.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A formal studio portrait of Mel Swanson in civilian attire, alongside a golf-outing snapshot of Mel with former NFL star Darrell Green beside a Jeep Grand Cherokee. Both images document the life and personal connections Swanson built after his U.S. Air Force service, complementing the military history preserved elsewhere in the archive.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A restored Douglas A-1 Skyraider, tail code "TC," sweeps low over a wooded hillside during a commemorative flying display. Once flown in close air support of ground troops in Vietnam, surviving Skyraiders like this one still take to the skies at airshows and memorial events to honor that legacy.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A pilot drenched in the traditional mission-completion hose-down, paired with an A-1 Skyraider banking against a wall of towering cumulus. Side by side, the images capture both the 'fini-flight' rituals that marked milestones like a 100th mission and the propeller-driven attack aircraft that anchored Air Commando close air support throughout the war.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A single air-to-air photograph from the Rufe Harris Collection captures an A-1 Skyraider banking over dense jungle mountains in Southeast Asia, shot from a wingman's cockpit. The image reflects the formation flying and mutual visual coverage tactics used by Air Commando and Special Operations Squadron pilots over hostile Vietnam War terrain.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Two photographs from the personal collection of Jax Roberts: an aircrew member in flight suit and survival harness beside tiered steel racks of ordnance and external fuel tanks, and the shredded outer wing panel of an A-1 Skyraider hit by enemy ground fire. Together they show both sides of the Vietnam air war in Southeast Asia, the logistics yard that armed daily combat sorties and the battle damage a Skyraider could absorb on low-altitude close air support and "Sandy" rescue escort missions and still bring its pilot home.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Veterans connected to Operation Tailwind gather for a group portrait beneath an American flag and ceremonial unit colors in a military headquarters setting, an image preserved in the Gene McCarley Collection. Tailwind was a 1970 MACV-SOG cross-border reconnaissance mission in Laos, later the subject of a widely publicized and ultimately retracted 1998 media controversy, and photographs like this one mark the reunions and official proceedings that brought its participants back together decades afterward.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A commemorative insignia set — decal, pins, and patch — honors the Douglas A-1H Skyraider pilots known as "Spads," who flew search-and-rescue and close air support for MACV-SOG's classified Prairie Fire operations in Laos. Worn and displayed by veterans and their associations, emblems like these keep the memory of those dangerous missions in circulation.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Scenes from "Jim Wold Day" at the Tennessee Museum of Aviation in May 2015, where attendees line the ramp fence to watch the restored A-1 Skyraider "TC 665" taxi out for a demonstration flight. Commemorative "Lieutenant America" shirts, "A-1H Skyraider" caps, and SPAD apparel identify the veterans, volunteers, and warbird enthusiasts who gathered to honor the aircraft that flew thousands of close air support and rescue missions in Vietnam.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A Warbird Digest magazine feature spotlights the restored A-1H Skyraider "Lieutenant America," owned and flown by Neal Melton of the Tennessee Museum of Aviation. Meticulously refurbished by WestPac Restorations while preserving its authentic Vietnam War-era paint scheme, the aircraft keeps alive the legacy of its combat service and 1972 nose art tradition.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow preserves multiple frames and versions of USAF Photo 99805, showing Colonel Gene Deatrick smiling from the cockpit of rebuilt A-1 Skyraider #649 at Pleiku Air Base. The images document his final 40-minute test flight in Vietnam, verifying the aircraft's airworthiness after a major rebuild and crediting the stenciled-on crew chiefs who kept it combat-ready.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A finely detailed scale model of the Douglas A-1 Skyraider 'Lieutenant America,' finished in Vietnam-era camouflage and displayed beneath a glass dome. Models like this preserve the liveries and personal nose-art markings of historic combat aircraft for collectors and researchers.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

An operational reference map of the Laos-Cambodia-South Vietnam tri-border region, laying out the rugged terrain and remote road network that shaped every cross-border mission. It is the ground MACV-SOG reconnaissance and Hatchet Force teams moved through on operations such as Tailwind, launched from South Vietnam into Laos in September 1970.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Six photographs from SOAR XLII, the 2018 Special Operations Association Reunion in Las Vegas, showing veterans signing photo books, conferring near the registration table, and posing with a Tennessee Museum of Aviation A-1 Skyraider "Lieutenant America" banner. Additional images document a leadership group portrait before the American flag and attendees socializing in the hospitality room.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A photographic sweep of A-1 Skyraider operations from the Jax Roberts collection, with combat-loaded aircraft banking hard over Southeast Asia, tail codes "T S" and "TT" on the runway, a barrier cable engagement after landing, and a silhouetted Spad heavy with ordnance shot from a companion aircraft. Between the air-to-air frames are the quieter details of aircrew life, a flight helmet and oxygen mask resting on a cockpit harness, pilots climbing down with ground crewmen assisting, and a weathered family graduation portrait that anchors the collection in the world these airmen came from.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Gene McCarley and fellow servicemen display a captured enemy pennant during the classified Operation Tailwind incursion into Laos. Conducted in September 1970 by MACV-SOG forces, the mission remains one of the Vietnam War's most daring and controversial covert operations.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

An embroidered patch set on a flight suit reading "Sandy," "Super Spad," and "Firefly," the mission nicknames earned by A-1 Skyraider pilots in Vietnam. Each name marks a different job: "Sandy" for the rescue escorts who shielded downed airmen, "Firefly" for night flare-illumination sorties, a small piece of cloth that captures how much was asked of Skyraider crews.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Three images of the "SPADS for MACVSOG" exhibit stand and its volunteers, plus a wide view of a symposium session seen from the back of the hall, at the 38th Special Operations Association Reunion in Las Vegas, 2014. Captions describe the Da Nang Skyraider detachment's support of MACV-SOG reconnaissance teams and the orange party suits worn by attending veterans.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

An aerial reconnaissance photograph of Highway 110 in Laos, paired with a historical account of MACV-SOG 'Hatchet Force' operations along that stretch of road. These company-sized, Special Forces-led units ran SLAM missions, Search, Locate, Annihilate, Monitor, to disrupt enemy movement on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Decades after flying combat missions from Danang Air Base, a group of A-1 Skyraider veterans reunites for a group photo beside a lovingly restored example of their old aircraft. The image serves as a testament to the enduring bonds forged among Vietnam War aviators.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Features four watermarked images from the Edward Blyth collection: a MACV-SOG reconnaissance team at a launch site, a field portrait of Blyth, a soldier and crewman aboard an in-flight UH-1, and wounded servicemen at the 71st Evacuation Hospital in Pleiku, January 1970. The photos document the sterile, unmarked appearance of cross-border reconnaissance personnel and include Medal of Honor recipient Franklin D. "Doug" Miller among the wounded pictured.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

The bronze plaque at Wisconsin's Lance P. Sijan Memorial, reproducing the Medal of Honor citation awarded posthumously to the Air Force captain. Sijan evaded capture for six weeks after ejecting over North Vietnam and died a prisoner of war without giving his captors information, heroism recognized by President Gerald Ford.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A feature page from Warbird Digest #51 (Nov/Dec 2013) spotlighting the A-1H Skyraider "Lieutenant America," serial number 139665. The spread documents the warbird's restored Vietnam-era paint scheme, its ownership by Neal Melton and the Tennessee Museum of Aviation, and the nickname bestowed by Lt. Randy Scott in 1972.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A tongue-in-cheek graphic showing a pig draped in an "OLAA" banner, created for a 2013 reunion of A-1 Skyraider veterans of the 56th Special Operations Wing. The mascot nods to the wing's classified Operating Locations, run from Nakhon Phanom, Thailand, in support of Air Commando and MACV-SOG missions, and to the humor its veterans carried forward for decades.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Two versions of the same 1969 photograph show a heavy-lift helicopter carrying a recovered A-1 Skyraider slung beneath it after a successful salvage operation. One image is the original vintage print scan and the other a cleaned, cropped edit prepared for publication, both tied to the photo's appearance in Air Force Magazine.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Images from the Gene McCarley Collection follow a MACV-SOG Hatchet Force through Operation Tailwind: Marine CH-53 Sea Stallions with ramps down, Montagnard fighters at rest, captured ordnance on the jungle floor, and team members holding a Ho Chi Minh portrait taken from an overrun enemy headquarters. Assembled by the captain who commanded the ground force during the September 1970 raid into Laos, the set documents the insertions, extractions, and tiger-stripe-clad partnerships at the heart of SOG's covert war along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A commemorative banner titled "SPADS for MACVSOG" honors the A-1 Skyraider pilots and crews of the 56th Special Operations Wing who flew close air support for MACV-SOG's clandestine reconnaissance teams. Centered on a photo of a shark-mouthed Skyraider with smoking engine, it is surrounded by a collage of period photos documenting the unit's aircraft, personnel, and operating locations.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A U.S. Air Force officer known as "Wylie" holds up a bent aircraft component marked "6 Dec 69, A/C 734" outside squadron living quarters at a Southeast Asia air base in 1970. Salvaged parts like this one were common keepsakes among Vietnam-era aircrew, each bent barrel or shrapnel-scarred fitting standing in for a memorable mission or a close call survived.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Two candid snapshots from the Mel Swanson family album, circa 1960 — a lighthearted moment at home and a young woman reclining on the living room sofa with her Siamese cat in March of that year. These domestic images open a window onto everyday American home life at the dawn of the 1960s, complementing the military material held elsewhere in the collection.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Visitors pose among vintage warbirds, aircraft engines, and open restoration bays during a tour of an aviation heritage hangar. Taken on a veterans' reunion trip connected to the Operation Tailwind archive, these photographs record the people — veterans, families, and volunteers — who keep the era's aircraft and stories alive alongside the machines themselves.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Maintenance views from the John Kiland collection: a military aircraft's forward equipment bay opened to reveal its wiring, hydraulic lines, and gauges, and a radial engine stripped of its cowling in a hangar. Together they show the mechanical complexity behind keeping Vietnam-era combat aircraft such as the A-1 Skyraider mission-ready.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A candid snapshot from the Jax Roberts collection showing Air Force personnel in off-duty camaraderie beside a vehicle in Vietnam. The central figure's flight suit, pilot wings, and captain's bars identify him as a pilot, with the name tape "Engebretsen" linking the photo to other squadron members in the archive.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Pages from the unit history and reunion books of Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 463 "Pegasus" sit alongside combat photographs of a tandem-rotor helicopter recovering another aircraft by sling and a MACV-SOG team extracted "on the string" beneath a helicopter during Operation Tailwind in 1970. Officer rosters, call signs, the embossed "Heavy Haulers" cover, and irreverent squadron cartoons trace the CH-53 crews who flew heavy-lift and extraction missions for MACV-SOG in Vietnam and Laos.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Ten images from the 38th Special Operations Association Reunion in Las Vegas, October 2014, many of them blurred or alternate-rendition frames of vendor-hall and ballroom scenes. Recurring figures include Don and Linda Engebretsen, Melvin Swanson, and James Yu-B, photographed among unit merchandise tables, casino restaurant gatherings, and symposium head tables.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A USAF A-1H Skyraider carrying tail code '6T' and serial 139821 cruises above the clouds on a Vietnam War-era mission with the 633rd Special Operations Wing. Rugged, heavily armed, and able to absorb serious battle damage, the Skyraider was the mainstay of Air Commando close air support and rescue-escort operations throughout the conflict.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Presents three versions of the same briefing notebook spread kept by Capt. Vaughn Bobby Ross for 1, 3 and 5 January 1970: an alternate higher-resolution scan, a duplicate copy, and a full-size original. The entries record radio frequencies and recon teams on the ground, including the 5 January "Wolf Girl" operation annotated for RT Vermont and RT Delaware.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Visitors fill a museum hangar beneath a restored WWII-era fighter, gathered to hear veterans tell their stories firsthand as part of a Veterans History Project presentation. Moments like this one preserve the personal narratives of the men who served while honoring the aircraft that carried them into history.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Reunion attendees gather on an airport ramp beside vintage aircraft, including the preserved Douglas A-1 Skyraider "Lieutenant America," during the 2 May 2015 Jim Wold Day event. The group portraits and candid greetings commemorate the wartime cooperation between American servicemen and their Vietnamese Air Force counterparts who once flew the Skyraider together.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A modern Google Earth satellite image, annotated to mark the operational area of MACV-SOG Recon Team Vermont near the Laos/Vietnam border. It reflects postwar research by veteran Joe Parnar and others to map and document the covert reconnaissance missions of the Studies and Observations Group during the Vietnam War.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A restored A-1 Skyraider nicknamed "TC 685" climbs into the sky after takeoff at a veterans appreciation airshow. The caption notes the Skyraider's Vietnam War roles in close air support, armed reconnaissance, and "Sandy" search-and-rescue escort missions.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Two 1969 group portraits of the 6th Special Operations Squadron at Pleiku Air Base, Vietnam, one showing airmen posed with squadron ordnance. The captions note the squadron flew the A-1 Skyraider, providing close air support and combat rescue escort during demanding wartime missions.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A-1 Skyraider veterans reunite at the Tennessee Museum of Aviation for "General James W. 'Jim' Wold Day" on 2 May 2015, as the restored Skyraider "Lieutenant America" (TC-665) taxis before the crowd with its propeller turning. Caps and name tags reading "SPAD" and "Sandy" mark the close-knit community of airmen who flew close air support and rescue-escort missions over Vietnam, captured here in candid reunion moments from the Don Engebretsen photo collection.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A U.S. Air Force AFTO Form 5 flight record logging the combat hours flown by 1Lt Donald L. Engebretsen in the A-1H Skyraider during late 1969. Kept to the tenth of an hour, ledgers like this one preserve a precise account of a Vietnam-era attack pilot's sortie tempo, day, night and instrument proficiency, and cumulative combat exposure.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow captures a 2016 reunion of veterans from Operation Tailwind, a 1970 MACV-SOG covert cross-border operation into Laos, gathered at the Tennessee Museum of Aviation. The group poses together before a preserved Douglas A-1 Skyraider, the attack aircraft that once provided close air support to special operations forces in Vietnam.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Two unit newspaper clippings from early 1970 reporting on A-1 Skyraider combat operations: Captain Karre's flight covering a downed Army helicopter so an unarmed "Dustoff" medevac could extract five survivors, and a 56th Special Operations Wing strike near Chu Lai flown by "Spad" pilots Maj. Timothy L. Buttermore and 1st Lt. James F. Seith. Written for the servicemembers who flew these missions, these contemporary accounts offer a rare first-person window into the Skyraider's rescue-escort and close air support work in Vietnam.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A member of a MACV-SOG reconnaissance team packs his rucksack at a fortified forward compound, readying for a clandestine crossing into Laos or Cambodia. From the Gene McCarley Collection, the photograph records the gear, dress, and daily routine of the indigenous and American soldiers behind the Vietnam War's most dangerous reconnaissance missions, Operation Tailwind among them.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Excerpted memoir pages from Misty FAC pilot E. Lynn Farnsworth trace his second combat shootdown over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos, from the crippled F-100F and ejection through tense hours evading capture in the jungle. The narrative closes with his dramatic rescue, as A-1 Skyraiders suppress enemy fire and a Pararescue Jumper helps hoist him aboard a Jolly Green Giant helicopter.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Two Vietnam War images of A-1 Skyraider operations: pilots Reeves and Ford sprinting across the flight line on a scramble alert, and a ground crewman marshaling Skyraider "ET-570" during a transfer flight from Nha Trang to Phu Cat. Together they capture the rapid-response rhythm of Air Commando and Special Operations squadrons flying close air support and rescue escort.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Ten photographs from SOAR XXXIX, the 2015 Special Operations Association Reunion, showing podium speeches, panel discussions, and audience moments beneath the Association's shield banner and a Budweiser sponsorship sign. Subjects include Doc Blanchard, a veteran linked to the 20th Special Operations Squadron "Green Hornets," and attendees displaying SOG-style patches and POW-MIA insignia.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Two images documenting the SOG/SPAD Symposium as reported in the Special Operations Association's SOAR XXXVIII After Action Report of January 2015. Included are a photo montage of ground reconnaissance veterans and Air Force pilots sharing the floor, and a printed AAR page in which organizer Don Engebretsen describes the symposium's purpose of reuniting Skyraider pilots with the MACV-SOG men they supported.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow presents pages from an Air Force Undergraduate Pilot Training class yearbook featuring student pilot Rick Chorlins with his wife Nancy, and honoring 1/Lt Richard D. Chorlins, an Air Force Academy graduate assigned to fly the A-1E Skyraider. These yearbook pages captured the personal lives, personalities, and camaraderie of pilot training classes before graduates went on to fly combat missions during the Vietnam War.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A twin-engine attack aircraft banks overhead in sharp silhouette, caught against the sun during a memorial flyover. The pass honors Vietnam-era aircrew, and the image turns a moment of remembrance into something close to a monument.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A Vietnam War photo set centered on the A-1 Skyraider "Peregrine" and its crews, ranging from air-to-air views above tropical clouds and an F-4 Phantom II on the runway to squadron parties, base mascot dogs, a scorched flight helmet kept as a memento, and 12.7mm armor-piercing fragments recovered from a battle-damaged A-1H. The mix of combat records and personal snapshots shows both the hazards Skyraider pilots faced on close air support and rescue-escort missions and the daily life they built between them.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Candid snapshots of Air Force personnel off duty during the Vietnam War, including airmen relaxing near a 'SPADS' sign referencing the A-1 Skyraider. Also pictured are four servicemen in mixed uniforms pausing for a photo outside their billeting quarters in Southeast Asia.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A warm family snapshot shows Jim and Joanne Wold seated with their Irish Setter at their rural home. This personal moment adds a human dimension alongside the military records and service photographs preserved elsewhere in the collection.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

An A-1 Skyraider pilot grins for the camera on the flight line, standing before his 'RESCUE'-marked aircraft. Skyraiders like this one flew as 'Sandy' escorts in Vietnam, laying down covering fire and guiding the helicopters that pulled downed aircrew out of hostile territory.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Scanned book pages present first-person combat narratives from Vietnam War aviators, including a "Misty" Fast FAC account of an F-100 Super Sabre being hit over the Ho Chi Minh Trail and its crew ejecting. Another excerpt describes a downed airman's rescue, coordinated by Covey and Sandy forward air controllers and completed by a Jolly Green helicopter crew and pararescueman under fire.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Two period newspaper clippings tell the rescue story from the ground up: a November 1969 account of four 56th Special Operations Wing A-1 pilots, among them 1Lt Albert J. 'Jax' Roberts III, who covered Navy Commander Lloyd W. Richards after he ejected over enemy territory, and Richards' own letter of thanks. The second, from Air Force Times in April 1970, follows Capt. Laurence C. Johnson, pulled accidentally from a C-130 over Southeast Asia and found at dawn near enemy troops by a Skyraider before a Jolly Green Giant hoisted him out.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A restored Douglas A-1 Skyraider climbs away after takeoff, shown from the rear three-quarter view in its authentic Vietnam-era camouflage and tail code. The caption highlights the Skyraider's rugged, heavily armed design and its valued role in close air support and "Sandy" rescue-escort missions.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Air-to-air views of A-1 Skyraiders banking above the clouds and in formation, a Navy F-4 Phantom of VF-114 refueling by probe-and-drogue, a battle-scarred hangar on a Vietnam flight line, and a comparative display of ammunition from 37mm anti-aircraft rounds to a .38 pistol cartridge. Drawn largely from the Don Fulton collection, these candid frames shot from cockpits and flight lines capture the everyday reality of Air Commando Skyraider flying and the constant threat under which Vietnam air bases operated.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Captured air-to-air by a fellow aviator, an A-1 Skyraider banks against a wall of towering monsoon-season clouds somewhere over Vietnam. It is a rare look at the beautiful, unforgiving sky that framed the Skyraider's demanding low-and-slow combat missions.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A preserved piece of history: an original skin fragment from A-1 Skyraider 139665, mounted as a memorial plaque and photographed at a personal gathering held in tribute. This quiet keepsake honors the aircraft's Vietnam War service, including its role in covert MACV-SOG operations, as part of the remembrance known as "Mel Swanson Day."

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Two off-duty scenes from a Southeast Asia air base: squadron members celebrating before a decorated clubhouse facade, and a close look at the patches on a pilot's custom 'party suit' at the officers' club. One patch reads 'SANDY,' the call sign of the A-1 Skyraider pilots who flew rescue escort over Vietnam and Laos, shielding downed airmen until helicopters could reach them.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A-1 Skyraiders on the Vietnam-era flight line: one under tow, another bristling with rockets and bombs, and "Magnet Ass" No. 618 with ground crew tending its pilot, alongside four servicemen relaxing with beers on a covered porch. Together the images pair the propeller-driven "Spad" -- prized for its heavy ordnance load, long loiter time, and battle-damage survivability on close air support and "Sandy" rescue-escort missions -- with the maintenance, support, and aircrew personnel who kept it flying.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A mannequin dressed in period flight gear and survival equipment was displayed at a squadron reunion in 1973. The exhibit preserved and showcased the specialized equipment worn by Air Force pilots during their Vietnam-era combat tours.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Pages from the Highland Air Times, the 633rd Special Operations Wing's newspaper at Pleiku Air Base, mix Silver Star citations for A-1 Skyraider "SPAD" pilots near Quang Ngai City with the announcement of the 6th Special Operations Squadron's inactivation, alongside a flight surgeon's health advisory and a chaplain's reflection. Joining them is a declassified Project CHECO report on the Rules of Engagement for Operating Location Alpha Alpha, the covert Air Commando base at Nakhon Phanom, Thailand, once Top Secret and released to the public in 2006.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Photographs from the Gene McCarley Collection show the ground force commander of Operation Tailwind in tiger-stripe camouflage at a Special Forces base camp, posed with a comrade identified as Koch. Alongside him, Hatchet Force troops — indigenous soldiers and American Special Forces advisors together — climb aboard a transport truck, capturing the staging and logistics behind MACV-SOG's covert cross-border missions.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Photographs from the Bob Karre collection ranging across Vietnam War flying life: an A-1 Skyraider between steel revetments, an HH-3E "Jolly Green Giant" rescue helicopter banking in flight, the MAC-banded tail of a C-141 Starlifter, and cockpit views of marking rockets and jungle highlands. Between the mission shots are the quieter frames — a serviceman resting in his bunk, aircrew at a formal squadron dining-in, dusk over coastal waters — that round out the record of a combat flying career.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Camouflaged A-1 Skyraiders on the ramp, blast revetments and perforated steel planking, engineers laying interlocking matting for a new runway: these photographs capture the working infrastructure of Vietnam War-era airbases. Between the flight-line scenes are the human ones — a pilot garlanded with flowers after a milestone, airmen grilling at night in March 1970, and servicemen sharing cold drinks outside their barracks in September 1973 — a candid record of daily life in Southeast Asia from the Mel Swanson collection.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A striking air-to-air photograph from Warbird Digest captures two Douglas Skyraiders in formation over Troy, Alabama: Neal Melton's Vietnam-era "Lieutenant America" and a Navy-marked AD-4N once assigned to USS Intrepid. Shot by Brian Silcox during a calendar photo flight, the image celebrates the enduring legacy of the Skyraider among today's warbird owners and pilots.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Life around the A-1 Skyraider in Southeast Asia, from a patched party suit in the officers' club to 'Wabash Cannonball' roaring to life on the flight line under a ground crewman's signal. Sandy Pirate and Jolly Green Giant patches in these Bob Karre collection photographs mark the two communities — rescue-escort pilots and combat helicopter crews — who flew together to recover downed airmen behind enemy lines.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

An AF Form 1098 Personnel Action Request from January 1970 assigning 1st Lt. John W. Weinig as a Tactical Fighter Pilot flying the A-1E Skyraider with OLAA, 56th Special Operations Wing. Behind the form's boxes and signatures is the human side of Vietnam-era special operations, one officer routed to one cockpit by a single sheet of paper.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Two flight line scenes from the Vietnam War: ground crew servicing an A-1 Skyraider named "Jayne Etta" in its revetment, loaded with bombs, fuel tanks, and rocket pods, and crewmen hosing down a large multi-engine aircraft at dusk. Both capture the unglamorous work behind every sortie, from the personal nose art crews painted on their aircraft to the routine washdowns that kept airframes free of corrosion.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A single commemorative image: the "These Good Men" banner created for the 2014 Special Operations Association reunion, pairing tributes to wartime brotherhood with an air-to-air photograph of an A-1 Skyraider flying close air support along the Vietnamese coast. The banner honors the Skyraider pilots who supported MACV-SOG operations during the Vietnam War.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A row of U.S. Army AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters lines a dirt forward airstrip in Vietnam's central highlands, ground crews keeping them mission-ready under harsh field conditions. These gunships provided close air support and armed escort for helicopter assault and extraction missions, including covert MACV-SOG operations like Operation Tailwind in 1970.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

The A-1 Skyraider "Lieutenant America" fires up its radial engine on the ramp during the Jim Wold Day warbird tribute on May 2, 2015, one wing folded to reveal the ordnance stations beneath. That fold-wing design kept the aircraft compact for carrier and ramp storage while still carrying the formidable underwing weaponry the Skyraider was known for.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Vietnam-era photographs and slides scanned for a Special Operations Association Reunion banner project, featuring A-1 Skyraider 628 and other loaded Skyraiders, ground crews arming and inspecting ordnance, and candid squadron life. Included are the 56th SOW's mascot pig "OLAA," a billet interior with a pin-up poster, and a close-up of a minigun pod muzzle, all tied to MACV-SOG close air support and rescue operations.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Two in-flight photos of Republic F-105 Thunderchief ("Thud") aircraft cruising in formation above the clouds during the Vietnam War. The captions describe the F-105's role as the primary strike aircraft of the Rolling Thunder campaign, noting its heavy bomb load and among the war's highest loss rates.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

An official Air Force portrait of Lieutenant Colonel Swanson, senior pilot wings and ribbon rack on display, opens a set that turns quickly to candid off-duty scenes from Southeast Asia. Officers raise an informal toast and airmen unwind at squadron gatherings, offering a rare look at the social life that sustained aircrews between missions during the Vietnam War.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A panoramic look at a Central Highlands airfield lined with light liaison aircraft, paired with a candid moment between two U.S. Army soldiers at rest. Drawn from the Larry Groah photographs, the pairing sets the forward airstrips that supported reconnaissance and special operations against the everyday faces of the men who took part in the covert 1970 MACV-SOG raid into Laos.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Two restored Skyraiders fly in formation over Troy, Alabama, one in original Vietnam-era USAF camouflage and the other in US Navy colors representing a USS Intrepid aircraft. The image illustrates the Skyraider's long service history across both the Air Force and Navy.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Vietnam War-era images of Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base from the Doug Carmichael collection, from an HH-3E "Jolly Green Giant" rescue crew and a taxiing A-1 Skyraider to an F-4 Phantom II on the ramp, the 602nd Special Operations Squadron unit sign, and a tower panorama of the sprawling base. Between the flight-line views are the human moments that defined "NKP" life, including airmen relaxing outside their barracks, a boat outing on the river, and dusk over the housing area, alongside a preserved overexposed frame kept as part of the complete archival record.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A hand-tinted studio portrait of Airman Jim Wold at age 19, photographed around 1951 in the early years of the independent U.S. Air Force. Keepsake portraits like this were commonly given to family when a young serviceman entered the military, marking the start of a career that would later connect him to a broader community of Air Force veterans.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A thatched structure along a Laotian waterway and a 1998 newspaper clipping, both preserved in the Gene McCarley Collection from Operation Tailwind. Together they span the 1970 MACV-SOG raid along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and the media firestorm that followed, including Lt. Col. Eugene McCarley's rebuttal of the CNN/Time "Valley of Death" nerve gas allegations that the network later retracted.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A young Air Force pilot stands soaked from head to toe on the flight line, doused with champagne in the traditional celebration of a training milestone, likely his first solo. Behind him sits a T-28 Trojan, the trainer that prepared Air Commando pilots for combat flying in the Vietnam War era.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A C-130 Hercules transport climbing low over the Thai countryside near Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base, paired with a candid snapshot of a child cradling a duckling from the Doug Carmichael collection. Together they bridge two worlds of the Vietnam War era: "NKP" as a vital hub for USAF special operations, search-and-rescue, and airlift missions over Laos and North Vietnam, and the quiet family life waiting back home.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

USAF Form 5 flight records for Major Dean E. DeTar of the 6th Special Operations Squadron, logging his A-1 Skyraider sorties from mid-1969 into January 1970. The forms track day, night, and instrument hours, landings, and combat missions — one month alone shows 49.7 hours over 21 combat sorties — building a precise picture of an Air Commando pilot's operational tempo in Southeast Asia.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Paper records from the Gene McCarley Collection, including a handwritten contact list that hints at the quiet correspondence among veterans, families, and researchers who pieced Operation Tailwind's history back together. At its center is Ted Turner's July 1998 letter of apology to Colonel McCarley for CNN's retracted "Valley of Death" report, a document that marks the veterans' long fight to see their 1970 raid into Laos recorded honestly.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Images from Bob Karre's personal Vietnam War-era collection range from the propeller-marked "SPAD" sign on Building 719 and an air-to-air view of a striped A-1 Skyraider in flight to a C-119 taxiing at dusk and a C-133 Cargomaster on the MATS-era ramp. Between the aircraft are the quieter textures of service: an off-duty squadron gathering marked with Air Pirate and Jolly Green patches, an airman sheltering from monsoon rain under a wing, a cockpit crowded with gauges, and twilight over the Vietnamese coast.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A Vietnam War rescue mission seen from the ground up: a "Sandy" A-1 Skyraider on SAR alert, a camouflaged Sikorsky HH-3E "Jolly Green Giant" on the flight line, remote dirt airstrips carved through jungle, and a quiet South Vietnamese city street. Drawn from the Tom Stump collection, the images pair the aircraft and forward strips that made combat search and rescue possible with the everyday civilian scenes American servicemen encountered in-country.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Aircrews and maintenance personnel of the 56th Special Operations Wing's Operating Location Alpha Alpha pose together beside one of their A-1 Skyraiders at Danang Air Base, Vietnam, in December 1970. An accompanying caption card lists the pilots and ground crew by name, preserving a rare individually identified record of the men who flew and maintained Skyraiders in Southeast Asia.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

An aerial view over remote Vietnam War-era jungle terrain shows smoke and impact bursts rising from a ridgeline as a helicopter waits below in a nearby clearing. The scene evokes the critical role of aerial fire support in cross-border reconnaissance missions such as Operation Tailwind, conducted into Laos in 1970.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A veteran and a fellow visitor pose at the "Standin' on the Corner" Park in Winslow, Arizona, the Route 66 landmark inspired by the Eagles' 1972 hit "Take It Easy." Taken decades after the Vietnam War, these travel snapshots document the later journeys and lighter moments in the lives of the servicemen represented in this collection.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow presents the handwritten reverse of a photograph documenting combat damage to A-1H Skyraider serial number 137618, struck by AK-47 fire at Da Nang Air Base in April 1970. Crew chief Ed Huett's notes identify the pilot as Major Williams of the 602nd Special Operations Squadron, capturing the everyday risks faced by Skyraider crews flying close air support.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A Vietnamese Air Force A-1 Skyraider pilot sits in his cockpit with visor lowered, pictured moments before or after a combat sortie. The Skyraider, a propeller-driven attack aircraft originally developed by the U.S. Navy, was a mainstay of VNAF close air support during the Vietnam War.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

An archived forum page documents the 1998 CNN/Time controversy, in which the network falsely alleged that U.S. forces used nerve gas during Operation Tailwind. The claims were retracted after independent investigation, making this a pivotal chapter in the vindication of the 1970 MACV-SOG raid into Laos.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Vietnam War veterans and guests pose together in front of the restored A-1 Skyraider "Lieutenant America" during the May 2015 Jim Wold Day tribute event. The gathering reflects a reunion of former aircrews and support personnel honoring their shared wartime service alongside the historic aircraft.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Candid photographs from SOAR XXXVII, the 2013 Special Operations Association Reunion in Las Vegas, capturing the ballroom floor, banquet tables, vendor and merchandise stands, and attendees including Larry Cavender, Don Engebretsen and Bob Hammond. The images document veterans of MACV-SOG and allied units gathering, reconnecting, and marking their service through banners, apparel, and informal conversation.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

The nose art of A-1 Skyraider "The Proud American" is captured as a sister aircraft taxis by in the background. The image reflects the pride crews and pilots took in their planes during Vietnam War flight-line operations.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A composited image of a heavily armed A-1 Skyraider, marked with shark-mouth nose art, banking over a jungle canopy background. It highlights the aircraft's role as the primary close-air-support and rescue-escort platform for USAF Air Commando squadrons in the Vietnam War.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

A composite American and indigenous MACV-SOG reconnaissance team gathers for a group portrait at the Phu Bai firing range, home of Forward Operating Base 1. Teams like this one ran classified cross-border missions into Laos and Cambodia, with Montagnard and other indigenous soldiers sharing the same extreme risks as their American counterparts.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Ground crew and aircrew pause for a break beside a doorway stenciled "Spads" at a Vietnam War-era ordnance loading area. The nickname honored the propeller-driven A-1 Skyraider in the jet age, and teams like this one worked around the clock to keep those aircraft armed for close air support and rescue-escort missions.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Vietnam War photographs of A-1 Skyraiders at work in Southeast Asia, from "TS" rolling down a Southeast Asian runway and a taxiing Skyraider with bombs and fuel on its pylons to air-to-air views of "TT 593" and a wingman held in tight formation. Assembled in the Jax Roberts collection for a Special Operations Association Reunion, the set also includes a runway arresting barrier, a Cold War jet pilot strapped into his ejection seat, and an aerial strike frame catching ordnance impact on a suspected enemy compound.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

An A-1 Skyraider banks low in silhouette over the jungle canopy in this photograph from the Gene McCarley Collection. Skyraiders flew dangerously low to deliver close air support for reconnaissance teams deep in hostile territory during Operation Tailwind, the September 1970 MACV-SOG cross-border operation into Laos.

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The Don Englebreston Collection

Two Vietnam War aircraft photographs from the Barry Pencek collection: AH-1G Cobra gunships staged with loaded rocket pods along a remote dirt airstrip near the Laotian border, and a C-123 Provider transport taxiing at a forward airbase. Both aircraft types were mainstays of MACV-SOG special operations such as Operation Tailwind, supplying the close air support and airlift that kept reconnaissance teams working behind enemy lines in one of the war's most secretive campaigns.

John Weinig Vietnam Pics to PhotoShop and Watermark

The Don Englebreston Collection

Vietnam War photographs from airman John Weinig's collection, showing a pilot beside his armed A-1 Skyraider, tail number 242, and USAF aircrew in flight suits and survival vests on the ramp and in a squadron office. Shot at Southeast Asian air bases ringed by corrugated-steel revetments, these candid images capture both the workhorse Skyraider's close air support role and the everyday camaraderie of airmen between combat sorties.

John Weinig Vietnam Pic's Large Watermarked 1

The Don Englebreston Collection

Two airmen pose beneath the "Home of the Spads" sign marking their squadron area during the Vietnam War. "Spad" was the aircrews' nickname for the A-1 Skyraider, a nod to the propeller-driven design that recalled the WWI-era SPAD fighter even as it flew alongside modern jets.

John Weinig Vietnam Pic's 90% Watermarked

The Don Englebreston Collection

American airmen cut loose at a squadron party during the Vietnam War, a scene from the John Weinig collection repeated at forward bases across Southeast Asia. Part celebration and part initiation for new arrivals, informal rituals like this built the tight-knit camaraderie that carried units through the stresses of combat deployment.

John Waresh

The Don Englebreston Collection

A close-up study of the Douglas A-1 Skyraider "AMERICA" on museum display, framing its four-bladed propeller, massive radial engine, and underwing stores. The detail view shows exactly what made the Skyraider formidable: pylons built to carry heavy bomb and rocket loads for close air support and rescue escort over Vietnam.

John Kiland

The Don Englebreston Collection

From the John Kiland Collection, a close look at Skyraider maintenance: a Wright R-3350 radial stripped of its propeller, its eighteen cylinders laid bare, the engine that gave the A-1 its remarkable load-carrying ability and reliability. A second frame opens the accessory section during overhaul, revealing the tangle of hoses, wiring, and components behind every hour a warbird spends in the air.

Joel Documents

The Don Englebreston Collection

An official AF Form 5 Pilot's Individual Flight Record logging 2Lt Joel T. Morrison's flying hours for November 1969, including 27.7 combat hours in that single month. Paperwork like this offers precise, verifiable evidence of the punishing operational tempo carried by Forward Air Controllers and pilots during the Vietnam War.

Joe Parnar Maps, etc

The Don Englebreston Collection

A topographic map of Laos from a 1970 U.S. military survey, annotated by Joe Parnar in 2016 to mark the extraction landing zone used during Operation Tailwind. The hand-drawn notations turn a Series L7015 sheet into a firsthand key to one of the most storied special operations missions of the Vietnam War.

Joe Parnar

The Don Englebreston Collection

Contains a 1968 topographic map sheet of the tri-border area of western Kontum Province and a hazy aerial photograph of forested mountain terrain, from the Joe Parnar collection. Both items relate to the rugged jungle terrain near Kontum into which MACV-SOG reconnaissance teams were helicopter-inserted during the Vietnam War.

Joe Parnar

The Don Englebreston Collection

Annotated Google Earth imagery of the forested Vietnam-Laos border highlands, marked with military grid references pinpointing helicopter pickup zones and aircraft and personnel loss sites. Cross-referencing wartime after-action reports against modern satellite views, MACV-SOG veterans and researchers used work like this to relocate mission sites and support the accounting of servicemen still missing in Southeast Asia.

Joe Driscoll Scarface

The Don Englebreston Collection

A line of UH-1 helicopters sits staged for a mission, part of the air support network tied to Operation Tailwind. The 1970 MACV-SOG raid into Laos leaned on rotary-wing assets like these, covered by the Marine Corps "Scarface" gunships of VMO-2, to carry reconnaissance teams deep into contested territory and bring them out again.

Jim Wold Vintage Photos from Phil Wold

The Don Englebreston Collection

Vintage family photographs from Phil Wold tracing Jim Wold's life beyond the cockpit, from a multigenerational gathering around the dining table in Hatton, North Dakota and a sunlit porch portrait believed to mark his mother's final birthday to a formal later-life portrait before an American flag backdrop. Church pews filled for a family occasion, a winter memorial service attended by a uniformed airman, the Wold Law Office monument sign, and a reunion with longtime friend Dan Stenoin round out a collection that gives the human story behind the military records preserved alongside it.

Jim Wold JPEG

The Don Englebreston Collection

The end-of-tour reports of Lt Col James W. Wold detail a year commanding an A-1H Skyraider special operations unit at Pleiku and Da Nang, flying 241 combat missions in support of classified "Prairie Fire" reconnaissance patrols, alongside his candid analysis of rescue tactics and the case for a dedicated close air support aircraft that led to the A-10. A later 1989 letter shows his continued advocacy for fellow airmen's recognition long after the war.

Jim Wold End of Tour Report

The Don Englebreston Collection

Lt Col James W. Wold's End of Tour Report chronicles a year commanding an A-1 Skyraider squadron at Pleiku and Da Nang, logging 241 combat sorties in support of Special Forces reconnaissance along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. His critique of high-risk 'fast mover' FAC tactics and case for continued close air support aircraft foreshadows the operational debates that led to the A-10 Thunderbolt II.

Jim Wold Day Photos

The Don Englebreston Collection

Scenes from the 'Jim Wold Day' tribute event at a Tennessee airfield, where veterans and families gathered on the ramp alongside a Douglas A-1 Skyraider, the restored P-47 Thunderbolt 'Hun Hunter XVI,' and the preserved nose section of a vintage warbird. Close-up views of the Tennessee Museum of Aviation's Skyraider and its 'Lieutenant America' nose art sit beside group portraits of the Air Commando and Special Operations airmen who flew and depended on these aircraft in Vietnam.

Jim Wold Day flyer

The Don Englebreston Collection

The promotional flyer for "General James W. 'Jim' Wold Day," held 2 May 2015 at the Tennessee Museum of Aviation in Sevierville, Tennessee. The event honored Wold, first commander of Operating Location Alpha Alpha, and brought Vietnam veteran A-1 Skyraider pilots together for panel discussions and flight demonstrations celebrating the propeller-driven attack aircraft that flew close air support and rescue-escort missions throughout the war.

Jim Wold Day 2May15

The Don Englebreston Collection

Two scenes from a May 2015 fly-in: an early-generation military helicopter on static display beside a jeep, and a Douglas A-1 Skyraider silhouetted against a blazing sun during a flyby. Together they trace the arc from the pioneering rescue and reconnaissance rotorcraft of the 1940s to the warbirds still flying today at airshows and remembrance events.

Jim Wold 20b's

The Don Englebreston Collection

A handwritten PACAF General Purpose Worksheet from the Jim Wold collection, logging combat sorties flown across three weeks in May and June 1970. Each line records mission numbers, controlling Forward Air Controllers such as "Covey," flying time, and bomb damage assessment, a pilot's own ledger of the pace of combat flying in Vietnam.

Jim Wold

The Don Englebreston Collection

An official U.S. Air Force portrait of a Brigadier General, wearing the Command Pilot badge above a ribbon rack earned across a long career of service. Formal portraits like this marked promotion to general officer rank, capping decades of flying and leadership in the Air Force.

Jim Seith Reworked Pictures

The Don Englebreston Collection

A-1 Skyraider pilots unwind in their squadron ready room during the Vietnam War, gathered beneath a hand-lettered sign laying out the "Spad House Rules" in tribute to their aircraft's beloved nickname. Informal spaces like this gave aircrews somewhere to relax, joke, and decompress between missions, and this reworked image from the Jim Seith pictures preserves that off-duty side of squadron life.

Jax Roberts Photo Scans

The Don Englebreston Collection

Scanned photographs from the Jax Roberts collection following A-1 Skyraiders through the Vietnam War, including cockpit views of rocket pods and a wingman over jungle mountains, air-to-air formation shots of the aircraft crews called the "Spad," and a close-up of combat damage torn through an aircraft's skin. The camera turns just as often to the people, with shirtless squadron personnel gathered at a Skyraider's nose in the tropical heat, Don, George, and Jax together at Da Nang Air Base, and a USAF colonel pinning a medal on pilot Roberts at an outdoor flight-line ceremony.

Jax Misc

The Don Englebreston Collection

A candid off-duty snapshot from the Jax Roberts Collection, showing a serviceman posed with a pin-up photograph during the Vietnam War. Personal pictures like this one preserve the humor and downtime of barracks life for young men a long way from home.

Jax for 2017 A-1 Reunion

The Don Englebreston Collection

Flight-line and mission photographs of Vietnam War A-1 Skyraiders, from ground crews servicing a minigun pod and tending "TS 242" beside a crash rescue truck to strike camera frames catching ordnance detonating on a hillside target. Alongside the combat imagery are the human moments of squadron life: a pilot climbing down from his cockpit after a sortie, a young airman doused in a traditional dunking ritual, and a candid scene at a forward base camp preserved in the collection of A-1 pilot A. Jackson "Jax" Roberts.

Jax Documents

The Don Englebreston Collection

An April 1, 1970 Air Force Times clipping recounting how Capt. Laurence C. Johnson survived being accidentally pulled from a C-130 Hercules when his parachute deployed prematurely over hostile territory in Southeast Asia. Injured and evading enemy search parties through the night, Johnson was spotted by an A-1 Skyraider and lifted out by a Jolly Green Giant helicopter crew, making this newsprint account a vivid record of the search-and-rescue teamwork that defined USAF combat operations in Vietnam.

HurlburtClassPics

The Don Englebreston Collection

Group portraits of Air Commando pilot training classes at Hurlburt Field, Florida — the "Express" flights and classes 69-01, 69-12, and 71-10 — posed before their T-28 Trojan and A-1 Skyraider trainers. Later annotated by veterans and historians, the photographs name each airman and mark those killed in action in Vietnam, making them at once training records and memorials to the men who trained together before deploying to Southeast Asia.

Hobson

The Don Englebreston Collection

A 2011 letter from aviation historian Chris Hobson to the A-1 Skyraider Association introduces his research manuscript on Vietnam air losses. The correspondence highlights the collaboration between historians and veterans to preserve the record of American air operations in Southeast Asia.

Good Resolution 1

The Don Englebreston Collection

Two Vietnam War images from the Doc Blanchard Collection: an Air Force pilot pausing beside the open cockpit of his A-1 Skyraider on a Southeast Asian flight line, and pilots sharing a laugh at an off-duty squadron gathering, one in the distinctive blue "party suit." The pairing captures both sides of a Skyraider aviator's deployment, the routine between combat sorties and the camaraderie that relieved its pressure.

GM pixs

The Don Englebreston Collection

Wartime photographs from the personal collection of Gene McCarley show Special Forces advisors, indigenous allied soldiers, and tiger-stripe-clad MACV-SOG personnel at forward airstrips and base camps in Vietnam. McCarley led the ground element during Operation Tailwind in September 1970, and these original 35mm slides offer a rare, unedited look at the elite reconnaissance teams who operated in denied territory along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Gene McCarley Tailwind Slide Show JPEG WM

The Don Englebreston Collection

Two photographs from the Gene McCarley Collection show personnel gathered beside a heavy-lift helicopter at a forward landing zone and indigenous MACV-SOG Hatchet Force troops loading onto a cargo truck with rucksacks, ammunition, and weapons as an American Special Forces advisor looks on. McCarley commanded the ground force during Operation Tailwind, the September 1970 covert raid into Laos, and these images capture the helicopter-borne insertions and troop movements that defined operations along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Gene McCarley Photos on same CD

The Don Englebreston Collection

A MACV-SOG reconnaissance team pushes cautiously through dense Laotian jungle near an enemy installation during Operation Tailwind, September 1970. The team's route carried it through and around enemy base camps and supply depots along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in one of the deepest and most audacious cross-border operations of the Vietnam War.

Gene Finamore Scans

The Don Englebreston Collection

USAF armament specialists load a minigun-equipped A-1 Skyraider with ammunition before a combat sortie. This scanned newspaper clipping documents the essential ground crew work that kept Skyraiders mission-ready.

Gene Finamore Scans

The Don Englebreston Collection

From the Gene Finamore collection, A-1 Skyraiders turn their engines in steel revetments on the OL-AA flight line, exhaust smoke drifting as ground crews ready them for another mission. A companion newspaper clipping, "Can't Keep a Good Plane Down," catches 1st Lt. James F. Seith of the 56th Special Operations Wing taxiing his shark-mouthed Skyraider past F-4 crews at Da Nang in leather helmet, goggles, and scarf.

Gene Deatrick

The Don Englebreston Collection

Lt. Col. Gene Deatrick poses in the cockpit of a newly rebuilt A-1 Skyraider at Pleiku Air Base, marking what is recorded as his final flight in the rugged aircraft. The image honors the Skyraider's storied role as a mainstay of Air Commando and Special Operations close air support and rescue missions throughout the Vietnam War.

Gary Hawes Raw Scans

The Don Englebreston Collection

Candid November 1970 snapshots of A-1 Skyraider life at Da Nang Air Base, from a "Spad Party" and Lt. Larry Warren mid-celebration at the DOOM Club to pilots Mel Swanson and Bob Donaldson in their off-duty quarters and munitions troops Tom Brown and Dan Neubert over a card game. Handwritten labels name the men in frame, and a separate portrait of pilot Jim Winans being fitted into a full-pressure suit, displayed beneath a "Reunion '73" sign, shows how long these bonds outlasted the war.

Gary Hawes JPEG WM Sm

The Don Englebreston Collection

Air-to-air views of armed A-1 Skyraiders from the Gary Hawes collection, including tail-coded "C-02" banking with a full load of external ordnance and a pair of A-1H "Spads" in formation above the clouds over Vietnam in November 1970. Ground-level frames complete the picture with aircrew gathered on a perforated-steel-plank ramp and flight-suited airmen at a squadron club, capturing the camaraderie between the close air support and rescue-escort missions these Air Commando and Sandy pilots flew.

Gary Hawes JPEG WM Med

The Don Englebreston Collection

Two November 1970 photographs from Da Nang Air Base: A-1 Skyraider pilots Mel Swanson and Bob Donaldson in an off-duty moment, and the inside of a "SPAD Ops" hut with airmen Levi Rentz, Chris Tateishi, and Sgt. Dieter Rapske between missions. Field telephones, radios, and status boards fill the operations room where Skyraider combat sorties were coordinated, while the nickname "Spad" itself speaks to the affection crews held for the rugged, WWII-era-designed aircraft they flew.

Gary Hawes JPEG WM Lg

The Don Englebreston Collection

Two A-1 Skyraiders in formation over the rice paddies of South Vietnam, bracketed by off-duty scenes at Da Nang Air Base in November 1970: munitions troops Tom Brown and Dan Neubert over a card game, and a "Spad Party" at the DOOM Club. The pairing shows both halves of Skyraider life, the heavily armed propeller-driven aircraft prized for loitering over targets far longer than jets, and the ground crews and aircrew whose camaraderie kept them flying.

Gary Hawes Final

The Don Englebreston Collection

Air-to-air photographs of armed A-1 Skyraiders in flight over Vietnam, including tail-coded "C-02" banking with rockets and bombs beneath its wings and a hand-labeled November 1970 view of A-1H Skyraiders en route to a combat mission. Rounding out the set is a candid officers' club portrait of Col. Walseh, commander of the 56th Special Operations Wing at Nakhon Phanom, the unit that directed the Air Commando squadrons flying these rugged, propeller-driven "Spads" on close air support and rescue escort.

Gary Hawes 20b 2013-11-23

The Don Englebreston Collection

Pages from the personal flight logbook of A-1 Skyraider pilot Gary T. Hawes, recording combat sorties flown from Nakhon Phanom, Thailand, and Da Nang Air Base, Vietnam, in September and October 1970. Entry by entry, the logbook names call signs and mission types from CBU strikes and infiltration support to SOG orbits and search-and-rescue alerts, offering a rare day-by-day account of what "Spad" pilots actually flew in support of special operations forces in Southeast Asia.

Gary Hawes

The Don Englebreston Collection

A U.S. Air Force pilot stands beside his A-1 Skyraider on the flight line, poised before a Vietnam War-era mission. The image evokes the legendary "Sandy" close air support and combat rescue escort role flown by squadrons like the 1st and 6th Special Operations Squadrons out of Pleiku.

Gary Bain Stuff

The Don Englebreston Collection

A tribute banner honoring Marine Corps aviators Capt. Gary L. Bain and 1st Lt. William C. Ryan, Jr., who flew F-4 Phantom II combat missions together as radar intercept team "Boomslang" with VMFA-323 and VMFA-115 out of Chu Lai, South Vietnam, 1968-1969. The collage captures squadron life and camaraderie while memorializing Lt. Ryan, who was killed in action on the same May 1969 mission that left Bain wounded and evacuated.

Gary Bain Scans

The Don Englebreston Collection

A man at the helm of a boat during a sunset outing, likely in the Cayman Islands, in this personal photograph from the collection. Non-military images like this one round out the archive, showing the civilian lives that collection contributors built after their military service.

From Frank Greco

The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow shows two servicemen displaying a captured red star pennant taken as a trophy during MACV-SOG operations in Southeast Asia. The photograph belongs to the Gene McCarley Collection, tied to Operation Tailwind, the 1970 cross-border mission into Laos led in part by McCarley's Hatchet Force company.

Frank Greco

The Don Englebreston Collection

A wartime aerial reconnaissance photograph and its accompanying narrative document the covert Hatchet Force units of MACV-SOG's Studies and Observations Group along Laos's Highway 110. This rare record captures how these teams dug in to interdict North Vietnamese Army supply lines feeding the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Form 5's and Orders

The Don Englebreston Collection

A USAF Individual Flight Record, AF Form 5, tallying one pilot's flying hours through December 1970 across day, night, instrument, and combat time. Routine paperwork in its day, records like this now carry the detail historians need to reconstruct a pilot's operational tempo during the Vietnam War.

Form 5's No 20b

The Don Englebreston Collection

Form 5's

The Don Englebreston Collection

A redacted Air Force Form 5, the "Pilots Individual Flight Record," logging Major Peter D. Williams' flying time for January 1970. Official records like this tracked every sortie by aircraft type, duration, day/night and instrument conditions, and combat time, and this entry documents a Vietnam-era career totaling more than 4,000 flight hours, over 400 of them in combat.

Form 5's

The Don Englebreston Collection

An official AF Form 5 Pilot's Individual Flight Record for 1Lt Donald L. Engebretsen, logging his January 1970 sorties flown largely in the Cessna O-1 Bird Dog. Tallying flight hours, landings, and combat time, this forward air controller's log is the bureaucratic backbone of the air war and a precise, dated account of one pilot's service.

Fatcapper07

The Don Englebreston Collection

Modern road maps of Savannakhet Province, Laos, one annotated and one plain, pinpointing the loss site of a "Jolly" rescue helicopter south of Ban Tang during the search and rescue effort for aircraft callsign Fat Capper 07. The maps document the heavily defended Route 9/Route 23 corridor along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, used by researchers to match wartime coordinates to present-day place names.

Ed Homan

The Don Englebreston Collection

The Distinguished Flying Cross citation awarded to First Lieutenant Edward L. Homan, USAF, for heroism on 6 October 1969. Flying an A-1 Skyraider in Southeast Asia, Homan laid down close-in covering fire during a Search and Rescue mission after two transport helicopters were shot down, shielding the survivors until they could be recovered.

Ed Hlavaty Pictures

The Don Englebreston Collection

Ed Hlavaty's photographs record two sides of the Vietnam War: a U.S. serviceman handing out relief supplies to villagers as children look on, part of the MEDCAP civic action programs that paired combat operations with food, clothing, and medical care. Alongside it, three Air Force aircrew members pose beside a white Sikorsky H-3 helicopter, the versatile twin-turbine workhorse flown on search and rescue, transport, and support missions.

Ed Hlavaty

The Don Englebreston Collection

A Vietnam-era slide shows a battle-damaged U.S. Air Force HH-3/CH-3 "Jolly Green Giant"-type rescue helicopter resting on maintenance jacks, its fuselage bearing severe combat damage. Aircraft like this flew dangerous combat search-and-rescue missions over Vietnam and Laos, often returning battered by ground fire.

Dyrud

The Don Englebreston Collection

Two views from "Jim Wold Day" on 2 May 2015: attendees Levy Rentz and a companion at the veterans reunion, and a restored Douglas A-1 Skyraider standing wings-folded at an aviation museum hangar entrance. Together they pair the people with the machine, linking Vietnam-era veterans and their families to the rugged single-engine attack aircraft prized in Korea and Vietnam for its heavy ordnance load and long loiter over the battlefield.

Drop Tank Baggage

The Don Englebreston Collection

A period aircraft drop tank is hoisted by boom lift and loaded onto a pickup truck at a desert airfield. Behind every restored warbird is a logistics story, and this image documents the ongoing work of collectors and restorers to locate, move, and preserve original components for historic aircraft.

Doug Miller

The Don Englebreston Collection

Two U.S. Army soldiers, identified as Doug Miller and Ed Wolcoff, pose together at a base camp in Vietnam. Their patches and "RECON" lettered hat mark them as MACV-SOG, the highly classified special operations command that ran covert reconnaissance across the borders of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

Doug Charmichle Photo

The Don Englebreston Collection

Vietnam-era Air Commando veterans at a squadron reunion — group portraits beneath the propeller of a restored A-1 Skyraider, a banquet under hanging aircraft, panel discussions, memento presentations, and visits to the Tennessee Museum of Aviation's Warbird Collection in Sevierville. Decades after their service, these airmen gather among preserved uniforms, patches, and wartime photographs, including a projected air-to-air shot of Skyraider tail code TT 779, keeping firsthand memory and camaraderie alive.

Don's Pic for Ed

The Don Englebreston Collection

An A-1 Skyraider marked "TT-779" climbs above the clouds of Southeast Asia, fully loaded with bombs and rockets beneath a dramatic dusk sky. Able to carry more ordnance than many contemporary jets and loiter far longer over the battlefield, the Skyraider became indispensable for close air support and combat rescue escort throughout the Vietnam War.

Don TN Air Museum Small JPEG's

The Don Englebreston Collection

Don's snapshots from the Tennessee Museum of Aviation catch the anticipation of an airshow morning on June 7, 2014, as a visitor arrives for the day's flying display. Beyond the museum fence, a vintage military trainer waits on the flight line.

Don TN Air Museum Pics

The Don Englebreston Collection

A June 2014 visit to a Tennessee air museum air show, with P-47 Thunderbolts "Wicked Wabbit" and a red-cowled sister ship on static display, the bare-metal P-51 Mustang "Ain't Misbehavin'" taxiing out, and A-1 Skyraiders wearing "AMERICA" and "Lieutenant America" nose art. Alongside the aircraft are the people who make such days possible and memorable, from a pilot wiping down his canopy before flight to visitors wandering the ramp on a family outing.

Don Jay 1st and 6th Group Photos

The Don Englebreston Collection

Two squadron group portraits taken with Douglas A-1 Skyraiders: the 6th Air Commando Squadron on its 1968 arrival in Southeast Asia, and the 6th Special Operations Squadron gathered on and around their aircraft at Pleiku Air Base in late 1969. Photographs like these marked the milestones of a combat deployment, preserving the faces of the airmen who flew and maintained the Skyraider through some of the most demanding close air support and rescue missions of the Vietnam War.

Don Jay

The Don Englebreston Collection

An A-1H Skyraider soars above the clouds over Southeast Asia while the 6th Air Commando Squadron's flight-line maintenance crew poses at Pleiku Air Base, circa 1968-1969. Together these images honor both the airmen who flew and the ground crews whose unglamorous, essential labor kept every combat sortie in the air.

Don Fulton pic of Don E 1st Flight

The Don Englebreston Collection

Photographs by Don Fulton spanning carrier flight operations with F-4 Phantoms and an A-4 Skyhawk, aerial refueling seen from a KC-135 boom operator's window, a sandbagged bunker position, underwing minigun and rocket pods, and the muddy forward airstrip where Don Engebretsen took his first Huey flight. Together the images pair personal milestones and everyday moments with the hardware of the air war, from ordnance loads to the rotary-wing airpower that shaped daily life at forward operating bases in Vietnam.

Don Engebretsen Slides

The Don Englebreston Collection

Personal color slides from the Don Engebretsen collection capture A-1 Skyraiders in revetments, on rain-soaked flight lines, and in formation over Southeast Asia, alongside an HH-3E "Jolly Green Giant" rescue helicopter on maintenance jacks. Shot from cockpits and flight lines around 1969 and 1970, these images pair the working details of Air Commando operations with quieter moments, from a squadron scheduling board to a double rainbow arching into the clouds below.

Don Engebretsen Slides

The Don Englebreston Collection

Drawn from the personal slide collection of Don Engebretsen, this image captures an airman pausing for a cigarette break in a squadron ready room. A copy of Stars and Stripes rests nearby, a quiet detail that grounds this everyday moment of military life away from the cockpit during the Vietnam War.

Don Engebretsen Redux Photos

The Don Englebreston Collection

Restored A-1 Skyraiders taxi, sit wings-folded on the ramp, and draw crowds at the "Tailwind Day Redux" commemorative gatherings, alongside candid shots of veterans, memorabilia tables, and aircraft maintenance details. Photographed by Don Engebretsen, these images document how the veterans of Operation Tailwind, the September 1970 MACV-SOG raid into Laos, keep the memory of the raid and the "Spads" that supported it alive decades later.

Don Engebretsen Personal High Def Vietnam Scans

The Don Englebreston Collection

High-definition scans of A-1 Skyraiders aloft in towering tropical cumulus and parked on the ramp with bold shark-mouth nose art, photographed from companion aircraft during the Vietnam War. Even the heavily underexposed frame earns its place, showing both the beauty of Southeast Asian skies and the technical limits of shooting film from a single-seat cockpit in combat.

Don Engebretsen OLAA

The Don Englebreston Collection

Two official U.S. Air Force Pilots Individual Flight Records for Lieutenant Colonel James W. Wold, covering October 1969 with the 6th Special Operations Squadron and June 1970. Typewritten entries tally monthly hours, sorties, and cumulative combat time, giving researchers a precise, day-by-day account of an aviator's wartime service and the operational tempo of Air Commando units.

Don Engebretsen JPEG Hook WM Med

The Don Englebreston Collection

Life on a Vietnam War air base built around the A-1 Skyraider: rows of aircraft in steel revetments, rocket pods being serviced on a rain-soaked ramp, a pilot checking his wing ordnance, and a crewman at the cockpit as the engine turns over. Air-to-air views of shark-mouthed and cloud-topping Skyraiders, a "SAR Alert" Sandy waiting to launch, and a helicopter's shattered nose section from February 1970 round out the picture of daily readiness and its cost.

Don Engebretsen JPEG Hook WM Lg

The Don Englebreston Collection

Shark-mouthed A-1 Skyraiders banking over water at dusk with wings full of bombs, rocket pods, and napalm, alongside a "SPAD" flight jacket and survival vest hanging ready for the next mission. The set widens beyond the cockpit to a Huey over the Central Highlands, tile-roofed base billets, a portrait of two Vietnamese girls, close-up flak damage in bare metal, and a champagne "fini flight" toast on the ramp.

Don Engebretsen JPEG Hook No WM

The Don Englebreston Collection

A-1 Skyraiders on "Sandy" search-and-rescue alert, a battle-damaged "303" sitting between revetments, an OV-10 Bronco banking on a forward air control run, and an HH-3E "Jolly Green Giant" up on jacks for maintenance. Between the flight-line and air-to-air frames are aerial views of island reefs and jungle mountains and a quiet souvenir-shop scene, tracing the full range of an Air Commando tour in Southeast Asia.

Don Engebretsen Collection

The Don Englebreston Collection

A preserved newspaper clipping, the continuation of an "Ammo Country" feature article, profiles the Air Force munitions troops who built up ordnance for aircraft such as the AC-130U gunship. It is a look at the vital but rarely celebrated logistics work that kept combat air operations armed and flying.

Don Engebretsen Cell Phone Photos

The Don Englebreston Collection

Don Engebretsen's candid photographs follow the October 2017 Medal of Honor weekend for Captain Gary "Mike" Rose, from the White House colonnade and a packed East Room to the Pentagon Hall of Heroes ceremony, a reception banquet, the Special Forces Charitable Trust gala, and green berets riding a tour bus together. Behind the formal events are hotel corridors and hallway reunions of veterans and families, marking recognition that came 47 years after Rose's heroism as a Special Forces medic in the classified 1970 Operation Tailwind raid into Laos.

Don Engebretsen 4800 Hi Res Personal Nam Scans

The Don Englebreston Collection

High-resolution scans of Vietnam War-era A-1 Skyraider photographs, from a squadron group portrait posed on perforated steel planking to a Skyraider rolling out under its drag chute beside a shark-mouth-painted aircraft. Together they capture both the people and the personality of the propeller-driven "Spad" units that flew close air support, interdiction, and rescue escort across Southeast Asia.

Don Engebretsen 02May15 Photos

The Don Englebreston Collection

Veterans, families, and friends gather for "Jim Wold Day" on 2 May 2015, watching a restored A-1 Skyraider taxi at a Tennessee airfield and posing for reunion portraits. Members of the A-1 Skyraider Association appear in shirts bearing the motto "We Flew - We Fought," among them Doc Blanchard, John Weinig ("Spad/Sandy"), and Chuck Kassab, men who flew the legendary attack aircraft in combat over Vietnam.

Don E PS Reworked Photos

The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow captures two A-1 Skyraiders of the 6th Special Operations Squadron flying in tight formation over jungle-covered mountains along the Laos-Vietnam border. It reflects the low-altitude close air support and rescue escort missions Air Commando squadrons flew in this rugged terrain during the Vietnam War.

Don E Photo Scans Misc

The Don Englebreston Collection

An identification photograph of 1Lt Don Engebretsen at Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base, holding a hand-lettered card with his rank and date, September 1970. Such cards were a common wartime shorthand for documenting personnel and milestones like a DEROS, the estimated date of return from overseas.

Don E Checklist Cheat Sheets

The Don Englebreston Collection

A pilot's handmade "cheat sheet" from January 1969 lists TACAN navigation channels, GCI call signs, and airfield frequencies across South Vietnam. Small enough to tuck into a flight suit pocket, this compact reference underscores the quick-access tools essential to airmen flying combat missions.

Don E - JPEG 2's

The Don Englebreston Collection

Vietnam War photographs from the Don Engebretsen Collection, including armed A-1 Skyraiders cocked on alert in steel revetments, a Skyraider banking over a coastal river delta at dusk, a forward air control aircraft threading mountain terrain, and an aerial view of bomb-cratered jungle trails. Alongside the flying come ground crews at work, aircrew relaxing in the officers' lounge, a costumed morale shot, and a portrait of two Vietnamese girls, a personal record of one airman's war on and off the flight line.

Don Documents Awards & Decs

The Don Englebreston Collection

The typewritten narrative supporting the Distinguished Flying Cross recommendation for 1Lt Donald L. Engebretsen, USAF, describing his A-1 Skyraider strike of 5 January 1970. It recounts repeated passes flown below 100 feet through heavy enemy fire to shield a wounded reconnaissance team in Southeast Asia, action credited with breaking the enemy assault and saving the team.

Don Dineen 6th SOS Articles

The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow presents newspaper clippings from a personal scrapbook chronicling the 6th Special Operations Squadron's A-1 Skyraider "Pappy Yocum's Country Store" and a dramatic combat rescue near a North Vietnamese riverbank. The clippings together document both the aircraft's combat record and the coordinated Sandy, Jolly Green, and jet fighter efforts that saved downed airmen.

Don Dineen 6th SOS

The Don Englebreston Collection

Original papers from Maj. Donald A. Dineen's tour with the 6th Air Commando Squadron: a 1968 AF Form 626 sending A-1 Skyraiders from Pleiku to Da Nang for search-and-rescue support, a personnel roster listing ranks and security clearances, and a pilot's own year-end combat tally. Together they trace the paperwork behind the Air Commandos' "Sandy" missions and the scale of a single tour — more than 1.1 million pounds of ordnance dropped between March 1968 and February 1969.

Don Dineen

The Don Englebreston Collection

Drawn from Don Dineen's collection, this slideshow documents Air Commando and Special Operations Squadron A-1 Skyraider pilots and crews in Vietnam, including unit group portraits, ground crew launches, and battle-damaged aircraft. Highlights include the 6th Air Commando Squadron at Pleiku during the Tet Offensive, imagery tied to the 1968 rescue of Colonel Swain at Kham Duc, and a painting depicting a "Sandy and Jolly Green" combat search-and-rescue mission.

Don Dineen

The Don Englebreston Collection

Skyraider pilots Reeves and Ford race to their aircraft on a scramble call, a flight-line crewman signals a pilot before launch near Nha Trang, and a declassified report recounts a combat rescue near Kham Duc. The 3 December 1968 narrative follows "Spad 11" and "Spad 12" suppressing and marking the crash site of a downed OV-1 Mohawk while two HH-3E "Jolly Green" helicopters dropped into a jungle ravine to hoist both survivors out.

Don Boudreaux Tailwind JPEG

The Don Englebreston Collection

Don Boudreaux's photographs show SOG personnel gathered at a forward position in Laos, two reconnaissance team members posing at a forward airfield, three allied indigenous troops in tiger-stripe camouflage clowning for the camera, and a U.S. soldier standing among Montagnard village children beside a stilted longhouse. Taken by a participant in the 1970 MACV-SOG raid into Laos, these candid images offer a rare, human look at the mixed American and indigenous teams who worked deep behind enemy lines along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Don and Linda

The Don Englebreston Collection

Ten images, largely sequential burst exposures with several blurred or out-of-focus frames, documenting Don and Linda Engebretsen and fellow attendees at the 38th Special Operations Association Reunion in Las Vegas, October 2014. Scenes include the vendor hall, a casino restaurant entrance, the SPADS display, and symposium panel sessions.

Doc Watermarked

The Don Englebreston Collection

A homemade sculpture nicknamed the 'Mechanical Man,' built from spare military gear, standing guard over a serviceman's barracks quarters in Vietnam. Alongside pin-up art and mounted helmets, touches like this reveal the humor and individuality servicemen brought to otherwise austere, regimented living spaces.

Doc Photo Scans High Resoluton

The Don Englebreston Collection

Two images spanning the Skyraider story: the battle-damaged A-1 "Peregrine," side number 258, parked on the ramp with a pilot on its wing, and three veteran aviators in squadron "party suits" at a later reunion. One of the reunion flight suits carries a "Sandy" patch, the call sign of the A-1 pilots who escorted rescue helicopters over Vietnam and Laos, connecting the aircraft to the men who kept flying its legacy alive.

Doc Photo Scans Good Resolution

The Don Englebreston Collection

A group portrait of U.S. Air Force personnel at an informal Vietnam-era gathering, several in flight suits with squadron patches, including one man identified by his name tape as "J.W. Weinig." Preserved on a slide whose colors have faded to deep red and orange with age, the image documents the officers' club camaraderie that bound aircrews serving far from home.

Doc Form 5's No 20b Forms

The Don Englebreston Collection

USAF Form 5 Individual Flight Records belonging to Warren 'Doc' Blanchard Jr., tracing his A-1E Skyraider flying from the summer of 1969 through January 1970. Sortie by sortie — day, night, instrument, and 19.4 combat hours logged as of 30 September 1969 — these administrative pages form a precise paper trail of one Vietnam-era aviator's operational tempo.

Doc Form 5 Edited for size and printing

The Don Englebreston Collection

An official U.S. Air Force Pilot's Individual Flight Record (Form 5) documenting the training flights of 2Lt Warren C. Blanchard Jr. in June and July 1969. Forms like this tracked every sortie, flight hour, and landing type, forming the backbone of a military aviator's official service record in the Vietnam War era.

Doc Final JPEG LG WM

The Don Englebreston Collection

Four scenes from the Doc Blanchard Collection: a champagne celebration on the flight line, an A-1 Skyraider taxiing past revetments marked "Home of the Spads," a 'Sandy' pilot in his party suit in the squadron ready room, and a Skyraider climbing out over a South Vietnam base past a camouflaged C-130. The set moves between the flying and the living, from the steel-and-earth revetments that shielded aircraft from rocket fire to the patch-covered party suits and milestone toasts of Air Commando squadron culture.

Doc Blanchard Slides - Copy

The Don Englebreston Collection

An HH-53 'Super Jolly Green Giant' banks through the sky with its aerial refueling probe extended, from the Bob Karre Vietnam scans in the Doc Blanchard Collection. Built for long over-water and over-jungle reach, helicopters like this one carried out the combat search-and-rescue missions that recovered downed airmen from hostile territory throughout the Vietnam War.

Doc Blanchard Slide Scans

The Don Englebreston Collection

Color slide scans from the Doc Blanchard Collection showing life between missions: a fini-flight handshake beside a rocket-laden attack aircraft, squadron parties and officers' club gatherings, airmen unwinding in the hooch with beer and a newspaper, servicemen sunbathing on a Vietnam beach, and a battle-worn flight helmet kept as a barracks keepsake. Shot on Kodachrome and tied to Lt. Col. Felix 'Doc' Blanchard, the Heisman winner who later flew F-4 Phantom II combat missions, these frames preserve the camaraderie and celebration traditions that sustained aircrew morale in Southeast Asia.

Doc Blanchard Final

The Don Englebreston Collection

Engine smoke pours from the A-1 Skyraider 'Wabash Cannonball,' tail number 619, as it starts up on the flight line with a ground crewman signaling the pilot. The colorful nose art and the airman at the wingtip capture how USAF squadrons personalized these rugged aircraft and kept them flying mission after mission in Vietnam.

Doc B&W Scans

The Don Englebreston Collection

Black-and-white scans from the Doc Blanchard Collection, ranging from a candid portrait of a USAF pilot reading the newspaper to servicemen servicing truck-mounted communications gear and a pilot boarding a shark-mouthed A-1 Skyraider. Together they pair the quiet downtime and unglamorous maintenance work of Vietnam War squadron life with the nose-art tradition that made Skyraider units unmistakable over Vietnam and Laos.

DOC 10_files

The Don Englebreston Collection

A single incidental item from the archive: an American Express logo icon saved among research files during the digitization process. Included here for completeness, it is a web graphic asset rather than part of the historical photographic record.

Doc 8 x 10 B&W Scans

The Don Englebreston Collection

A black-and-white documentation photograph of the punctured engine cowling on A-1H Skyraider 52-139738, hit while flying from Da Nang Air Base on April 22, 1970. Images like this were taken for maintenance and unit records, and they survive as a stark, close-up account of the risk carried on every Skyraider sortie.

Dean Detar Form 5's

The Don Englebreston Collection

Two USAF Pilot's Individual Flight Records for Major Dean E. DeTar of the 6th Special Operations Squadron, covering June and December 1969 in A-1G, A-1H, and A-1J Skyraiders. The typewritten sorties, hours, and landings add up to a career total of more than 3,064 flight hours including 346 in combat, a quantifiable record of Air Commando close air support and special operations flying in Vietnam.

Dean DeTar

The Don Englebreston Collection

Veteran Dean DeTar sits for an informal oral history interview, his service medals — including the Purple Heart — pinned proudly to his vest. Firsthand recollections like his preserve the memories and personal detail that formal service records alone can never capture.

Dean DeTar

The Don Englebreston Collection

Colonel Dean E. DeTar, A.F.C., Ret., photographed early in his Air Force career as he climbs into the cockpit of his aircraft. His Air Force Cross places him among the Legion of Valor, the congressionally chartered organization reserved for recipients of the nation's highest awards for combat valor.

DCIM Walgreens

The Don Englebreston Collection

Scenes from A-1 Skyraider squadron life in Southeast Asia, including a salvaged propeller mounted as a "SPAD" unit display, a wingman's-eye view of a pilot in his cockpit, marking bombs riding over a scorched target, and a Skyraider at rest on the ramp at dusk. Drawn largely from the Rufe Harris 6th Special Operations Squadron collection, the set closes with a towering storm cloud, a reminder of the monsoon weather Air Commando aircrews flew through.

Cpt.. Bob Karre USAF

The Don Englebreston Collection

A USAF Special S.E.A. Operational Navigation Chart, sheet SOC-1, mapping the Vietnamese coastline and the adjoining waters of the Gulf of Tonkin and Gulf of Thailand at 1:1,000,000 scale. Printed with terrain relief, elevation data, and overlaid territorial water and air defense identification boundaries, it was the kind of chart aircrews used for flight planning, target orientation, and search-and-rescue — this example preserved in the collection of Capt. Bob Karre, USAF.

Complete Disk of Photos FH01

The Don Englebreston Collection

Photographs from the Operation Tailwind era capture indigenous troops in tiger-stripe camouflage filling canteens at a U.S. Army water tanker, an AH-1 Cobra gunship waiting at a forward staging area, helicopters in formation at dusk, and a USMC CH-53 Sea Stallion taxiing on a Southeast Asian airfield. Together they show the aircraft, allied troops, and support machinery behind MACV-SOG's cross-border missions into Laos in September 1970, including one severely faded slide preserved as a reminder of how fragile photographic memory can be.

Complete Disk of Photos FH

The Don Englebreston Collection

A fortified MACV-SOG forward operating base ringed by barbed wire beneath its guard tower and antenna array, paired with a Cobra gunship crewman standing beside his shark-face-painted aircraft at a 1970 staging area. Both images come from the Barry Pencek collection and show the ground and air sides of Operation Tailwind, the September 1970 MACV-SOG cross-border operation into Laos.

cnn

The Don Englebreston Collection

Newspaper clippings and an editorial cartoon from June and July 1998 tracking the CNN and Time "Valley of Death" report, which alleged that U.S. forces used sarin nerve gas during Operation Tailwind, a 1970 covert MACV-SOG mission into Laos. Washington Times columns, an ex-Army medic's rebuttal that the drops were tear gas, and Chuck Asay's cartoon on the retraction preserve how veterans fought back against a story the network was ultimately forced to withdraw.

Chris Dyrud Redux Photos

The Don Englebreston Collection

Group portraits from a "Tailwind Day" Redux reunion, with attendees gathered in a museum hangar full of vintage warbirds and posed before a USAF combat rescue helicopter. The aircraft is the same type once used to pull special operations teams out of Laos and Vietnam, and the gatherings themselves sustain the bonds forged during MACV-SOG's covert 1970 cross-border operation.

CH-34

The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow showcases Sikorsky CH-34/HH-34G helicopters at the Tennessee Museum of Aviation, including a preserved rescue helicopter, an exposed engine bay, and a fully restored Choctaw. Together the images trace the H-34 family's Vietnam-era service in search-and-rescue, transport, and medevac roles.

Byron Hukee Provided Information

The Don Englebreston Collection

A handwritten roster from the Byron Hukee collection tracks A-1H and A-1J Skyraider aircraft assigned to Da Nang in 1969, cross-referenced with numeric tracking codes. This single page of unit-level record keeping offers a rare firsthand glimpse into how the Skyraider fleet was organized during the Vietnam War.

Byron Hukee

The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow features an A-1 Skyraider nicknamed "Spad Dad II," tail code TC 665, banking in flight while carrying a heavy load of bombs and rocket pods. It showcases the aircraft's rugged airframe and enduring value in the close air support role, even under ordnance loads far exceeding its WWII-era design specs.

Byron Hukee

The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow shows a pair of A-1 Skyraiders, or "Spads," escorting an HH-53 "Jolly Green Giant" rescue helicopter above the clouds over Vietnam. It illustrates the close partnership between Sandy and Jolly Green crews that formed the core of Air Force combat search-and-rescue missions.

Boxer 22 SAR

The Don Englebreston Collection

A hand-drafted briefing map for the combat search-and-rescue operation code-named "Boxer 22," charting the terrain along the Laos–North Vietnam border where a downed navigator and pilot came down near the Nam Ngo River. An inset marks the two separate survivor locations ringed by North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun positions, showing exactly what rescue coordinators and A-1 Skyraider RESCORT pilots faced when planning an extraction from the war's most heavily defended ground.

Bobby Ross Running Recon Scans

The Don Englebreston Collection

Features seven scanned spreads from the published briefing notebook of Capt. Vaughn "Bobby" Ross, a UH-1 pilot with the 57th Assault Helicopter Company supporting MACV-SOG's Command and Control Central from late 1969 into early 1970. The entries record survival letters, radio frequencies, recon team positions, and Covey forward air controllers, along with details such as Hatchet Force operations and state-named reconnaissance teams like RT Vermont.

Bob Karre EX LG WM JPEG

The Don Englebreston Collection

A Douglas Skyraider rests with its wings folded on a carrier flight deck, hand-painted nose art reading "SuNanSam" and a ground support cart alongside. Flown by the U.S. Navy from carriers off the Vietnamese coast, the rugged Skyraider carried out strike and rescue-escort missions throughout the war.

Bob Karre Awards and Decs

The Don Englebreston Collection

Official citations and Seventh Air Force special orders documenting the combat decorations awarded to Captain Robert H. Karre, an A-1H Skyraider pilot in Vietnam, from 1969 to 1970. Together they trace repeated Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal awards, along with a Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross with Silver Star, for missions over Duc Pho, Dak To, Kontum, and Tam Ky, including a rescue that brought five downed Army helicopter crewmen home.

Bob Karre 20b Forms

The Don Englebreston Collection

A handwritten PACAF Form 20b worksheet from the Bob Karre collection served as a personal combat mission log, recording sorties, flying hours, and bomb damage assessments for missions flown over Southeast Asia. Working documents like this one give a rare, unfiltered measure of the pace and scope of combat flying during the Vietnam War.

Bill

The Don Englebreston Collection

A U.S. Army soldier poses beside a self-propelled 155mm gun motor carriage on a mountain roadside, and again alongside a rugged Army dump truck marked "0819670." Both Korean War-era images spotlight the heavy vehicles — mobile long-range artillery and the engineering equipment that built the roads — that made operations possible in punishing mountainous terrain.

Barry Pencek JPEG WM Slide Show

The Don Englebreston Collection

Images from Barry Pencek's Operation Tailwind materials: a portrait of aircrewman "Sexton" in flight suit and parachute harness, an AH-1 Cobra escorting UH-1 Hueys over the rugged Laotian highlands, and an aircrewman in survival vest and sidearm beside his aircraft marked "VT10." Together they document the September 1970 MACV-SOG raid along the Ho Chi Minh Trail from the aircrews' own vantage point — the helicopter support that sustained SOG teams deep in enemy territory, and the men who accepted the risk of a shoot-down to provide it.

Barry Pencek

The Don Englebreston Collection

A U.S. serviceman poses beside the hand-painted entrance to an improvised "Dak To Officers Club," a bunker built from stacked rocket-ammunition crates. Signs like this one reveal the dark humor and camaraderie that sustained troops at forward bases in Vietnam's Central Highlands.

A_1HCockpit

The Don Englebreston Collection

A close study of the Douglas A-1H Skyraider cockpit, showing the left-side console with its throttle quadrant, fuel selector, canopy jettison mechanism, and oxygen system placard. Little changed from its late-1940s design, this dense array of mechanical controls served pilots flying close air support and rescue escort missions throughout the Vietnam War.

ANA Tailwind

The Don Englebreston Collection

Rare wartime images from Operation Tailwind, the September 1970 MACV-SOG raid into Laos, include a U.S. Marine Corps CH-53 Sea Stallion lifting personnel out by rope when the jungle allowed no landing. A second view of camouflaged troops filing through a fortified compound gate documents the forward bases behind these clandestine cross-border missions.

AllNewsletters

The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow displays the masthead of the A-1 Skyraider Association newsletter, a veterans' publication based at Randolph AFB in San Antonio, Texas. It represents how such newsletters helped sustain camaraderie and shared memory among former Skyraider pilots and Air Commando aircrew.

album-d148972718-downloads-pt2

The Don Englebreston Collection

Continuing the record of Captain Gary M. "Mike" Rose's Medal of Honor events, these photographs center on his October 24, 2017 induction into the Pentagon's Hall of Heroes, with senior Army and Marine Corps leaders, family, motorcycle escorts, and an exhibit panel. Together they trace the formal honors given a Special Forces medic whose Operation Tailwind valor stayed classified for decades.

album-d148972718-downloads-pt1

The Don Englebreston Collection

Images from October 2017 record the White House ceremony, Pentagon events, receptions, and banquet surrounding the Medal of Honor awarded to retired Special Forces medic Captain Gary "Mike" Rose. Fellow recipients, MACV-SOG veterans, family, and musicians gather to mark long-delayed recognition of his heroism during the covert 1970 Operation Tailwind in Laos.

AJ Roberts the Col

The Don Englebreston Collection

A close look inside a restored Douglas A-1 Skyraider reveals the dense array of gun, bomb, and rocket switches its pilots worked during Vietnam-era close air support and rescue-escort missions, with a modern GPS unit showing the airframe still flies. A companion museum display pairs a disassembled radial engine with an original nose-art panel, joining the aircraft's mechanical heart to the personalized markings crews painted on their machines.

AAR Photos

The Don Englebreston Collection

Three images selected for the reunion's After Action Report, depicting symposium panelists in Skyraider party suits and Air Force caps at the 38th Special Operations Association Reunion, Las Vegas, 2014. One frame highlights Larry Warren of the 22nd Special Operations Squadron "Zorros" displaying a SPADS medallion.

A1 Mission Logs from Original Pencil Copies

The Don Englebreston Collection

A page from an A-1 Skyraider pilot's handwritten mission log, kept on a standard PACAF General Purpose Worksheet, records combat sorties flown during May of the Vietnam War. Entries under the call sign "SPAD" note search-and-rescue escort, close air support, and armed reconnaissance work with Forward Air Controllers Covey and Nail, along with flight times and ordnance expended.

A1 and Related Pictures

The Don Englebreston Collection

Featured in Warbird Digest, this air-to-air portrait shows A-1H Skyraider serial 139665, "Lieutenant America," owned and flown by Neal Melton. Meticulously restored by WestPac Restorations with its original Vietnam War-era paint preserved, the aircraft carries forward the naming legacy of Lt. Randy Scott, who christened it in 1972.

A1 and Related Pictures

The Don Englebreston Collection

Aircraft of the Southeast Asian air war are gathered here, from a VNAF A-1 Skyraider banking over the Mekong Delta and a folded-wing Skyraider on the flight line to an F-105 Thunderchief and a Cessna O-1 Bird Dog marking targets for strike aircraft. A museum panel tallying 2,257 U.S. aircraft lost between 1966 and 1973 sets the cost of those campaigns alongside the machines that flew them.

A1 #665 at the TN Museum 2011

The Don Englebreston Collection

Douglas A-1 Skyraider tail number 665 stands on display in a Tennessee aviation museum hangar in 2011, preserved with its wings folded. That folding wing, inherited from the type's carrier-based Navy origins, marks an aircraft that became a rugged workhorse of Air Commando and Navy squadrons during the Vietnam War.

A-1 Small JPEG Pictures

The Don Englebreston Collection

A wartime image captures U.S. Air Force Douglas A-1 Skyraider S/N 33882 banking low over the Southeast Asian countryside, heavily loaded with external ordnance and fuel tanks. It documents the rugged workhorse of close air support and rescue escort, valued in Vietnam for its endurance over the battlefield and its ability to absorb damage.

A-1 Skyraider Reunion Oct 2013 Pictures

The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow captures candid moments from the October 2013 A-1 Skyraider Association reunion in San Antonio, Texas, including hospitality suite gatherings, a Tex-Mex buffet banquet, and a quilt fundraiser. Throughout, veterans and their families mingle, laugh, and pose for group portraits, many wearing squadron patches and Skyraider-emblem apparel that reflect lasting pride in their Vietnam War service.

A-1 #665 Tennessee Air Museum

The Don Englebreston Collection

Photographed at the Tennessee Air Museum in April 2011, these views document Douglas A-1 Skyraider #665, the "Lieutenant America," from its stars-and-stripes nose art and stenciled crew names to its folded wing and densely packed instrument panel. Visitors, volunteers, and a restored P-47 Thunderbolt round out a record of how Vietnam-era warbirds are preserved and interpreted for the public.

7 Rescue

The Don Englebreston Collection

An aerial view records the remote, mountainous jungle of Laos along the Ho Chi Minh Trail corridor, the operational area for Operation Tailwind, the September 1970 MACV-SOG cross-border reconnaissance-in-force mission. Air Commando A-1 Skyraiders and other aircraft flew close air support and rescue missions over canopy and steep ridgelines that made ground operations extraordinarily dangerous.

6 Mission

The Don Englebreston Collection

Rare in-country photographs from the Joe Driscoll "Scarface" collection show MACV-SOG reconnaissance team members pausing in jungle clearings and bomb-scarred ground deep inside Laos during Operation Tailwind. A combat image made in flight, with smoke rising as an AH-1 Cobra gunship supports the team below, offers a firsthand view of covert cross-border operations.

5 insert

The Don Englebreston Collection

Taken during the September 1970 MACV-SOG mission into Laos, these photographs move from the cabin of an extraction helicopter, where a team member tends a wounded comrade, to aerial views of smoke marking targets above the jungle canopy. The rivers, ridgelines, and dense forest below convey the terrain that defined Operation Tailwind.

4 Dak To Prep

The Don Englebreston Collection

Photographs taken at Dak To, the forward base in Vietnam's Central Highlands, show vehicles and equipment staged along the runway, soldiers assembling beside a UH-1, and Cobra gunships ready on a muddy monsoon-season airfield. Together they document the logistical preparation behind MACV-SOG's Operation Tailwind, the September 1970 cross-border mission into Laos.

30Jun SAR Pete & Ken

The Don Englebreston Collection

A page from "Pararescue 50 Years Plus" recounts the loss of HH-53 'Jolly 54' and its five-man crew, shot down over Laos on 30 June 1970 while attempting to rescue a downed OV-10 pilot. It also traces the decades-long postwar search that ultimately located and recovered the crew's remains in the early 1990s.

3 and 4May19 Event Photos

The Don Englebreston Collection

Photographs from a warbird event at the Tennessee Museum of Aviation in May 2019 follow the restored A-1 Skyraiders "Wiley Coyote" and "Lieutenant America" through smoky radial engine start-ups, taxi runs, hangar displays, and flight. Close views of nose art and folded wings show how these Vietnam-era attack aircraft are kept alive for new audiences.

2016 4-30 Tailwind

The Don Englebreston Collection

On April 30, 2016, veterans, families, and friends gathered at the Tennessee Museum of Aviation for a reunion tied to Operation Tailwind, the 1970 MACV-SOG operation into Laos. Photographs of attendees beneath an A-1 Skyraider wing, seated in vintage cockpits, and posing beside a T-28 Trojan record the enduring bonds among the men who carried out these classified missions.

2014_01_31

The Don Englebreston Collection

Features the restored Douglas A-1H Skyraider "Lieutenant America" (S/N 139665), banking for a Warbird Digest magazine photo feature. Owned and flown by Neal Melton and based at the Tennessee Museum of Aviation, the aircraft retains its authentic Vietnam War-era paint and squadron markings following restoration by WestPac Restorations.

2014_01_31

The Don Englebreston Collection

A Warbird Digest magazine feature spotlights the A-1H Skyraider "Lieutenant America," serial number 139665, owned and flown by Neal Melton and based at the Tennessee Museum of Aviation. Its original Vietnam War-era paint and nose art, named by Lt. Randy Scott in 1972, were deliberately preserved during restoration for their historical significance.

2013_11_23

The Don Englebreston Collection

Squadron humor survives in "Spads with a Load," a 1970 parody of Roger Miller's "King of the Road" written by 1st Lt. Warren Blanchard. Its verses celebrate the A-1 Skyraider's heavy ordnance loads, long loiter times, and search-and-rescue escort work over Vietnam and Laos, preserving the voice of the pilots who flew it.

2013_09_29

The Don Englebreston Collection

Presents a blank PACAF Form 20b "General Purpose Worksheet," dated November 1967, used to log combat mission details. The form illustrates how Vietnam War-era Air Force squadrons tracked call signs, flying time, and bomb damage assessment.

2013_08_18

The Don Englebreston Collection

An official valor award narrative recounts the combat action of 1st Lt. Donald L. Engebretsen on 5 January 1970, when he made repeated low-altitude passes in an A-1 Skyraider to relieve a reconnaissance team pinned down by a company-sized enemy force. Documents like this preserve, in the military's own words, the moments that decided whether men on the ground came home.

2013_08_05

The Don Englebreston Collection

Consists of a scanned administrative document, a 2013 Advice of Deposit from State Street for the FedEx Corporation Retirement Plan. It is a misfiled personal financial record rather than a photograph, retained only for archival note-keeping.

2013_08_04

The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow features a August 1970 Letter of Commendation praising A-1 Skyraider pilots 1st Lt Thomas K. Stump and Capt Edwin A. Gullion for strafing within five meters of a surrounded reconnaissance team under intense fire. It also includes the closing page of a commendation letter signed by Lt. Col. Edward P. Cullivan, with a handwritten 2013 note reflecting on the pride felt by veterans of the Danang-based unit it honored.

2013_06_27

The Don Englebreston Collection

Contains a scanned personal receipt from Sam's Club and a Vizio TV label dated January 2013. The item is a personal financial document unrelated to military or historical subject matter.

2013_06_26

The Don Englebreston Collection

A 2013 preliminary construction drawing and liner order form document an in-ground 'Lazy L' swimming pool built for customer Donald L. Engebretsen by Latham Pools. Unrelated to wartime service, these documents were preserved alongside military records, offering a glimpse into the family's later civilian life and home projects.

2013_06_20

The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow contains a scanned Latham International pool liner warranty document. It is an unrelated item inadvertently included among the historical military and aviation photographs in this collection.

2013-10-15 Larry Cavender 20b Original Document Scanned

The Don Englebreston Collection

Handwritten mission sheets kept by A-1 Skyraider pilot Larry Cavender log his combat sorties from late 1969 through the spring of 1970, flown under call signs including "SPAD," "Zorro," and "Raven." Entries covering rescue escorts, truck interdiction strikes, and the successful recovery of downed airman "Boxer 22" give a day-by-day account of the air war over Vietnam and Laos.

2012_09_19

The Don Englebreston Collection

A U.S. Air Force squadron stands assembled in front of their radial-engine trainer aircraft in this mid-20th century group photograph. Formal lineups like this one were a long-standing tradition, marking the graduation of a training class or the stand-up of a newly formed operational squadron.

2012_04_25

The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow presents the Distinguished Flying Cross citation (First Oak Leaf Cluster) awarded to 1st Lt. Donald L. Engebretsen for heroism on 5 January 1970. Flying an A-1H Skyraider, Engebretsen pressed repeated low-altitude attacks against enemy forces surrounding a reconnaissance team, enabling its safe helicopter evacuation under fire.

2012_03_28

The Don Englebreston Collection

This slideshow presents a 1968 photograph of Vietnamese reconnaissance team leader "LT. Vinh" posing with his American counterpart. It highlights how Vietnamese personnel served alongside U.S. advisors on cross-border reconnaissance teams, contributing local knowledge and leadership to high-risk missions.

2011_11_12

The Don Englebreston Collection

Pages from a U.S. Air Force pilot's personal flight logbook trace the path from A-1E training sorties to first combat missions out of Pleiku Air Base in September 1969 and on through the spring of 1970. Handwritten remarks noting search-and-rescue scrambles, troops-in-contact support, and flights along the tri-border and DMZ areas give a mission-by-mission account of Skyraider flying in Southeast Asia.

200 Mis A-1 Photos

The Don Englebreston Collection

Drawn from an Air Commando pilot's service in Southeast Asia, these Vietnam War images follow the A-1 Skyraider from Da Nang revetments and armed Navy ramps to flight above the jungle. Alongside them are Misty Fast FAC pilots, a VNAF Kingbee helicopter, a bunkered airfield perimeter at Qui Nhon, and a champagne flight marking a mission milestone.

2 LG Photo Scans Mike- Gary Rose + Koch

The Don Englebreston Collection

Two candid wartime photographs from the Mike Gary Rose and Koch collection capture raw human moments amid Vietnam's Special Forces reconnaissance operations, from an exhausted soldier's helicopter extraction to a bandaged allied fighter's triumphant laugh. Together they illuminate the physical toll and fierce camaraderie shared by U.S. Special Forces and their indigenous CIDG and Montagnard partners deep behind enemy lines.

2 367

The Don Englebreston Collection

An aerial photograph looks down on a major American coastal airbase in Vietnam, its runway, tent cities, and Quonset huts spread between a lagoon and the South China Sea. Bases such as this launched MACV-SOG reconnaissance and raid missions, including the September 1970 Operation Tailwind supported by Marine helicopter gunship squadron HML-367 "Scarface."

105NIKON

The Don Englebreston Collection

Restored A-1 Skyraiders take to the air during a "Tailwind Day" commemorative gathering honoring the veterans of Operation Tailwind, the 1970 MACV-SOG operation into Laos. Approach passes, low flyovers, and a close look at "Lieutenant America" nose art keep the legacy of Skyraider aircrews and ground crews visible decades later.

.picasaoriginals

The Don Englebreston Collection

At a staging area near Dak To, South Vietnam, soldiers pose before an improvised bunker built from stacked ammunition crates ahead of Operation Tailwind in September 1970. Hand-lettered signs welcoming "U.S. Maureens" to the "Dak To Officers Club" reveal the wry humor troops leaned on to keep spirits up before heading into the field.

.picasaoriginals

The Don Englebreston Collection

A propeller-driven A-1 Skyraider banks low over dense jungle canopy, its silhouette framed against the treetops in a striking moment of aerial support. Aircraft like this flew close air support and escort for MACV-SOG reconnaissance teams along the Laos border during operations such as Operation Tailwind in 1970.

YUMA AAF AUCTIONEER 1944

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Pages from The Auctioneer, the 1944 base newspaper of Yuma Army Air Field, mix promotion rosters and Military Police features with pin-ups, Milton Caniff cartoons, aircraft recognition drills and a hypnotist's turn at the Service Club. One surviving copy, addressed home to New York, shows how such papers carried a training base to the American doorstep.

WWII V-MAIL CARTOONS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Hand-drawn and pre-printed cartoons fill these Victory Mail letters, most sent by U.S. Navy Seabees in the Pacific to Beatrice Cory of San Francisco in 1943 and 1944. Valentine and Easter greetings, comic strips about ship's chores, and censor and holiday handling stamps show how a microfilmed one-page form carried humor, affection, and morale across an ocean.

WWII TOKIO KID POSTERS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Original "Tokio Kid" posters, illustrated by Jack Campbell for the Douglas Aircraft Company, urged defense workers to stop wasting tools and scrap materials during World War II. Shown alongside a Douglas airline advertisement and an employee bulletin, they survive as evidence of home-front production campaigns and the racially charged caricature that drove them.

WWII POST US TO MANILA

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A single 1945 photograph looks across Manila's harbor district, where a wrecked pier bears the scars of the battle that liberated the city from Japanese occupation. U.S. Army trucks massed in the yard beyond speak to the enormous logistical effort of restoring the Philippine capital and its vital port.

WWII PINUPS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Hollywood glamour meets the home front in this gathering of 1940s pin-up and publicity photographs, including Universal Pictures studio stills, patriotic "V for Victory" novelty poses, and portraits credited to Chicago's Maurice Seymour studio. Autographed prints, photographer backmarks, and a studio mailing backing round out the group, revealing how such morale-boosting imagery was made, mailed, and circulated during World War II.

WWII PHOTO ALBUM WWII Oahu Hawaii VJ 1945

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A wartime photo album records Oahu in the summer and autumn of 1945, from shipboard views of Pearl Harbor and Ford Island to the crowds, floats, and marching sailors of the September 3 V-J Day parade in Honolulu. The battleship USS Mississippi, the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, and a commemorative Navy pennant complete a firsthand view of the Pacific war's final days.

WWII photo album 447

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A personal album connected to the 447th Bombardment Group ranges from home-front lawns, where airmen pose in A-2 flight jackets, to sandbagged airfield defenses, tent encampments, and bombed European ruins. Scenes from the Pacific and the rubble of Manila show how wartime albums gathered postings, travels, and keepsakes well beyond one unit's own service.

WWII PARIS AND BUCHENWALD

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A serviceman's personal photographs follow American soldiers from training grounds in England to liberated Paris and the advance across France and Germany in 1944-1945. Jeeps, half-tracks, radio shops, and handwritten captions naming friends preserve the equipment, places, and friendships behind one man's war.

WWII PACIFIC NAVY

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Sailors' snapshots from the Pacific theater show gun crews at their Oerlikon mounts, supply vessels dressed with signal flags at jungle piers, and outrigger canoes glimpsed from passing decks. Away from the front lines, these candid images preserve the logistics work and everyday human rhythms that sustained the naval war.

WWII Pacific

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Official Navy and Marine Corps combat photographs of the 1944 Marshall Islands campaign, from supply landings and dug-in Marines on Kwajalein to the base at Eniwetok and the D-Day approach to Saipan. Servicemen's personal snapshots of airfields and thatched island villages accompany them, pairing the record of the Central Pacific offensive with the everyday view from the ranks.

WWII not 57TH FIGHTER WEAPONS WING F-4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Checklists, kneeboard cards, and syllabus pages issued by the 57th Fighter Weapons Wing in 1971 and 1972 cover F-4 Phantom II refueling, preflight inspection, operating limits, night emergency signals, and pilot-to-crewchief hand signals. Produced at Nellis Air Force Base, these working documents show the procedural discipline behind Vietnam-era fighter training.

WWII nose art photos

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Wartime snapshots of downed and captured aircraft gather here, from a burned RAF wreck in a French field to Luftwaffe and Soviet machines photographed on the Eastern Front. Paired with artwork for the "Back the Attack!" war loan poster, the group shows how soldiers and the home front alike turned aviation imagery into record, trophy, and rallying call.

WWII NEGATIVES NURNBERG TRIAL

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Negatives from the Nuremberg war crimes trials of 1945-1946 show American military police guarding the Palace of Justice, motorcades assembling near the courthouse, and officials passing through the war-damaged city. Photographs of a first edition of "Mein Kampf" survive alongside them, documenting the ideology Allied prosecutors placed on trial.

WWII NEGATIVES NURNBERG PHOTOS 3

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Taken from within the crowd, these negatives capture Nuremberg in the 1930s as motorcades pass beneath swastika banners and raised arms, with the "Photo Hoffmann" shopfront anchoring the scene to the regime's official photographic network. Quieter views of fairground plazas and half-timbered squares round out a ground-level record of the city that hosted the annual Nazi Party rallies.

WWII NEGATIVES NURNBERG PHOTOS 2

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Massed formations cross the Zeppelinfeld, mounted troops and Panzer I tanks parade before packed grandstands, and banner-lined tribunes rise above the crowd in this run of negatives from the Nuremberg rally grounds. A faint high-altitude bomber formation among them marks the turn from staged rearmament displays to the war those displays foreshadowed.

WWII NEGATIVES NURNBERG PHOTOS 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Negatives from Nuremberg record the Zeppelintribune grandstand, flak gun demonstrations, horse-drawn artillery, and banner-lined streets filled for the Nazi Party's annual Reichsparteitag rallies of the 1930s. Views of the medieval gate tower, the covered bridge over the Pegnitz, and the surrounding countryside set that spectacle against the older city that would later host the International Military Tribunal.

WWII NEGATIVES BREMERHAVEN

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A set of negatives follows the wartime and postwar route through Bremerhaven, from a New York harbor tug alongside a troop transport to gangways, gantry cranes, and rail cars at Germany's principal American port. Bombed-out buildings, a scarred harbor basin, and a Certificate of Service anchor the collection to a documented career.

WWII NEGATIVES 101312

The Snapshots in Time Collection

WWII MINE PLANTER Gen William M

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A U.S. Army Mine Planter Service vessel lies at anchor off a tropical coast artillery station, a reminder of the ships that laid and maintained the controlled minefields guarding American harbors. A companion 1936 view of dugout canoes in Panama's San Blas Islands ties the collection to service in the Canal Zone.

WWII MARINE CORPS PHOTOS OKINAWA

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Official U.S. Marine Corps photographs follow the 1945 Battle of Okinawa from the April landings and the seizure of Yontan Airfield through flamethrower assaults, command posts in island tombs, and the mass surrenders of the campaign's final weeks. Numbered and press-captioned, they preserve both the fighting itself and the wartime image the Marine Corps chose to release.

WWII MANILA PHOTO ALBUM

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Drawn from a personal wartime album kept in Manila, these images show Filipino porters carrying produce on bamboo shoulder poles, a hand-tinted souvenir postcard of villagers walking home beneath a stone bridge, and a quiet coastal cove with a swimming pier. Together they record the everyday Philippines that American servicemembers encountered away from the battlefront.

WWII MANILA PANARAMAS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Panoramic photographs record the encampment, motor pool, and vehicle yards of Battery C, 4th Field Artillery Battalion in Manila on 8 July 1946. Taken days after Philippine independence, they set American military logistics against the shattered civic architecture left by the 1945 Battle of Manila.

WWII MAG PHOTOS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Signed Walter Thornton agency pinups, illustrated magazine beauty features, and souvenir programs from Earl Carroll's Hollywood and the Florentine Gardens trace the glamour culture that entertained servicemen during World War II. Inscribed to a recipient named Paul, several prints show how this print and nightclub imagery traveled directly from the home front to the troops.

WWII LEYTE

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A serviceman's personal album from the 1944-45 Leyte campaign, with snapshots of Filipino bumboats trading alongside anchored warships, anti-aircraft fire above the fleet, and a nighttime celebration recorded on August 13. Preserved alongside the photographs are the owner's own handwritten caption cards, whose firsthand notes identify the vessels, places, and moments the images capture.

WWII KWAJALEIN MILITARY ALBUM

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A serviceman's wartime album documents the 1944 assault on Kwajalein Atoll, with shattered palm groves, destroyed Japanese fortifications, amphibious tractors, and the tent camps established after the atoll's capture. A home-front snapshot preserved among them measures the distance between the Central Pacific campaign and the life left behind.

WWII KOTEC CHINA BURMA COLLECTION

The Snapshots in Time Collection

The Kotec archive preserves the working life of a military photographer in the China-Burma-India theater, from Kodak aerial mapping film and an infrared project canister to War Department pocket guides, technical manuals, and mission logs kept at Tingkawk Sakan, Burma, in 1944. Keepsake boxes and deteriorated original negatives document both a serviceman's personal record and the archival care now given to it.

WWII JUMBO PC SAN ANTONIO 1945

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Oversized 1945 souvenir "jumbo" postcards present San Antonio, Texas, from the air, taking in the Tower Life Building, the Alamo, the River Walk, and the Army airfields that trained thousands of servicemen. Their reverse sides carry "Keep 'Em Flying" emblems and wartime security warnings, capturing home-front pride and vigilance.

WWII JAPAN

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Drawn from the album of an American serving with the Miyagi Military Government in Sendai, this group pairs photographs of firebombed Japanese cities with unit rosters, a 1943 Christmas dinner program, a bilingual holiday card, and an Allied surrender leaflet. Together they connect the scale of wartime destruction to the named personnel who administered the occupation that followed.

WWII HAWAI

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Wartime Hawaii seen from the air and on the ground, with oblique views of Oahu airfields, harbors, and settled valleys set beside quiet street corners and palm-lined coastal parks. A related series documenting aircraft wreckage in forested terrain rounds out the group, together with one image the archive notes as a probable mislabel from outside the islands.

WWII GERMANY NEGS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Wartime negatives document the closing months of the war in Germany, from wrecked horse-drawn supply columns and a disabled Panther tank to bombed streets and Nazi-era military architecture bearing the "Von Richthofen" name. Taken as Allied forces advanced, these images record the collapse of German logistics and the toll borne by European towns.

WWII DER ADLER

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Pages from the French-language edition of Der Adler, the Luftwaffe's official illustrated magazine, distributed in occupied Europe during the Second World War. Flak batteries firing at night, Stuka attacks near Kharkov, desert improvisations in North Africa, and portraits of decorated airmen sit beside advertisements for Junkers, BMW, and Merck, showing how propaganda, technical instruction, and industrial marketing shared the same page.

WWII DEAR MR VETEREN

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Pages from "Dear Mr. Veteran," the Office of Price Administration booklet of February 1946, explain price ceilings, used car sales, and the postwar housing shortage through plain text and pointed editorial cartoons. Alongside a 28th Infantry Division song sheet and a 1942 home-front service guide, they capture how returning servicemen were prepared for peacetime life.

WWII CUSHMAN

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Drawn from the personal photographs of Thomas W. Cushman, this World War II collection follows Army Air Forces life from gas mask training and cadet identification badges to bomber crews, ground crews, and B-29 Superfortresses marked with hand-painted nose art. Together the images preserve both the machinery of the air war and the camaraderie of the men who served alongside it.

WWII CINC OHIO

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs from Cincinnati and other Ohio venues record the war expositions of 1918 and 1919, where captured German field guns, trench mortars, and a naval gun marked "From the Emden" traveled by rail for public display. Alongside the trophies stand home-front booths on food conservation and infant health, showing how civic campaigns brought the First World War into American communities.

WWII BOMB FUSE LETTER

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Letters home from a 464th Bomb Group airman are preserved here alongside a bomb arming safety pin still bearing its handwritten tag from the December 1944 raid on the Blechhammer oil refineries. Pairing candid family correspondence with the hardware of heavy bomber armament, the grouping links the human and mechanical sides of Fifteenth Air Force operations from Italy.

WWII BELGIUM FRANCE

The Snapshots in Time Collection

U.S. Army Signal Corps photographs follow American infantry from the ruins of Vire and Brest through the frozen villages of the Ardennes and into Germany in 1944 and 1945. Original wartime captions identify each scene, preserving a ground-level record of the liberation of Western Europe and the towns left shattered in its wake.

WWII ART

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Aviation art of the Second World War fills this collection, ranging across works titled Mustang, Corsair, B-29, Ie Shima, Over the Philippines, and Shot to Hell. Its centerpiece, "Summer of '42," depicts the Flying Tigers and their shark-mouthed P-40 Warhawks above the karst peaks of southern China, part of a tradition that keeps historic squadrons visually alive.

WWII API NEWS PHOTOS NAVY

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Wartime wire-service prints and their reverse sides document the Battle of the Atlantic and Navy life at sea, from a torpedoed tanker towed into Morehead City to sailors resting at an anti-aircraft mount. Date stamps, rights notices, and grease-pencil edits on the versos reveal how news photographs traveled from the front to the printed page.

WWII AIRCRAFT

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Bombers and jets on the ramp trace American air power from the wartime B-29 Superfortress to the swept-wing B-47 Stratojet of Strategic Air Command. Nose art, refueling trucks, open-house crowds, and a Navy Panther fighter capture the working life of air bases through the early Cold War transition to the jet age.

WWII 5th Marine div IWO JIMA

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Marines of the 5th Marine Division photographed on Iwo Jima in 1945 appear at tented garrison camps, captured airfields, wrecked aircraft, and a captured Japanese field gun. Lighter moments - puppies on a blanket, a hand-lettered tent sign reading "Ye Old Sackie Shackie" - reveal the camaraderie that carried men through one of the Pacific War's costliest battles.

WWII 101st AIRBORN PHOTOS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Two winter photographs place the viewer at Bastogne, Belgium, where the 101st Airborne Division held the surrounded town during the Battle of the Bulge. A soldier beside the snowbound town sign and a general bent over a map capture both the setting and the command of that December 1944 stand.

WWI post cards

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Hand-embroidered silk keepsakes, patriotic "Allies' Flags" designs, and Y.M.C.A. soldier's mail make up this gathering of World War I souvenir postcards bought in France by men of the American Expeditionary Forces. Written messages home to Brooklyn families, complete with censor's stamps, turn mass-produced novelties into intimate records of wartime correspondence.

WWI LETTERS PVT WILLIS W WAGENER

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Letters, envelopes, and family photographs trace the world of Private Willis W. Wagener of Modesto, California, whose World War I correspondence was preserved beside portraits, annotated photograph cards, and household papers reaching back to 1903. Kept together across generations, these fragile artifacts offer an intimate counterpoint to the official military record of a soldier's service.

WWI FRANCE GLASS NEGS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Glass plate negatives from wartime France picture motor ambulance columns, supply truck convoys, a British field ration point, and the long rows of beds inside a military hospital ward. Ruined houses, a village church, and troopships at harbor complete a rare photographic record of the logistics and medical care that sustained the Western Front.

WWI FRANCE BATTLE RRPC

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Handwritten postcards, French village views, and unit photographs trace American service from the Western Front of 1918 to the Pacific campaigns of the 1940s. Soldiers describe marches through the Champagne countryside, an aerial bombing raid, and the first use of continuous-wave radio, preserving firsthand voices alongside the places and units they served with.

WWI 348TH MACHINE GUN BTL PHOTO

The Snapshots in Time Collection

On September 25, 1920, veterans of the 348th Machine Gun Battalion, 91st Division gathered at States Restaurant for their first reunion banquet, two years after the Armistice. The photograph and its hand-lettered caption preserve the fellowship of men who fought together in the Meuse-Argonne and Ypres-Lys campaigns.

WW RIFLE TEAM CAB PHOTO

The Snapshots in Time Collection

An early twentieth-century cabinet photograph presents a nine-man military rifle team posed outside their armory with bayoneted service rifles, studied here in full and in enlarged detail. Close views of chevrons and wreath-motif marksmanship badges, along with a hand-annotated album page, reveal how such units recorded and remembered their own.

WILLIS AND PARTY PHOTOS 1921

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Snapshots and captioned album pages from the collection of World War I veteran Willis W. Wagener follow him and his friends on hikes, camping trips, and Sierra Nevada outings in 1919 and 1921. Wry handwritten inscriptions on the reverse of each print turn a personal photo album into an intimate record of a soldier's return to civilian life.

WEBSr

The Snapshots in Time Collection

The Lt. Bancroft Korean War collection brings together Martin PBM Mariner patrol flying boats, a sailor's studio portrait, shipboard mess life, and the paperwork of remembrance: an annotated accident report, a typed letter, and vintage aviation advertising. Together they trace how one veteran's naval service was recorded and researched.

WAYNE BANCROFT SR LOG BOOK

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Pages from the personal Navy flight logbook of Wayne E. Bancroft Sr. record his training in SNJ, R4D, and PBY aircraft between 1949 and the opening month of the Korean War, including carrier landings and catapult launches. Kept flight by flight, the entries show how a Cold War naval aviator was made.

WAF Album

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Pages and snapshots from the personal photo album of a member of the Women in the Air Force capture informal 1950s scenes, among them two women beside a period automobile and another standing with a horse in an open field. Candid images like these, alongside a storefront advertising view, record the friendships and everyday leisure of servicewomen off duty.

VIETNAM PHOTOS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Color slides taken by American servicemen across Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War era, ranging from rural canals and stilt houses in Vietnam to temple compounds, river ferries, and market streets in Thailand. Away from combat, these snapshots preserve the everyday life and vernacular architecture that surrounded the conflict.

VIETNAM 1967_Viet_Nam,_Cu_Chi

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Taken at Cu Chi, South Vietnam in 1967 by serviceman C. Maloney, these color snapshots show the 25th Infantry Division base camp with its barracks huts, jeeps, and fuel point, alongside village paths, shopfronts, and children in the surrounding district. Handwritten inscriptions on the reverse anchor each print to its date and place.

VIETNAM 1967

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Street-level photographs made in South Vietnam in 1967 show villagers washing dishes and laundry in shared basins, a roadside vendor serving passersby, and a commercial block with a photo-processing shop. Sandbagged positions in the background mark how wartime security had become routine amid the ordinary commerce and family life that continued through the American troop buildup.

VIETNAM 1965 3RD TACTICAL FIGHTER WING

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Color slides taken in 1965 by airmen of the 3rd Tactical Fighter Wing look outward from the air base to a farmer with an ox cart, a Saigon-bound passenger bus, roadside billboards, and temples glimpsed on leave in Thailand. Faded and sometimes blurred, they capture the everyday Southeast Asia that surrounded the early American presence in Vietnam.

VIETNAM 1964 VIETNAM SAIGON

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Color snapshots taken in and around Saigon in 1964 record the South Vietnamese capital before the major American escalation, from Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica and the Ben Thanh Market clock tower to cyclos, market vendors, and shophouse streets. Coastal bays and a rural hamlet round out a rare civilian view of a country on the eve of prolonged war.

VIETNAM 1963

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Three 1963 photographs from South Vietnam show U.S. Military Assistance Command advisors and ARVN personnel, including an Airborne officer in a red beret, screening detainees at a field compound. Taken during the early advisory phase of American involvement, they document the close joint working relationship that preceded the large troop commitments of 1965.

VIET NAM ERA TICONDEROGA BW 8 BY 10S

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Official Navy photographs document the Vietnam-era service of USS Ticonderoga (CVA-14), including A-4 Skyhawk formations, F-8 and F-4 intercepts of Soviet Tu-95 bombers, destroyers alongside for underway replenishment, and a shipyard overhaul. A 1968 Shellback certificate and stamped photo reverses preserve the paperwork of life at sea.

VIET NAM CAMBODIA

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Mid-twentieth-century views of Phnom Penh capture the Central Market, Hotel Le Royal, the Silver Pagoda, and the boulevards where cyclos, taxi-buses, and delivery trucks mingled. Photographed before the Cambodian Civil War and the Khmer Rouge period, they preserve a capital of colonial facades and busy merchant streets.

VIET NAM

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A small set of photographs held in the archive under the heading Vietnam, preserved together as a single group. The images remain uncaptioned, offering researchers an unannotated visual record awaiting further identification and study.

USS VILLALOBOS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Centered on the Yangtze Patrol gunboat USS Villalobos (PG-42), this small group brings together a crew portrait, the ship dressed overall at Hankow, and the war service certificate of sailor Oscar Engebretsen. His handwritten note naming Ichang as the patrol's farthest point upriver anchors the set to a specific voyage in 1923.

USS TRENTON

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A cloth-bound scrapbook compiled by H.A. Petrey aboard the light cruiser USS Trenton (CL-11) between 1938 and 1940 follows the ship and her crew from Villefranche-sur-Mer to Lisbon, London, Madeira, and Honolulu. Shore-leave snapshots, souvenir prints, and handwritten jokes preserve an enlisted sailor's view of the fleet in the last peacetime months before the Second World War.

USS TICONDEROGA

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Aboard the Essex-class carrier USS Ticonderoga, these Vietnam-era slides move between a Skywarrior tanker refueling Skyhawks in flight, a deck packed with aircraft, and sailors napping, relaxing, or sharing a meal ashore. Even the chemically degraded frames are kept, preserving the fragility of mid-century color film as part of the record.

USS TICONDEROGA

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs from USS Ticonderoga document the Cold War at sea during the Vietnam era, centering on close-range intercepts of Soviet Tu-95 "Bear" bombers by the carrier's fighters and on the intelligence trawlers that shadowed the task force. Contact sheets and annotated Fuji negative sleeves survive alongside the images, preserving the provenance of the encounters they record.

USS SARATOGA DAMAGE

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Official Navy damage-assessment photographs record the torn bulkheads, blast-scarred compartments, and smoke-filled seas surrounding USS Saratoga (CV-3) after the kamikaze and bomb strikes off Iwo Jima in February 1945. Interspersed views of Pacific Islander families and village dwellings round out a collection that captures both the machinery of war and the communities it touched.

USS SAINT PAUL CA-73

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs and typed caption slips from a sailor's album record USS Saint Paul (CA-73) around 1970, the last all-gun heavy cruiser in active U.S. Navy service. Manning the rail in San Diego Bay, dressed ship ceremonies, deck maintenance beneath the 8-inch turrets, and the Battle Efficiency "E" mark her final year between Vietnam deployments.

USS CHARR SS 328

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs associated with the Balao-class fleet submarine USS Charr (SS-328) follow her crew through dry-dock overhauls, pierside duty, signal watches, and studio portraits taken on liberty in Pacific ports. Annotated versos naming officers and dates give this record of wartime submarine life unusual documentary depth.

US TO MANILA

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographed largely from shipboard, this World War II series records Manila in 1945, its port terminal and pier arches shattered by the battle for the city yet already busy with American trucks, cargo vessels, and troopship movements. Views of the patrol craft P 159 and of local boys swimming alongside moored ships capture both devastation and everyday resilience in the liberated capital.

US MILITARY IN AUSTRALIA album

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A personal wartime album follows American servicemen through Australia, the Pacific staging grounds, and postwar occupation duty in Germany and Austria. Office desks, jeeps, camouflaged barracks, and hand-dug field shelters combine into a composite record of one serviceman's journey across several theaters.

training

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Life at a wartime U.S. Army training post comes into view here, from standardized wooden barracks and drill fields to convoys threading sandy forest roads. Sherman tank crews at rest, radio instruction, and field meals together record how American soldiers were housed and prepared during and after World War II.

suite photos

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Behind the scenes of the Joseph Smith oral history interview, these contemporary photographs record the veteran, his family across three generations, and the fur-hooded field parka he wore in Korea. Not wartime images but documentation of the work of remembering, they preserve the human context surrounding the Lt. Bancroft Korean War collection.

still photos upscaled

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Digitally upscaled film stills and photographs from the Francis R. Ferry collection document the American carrier operations that ended the Japanese battleship Yamato on April 7, 1945. Helldivers ranged across the flight deck, Avengers in formation and the towering explosion itself frame one of the last great air-sea battles of the Pacific War.

STARS STRIPS ARTICLE EMAIL

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A wartime newspaper clipping and printed emails from 2005 reconstruct the December 1952 loss of Navy PBM Mariner BA-12 off the Korean coast, among whose crew was LTjg Wayne Bancroft. The exchange shows how veterans and families pieced together the record of a single night decades afterward.

SOUTH CHINA AND FORMOSA

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Carl Stone's camera followed American naval activity beyond the Philippines to South China and Formosa around the turn of the twentieth century, recording temple gateways and swallowtail rooflines, walled lanes at Swatow and Amoy, park fountains at Taipeh, and a quiet coast. His handwritten album captions still identify scenes long since separated from their photographs.

SMITH SCANS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Drawn from the Joseph Smith material within the Lt. Bancroft collection, these Korean War-era snapshots follow American servicemen from Naval Air Station Alameda to bases at Iwakuni and Atsugi in Japan. Patrol aircraft, embroidered souvenir jackets, memorial services, and handwritten print backs together preserve both the work and the private texture of wartime service.

SMITH SCANS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Scanned from Navy veteran Joseph Smith's personal photographs, these images follow sailors and aircrewmen through occupied Japan, past bilingual air raid signs and Japanese notice boards, to a memorial wreath ceremony held at sea. Handwritten dates on the reverse sides, including Iwakuni in December 1952, anchor a private archive of service, loss, and affection.

smith doc scans

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Citations, deck logs, telegrams, and shipboard snapshots reconstruct a single perilous night: the December 1952 rescue of downed airmen from icy North Korean waters by the crew of USS Renshaw. Centered on Seaman Ronald Morris Tullgren, the documents pair official record with personal photography to show the human stakes of Korean War naval service.

SMALL NEGATIVES IN PAPER

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Salvaged from a canister of small personal negatives, these frames follow an American serviceman across the China-Burma-India Theater of World War II, from troopship decks and convoy gun tubs to a courtyard fire in an Indian street. Candid, sometimes accidental, they preserve the unofficial view of a distant theater rarely captured in official wartime photography.

SILK MAPS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Printed on silk for durability and silence, these Army Air Forces escape-and-evasion charts map the China coast, Formosa, the Ryukyus, Luzon, and southern Japan, overlaid with ocean current, wind, and magnetic variation data. Issued to bomber crews such as the 345th Bombardment Group, they were vital survival gear for downed airmen.

RPPC JC BARDELL SET SAN FRAN

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A souvenir set of real photo postcards published by J. C. Bardell of San Francisco gathers the Ferry Building, Coit Tower, Alcatraz, Mission Dolores, and the newly completed Bay and Golden Gate bridges. Blank divided-back reverses and the original 1936 mailer folder show how such keepsakes were sold, collected, and sent.

roundup cbi

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Pages from the CBI Roundup and Chota Roundup, U.S. Army newspapers of the India-Burma Theater, document the closing of the war in South Asia through the May 2, 1946 issue printed in Calcutta. Reports on troopship departures, replacement depot out-processing, and the quieting of Chandernagore trace the machinery of demobilization.

ROSEVILLE BOMBS BOUND FOR VIETNAM AUG 1973

The Snapshots in Time Collection

On April 28, 1973, a Southern Pacific freight train loaded with aerial bombs bound for Vietnam caught fire and detonated at the Roseville, California rail yard, and these photographs record the devastation that followed. Craters, shredded boxcars, twisted rails, and scattered ordnance debris document one of the largest accidental munitions explosions on American soil.

PrintedMaterial

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Printed and handwritten papers from the Bancroft collection center on Ensign Wayne E. Bancroft, USNR, whose Navy identification card sits alongside family letters and Greek airmail envelopes postmarked from Zakynthos. These documents connect a Korean War officer's service record to the Greek-American family ties he maintained across decades and continents.

PRE-FLIGHT BOOKLET

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Pages from a World War II Army Air Forces pre-flight booklet introduce aviation cadets to boxing drills, Morse code, chapel services, mail call, and the campus of Maxwell Field. Illustrated with photographs and gently comic dialogue, the booklet reveals how the service sold its most demanding training to young men on the edge of combat.

POST CARD 1919 02 26

The Snapshots in Time Collection

In February 1919, Private Willis W. Wagener rode the troop train home from Camp Kendrick through Chicago, mailing a Red Cross canteen card along the way. A hand-tinted view of Sixth Avenue in Emporia, Kansas accompanies it, showing how illustrated postcards carried images of home between soldiers and families in the months after the Armistice.

POST CARD 1918 12 26

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Weeks after the Armistice, Private Willis W. Wagener of the 1st Gas Regiment mailed home a censored postcard from France to his sister in Ceres, California. Paired with a souvenir view of the Avenue des Etats-Unis in Chaumont, headquarters of the American Expeditionary Forces, it captures a soldier's world during the long wait for demobilization.

POST CARD 1918 02 18

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Writing from Camp Lewis, Washington in February 1918, Private Willis W. Wagener told his mother in Ceres, California about a rain-soaked review, a 25,000-man parade, and his growing fondness for Army life. The postcard and letter together open an intimate window on training camp routine in the months before American troops shipped out to the Western Front.

Plum Brook LARGE PHOTO

The Snapshots in Time Collection

At the Plum Brook Ordnance Works in Sandusky, Ohio, these World War II photographs record elaborate safety exhibits of respirators, protective suits, and cautionary posters marking 17.8 million man-hours without a fatal accident. An employee newspaper and a cafeteria mural celebrate the war bonds that bought the plant its own B-17 bomber.

Photos

The Snapshots in Time Collection

The personal collection of Lt. W.E. Bancroft pairs a formal Navy studio portrait and a memorial service lined with named wreaths against family scenes: a child on a tricycle, a Christmas gathering in a wood-paneled living room, a backyard afternoon in the early 1950s. Held together, these images show how home-front life and Korean War service occupied the same archive.

PHOTOGRAPHS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Formal studio portraits of two American soldiers of the First World War, including Private Willis W. Wagener and Franz Appleman of Clermont, Iowa, in standard-issue campaign hats, wool service coats, and wound puttees. Preserved within Wagener's personal wartime correspondence, they show the keepsake portraits citizen-soldiers sent home before training camp and deployment overseas.

PHOTOGRAPHS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Drawn from the family archive of Captain Carl L. Stone, these portraits follow one man from a Victorian childhood sitting to the khaki uniform and saber of a Philippine Scouts officer. Alongside them, views of a nipa hut near Camp Stotsenburg and mounted officers in the islands place a personal life within the American presence in the Philippines.

PHOTO ALBUM TOM CUSHMAN

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Tom Cushman's wartime photo album pairs formal portraits of a U.S. Army Air Forces officer with snapshots of California training bases, crowded Florida beaches, and the wreckage of a B-17 in the Los Angeles River. Matchbooks, nightclub napkins, and souvenir postcards fill its pages, preserving the off-duty world of a serviceman on the home front.

PHOTO ALBUM NY COPS WWI FRANCE

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A worn cloth-bound album kept by New York City police officers who served in France during World War I holds snapshots of a country road near Brest, a French Dorand AR biplane, and a pyramidal tent camp captioned "God Bless Our Home." Later pages of family portraits and 1920s street scenes follow the men into the lives they returned to.

Photo Album Mare Island 1917

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A World War I-era Navy photo album records Mare Island Naval Shipyard in 1917 and 1918, from the electrical school and magazine guard detachment to the cantonment, tennis courts, YMCA building, and swimming pool. Handwritten rosters naming each newly rated electrician make this an unusually complete record of Navy technical training during American mobilization.

PHILLIPINES TYPHOON

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs from the Carl Stone collection survey the aftermath of a typhoon in the early 1900s Philippines, with uprooted trees along Manila boulevards, stripped rooftops, and linemen restoring downed wires. Streetcars still running past the debris capture a colonial-era city absorbing the region's natural hazards while daily life carried on.

PHILLIPINES SCOUTS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

The Carl Stone collection documents the Philippine Scouts and the American garrison in the islands during the early 1900s, with officers halted in the field, artillery drills beside retired Spanish cannon, parade formations under the flag, and a funeral procession for Major Williams. Quieter frames of soldiers at observation instruments and field notebooks record the routine of colonial service after the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars.

PHILLIPINES GENERAL

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs from the Carl Stone collection capture the Philippines in the early 1900s, when American administration followed the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars. Manila storefronts, riverside villages, mountain hill stations, Spanish colonial cemetery walls, and the volcanic landscape appear alongside harbor wrecks and hikers at rest, documenting the islands as U.S. servicemen first encountered them.

Patch

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Close studies of an embroidered U.S. Navy squadron patch from the Lt. Bancroft collection show a cartoon hornet riding an aerial bomb toward a Pacific island, rifle and telescope in hand. Rendered in the Disney-influenced insignia tradition of the WWII and Korean War years, such emblems carried unit identity and morale onto every flight jacket.

PAT McALEER

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Assembled around the career of Marine aviator Edward Potter McAleer, this collection joins scrapbook pages and squadron snapshots to the documents of a flying life: cadet formations at Saint Mary's Pre-Flight School, a 1943 uniform bill, Corsairs in formation over the South Pacific. A carrier rescue photographed aboard USS Boxer in 1951 carries the story from the Pacific war into Korea.

Part 9

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Strike-camera photographs from the 312th Bombardment Group capture parafrag bombs falling, hangars burning, and B-25 Mitchells banking away from Japanese airfields, vessels, and roads. Taken during low-altitude interdiction missions over the Philippines and the Southwest Pacific, these frames record the Fifth Air Force campaign against enemy supply lines at the moment of impact.

Part 9

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Following the men of the 345th Bombardment Group from crowded troop transport decks to their forward base at Ie Shima, this selection gathers shipboard snapshots, beach portraits, stage performers entertaining the troops, and wrecked Japanese aircraft. Souvenirs such as a Karatsu hotel luggage label and a Seoul broadcasting station postcard show what airmen carried home alongside their photographs.

Part 9

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Drawn from the USS Petrof Bay (CVE-80) collection, these items range from Japanese-language leaflets and captured documents to aerial camera specification charts for the photo-reconnaissance TBM-1CP. A Christmas 1944 dinner menu, a holiday message from President Roosevelt, a hand-drawn map of Iwo Jima, and views of replenishment at sea and a B-29 on a Pacific hardstand complete the picture.

Part 9

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Certificates and flight photographs follow Edward P. McAleer from a 1940 Social Security card to his designation as Naval Aviator No. C-7507 in July 1943. Corsairs banking over South Pacific atolls and later crowding carrier decks off Korea trace the long frontline career of both the pilot and his aircraft.

Part 9

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs, studio portraits, and paperwork from a China-Burma-India Theater archive range from a riverside village beneath a hilltop watchtower to a scrapbook poem titled "Two Years Overseas??" and a Saul Steinberg cartoon of a Chinese street scene. Postwar Fourth Air Force reserve correspondence and a few misfiled documents round out a candid record of wartime service and its aftermath.

Part 9

The Snapshots in Time Collection

The Moon-Sammet family archive preserves handwritten letters and Western Union telegrams exchanged between serviceman Ross Moon and Marianne Sammet of Richmond, California. Written from as far away as Sendai, Japan, and dated into the first days of 1946, they carry holiday greetings, mess hall humor, and the strain of separation as wartime service gave way to occupation duty.

Part 8

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Handwritten and typewritten pages from the Moon-Sammiet collection carry the wartime and immediate postwar correspondence of Pfc Ross Moon of the 11th Airborne Division to Marianne Sammet in Richmond, California. Camp routine, homesickness, family news, and uncertainty about coming home fill letters that reveal what official military records never set down.

Part 8

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Strike-camera photographs from the 498th Bombardment Squadron, 345th Bomb Group, document low-level barge sweeps, parafrag attacks, and raids on Boram airfield and other targets across New Guinea and the Philippines between 1943 and 1945. Wreckage on Ie Shima and handwritten album captions round out a combat record that shows both the results of these missions and how the men who flew them described their war.

Part 8

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Frames from a Fifth Air Force strike sequence show parafrag bombs drifting toward Japanese airfields, hangars and dispersal areas erupting in smoke, and wrecked aircraft strewn along the tree line. Several are preserved as full album scans, complete with handwritten sequence numbers, keeping the 312th Bombardment Group's combat photographs in the personal context a veteran gave them.

Part 8

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Confidential gunnery training pages sit alongside snapshots of hillside encampments, rice paddies, pack mule trains, and local children in this China-Burma-India Theater collection. A newspaper notice of a cadet killed in a training crash and handwritten album captions give the technical material a human weight, tracing both the instruction and the daily life of American airmen in a remote theater.

Part 8

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Typewritten action report pages from USS Petrof Bay (CVE-80) recount the Battle off Samar, the early kamikaze raids of 25 October 1944, and 108 continuous hours at General Quarters during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Paired with the ship's christening ceremony, an annotated Iwo Jima air support chart, and a gunner wedged into an Avenger turret, the group traces an escort carrier from launch to the front line.

Part 8

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Life at a Pacific island base comes into focus through Edward P. McAleer's album, from Sherman tanks with wading trunks and Marston mat airstrips to Corsairs on the ramp and pilots at rest between missions. Enlistment papers, a shellback certificate, and a Roi-Namur officer's club card preserve the ephemera of a young aviator's war.

Part 8

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs made on Luzon during the 1944-1945 Philippine campaign pair the pin-up art and open-air camp theaters of American servicemen with portraits of the Filipino civilians they encountered. Aeta families, village children, market stands stocked with American goods, and outrigger bancas record a wartime meeting of two very different worlds.

Part 7

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Low-level strike photographs from the 312th Bombardment Group document attacks on Philippine railways, coastal building complexes, Japanese barges, and shoreline defenses across the Southwest Pacific. Several remain mounted on their original album pages, with reference numbers still visible, showing how veterans preserved these combat images as personal records of their service.

Part 7

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Envelopes and letters from the Moon-Sammet collection trace the correspondence of Pfc Ross Moon of the 11th Airborne Division, writing from APO addresses in the Pacific and occupied Japan to Marianne Sammet in Richmond, California. Airmail cancellations, typed marginal jokes, and a lyric sheet for the airborne ballad "Blood on the Risers" preserve both longing and barracks humor.

Part 7

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Crash-fire crews fighting a burning transport, a four-engine Liberator-type aircraft banking beneath overcast skies, and the passenger terminal at Agana capture both the hazards and the routines of Naval Air Transport Squadron VR-6 on Guam. Handwritten caption pages from October 1947 also mark Pan American Airways' arrival, tracing the island's shift from wartime airfield to trans-Pacific commercial gateway.

Part 7

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Drawn from the Pat McAleer photo albums, these snapshots and scrapbook pages record off-duty hours at Pacific island bases: beaches, sailboats, deck chairs outside barracks, and aircrew just back from a mission. Handwritten annotations naming comrades later killed in the war give this informal record its lasting weight.

Part 7

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Pages from the official wartime history of USS Petrof Bay (CVE-80) document the escort carrier from her commissioning at Astoria, Oregon, through anchorages at Manus, Ulithi, and Kerama Retto, underway refueling, air group organization, and 402 sorties flown over the Palau Islands. Muster rolls, chapel and library records, and engineering reports on Wildcat spare parts reveal how the ship was crewed, supplied, and sustained.

Part 7

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Pages from confidential U.S. Army Air Forces gunnery manuals diagram overhead, flat side, and low side attack runs taught to fighter pilots bound for the China-Burma-India Theater. Interleaved with them are USO entertainers backstage, a bustling Chinese main street, and album notes recalling a squadron party at Kunming, joining combat instruction to the texture of life in the theater.

Part 7

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs taken by servicemen of the 345th Bombardment Group capture the "Air Apaches" and their B-25 Mitchells at Ie Shima, along with ground crews, aircrew portraits, captured trophies, and handwritten album notes about nose art. At the heart of the group are eyewitness views of the Japanese "Green Cross" surrender envoys who landed on the island on 19 August 1945, en route to Manila.

Part 7

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Kept by a crewman of the protected cruiser USS Columbia (C-12), this album captures the "Old Navy" at the turn of the twentieth century. Gun crews and studio portraits sit alongside a mascot goat, a Mexican bullfight, and tropical liberty ports, revealing both the discipline and the humor of shipboard life.

Part 7

The Snapshots in Time Collection

McDonnell F2H-3 Banshee jet fighters catch the wire and fold their wings aboard USS Tarawa, joined by a Curtiss P-40N Warhawk in flight, a North American AT-6F Texan in civilian hands, and a T-28 Trojan trainer. Handwritten identification slates preserved alongside the prints show how such collections were catalogued as naval aviation crossed from propellers to jets.

Part 7

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Portraits of Filipino women, children, and families on Luzon sit beside images of shattered buildings in Baguio and bombed-out Manila neighborhoods, captured by American servicemen during the 1944-1945 liberation campaign. The contrast between mid-1940s fashion, barrio porches, and outrigger boats and the ruins behind them makes this a rare civilian record of the Pacific War.

Part 7

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Candid images from Edward P. McAleer's photo album record the off-duty side of Pacific island service: tent camps and improvised laundry drums, sandbagged beaches, aircrew portraits, and a Hawaiian souvenir card. A satirical poem on the chain of command rounds out an intimate counterpoint to official military photography.

Part 6

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Numbered strike and reconnaissance photographs trace the 312th Bombardment Group's interdiction campaign against Japanese rail lines, motor convoys, and villages in the Philippines and Southwest Pacific. Original photo control numbers and handwritten mission notes, including a January 1945 strike on the Legaspi-Calauag railroad, tie individual frames to specific squadrons, dates, and targets.

Part 6

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Attention shifts to the Big Island in these album pages, which take in downtown Hilo storefronts, Rainbow Falls, a sugarcane flume trestle, a Japanese Buddhist temple, and the 1942 eruption of Mauna Loa. Rifle range and mess hall views set military routine against the small-town island life around it.

Part 6

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Tent cities laid over Marston matting, coral beaches behind sandbag revetments, and Corsairs on hastily built airfields define this record of a Marine aviator's Pacific service. Ready alert duty, quiet moments at camp, and a postwar Corsair night fighter aboard USS Leyte carry the story from World War II toward Korea.

Part 6

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Football games on a makeshift field, a firefighting exhibition, rows of Quonset huts among the palms, and transport aircraft on the flight line show Naval Air Transport Squadron VR-6 at Naval Air Station Agana, Guam, through 1947. Handwritten caption pages and verso inscriptions anchor each scene by date and place, documenting recreation and living quarters alongside squadron duty.

Part 6

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Spanning the piston-engine era to the jet age, this gathering of American military aircraft photographs ranges from the Curtiss XP-40 prototype and wartime trainers to the supersonic B-58 Hustler and the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress. Reverse-side views bearing Convair and Douglas company stamps reveal the cataloging and press-distribution trail behind each historic image.

Part 6

The Snapshots in Time Collection

An American serviceman's album from the China-Burma-India Theater looks outward at wartime China: hillside temples and terraced rice paddies, a young Nationalist army bugler, a street scene outside a country inn, and a camp mascot on a gravel riverbed. Handwritten caption cards, including one on hiding during a jing bao air raid, preserve the observations that gave these snapshots their meaning.

Part 6

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Hand-tinted views carry the viewer through the American-era Philippines, from riverside barrios and coconut groves to the gorge at Pagsanjan Falls, the Montalban Dam, and the gardens of Baguio. Commercial studio prints and local landmarks together show how the islands were seen and remembered by visitors.

Part 6

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Wartime entertainment takes the stage in this set of photographs, with costumed dance duos and troupes, comedy skits performed by servicemen, a vocalist fronting a small band, and a visiting USO entertainer posing in a Navy Jeep. Together with images of WAVES at a reception and women aboard a military transport, they record the morale work that sustained troops far from home.

Part 6

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Shore-liberty pages from the USS Columbia album center on an afternoon at a Mexican bullring, with handwritten captions naming banderilleros, matadors, Mexican officers, and the Marines who watched from the grandstand. Park promenades, a cut-out portrait titled "Old Chums," and a landing party billeted in a Mexican palace complete this record of American sailors abroad.

Part 6

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Life at the 345th Bomb Group's tent camp on Ie Shima in 1945 comes through in field haircuts, laundry stirred in a repurposed oil drum, muddy camp roads, and a salvaged-lumber hooch decorated with hand-painted pin-up art. Between missions against Japan, these candid frames record the improvised routines that held morale together.

Part 6

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Wartime negatives from Luzon trace the aftermath of the 1944-1945 liberation campaign, from hillside towns reduced to standing chimneys and rubble-strewn streets to the rebuilt shopfronts that followed. Interwoven are portraits of American servicemen with Filipina companions, village children on barrio roads, stilt houses, and a town plaza monument to Jose Rizal.

Part 6

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Off-duty hours aboard and ashore with the escort carrier USS Petrof Bay fill this group, from costumed variety shows and dance acts to island chapels, coconut palms, and portraits of Pacific Islander children. Enlisted rosters from 1945 name the sailors who kept the ship running.

Part 6

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Snapshots and documents from the personal album of Marine aviator Edward P. McAleer trace wartime service from Civilian Pilot Training in California to jungle camps, wrecked armor, and tropical beaches across the Pacific. A squadron commander's New Year message and a much-forwarded envelope add the paper trail behind a life in constant motion.

Part 6

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Following PFC Ross Moon of the 11th Airborne Division, this selection of Moon-Sammiet letters spans airborne jump school, service in the Pacific, and sightseeing in occupied Japan. Japanese banknotes kept as souvenirs and a repurposed department-store airmail envelope accompany the correspondence, preserving both the emotional and material traces of wartime service.

Part 5

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Pages from an early 1900s sailor's album follow the protected cruiser USS Columbia from fleet maneuvers off Culebra, Puerto Rico to a state funeral procession in Mexico and a rooftop view of Chapultepec Castle. Portraits of shipmates and bandsmen sit beside images of USS Hartford, Texas, and Kearsarge, capturing the New Navy at work and at ease.

Part 5

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Further pages from a veteran's Hawaii album cover Service Company baseball, Christmas chow, a wrecked cargo truck, and the hutments of Schofield Barracks' "Hut City." Most striking are photographs of engine wreckage identified as a Japanese aircraft shot down at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Part 5

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Everyday life at forward Pacific bases anchors this selection from the Edward P. McAleer albums: pyramidal tent camps, boom trucks, debris-strewn beachheads, and servicemen on Kwajalein in 1944. A memorial marker on an invasion beach and an equator-crossing certificate set the camp snapshots against the campaign that surrounded them.

Part 5

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Servicemen's snapshots from the China-Burma-India Theater turn away from the flight line toward the world around it: a Chinese memorial arch beside a damaged building, a water buffalo on a Burmese hillside, busy street markets, rickshaws, and a North African transit stop. Handwritten album captions accompany the images, preserving the civilian landscapes and ordinary moments that framed wartime service.

Part 5

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Postwar American aviation is surveyed here through the B-57 Canberra, the F-84F Thunderstreak, the F-100 Super Sabre, and the Navy's first operational jet fighter, the McDonnell FH-1 Phantom. Views of B-25 Mitchells in flight and the outsized Aero Spacelines Guppy loading a rocket stage link the World War II generation to the Apollo program.

Part 5

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Drawn from the personal effects of B-24 Liberator crewmen, this grouping pairs combat relics such as bomb fuze safety pins tagged with mission targets and dates alongside photographs of Army engineer trestle bridges, wrecked spans, and a shipyard Liberty monument. Inscribed family snapshots and postwar beach portraits round out a record of the distance between the air war over Europe and the lives waiting at home.

Part 5

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Banking turns and ramp portraits capture the swept-wing generation taking hold, with F-100 Super Sabres, the F-86, the carrier-based FJ-4 Fury, and the T-37 trainer alongside wartime types such as the B-25 Mitchell, P-51D Mustang, and Douglas DB-7. The rare XR-12 Rainbow prototype and an Iranian-marked C-130E round out a survey of postwar American airpower and its export.

Part 5

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Drawn from a photo album kept by a member of Naval Air Transport Squadron VR-6 at Naval Air Station Agana, Guam, these images move between monsoon rains over Quonset huts, off-duty hours in mess halls and recreation lounges, and port-call street scenes in Manila, Tokyo, and other Western Pacific cities. Together with their handwritten caption pages, they record the ordinary texture of Navy life across the Pacific in the years after World War II.

Part 5

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Images from the 312th Bombardment Group document the unit's November 1944 redeployment from New Guinea to the Philippines, from beach staging areas and packed LST decks to the tented headquarters camp and open-air theater on Luzon. Portraits of local islanders and a low-level strike on the Boela oil facilities round out this record of Fifth Air Force life in the Southwest Pacific.

Part 5

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Six contact sheets survey the wartime world of 1st Lt. Earle Campbell of the U.S. Army Air Forces, whose service certificate anchors the group. Chinese temples and market towns, weaving workshops and river life, squadron maintenance, and stopovers at the Pyramids trace a personal route across the China-Burma-India theater.

Part 5

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Drawn from a personal photo album kept by a member of the 345th Bombardment Group, these snapshots record life at the "Air Apaches" forward base on Ie Shima in 1945, from muddy squad tents and barracks construction to coastal bluffs, wrecked aircraft, and a mission photograph taken over the Japanese coast. Handwritten album captions preserve the airmen's own voices, humor, and crew names alongside the images.

Part 5

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Drawn from the personal wartime album of Marine aviator Edward P. McAleer, this selection ranges from captured Japanese gun emplacements and Helldiver ferry flights across the Marshall Islands to tent quarters, island villages, and a backyard snapshot with the family dog. Together with a Quantico unit history and a Marine Corps letter of appreciation, the images trace one man's service from the Pacific war to the Korean-era reserve recall.

Part 5

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Ranging from the Cordillera highlands near Baguio to the war-battered waterfronts of Luzon, these World War II negatives capture traditional ground loom weaving, thatched stilt houses, and mountain valley settlements. Portraits of Filipino civilians, a makeshift cemetery of wooden crosses, and rebuilt storefronts amid ruins together record both the cost of the campaign and the persistence of daily life.

Part 5

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Filed among a collection of military band negatives, these 1940s frames turn out to be almost entirely personal: family portraits, a woman caught mid-laugh indoors, and a couple bundled against the wind on a rocky New England beach. Lighthouses, harbors, and sunlit seascapes on the same rolls show how everyday life shared film with archival subjects.

Part 5

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Life aboard a U.S. Navy escort carrier in the wartime Pacific comes through in hangar deck concerts by the ship's own musicians, Christmas parties, wardroom meals, and surgery in the sick bay. Alongside these moments of respite are the working realities of the fleet, from underway replenishment with a destroyer escort to sailors queued in a cramped passageway.

Part 5

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Wartime Asia appears here in stark contrast, pairing hand-tinted views of Manila's plazas and colonial architecture with scenes of street fighting and ruin in 1930s China and the shattered city of 1945. Preserved in personal albums, these images record how quickly civic life gave way to urban destruction.

Part 5

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Historic burial grounds and civic monuments fill this run of World War II-era stateside negatives, among them the grave of Paul Revere in Boston, Grand Army of the Republic markers, the Richardson family obelisk, and memorials to Deacon John Butler, first settler of Pelham. Portraits of young women at a farmhouse and a New Hampshire Sunoco station set that history against ordinary home-front days.

Part 5

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Life below decks aboard the escort carrier USS Petrof Bay (CVE-80) comes into focus through scenes of the Combat Information Center, the radio room, the tailor shop, and a shipmate teaching trigonometry at a chalkboard. Alongside band performances, coffee shared in berthing compartments, and sailors ashore, these images record the work, study, and camaraderie that sustained a crew through long Pacific deployments.

Part 5

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Pages from a pocket Japanese-English phrasebook join letters written from Sendai in early 1946, when a soldier of the 11th Airborne Division served during the American occupation of Japan. Food, barber-shop, and everyday vocabulary lists set beside descriptions of barracks life and snowy winter duty show how language and correspondence bridged distance and cultures alike.

Part 5

The Snapshots in Time Collection

B-25 Mitchells of the 312th Bombardment Group sweep in at mast height over New Guinea's coastal villages, beached vessels, and Japanese-held airfields in this run of wartime strike photographs. Reconnaissance views of the Wantoat highlands and jungle bomb damage show the terrain and intelligence work behind the Fifth Air Force's 1943-1944 New Guinea campaign.

Part 5

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Cold War air defense comes into focus through Nike missile batteries, underground magazines, fire control vans, and ground-control-intercept consoles staffed by Army and Air National Guard crews. Transport scenes with the C-130 Hercules and the California Air National Guard's C-97 Stratofreighter document the airlift work that supported the continental defense network.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Early twentieth-century service runs through this part of the Jervey Signal Corps album: Washington, D.C. landmarks and Army post buildings, interwar Air Corps transports and pursuit aircraft, and a cameraman at work beside a mobile darkroom truck. Tropical harbors and a horseback riding party record postings far from home.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Rooftop panoramas of Manila, the Carriedo waterworks basins, mountain roads through the Cordillera, and ships at anchor in Manila Bay chart the Philippines in the last years of Spanish rule and the first of American administration. Sugarcane mills, harbor stops at Nagasaki, and infantry on review add the working and military life that moved through these landscapes.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Rest and readiness sit side by side in these 101st Airborne Division photographs, from paratroopers relaxing in a blossoming orchard to 57mm anti-tank crews at dug-in emplacements and observers in a snow-edged forward trench. Field meals, farmhouse halts, and a soldier carrying wildflowers preserve the human texture of the division's European campaigns.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Soldier-taken photographs follow the 101st Airborne Division through Normandy orchards, forest encampments, and forward observation posts, with anti-tank gun crews, chow lines, and engineer-built bridges among the scenes recorded. The collection captures the ordinary rhythms of airborne life between the division's major engagements in Europe.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Letters, envelopes, and snapshots from the Moon-Sammiet family collection, preserved in a wooden keepsake box, follow a serviceman's Pacific crossing and his correspondence with Marianne Sammet in Richmond, California. Accounts of storms at sea, Japanese language lessons aboard ship, and hopes of marriage after the war sit alongside home-front images of a 1930s Ford coupe.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Press clippings, album pages, and personal snapshots follow Marine fighter squadrons from Civilian Pilot Training at Lone Pine in 1942 to VMF-112 and its Corsairs at Santa Barbara and Guadalcanal. Handwritten memorial notes beside cheerful portraits make plain the cost carried by the men in these pictures.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Ie Shima in 1945 is seen from the flight line of the 345th Bombardment Group's B-25 Mitchells to the perimeter gun crews, artillery training with the 75mm Pack Howitzer, and the rows of white crosses in the island's temporary military cemetery. A handwritten note reading "This is where Pyle is buried" marks the resting place of war correspondent Ernie Pyle, killed on the island that April.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs taken by personnel of the 312th Bomb Group record life beyond the flight line in New Guinea and the Philippines, from jungle camp construction and a Tacloban capitol gathering to island beaches, waterfalls, and rubber plantations. Ceremonial dances, ventriloquist acts, and sand sculpture round out a portrait of morale, landscape, and cultural encounter in the wartime Southwest Pacific.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

The Margaroli family collection gathers the home-front keepsakes a B-24 Liberator belly gunner carried through the war: Christmas postcards and a 1944 servicemen's dinner menu, a radio station letter, taxi and dairy advertising cards, and family portraits stretching back to the 1920s. Small and ordinary, these items restore the personal world behind a bomber crewman's military service.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Wartime B-25 Mitchell factory views from Southern California give way here to the aircraft of the early Cold War, among them Navy FJ Fury and F2H-3 Banshee fighters, the T-28 Trojan trainer, and the C-124 Globemaster II. A striking overhead study of a KB-50 tanker refueling two F-100 Super Sabres captures the arrival of the supersonic era.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A veteran's China-Burma-India Theater album gathers portraits at field camps, airmen with their jeep, and a Curtiss C-46 Commando taxiing on a forward airstrip along the "Hump" supply route. Transit photographs of Giza and a few stateside snapshots filed among them trace the wider journey, from Cairo layovers to the civilian life servicemen returned to.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Color slides taken in 1965 by a member of the 3rd Tactical Fighter Wing look out over Bangkok rooftops and hotel signage, a terrace swimming pool, and a roadside Buddhist temple. Canal dockworkers, civilians beside South Vietnamese railroad tracks, a tapped rubber tree, and an aerial view from an aircraft wing record the everyday world surrounding the early American air war.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Morale and faith aboard USS Petrof Bay (CVE-80) take center stage in views of an improvised shipboard chapel decorated for Christmas, sailors browsing the ship's library, a piano sing-along ashore, and crowded benches on the mess deck. A commemorative painting presented to the carrier's first commanding officer and a 20mm gun crew at their station round out this portrait of wartime Pacific service.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Album pages from the Edward P. McAleer collection pair squadron portraits, fighter aircraft, and muster formations behind sandbag revetments with beach liberty, beer rations, and a wedding invitation saved among the snapshots. Compiled by servicemen themselves and annotated in their own hand, these pages offer an intimate counterpoint to the official record of wartime aviation.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Continuing a VR-6 squadron album from Agana, Guam, these July 1947 pages center on aircraft and the people who kept them flying, from a Lockheed Constellation on a round-the-world stop to a Pan American airliner sharing the same island tarmac. Vine-covered quarters and inscribed photo versos naming shipmates preserve details of postwar Pacific service that would otherwise be lost.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

North American Aviation designs dominate this group, from the export NA-50 fighter and the experimental XB-28 Dragon to B-25 Mitchell bombers, F-86 Sabres in foreign markings, and F-100 Super Sabres in publicity flight. Several P-51 Mustangs appear in postwar racing, display, and civilian test liveries, showing how wartime fighters found second careers well into the Cold War.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Squadron portraits, contact sheets of captured Japanese aircraft and refugee trains, riverside encampments, and officers' club receptions beneath a winged tiger mural chart one airman's China-Burma-India service. Assembled from a personal collection, the group carries World War II in the theater from stateside training through the campaign's uneasy close.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

The material aftermath of the 1945 Luzon Campaign fills these images: fields of spent shell casings, broken ammunition crates, collected ordnance, and a collapsed bridge span resting against its stone abutment. Pine-covered Cordillera ridgelines, tent camps reinforced with woven bamboo, and Filipino civilians gathering their belongings place that debris within a landscape and a population reshaped by war.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Sailor-musicians, comic duets, and a squadron portrait of Composite Squadron 76 in the South China Sea capture the human side of escort carrier service, alongside an Avenger torpedo bomber turning up on the flight deck. Caption cards tying prints to USS Petrof Bay and a stray night view of a San Francisco hilltop tower show how personal and official images mingled in a single collection.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Cold War service in the California National Guard comes into view here, from Boeing C-97 and KC-97 Stratofreighters on the flight line to a Hiller OH-23 Raven over open grassland. Legislative visits, award ceremonies, NCO Academy instruction, and radio watch rooms together document the working life of the state's citizen-airmen and soldiers around 1960.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Military band performances share space here with the personal photographs kept alongside them, from brass sections on stage and servicemen gathered in barracks dayrooms to glamour-style studio portraits and family snapshots of the 1940s home front. Together with a view of the neutral Swedish exchange liner MS Gripsholm, these images trace both duty and private life during World War II.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

From the crowned queens of the 1932 Manila Carnival to mule trains in the Cordillera gold districts, these photographs range across the American colonial Philippines. Coastal towns, palm-lined avenues, barracks interiors, and carved shields together sketch the spectacle and the everyday life of the islands.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Strike photographs from the 312th Bomb Group record attacks on Dagua airfield, camouflaged supply barges along the New Guinea coast, and shipping destroyed northwest of Muschu Island in March 1944. Parafrag bombs falling and B-25 Mitchells egressing at treetop height document the Fifth Air Force tactics that severed Japanese supply routes in the Southwest Pacific.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A small group of Pacific Theater photographs sets the routines of service against the wreckage left by urban combat, with GIs hauling a K-ration crate through their tent camp and manning an improvised signal post above open country. Shattered colonial and neoclassical buildings in the same sequence record the cost of battles such as those at Manila and Okinawa.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Family snapshots from mid-century rural New England gather children in farmstead fields, a religious sister visiting relatives, pet mice and a tuxedo cat, and a farmhand at work beside a timber barn. Civil War and Revolutionary War memorials appear among them, joining private life to the public commemoration that surrounded it on the wartime home front.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Morale and friendship anchor this run of album pages, from USO shows and ukulele ensembles at Ewa Plains to the Armed Services YMCA in Honolulu and buddy portraits in khaki. Named comrades and candid camp scenes preserve the off-duty world of servicemen stationed on Oahu during World War II.

Part 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Album photographs from USS Columbia around 1904-1905 balance solemn ceremony with shipboard routine, from the Marine honor guard receiving the remains of Ambassador Azpiroz to an improvised barber's chair below decks. Harbor views, port calls at New Haven and in the Caribbean, and portraits in mourning dress preserve the human texture of turn-of-the-century naval service.

Part 3

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Personal snapshots taken by American servicemen in the Pacific Theater during 1945 bring together portraits of GIs at rest, displaced Okinawan civilians sheltering along a riverbank, and local women photographed in villages, gardens, and traditional Filipiniana dress. Alongside a military formation marking the arrival of Japanese surrender emissaries, these informal images record how the war's final campaigns touched soldiers and civilians alike.

Part 3

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Wartime-era stateside negatives survey the New England landscape and its landmarks, from riverside mill complexes and covered bridges to memorial cannons, the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Lawrence, and the Minuteman at Concord's Old North Bridge. Interleaved portraits and farmyard scenes place these monuments within the everyday rhythms of home-front life.

Part 3

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Amateur color slides taken aboard the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown (CV-10) capture the stores ship USS Zelima coming alongside for underway replenishment, the destroyer USS Agerholm driving through heavy seas, and the Golden Gate Bridge in fog. Send-off parties ashore and manning the rail at Alameda round out a sailor's-eye record of 1950s Pacific Fleet life.

Part 3

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Breadth defines this part of the Jervey Signal Corps album: cameramen filming field exercises, the soundstages used for Army wartime filmmaking, and an officer on horseback from the mounted era. Scenic and social images follow, including a world's fair promenade, Teotihuacan, and the 1939 royal visit to the United States.

Part 3

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Drawn from a family album associated with the Presidio of San Francisco, these early twentieth-century photographs move between the ceremony of the "Taft Parade" and the quiet of farm life, hay wagons, and garden gatherings. The mix of civic spectacle, fashion, and rural work shows how personal and military histories were preserved side by side.

Part 3

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Flight deck operations aboard USS Ticonderoga anchor this group of Vietnam-era color slides, with A-4 Skyhawks spotted for launch, an F-8 Crusader poised on the bow catapult, and a five-inch gun firing off the coast. A Yokosuka street scene rounds out the run, linking Yankee Station to the liberty ports that sustained it.

Part 3

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Taken by an American serviceman linked to Scott Field, these First World War negatives follow the sights of wartime England, from St Paul's Cathedral seen across the Thames and Marble Arch to the medieval walls of Lincoln Castle and Cathedral. Depot yards stacked with entrenching tools, a requisitioned steam trawler, and troops boarding a Rhine river steamer set the sightseeing against the machinery of the war.

Part 3

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Letters and envelopes from the Moon/Sammiet family correspondence trace a soldier's messages to his sweetheart Marianne in Richmond, California, written from Camp Roberts and other posts in 1945. Army letterhead, novelty pin-up stationery, and printed envelope advertisements round out an intimate record of wartime separation and everyday military life.

Part 3

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Everyday life in the rural Philippines around the turn of the twentieth century fills these photographs: villagers with winnowing trays, carabao herds and riders, gamecock owners posed beneath a tree, a boys' classroom at recitation, and a shaded provincial street. American infantry marching through town and a plaza church beside a ruined arcade place these scenes within a period of profound political change.

Part 3

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A 1949 commemorative album follows General Jonathan M. Wainwright, the commander of Bataan and Corregidor who endured more than three years of Japanese captivity, through the receptions, galas, and studio appearances of his postwar celebrity. Ceremonial leis, Disabled American Veterans citations, and hotel corridor conversations capture the social life of veterans' conventions in the late 1940s.

Part 3

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Album pages kept by a soldier of the 105th Infantry Service Company follow garrison life on Oahu, from motor pools, parade grounds, and camouflaged field shelters to off-duty baseball, the regimental band, and a mascot mule named "Appleknocker." Sightseeing views of Honolulu and the Pali round out the record.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Personal snapshots from the 101st Airborne Division collection capture the human side of wartime service: unit portraits, a band performance in a barracks courtyard, playful off-duty poses, and a paratrooper grinning from a foxhole. Alongside encounters with European civilians and barbed-wire compounds in 1945, these fragile, sometimes damaged images preserve faces official photography rarely recorded.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Baseball games, a squadron softball final, an Officers Club band, and a June 1945 skeet range capture how airmen of the 312th Bomb Group spent their hours between missions at forward Pacific bases. Alongside them, LSTs unloading on a Philippine beachhead, situation maps in a mess tent, and encounters with Filipino townspeople place that daily life within the Southwest Pacific advance of 1944-1945.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Marine aviation in the Pacific fills these pages from the Pat McAleer collection, where F4U Corsairs on forward airstrips share space with tent camps, sandbagged observation posts, and captured enemy guns and vehicles. Informal group portraits and scrapbook annotations preserve the daily texture of a fighter squadron's advance across the islands.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs associated with the 101st Airborne Division follow the Screaming Eagles through the farmsteads, villages, and occupied towns of northwest Europe in 1944 and 1945. Briefings in the woods, a local wedding, outdoor haircuts, and a courtyard formation reveal the long stretches of ordinary life that surrounded the division's better-known campaigns.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Filed within a collection labeled for the 1968 Tet Offensive, these color slides in fact show civilian American scenes: vintage automobile shows, a Cadillac on resort grounds, and a Victorian railroad depot resembling Disneyland's station. Presented as found, they illustrate the archival challenge of provenance within large personal slide collections.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs taken across the China-Burma-India Theater move from mosque steps in India and feluccas on the Nile at Cairo to riverfront skylines, hillside pagodas, and a P-38 Lightning down in a flooded rice paddy. Servicemen posing with local children and handwritten captions naming Nanking landmarks record the encounters and long journeys behind the Allied supply effort.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Images from the Glenn Haidet collection pair early Cold War service life, airmen at Randolph Field, a C-97 Stratofreighter on the flight line, and an airdrop bundle at an open cargo ramp, with visits home and a wrecked rural coupe. Engraved operations maps at the Normandy American Cemetery lend the group a note of remembrance.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Studio portraits of 392nd Bombardment Group officers, among them Major Myron Keilman and Captain Kenneth Bevin, sit alongside snapshots of English country scenery and rest leave in Scotland. Hand-labeled caption cards on the reverse of each print identify the men, places, and dates, giving names and context to a squadron's wartime years in England.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Color slides from a 3rd Tactical Fighter Wing airman's personal collection range from Vietnamese street scenes and a roadside family tomb to Thai floating markets, canal temples, and Khmer palace architecture. Taken in 1965, they record base life and the off-duty travels that shaped one serviceman's view of Southeast Asia.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Wartime fighters, captured enemy aircraft, and postwar experimental types share this selection, from the radar-equipped P-61 Black Widow and Bell P-63 Kingcobra to a Luftwaffe trainer marked for U.S. technical evaluation. Later images carry the story forward to the F-84 Thunderjet, the TF-86 transonic trainer, and the rocket-powered X-15 at the edge of space.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Views of the American colonial Philippines gather Coast Artillery crews at the Manila Bay harbor defenses with scenes of the Manila Hotel, harbor steamships, hillside villages, and the 1932 Manila Carnival queen. The images document both the fortifications and the everyday life surrounding them before World War II.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Scrapbook pages from Marine Lieutenant Edward P. McAleer follow the Central Pacific air war at Kwajalein and Roi-Namur, from early B-29 Superfortresses and F4U Corsairs to ground crews on the flight line and DUKWs on the beach. Ready-alert quarters, floral liberty shirts, news clippings, and a Cherry Point mess card round out a firsthand record of aviation service in 1944 and 1945.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Life and hazard aboard the escort carrier USS Petrof Bay (CVE-80) come into focus through wartime Navy photographs of launches at sunset, radar-crowned masts, deck crashes, and the equator-crossing Shellback ceremony. Paired caption cards, date stamps, and handwritten notes on the reverse sides preserve the classification markings and personal details that let researchers reconstruct each image's story.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

A page from a World War I soldier's personal scrapbook gathers snapshots of a sprawling Army tent encampment, the local YMCA hall, a fellow soldier, and a beach outing with friends. Assembled by hand, it captures the blend of training, camaraderie, and leisure that shaped American service life in 1917-1918.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Pages from a flight instructor's scrapbook follow successive classes of Navy V-5 cadet candidates through elimination and primary training, with penciled nicknames, first-solo portraits, and biplane and monoplane trainers of 1941-1943. Graduation announcements and a calling card from Turner Field, Georgia, extend the record to the Army Air Forces schools running in parallel.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Drawn from the Margaroli family archive, these 1944 letters follow a B-24 Liberator belly gunner through Army Air Forces training at St. Petersburg, Florida, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and on to service overseas. Rainy barracks moves, bartered cigarettes, a chaplain's pre-mission prayer, and a few misfiled family snapshots show how personal and military records were kept side by side.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Captured Japanese anti-aircraft guns on Luzon are documented here in detail, from emplacements and head-on views to close-ups of a gunner's shoulder rest and collected magazines and cartridges laid out for intelligence study. Village scenes, including a hand-painted shoemaker's sign and a girl on a bicycle, show civilian life continuing alongside the 1944-1945 liberation campaign.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

A sailor's album from Naval Air Transport Squadron VR-6 documents Naval Air Station Agana on Guam in the spring and summer of 1947, where Quonset huts served as barracks, offices, dispensary, and mess. Handwritten caption leaves, some now outliving the photographs they once introduced, record the quiet postwar work of sustaining a Pacific air transport hub.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Wartime Washington sightseeing, a patriotic rally at Boston's Old State House, and bandsmen clowning through a mock foxhole duet appear beside quiet domestic and rural snapshots of the 1940s. The mix captures how closely military service, civic ceremony, and everyday home-front life were bound together in a single personal archive.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Two sides of the Pacific war meet in this album from the 345th Bombardment Group: B-25 Mitchells over open water, coral airfield roads and aerial views of the Ie Shima and Okinawa buildup, alongside soldiers moving supplies by pack horse and mule through jungle terrain. A hand-painted squadron scoreboard and a Philippine cemetery snapshot fill out the group's 1945 record.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Flooded rice paddies, gilded temple halls, and cliffside shrines share these frames with forward airfields and banking transport aircraft of the China-Burma-India theater. Photographed off duty by American servicemen during the Burma campaign, the images record a wartime encounter with landscape and local life that official coverage rarely captured.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Factory and field photographs trace American military aviation from the Bell P-39 Airacobra and North American B-25 Mitchell through rarely seen experimental types such as the Curtiss-Wright XP-55 Ascender, Douglas XB-28, and Douglas XTB2D-1 Skypirate. Later images of the Boeing B-47 Stratojet and North American X-15 carry the story into the jet age and the edge of spaceflight.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Aerial reconnaissance and strike photographs preserved in a 312th Bomb Group veteran's album record the Fifth Air Force campaign over New Guinea, from cratered runways at Dagua and Wewak to wrecked Japanese aircraft and camouflaged base buildings. Studied at the time to gauge bombing results, these images now trace the contest between Allied raids and Japanese efforts to keep their airfields in service.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

The Casablanca-class escort carrier USS Petrof Bay (CVE-80) appears here at anchor in dazzle camouflage, streaming smoke after an aerial attack, and with Avenger torpedo bombers ranged across her flight deck. Squadron portraits of VC-76 and confidential Bureau of Aeronautics caption cards from October 1944 round out a record of both the ship's Pacific service and the Navy's rigorous photographic documentation practices.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Wartime Honolulu comes into view through snapshots of Waikiki Beach and Diamond Head, the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, Matson Lines storefronts, and palm-lined streets lined with 1940s automobiles. A beachside recreation club and a formal ceremony round out a serviceman's record of Hawaii as both staging area and place of rest.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Miss California 1960, Suzanne Marie Reamo, tours National Guard units in these photographs, trying a field telephone at summer camp and joining officers at a party and dinner. Wildfire-scarred California landscapes, banquet portraits, and a photographer's order envelope round out a record of the Guard's civic and disaster-response life.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Shot from the flight deck of the Essex-class carrier USS Ticonderoga, these Vietnam-era color slides follow A-4 Skyhawks, A-1 Skyraiders and F-8 Crusaders through the daily cycle of catapult launches and arrested landings on Yankee Station. Sailors silhouetted at the rail and 5-inch guns firing toward the coast round out a first-hand record of carrier war at sea.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Shore leave and shipboard life meet in this 1930s album kept by a sailor of the China Station, from rickshaw rides through a treaty port and a locomotive at a Chinese platform to guitar playing among the anchor chain. The photographs capture both the routines and the recreations of the interwar Asiatic Fleet.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Scrapbook pages from the USS Columbia album mix division group portraits and laundry call on deck with visits ashore to Fort Jefferson, New Orleans, and Caribbean coaling stations. Hand-trimmed silhouette and star-shaped portraits of shipmates, a goat mascot named Billie, and a screw-pile lighthouse round out a sailor's record of the Old Navy era.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Roster pages from a Scott Field class yearbook name the airmen of an Army Airways Communications System class, twenty portraits at a time, many pictured wearing the radio headsets of their trade. A memorial page for 'Taps' and a run of 'Crack-Ups' cartoons close the volume, preserving both the names and the humor of a wartime training class.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Handwritten pages by a U.S. Army transportation officer in the China-Burma-India Theater set out his qualifications, his study of maritime law, and his frustration at remaining a First Lieutenant. Candid and self-advocating, they reveal the personal ambitions behind the logistics work that sustained Allied operations.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Pages from the Scott Field Book capture life at the Army Air Forces radio and communications school in Illinois, from gunnery turret training and Army Nurse Corps field exercises to WAC teletype operators and African American trainees in segregated units. Sports, Christmas features and visits from Bob Hope reveal the morale-building world built around wartime instruction.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Stateside negatives from New Hampshire and Connecticut record the New England home front, from hurricane-felled trees near Nashua in 1938 and flooded textile mills to civil defense parade floats in wartime Pelham. Grumman F6F Hellcats displayed in city parks round out a portrait of American communities living alongside disaster, industry, and the war effort.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Corsair II formations above the clouds, jets banking against open sky, and underway replenishment alongside a supply ship show USS Ticonderoga's air wing at work during the Vietnam War. Quieter frames of berthing compartments, nightclub booths ashore, and a Rocky Mountain overlook reveal the life sailors led between cruises.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Life aboard an Asiatic Fleet warship comes into focus here, from a sailor typing at his desk and a mascot puppy on deck to seamanship knot boards, moored gunboats dressed in signal flags, and a floatplane pilot at his open cockpit. These candid 1930s views humanize the American naval presence along China's coast and rivers.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Free-franked envelopes and handwritten pages from the Moon/Sammiet collection follow Pvt. Ross Moon's letters home from Camp Roberts, California, through the summer and early autumn of 1945. Mess hall duty, training hikes, and a letter written the day news of "the new bomb" reached the radio place ordinary lives beside the war's closing weeks.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs from the 5th Marine Division's Iwo Jima campaign of 1945 capture squad portraits on volcanic ground, camp life beneath rolled-up tent walls, and Marines with a litter of mascot puppies. Handwritten name lists on the reverse of prints, and a farmyard snapshot from home, show how personal keepsakes shaped these collections.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs from Norman Baget's album follow the 44th Infantry Division through Germany and into the Austrian Tyrol, recording demolished river bridges, Alpine towns, a captured German bus, and a wrecked Ju 87 Stuka. Quieter frames preserve a village procession, a unit mascot, and handwritten album pages.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Wartime Oahu turns social in these album pages, which record the March 1943 "Minnesota Day" gathering at the University of Hawaii, hula performances for servicemen, and a wryly captioned "Rain Coat" parade. Street views of Schofield Barracks and home-front snapshots complete the picture of life behind the Pacific front.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Scrapbook pages, certificates, and flight line snapshots trace the naval aviation training of E. P. McAleer from pre-flight school through squadron service at Santa Barbara and El Toro. Handwritten "KIA" annotations added later by a squadron mate turn routine training photographs into personal memorials.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Colonel W. W. Jervey and the Army Pictorial Service anchor this group, with Signal Corps officers posed beside motion picture cameras at European Theater headquarters in 1943. Alongside them are officers conferring in a requisitioned billet, English village bridges and stone spring houses, and earlier parades and social gatherings.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Color slides taken around Cam Ranh Bay record one of the largest American installations in South Vietnam, from forklifts and supply yards to tent camps, drydocks, and a processing point for soldiers heading stateside. Together they show the logistics machinery, and the quiet pauses, behind the war effort.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Family snapshots from a Presidio of San Francisco photograph album span the Edwardian era through the interwar years, with draft horse teams and hay wagons, ranch roads, Model T portraits, children with pets, and women in cloche hats and 1920s dress. Together they offer an intimate domestic counterpoint to the post's official military record.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

General Jonathan M. Wainwright's personal album from 1949 moves between Hollywood studio visits, testimonial banquets, and a Disabled American Veterans convention hall to the terraces, cliffs, and tropical harbors of his travels abroad. Together the images document how the survivor of Corregidor and Japanese captivity lived out his celebrated postwar public life.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Dating from 1971, these F-4 Phantom manual pages and data cards set out weapons delivery tables, dive-toss and strafing procedures, ECM pod indications, and emergency steps for landing with hung ordnance. Preserved from a Da Nang collection, they show the exacting technical world behind every combat mission.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Album pages kept by an American serviceman follow the occupation of Japan from Okinawa's camps, radar sites, and turtleback tombs to the bombed blocks of Hiratsuka and the streets of Niigata in late 1945. An honorable discharge certificate closes the record, marking one soldier's passage back to civilian life.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Drawn from a sailor's personal scrapbook, these snapshots follow the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (CVB-42) from carrier operations alongside USS Midway and USS Princeton to liberty ashore in Rio de Janeiro and Trinidad. Aviator portraits, handwritten caption pages, and a visiting Portuguese premier record both the flying and the far-flung sociability of postwar naval deployments.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

At the heart of this Japanese archive is a memorial packet prepared for the family of Army Infantry Sergeant Yonekura Toshiro, killed in Shanxi Province in 1939: a handwritten service record, a battle narrative, and photographs annotated in red and blue ink to show where and how he fell. Home-front memorial portraits, a street ceremony, a family castle portrait, and a 1952 envelope trace remembrance across decades.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Snapshots gathered by an American serviceman during the Allied Occupation of Japan record shrines and torii gates, tram-lined streets, wooden shophouses, and fish hung out to dry, alongside group portraits of U.S. Navy sailors. Personal and unofficial, these images preserve an everyday view of Japanese life and American presence between 1945 and 1952.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

German soldiers of the First World War appear here in revetted trenches, camouflaged gun positions, farmhouse billets, and outside a hand-painted "Funker" wireless signals post. Heavy siege guns, mounted officers leading an infantry column, and a soldier holding his child on a railway platform span the technical and deeply personal sides of the conflict.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Turn-of-the-century views gathered here range from Fort Santiago's stone ramparts and a ruined colonial church to nipa huts, plaza crowds, and women processing fiber in rural Philippine villages. Interleaved with troops drilling stateside, exercising on transport decks, and standing in formation, the images document both the American military passage across the Pacific and the islands they came to occupy.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

From mortar instruction at Camp San Luis Obispo in 1948 to Guardsmen facing demonstrators at Berkeley's People's Park in 1969, these press photographs trace three decades of the California National Guard. Wire service caption slips, release stamps, and photographers' credit marks on their reverses show how such images were documented and distributed.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs and artifacts from the two World Wars range from an alpine military cemetery and aerial reconnaissance prints to Nazi-era flags, rallies, and portraits of U.S. Army Air Forces airmen. Several attributions remain unconfirmed, making the group a valuable study set for researchers weighing collector labels against visual evidence.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

From final equipment checks beside a C-47 to wrecked Waco gliders at Normandy and Bastogne, these images trace the 101st Airborne Division through its hardest campaigns and their aftermath. Anti-tank crews, field meals, graves detail, and a postwar reunion portrait record both the cost of airborne operations and the bonds that outlasted them.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

More scenes from USS Petrof Bay (CVE-80) balance duty and downtime, from a Wildcat launching off the flight deck and a convoy strung across the horizon to sailors clowning in grass skirts during a Hawaiian port call. A shore encounter with a Pacific Islander elder and a postwar view of the carrier at anchor trace the ship's service to its quiet end.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Air operations in the China-Burma-India Theater are documented here through P-38 Lightnings at forward airstrips, a bomber landing in Burma, burned fighter wreckage, and a serviceman posing on a captured Japanese aircraft. Alongside them, an officers' club Flying Tiger mural, an overloaded refugee train, and mass labor crews building airfields show the human scale of the war in China.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Digitized from original period negatives, this First World War group follows U.S. Army Air Service personnel from snow-covered barracks and railroad sidings at Scott Field, Illinois, to billets and tent camps in France. Baseball games, a camp dog, and posed portraits with Navy sailors capture the everyday texture of American mobilization between 1917 and 1919.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Images from the 11th Armored Division follow M4 Sherman crews from stateside training to the ruined cities and stranded river barges of Germany in 1945. Captioned reconnaissance prints of Bremen and Bremerhaven harbors and a soldier's postcard home from occupied Heidelberg complete the record.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

From stateside parade grounds and Fort Bragg portraits to C-47 boarding lines, captured Nazi vehicles, and occupation patrols in defeated Germany, these images follow the 101st Airborne Division from training through victory. Among them is the capture of a senior Nazi official in May 1945, a rare glimpse of the war's final reckoning.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Personal 35mm slides continue a serviceman's record of the Vietnam War, showing improvised barracks quarters, sandbagged support areas, barbed wire perimeters, and a roadside glimpse of Vietnamese daily life. Chinook and AH-1 Cobra helicopters overhead recall the air power that sustained American operations in Southeast Asia.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Everyday South Vietnam in 1965 comes into view through an airman's camera: riverside villages, laundry shops and market stalls near Bien Hoa Air Base, a rain-slicked compound road, and a Thai temple pavilion visited off duty. Together these images document civilian life continuing beside the early American buildup.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Transport ships, snowbound barracks, P-47 Thunderbolts, and an early F-80 jet fighter trace one serviceman's journey through the Allied occupation of Japan and the transcontinental rail travel that bracketed it. Far from combat imagery, these snapshots record the weather, machinery, and long passages that filled a postwar tour of duty.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

A soldier's personal album traces American military life in occupied Japan through the 1950s, from F-84 Thunderjets in formation and P-47s lined up on an airfield ramp to snow-covered base roads, officers' club dinners, and railway platforms shared with Japanese civilians. Stateside scenes near Whitefish, Montana, round out a record of service spanning two continents.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs from the 312th Bombardment Group's wartime collection range from candid village portraits in New Guinea and collected moth specimens to aircraft nose art, a crash-landed A-20G Havoc, and the group's squadron insignia chart. A candlelit field memorial service for airmen killed or missing lends the collection its most solemn note.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Naval aviation takes the foreground in these pages from Edward P. McAleer's album, from an air-to-air Hellcat snapshot and a ditched aircraft awaiting salvage off Kwajalein to Avenger training at NAS Santa Barbara and a Bearcat banking with underwing rockets. Briefings at the mission status board and candid tent-camp portraits fill in the daily rhythm behind the flying.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Life in the wartime Panama Canal Zone is captured in open-bay barracks, recreation rooms, the Balboa Railroad Station, and an Army band welcoming an arriving steamship. Family snapshots and a stateside cadet formation round out an album kept by someone stationed to guard the canal.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Quonset hut offices, canvas tent hutments, officers' quarters, and a Douglas R5D Skymaster on the ramp document Naval Air Transport Squadron VR-6 at Naval Air Station Agana, Guam, between 1947 and 1948. Handwritten album caption pages and candid views of off-duty sailors preserve the daily rhythms of a Pacific logistics hub in the early postwar Navy.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

From the Glenn Haidet collection come 1950s views of Air Force life, including Spanish Mission Revival clubs and squadron buildings, an airfield operations tower, and a Boeing C-97 Stratofreighter on the ramp. Tavern scenes, a formal gown, and a family vacation stop set military service within the wider texture of postwar American life.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Color slides from a serviceman's personal collection document Vietnam in 1968, from Tet Offensive destruction and armored cars on Saigon streets to Independence Palace, base life, and long Pacific flights home. A handful of unrelated frames, including a car show and a Disneyland visit, remain as found, showing how wartime and homefront images shared a single carousel.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

A serviceman's camera follows the long journey to war, from Casablanca street corners and the Great Sphinx of Giza to Indian city scenes and transport ramps beneath a domed mausoleum. Crash-landed Lightnings, captured Japanese fighters, and celebrations under ceremonial archways complete this China-Burma-India record.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Album photographs follow American recruits through mobilization for the First World War, from gas mask drills and trench-digging practice at Camp Lewis to formal portraits in wool service coats. Scenic California hillsides and civilian street views round out the collection, showing how ordinary life persisted alongside preparation for the Western Front.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Bandsmen in lyre-badged caps, an airman outside his Base Air Force Band rehearsal room, and a hand-drawn caricature pinned to a display board sit beside work details, jeeps, and sunbathing on off-duty afternoons. An earlier family portrait from around 1930 extends the archive back a generation.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Along the China coast in the 1930s and 1940s, these negatives capture junks under sail, dockside crowds, ocean liners on the transpacific run, and the Asiatic Fleet destroyer USS Pope in Chinese waters. Nationalist sentries, armed shipboard defenders, and bamboo-scaffolded construction mark treaty ports caught between rapid modernization and the approach of war.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Album pages compiled around the U.S. Navy's V-5 Naval Aviation Cadet program preserve named portraits of cadets and instructors beside their training aircraft, from elimination-phase civilian fields to advanced flying school. Family snapshots, a mascot dog, and a cadet Christmas card round out an intimate record of wartime flight training.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Correspondence, censored envelopes, and press clippings document S/Sgt. John J. Margaroli Jr. of Auburn, California, a B-24 Liberator ball turret gunner who flew with the Fifteenth Air Force from Italy. Accounts of combat missions, rest leave at Capri, bomb fuse pins sent home as souvenirs, and a uniformed 1944 portrait give a crewman's own voice to the strategic air war.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

At an engineering camp on Luzon, American servicemen pour concrete pads, wash half-tracks, stack lumber, and pose with the DUKW amphibious trucks that sustained the Philippines liberation campaign. Roadside markets trading in surplus rations, a rebuilt general merchandise store, and pet macaques kept as camp mascots round out this record of work, commerce, and camp life.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Life on the ground with the 392nd Bombardment Group at RAF Wendling, England, comes into focus through portraits, awards ceremonies, squadron offices, officers' quarters, and leave taken in Scotland. Handwritten captions on the reverse of the prints name the men and dates, preserving the personal record behind the Eighth Air Force's daylight bombing campaign.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Bombers, fighters, and heavy transports of the 1940s and 1950s gather here in air-to-air and flight-line photographs, from the record-setting B-29 "Pacusan Dreamboat" and the gull-winged F4U Corsair to the Globemaster II, Stratofreighter, and C-123 Provider. Together they trace the shift from wartime aviation to the airlift and jet training fleets of the early Cold War.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Spanning the years from prewar pursuit fighters to the jet age, these aircraft photographs range across a Curtiss P-36 in pre-1942 insignia, a B-25 Mitchell and A-26 Invader, a captured German Arado Ar 196 seaplane, and Cold War types including the B-47 Stratojet, KC-97, T-33, and C-124 Globemaster II. Together they trace how American airpower transformed within a single generation.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Coast Artillery batteries, massed parade reviews, rail yards, and coastal posts record the U.S. military presence around Manila Bay in the years before World War II. Interspersed with town scenes and scenic overlooks, the images preserve a peacetime garrison soon transformed by the invasion of 1941-42.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Taken from the flight deck of USS Petrof Bay, these photographs show USS Suwannee burning after a kamikaze crash-dive on 26 October 1944, in the opening wave of coordinated suicide attacks following the Battle off Samar. Flight deck accidents from 1945 and the confidential Bureau of Aeronautics caption cards that accompanied each print document both the hazards of carrier aviation and the Navy's wartime control of its own imagery.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Snapshots taken around Myitkyina, Burma, after its capture in 1944 record the visitors who reached this remote China-Burma-India outpost: entertainers gathered beneath a transport wing, local residents outside a shop, and airmen posing with companions in CBI-patched flight jackets. Handwritten dedications on the reverse sides preserve the personal ties behind a vital wartime logistics hub.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Flight deck crewmen in numbered jerseys muscle fighters into position aboard USS Petrof Bay (CVE-80), while confidential Bureau of Aeronautics caption cards document crashes, a jettisoned aircraft, and the burning USS Suwannee after a kamikaze strike in October 1944. Together the photographs and their reverse sides show both the daily hazards of carrier flight operations and the wartime controls placed on Navy imagery.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Low-altitude combat photographs and annotated scrapbook pages follow B-25 Mitchells through the Fifth Air Force strikes on Dagua and the airfields around Wewak, New Guinea, with parafrag bombs falling among dispersed Japanese aircraft. Handwritten captions by the airmen who flew the missions accompany views of smoke columns, revetments in coconut plantations, and fields of wrecked enemy fighters.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Nike missiles on their launchers and in flight sit alongside wildfire mop-up convoys, aircraft maintenance at Sacramento, and airmen of the 146th Air Transport Wing in this look at California Guard duty around 1960. Surviving photo lab order envelopes add a rare view of the administrative trail behind the images themselves.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Away from the flight deck, these candid photographs follow the crew of USS Ticonderoga through hot working spaces, an empty hangar bay, underway replenishment alongside, and liberty ashore in Japan, Hawaii and other Pacific ports. Together they document the human side of a Vietnam War deployment, where shipboard routine and shore leave shaped a sailor's world.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Views from the Carl Stone album survey the Philippines in the early 1900s: nipa houses and calesa carts on provincial streets, colonial churches beside new tram lines, and steamships riding at anchor in Manila Bay. The album documents the islands in transition under American administration after the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Hand-captioned album photographs follow USS Columbia through gunnery drill off Menemsha Bight, a Marine guard in campaign dress, and liberty ashore at Pensacola, Panama City, St. Thomas, and Kingston. Billy the ship's goat, a photo-booth portrait strip, and a saluting shore battery bring the everyday life of an Old Navy cruiser into view.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

An airman of the 345th Bombardment Group photographed Manila in the months after its 1945 liberation, recording gutted government buildings, the ruined Hotel Great Eastern, and rubble-strewn streets along Rizal Avenue and the Pasig River. Crew portraits, a B-25J Mitchell, and a handwritten album caption anchor the destruction to the men who witnessed it.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Street markets, Lambretta jitneys, and shophouse signage in Vung Tau and nearby South Vietnamese towns fill this 1971 album alongside the hand-lettered caption cards that identify them. The result is a candid portrait of civilian life and troop billets sharing the same wartime landscape.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Certificates, enlistment cards, menus, and club memberships trace the wartime path of Marine naval aviator Edward P. McAleer, from his 1942 entry into the Navy's aviation cadet program to duty on the captured atolls of Roi-Namur. Small in scale but rich in detail, these papers reveal the training pipeline, regulations, and everyday rituals that shaped Pacific air war service.

Part 2

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Personal photographs from the album of Marine Fighting Squadron VMF-214, the "Black Sheep Squadron," pair home-front snapshots of young women and family automobiles with images of F4U Corsairs, barracks, and airfield life in 1945. Together they show how servicemen kept reminders of home close alongside the record of their wartime service.

Part 2

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Sentry silhouettes, drill formations, and shipboard tasks give way to barracks bunks papered with pin-ups and leave time on the beaches of Waikiki in this wartime run of images from the Joe Vieira collection. Fort Ord training scenes and candid portraits of friends record the rhythm of duty and rest across the Pacific war.

Part 2

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A period album records the U.S. Army Quartermaster depots of occupied Germany, including the quarters of the 700th Q.M. Depot Company, tarpaulin-covered storage yards, machine-shop lathes, and warehouses of repacked crates. Civilian laborers appear throughout, a reminder of how deeply local workers were woven into the occupation supply network.

Part 2

The Snapshots in Time Collection

The extraordinary Aero Spacelines Guppy dominates this group, its bulbous fuselage and swing-open nose photographed on ramps and mid-loading alongside a supersonic F-100 Super Sabre. Built from surplus Stratocruiser airframes to ferry Saturn rocket stages, these outsized transports link wartime Boeing engineering to the Apollo era.

Part 2

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A sailor's album from the battleship USS Maryland (BB-46) mixes 1930s views of the Manhattan skyline and a Pacific port call with family snapshots taken on porches, beside automobiles, and on a turkey farm. The combination shows how naval service and home life shared a single collection.

Part 2

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Camp life and combat aftermath on Okinawa meet in this run of 1945 snapshots, from servicemen relaxing outside their tents and bathing in improvised showers to jeep patrols, bombed ruins, and civilian laborers at an open-air work yard. A rare view of the white, green-crossed Japanese surrender aircraft at Ie Shima anchors the group to the Pacific War's closing days.

Part 2

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Kept by a French aviator during the First World War, this album pairs portraits of officers in fur flying coats and the collapsed framework of a downed airship with village weddings, circle dances, and traditional Balkan dress. It records both the emerging world of military aviation and the cultural encounters of airmen serving far from the Western Front.

Part 2

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Faded 1950s color slides from the Thule Air Base collection in Greenland include a stockpile of animal hides and carcasses gathered on a wooden rack near the installation. Such views record the traditional Arctic subsistence practices of local Greenlandic communities living alongside a strategic Cold War base.

Part 2

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographed from the decks of American warships on the pre-war China Station, these 1930s images survey gunboat forecastles, crowded treaty-port harbors, steam launches, and sailors gathered in dress whites beside the main battery. Together they preserve the everyday texture of Asiatic Fleet service in the uneasy years before the Pacific War.

Part 2

The Snapshots in Time Collection

English gatehouses, parish churches, and Harlaxton Manor sit alongside half-timbered French streets and a wooded tent encampment in these First World War negatives from the Scott Field-England collection. Busy London traffic and an American Expeditionary Forces column marching with its colors and mascot show what U.S. airmen and soldiers saw of Europe beyond the front lines.

Part 2

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs from a 1953-1954 deployment aboard USS Yorktown (CV-10) move between the crowded piers of Yokohama, Japan, and the quiet waters of Pearl Harbor, where the USS Arizona still lay unmemorialized. Ocean liners, Corsair fighters, and off-duty sailors together document the Pacific in the closing year of the Korean War.

Part 14

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Two informal snapshots from the USS Petrof Bay (CVE-80) collection show Pacific Islander boys on a beach during a wartime port call and sailors in improvised costume for a shipboard ceremony. Small moments like these record the encounters and traditions that shaped life aboard an escort carrier in the Pacific theater.

Part 13

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs from the escort carrier USS Petrof Bay (CVE-80) range from a squadron victory scoreboard and a deck ceremony to swing band performances, berthing compartment coffee, and social gatherings ashore. A date slate and a handwritten "Iwo Jima" caption anchor the collection to the ship's 1944-1945 Pacific service.

Part 12

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Images from the escort carrier USS Petrof Bay (CVE-80) span lookouts at their battle stations, aerial reconnaissance and wrecked Japanese aircraft, a forward Pacific airstrip, and a technician at work in the ship's laboratory. Alongside flight deck ceremonies and social gatherings, the set shows how combat operations and daily routine ran together aboard a wartime carrier.

Part 11

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Life aboard the escort carrier USS Petrof Bay (CVE-80) comes into focus through wartime photographs of Equator crossing ceremonies, pie-eating contests, boxing matches, and cake cuttings on the flight deck. Alongside these morale-building traditions are burials at sea and handwritten album captions, together preserving both the camaraderie and the losses of a Pacific carrier crew.

Part 11

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Official strike-camera photographs from the 312th Bomb Group document low-level attacks on Bangued, Pattao, and other Luzon towns during the 1945 liberation of the Philippines. Parafrag bombs in mid-fall, aircraft shadows on the ground, and annotated damage-assessment frames preserved in squadron scrapbooks show how each mission was recorded and analyzed.

Part 10

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Carrier aviation aboard the escort carrier USS Petrof Bay is seen here in aviators crossing the flight deck, FM-2 Wildcats aloft, gun crews at their catwalk stations, and the ship's 1944 commissioning ceremony. Stamped and annotated photograph backs preserve the dates and places behind the images.

Part 10

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Strike photographs from the 312th Bombardment Group capture the 1945 air campaign over Luzon, with parachute-retarded fragmentation bombs caught mid-descent above villages, sugar mills, and the Spanish colonial church at Iguig. Damage assessment views marked up by intelligence officers show how these low-level attacks were judged once the aircraft had gone.

Part 10

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A veteran's personal archive of the China-Burma-India Theater, brought together here in overview views of documents and photographs alongside the records themselves: Air Medal citations for photographic reconnaissance missions, declassified special orders routing airmen to Karachi, and a handwritten roster naming the men in a unit photograph. Flight line scenes and aerial strike frames complete a firsthand account of one of the war's most demanding theaters.

Part 10

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Before the 345th Bombardment Group reached its forward base on Ie Shima, its airmen lived the routines seen here: rows of wooden barracks, mass calisthenics, formations with bedrolls and field gear, and leave-day clowning outside a stateside post office. Kept in a personal album, these candid frames preserve the training-camp life that official photography rarely recorded.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs, souvenir programs and official Air Force news releases trace the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds through their F-100 Super Sabre years, from diamond formations over the Nevada desert to crowds pressed against the airfield fence. The set preserves both the spectacle and the publicity machinery behind America's first supersonic precision flying team.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Personal color slides from USS Ticonderoga follow her crew from the island superstructure and crowded berthing compartments to liberty calls at the Great Buddha of Kamakura, a temple gate, and Mount Fuji seen from Hakone. Warmly candid, they record the human side of a Seventh Fleet deployment during the Vietnam War.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A sailor's box-camera snapshots document U.S. Navy service on the China Station in the 1930s, from catapult floatplanes hoisted aboard ship to dress-white musters on treaty-port piers and Yangtze Patrol gunboats at anchor. Shore-leave views of the ruins of Pompeii round out an informal portrait of the Asiatic Fleet in the years before World War II.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Preserved for decades in a family wood box, these Moon/Sammiet letters carry news between Pvt. Ross Moon in California training camps and Marianne Sammet at home in Richmond. Pencil-written pages on gasoline rationing, camp routines, and a visit from the Women's Army Corps sit alongside a ribbon-tied bundle and a free-franked 1945 envelope.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs from the 5th Marine Division's Iwo Jima collection range from Mount Suribachi above the invasion anchorage to a Sherman tank overturned on black volcanic sand, a captured weapons dump, and B-29 Superfortresses on the island's airfields. Camp scenes of Marines posing together and joking beside a hand-lettered tent sign preserve the camaraderie that ran alongside one of the Pacific War's fiercest battles.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Diary pages, draft letters, travel passes, and saved scraps of Chinese newsprint document the China-Burma-India Theater through the eyes of an officer working river and air freight logistics in Assam and Bengal. Together these papers trace the unglamorous supply work that kept Allied forces moving, and one veteran's uncertain path into postwar life.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Hand-painted nose art fills these frames, from B-29 Superfortresses carrying cartoon rabbits and a "Black Cat" talisman to transports honoring the Naval Construction Battalions that built Pacific airfields. P-38 Lightnings on forward airstrips in 1945 and the wreckage of a French fighter from 1940 widen the view across the war.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Weathered negatives from a Scott Field collection trace an American serviceman's path through the First World War, from the Brooklyn Bridge and New York Harbor to snow-covered bell tent camps, stone farmhouses in rural France, and the Thames at St Paul's. A distant airship over the English countryside, associated with the R38 and its 1921 loss, closes the sequence.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Everyday life at the sprawling Cam Ranh Bay base comes into focus here, with hooch interiors, endless rows of tin-roofed barracks, sandbagged walkways, and the port's cargo infrastructure. Glimpses of Vietnamese residents and river traffic set the base against the country that surrounded it.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Color and black-and-white photographs from a 1949 album associated with General Jonathan M. Wainwright follow his travels along Mexico's Pacific coast, where charter fishing boats crowd Acapulco marinas and cliffside villas cling to granite outcrops. Bullring scenes from Mexico City and a canal-side temple pavilion in Bangkok extend the journey well beyond the battlefield.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Pages from the 366th Tactical Fighter Wing's 1971 "DaNang Inflight Aid" and related F-4 Phantom II flight manuals gather the strafe settings, bombsight corrections, ordnance carriage limits, fuel planning tables, and emergency divert airfields that aircrews carried into the cockpit. Rarely seen alongside combat photography, this paperwork reveals the exacting technical discipline behind every mission flown from Da Nang Air Base during the Vietnam War.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Ship's cats, a Crossing the Line ceremony, dockside group portraits, and quiet village scenes ashore fill this 1930s record of United States Navy service in China and the Pacific. Preserved on aging negatives, the images document a vanished world of treaty ports and peacetime patrols on the eve of global war.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Compiled by an American serviceman during the Allied occupation of Japan, these album pages and press photographs document the aftermath of the atomic bombings, with ruined city blocks, medical records of burn injuries, and official caption cards naming survivors. Troopship crossings, B-29 crews, and annotated target views frame the campaign that preceded them, making this a rare firsthand record of the war's final chapter.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Snapshots from veteran Norman Baget's album follow the U.S. Army's 44th Infantry Division from English garrison towns and the Atlantic crossing aboard RMS Queen Elizabeth to the streets of liberated Paris and Metz. The sequence closes with the division's troopship homecoming at a New York pier.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

The opening pages of a leather "Aloha" souvenir album trace Private Alfred B. Wegner's 1943 service at Schofield Barracks, with training company portraits, barracks views, and a handwritten note marking his transfer. Family portraits and Oahu countryside scenes show how home and island life shared space in a soldier's scrapbook.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

From flight school trainees beside a fabric-covered biplane to armorers loading .50 caliber belts on a USAAF flight line, these images follow American airmen from training into service. Scrapbook pages from the McAleer collection extend the story to VMF-112 Corsairs and a Mustang pilot in Korea.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Drawn from a U.S. Army Signal Corps veteran's album, these World War II photographs move from liberated Paris streets and a bustling North African market to bombed-out European towns and captured German officers under guard. Official coverage and personal snapshots sit side by side in a single record of the war.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Wartime snapshots from the Hawaiian Islands pair aerial views of military airfields, coastal towns, and cloud-wreathed volcanic peaks with quiet scenes of palm groves, lava shorelines, and unpaved island roads. A crashed B-17, a keepsake sailor's portrait, and a reconnaissance view of a European river viaduct extend the collection beyond the Pacific.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A personal album tied to the Presidio of San Francisco sets Army post life beside family life, from Company H at Guard Mount and the WWI-era West Cantonment barracks to soldiers in gauze masks during the 1918 influenza pandemic. Candid civilian snapshots and an inscribed portrait verso show how military and domestic keepsakes were preserved together.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Candid snapshots from a 101st Airborne veteran's personal collection show a soldier asleep in a muddy jeep, a chow line seen from above, snow-covered towns, and rubble cleared along Western European roads. Faded and light-damaged frames sit beside sharper ones, giving an unposed counterpoint to official photography of the 1944-1945 campaigns.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs preserved by a veteran of the China-Burma-India Theater bring together fighter and transport aircraft, wrecked planes on remote airstrips, jeep encampments, and airmen briefing over maps in a tent. Together with a Distinguished Flying Cross citation and handwritten album cards, they document the hazards and daily routines of an often-overlooked WWII theater.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Compiled by a Tenth Army serviceman, these album pages follow a route from Hawaii to Okinawa, mixing leave-time snapshots of Schofield Barracks and Hilo with an illustrated souvenir camp map. At their center is the formal surrender of the Ryukyu Islands on 7 September 1945, preserved in narrative, map, and document.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Life aboard the aircraft carrier USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (CVB-42) comes into view through photographs of her air group in formation, a 1945 Christmas party on the hangar deck, and boisterous Crossing the Line ceremonies at the equator. Together with port calls in Rio de Janeiro and visits by dignitaries, these images capture the ritual, recreation, and quiet diplomacy of postwar naval service.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Drawn from a private Japanese family album, these photographs move between the home front and the North China campaigns of the Second Sino-Japanese War, with memorial processions, military funerals, and street ceremonies set beside army columns crossing eroded loess terrain. A condolence letter on army stationery and a 1942 certificate of thanks for war-relief donations show how public ritual and private grief were bound together.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Candid snapshots kept by an American serviceman in occupied Japan capture village streets and tram lines, wooden shopfronts, bicycles, and a coastal town behind its stone seawall. Sailors posing with local children and a meeting with Nationalist Chinese officers record the everyday encounters of the years following Japan's surrender.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

American servicemen of the First World War appear here in group portraits and candid camp scenes, posing with small box respirator gas masks, washing mess kits outside barracks huts, and standing among bell tents in France. Linking Scott Field, Illinois with wartime negatives from England, these images preserve the training, equipment, and everyday camaraderie behind the American Expeditionary Forces.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Personal photographs of the Imperial German Army during the First World War show soldiers at ease in timber-lined dugouts and woodland billets, posing with horses, regimental dogs, and touring automobiles. Alongside them are horse-drawn field artillery teams, labor parties building timber barriers, and a railway depot shattered by bombardment, offering an intimate counterpoint to official war imagery.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Personal 35mm color slides from the Vietnam War era capture the off-duty hours of American servicemen: beers at base camp picnic tables, outdoor clubs under sun umbrellas, a USO variety show, and quiet street scenes in South Vietnamese towns. A few frames stray beyond Vietnam entirely, a reminder of how personal collections gather the ordinary alongside the historic.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

From stateside mobilization camps and shipboard calisthenics to garrison mess breaks and wagon trains on tropical roads, these photographs trace American soldiers across the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars. Alongside them, images of Filipino townspeople, brass bands, and Spanish colonial churches record the communities and landscapes that occupation forces encountered.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Spanning the 1880s through the postwar years, this California military gathering brings together wire photo captions, newspaper clippings, and Signal Corps prints documenting coast artillery guns, National Guard mobilizations during the 1934 San Francisco strikes, and Pacific war games. Its verso captions and studio backmarks name the people and places behind the images.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs from the 3rd Tactical Fighter Wing collection pair life inside the wire - administrative offices, a snack bar and commissary, a squadron day room - with the streets just beyond it. Made in 1965, they show Vietnamese civilians and American airmen sharing the same daily landscape.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Official U.S. Navy photographs from the escort carrier USS Petrof Bay (CVE-80) capture flight deck life during the Second World War, from crews spotting fighters by hand to crash-damaged aircraft cleared away by mobile crane. Together with a Bureau of Aeronautics restriction stamp on one verso, they document the tight margins and constant hazards of escort carrier aviation.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Street-level photographs document the public face of the Third Reich: motorcades passing saluting crowds, SA formations, marching columns beneath swastika banners, and flag-draped official buildings in German towns of the 1930s. Preserved privately, they stand as evidence of the political spectacle that shaped daily life before the war.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Pages from an American serviceman's personal album document Hiroshima after the atomic bombing of August 6, 1945, pairing photographs of gutted concrete ruins and the Atomic Bomb Dome with the handwritten caption cards that identified them. These firsthand annotations turn anonymous images of devastation into a dated, located record of the occupation period.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Mid-century snapshots move between Fort Knox, where a chapel, guest house, and preserved Chaffee and Patton tanks mark the home of the Armor School, and the flight line of Boeing C-97 Stratofreighter 22625. A downtown clock tower and a variety-store lunch counter round out this portrait of 1950s military and civilian life.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs from a serviceman's album capture Japan during the Allied occupation, where bombed-out cityscapes and rows of surplus aircraft awaiting scrapping stand alongside busy street corners returning to civilian routine. Interleaved snapshots of American officers, harbor logistics, and stateside winter scenes give a personal shape to the years of reconstruction after World War II.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs from the escort carrier USS Petrof Bay (CVE-80) follow the ship from San Francisco Bay, past Coit Tower, Alcatraz, and the Golden Gate Bridge, out to the Pacific. Avenger and Wildcat aircraft ready for launch, a harbor pilot boat under sail, and a task force in formation record the working life of a small carrier at war.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Naval aviation in the Pacific is the subject of these wartime photographs, centered on the escort carrier USS Petrof Bay and the Avenger torpedo bombers of her air group. Patrol bombers on coral airstrips, a gunner at his turret, and Mount Fuji seen from the air trace the reach of American carrier power toward Japan.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

A sailor's post-bound personal album opens onto Naval Air Transport Squadron VR-6 at Naval Air Station Agana, Guam, with mounted pages showing Quonset huts, base chapels, palm-lined roads, transport aircraft on the runway, and the response to an airfield accident. Snapshots from Manila round out an intimate, ground-level record of the air bridge that supported American forces across the postwar Pacific.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A private militaria collection is documented here in detail, with German uniforms, helmets, visor caps, edged weapons, insignia, flags, and period tableware arranged for display and cataloging. Among the artifacts are concentration camp prisoners' jackets, objects that require careful and respectful interpretation as material evidence of both military history and Nazi persecution.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Allied aerial reconnaissance prints of Bremen and Bremerhaven document harbor basins, shipyards, rail yards, and bomb damage in the final weeks of the war in Europe, their stamped versos recording date, map reference, and camera bearing. A Normandy landing photograph and a front-line movie sign broaden the view.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs taken by troopers of the 101st Airborne Division trace the division's path across Western Europe, from captured German guns and weapons to snowbound Alsace-Lorraine road signs, wrecked aircraft, and bomb-shattered villages. Together these images record the aftermath of combat and the harsh winter conditions of the Ardennes campaign.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Taken on 35mm color slide film during the 1968 Tet Offensive period, these images move between an air base under attack, jeeps and base camps, harbor docks stacked with military cargo, and quiet Saigon streets. Photographed by servicemen themselves, the set balances the machinery of war with the civilian life continuing beside it.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Lockheed P-38 Lightnings define this China-Burma-India gathering, parked on jungle airstrips, wearing nose art such as "Moby Dick," and lying wrecked in flooded rice paddies. Crew portraits, an officers' club Flying Tiger mural, and joint ceremonies with Chinese Nationalist troops preserve the bonds formed flying the Hump.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Pages from a World War I family album set seaside holidays, farm life, and a holiday greeting card beside gun drills with Battery F of the 124th Field Artillery. Hand-labeled snapshots from Camp Lewis and the Tacoma rail yard show how closely home-front routines and military service were bound together between 1917 and 1919.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Color slides taken by American servicemen record daily life at U.S. bases in Vietnam, from rice paddies and thatched villages beyond the wire to sandbagged bunkers, monsoon downpours, and CH-54 and CH-47 helicopters at work. This everyday view complements the era's better-known combat photography.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs from the USS Petrof Bay collection follow the escort carrier through Pacific operations, from flight deck crews tending an FM-2 Wildcat and storm damage to a gun director, to aerial views of warships under fire during the Philippines campaign. Original Bureau of Aeronautics caption sheets and confidential stamps preserve the Navy's wartime documentation practice alongside the images themselves.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Views of China from the revolutionary and interwar decades range from a man reading a Shanghai Military Government proclamation around 1911 to US Navy destroyers moored in Chinese ports in 1936, a parade before the Shanghai Bund, and a gas mask drill at a foreign legation. An aerial view of the Great Wall and a 1905 American chromolithograph round out this varied record of foreign presence in China.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs from a serviceman's album pair sweeping views of Hiroshima's leveled cityscape after the atomic bombing of August 6, 1945 with quieter scenes of occupation-era Japan. Ruined foundations and railroad rights-of-way sit alongside fan dancers, city streets, and a converted Post Exchange, capturing both devastation and daily life.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs and typed records from the 1945 Luzon Campaign pair the pine-covered grounds of Camp John Hay near Baguio with abandoned Japanese Type 97 Chi-Ha tanks left across the countryside. Army unit histories and antiaircraft reports round out the images, joining the operational record to the landscape it was fought over.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Aircrews of the 579th Bombardment Squadron and 392nd Bombardment Group pose beneath their B-24 Liberators at Wendling Airfield while ground crews load 500 lb bombs and airmen rest at an English country estate. Aerial reconnaissance and damage assessment prints round out a collection that shows both the work and the results of the Eighth Air Force's air war.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Hand-painted nose art, squadron clubs, and camp infrastructure appear alongside aerial reconnaissance of wrecked Japanese airfields and war-damaged Philippine cities in this 312th Bombardment Group archive. The combination of morale-boosting personal touches and hard damage-assessment imagery reflects both sides of Fifth Air Force service in the Southwest Pacific.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Annotated Allied aerial reconnaissance photographs and captured Japanese negatives from the China-Burma-India Theater of World War II, including detailed target studies of the Japanese-held airfield at Myitkyina, Burma. Alongside the interpreters' hand-lettered intelligence markings, badly deteriorated portraits testify to the fragility of wartime film in the tropics.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

A serviceman's wartime photo album documents the Panama Canal Zone through its architecture: Spanish Colonial Revival and Streamline Moderne facades, the Cristobal Post Office, the Atlantic Terminal, and the gates of France Field. Autograph book pages signed in 1939 and 1940 add the voices of the men who served there.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Aerial reconnaissance cameras, calibration rigs, grid maps, and guarded flight lines dominate this Kotec collection record of the China-Burma-India theater in World War II. Barracks halls, volleyball games, and rides in a horse-drawn tonga round out a portrait of the technical and daily labor behind Allied air operations.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Drawn from a collection of military band negatives, these images move between rehearsal rooms, formal stage performances beneath the Great Seal, and studio portraits of enlisted servicemen. Candid moments and home-front portraits of women in mid-1940s dress round out a record of the people behind the music.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

A civilian eye on China in the years surrounding the Second World War, these photographs move from crowded junk anchorages and treaty-port rickshaws to bomb-damaged Shanghai streets and the crowded decks of evacuation steamers. Preserved among family negatives, they record the everyday life of Western residents abroad and the moment that world came apart.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographed from USS Petrof Bay in October 1944, these images and their original Bureau of Aeronautics caption cards record the Battle off Samar, including USS Santee and USS Suwannee struck in some of the first organized kamikaze attacks. FM-2 Wildcats launching, a chapel decorated for Christmas, and a squadron officer roster fill out the daily life of a "baby flattop" at war.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Camp shows, field organs, Red Cross tent lounges, and a Curtiss C-46 Commando poised for the run over the Hump: this Kotec collection documents life at the Myitkyina airfield in wartime Burma. Its photographs show how morale was sustained among Allied airmen serving in one of the most remote theaters of World War II.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Spanning World War II to the Cold War, this selection ranges from a B-24 Liberator over coastal terrain and the rare Douglas XB-28 "Dragon" prototype to the F-100 Super Sabre above the clouds, the A4D-1 Skyhawk, the C-124 Globemaster II, and the T-38 Talon. A 1967 Naval Aviation News designation chart and a caption card flagging a P-40 movie-set image show the archival work of identifying what the camera captured.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Drawn from a personal album labeled "Manila," these photographs move between Philippine scenes and home: a backstrap weaver in the Cordillera, outrigger boats, calesas, and nipa hut villages beside stateside portraits of family. The pairing captures the two worlds an American serviceman held in mind before the war.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

A World War II Navy V-5 photo album documents the civilian contract airfields where Naval Aviation Cadets first learned to fly, among them Johnson's Flying Service in Greenwood, South Carolina, and Sam Houston Airport's Cliff Hyde Flying Service. Instructors, host families, bus drivers, and handwritten rosters and verse round out a portrait of the wartime training pipeline and the communities that sustained it.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Letters, censored envelopes, and newspaper clippings from the Margaroli collection follow S/Sgt. John J. Margaroli, a B-24 Liberator gunner with the 464th Bomb Group who wrote home to Sacramento, California. A firsthand account of a 1944 raid on the Regensburg airdrome sits beside barracks sketches, family news, and a home-front snapshot.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Album pages from a 312th Bombardment Group veteran gather aerial views of New Guinea during the 1943-1944 Fifth Air Force campaign, including Dagua, Wewak, Hansa Bay, and the airstrip at Wom Point. Alongside bomb craters and wrecked Japanese aircraft are Sepik River villages under attack, a sobering record of the air war's reach into civilian life.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Official photographs span half a century of American airpower, from a Boeing pursuit biplane on an Army field in 1931 and pre-war Air Corps bombers to the B-24 Liberator, B-25 Mitchell, and P-51 Mustang of World War II. Cold War subjects follow, including the B-52 Stratofortress, F-100 Super Sabre, T-38 Talon, and a 1960 capsule drop test flown from a B-47.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

The souvenir album of N. Fitchelberg, Musician U.S.N., opens with its worn leather covers and inscription before turning to USS Columbia in dry dock at Philadelphia, the band quarters below decks, and the Engineer Force posed on deck. Liberty pages from Cuba and St. Thomas anchor the album's provenance and place naval service within a sailor's personal world.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

An airman's album for the 345th Bomber Group ranges from B-25 Mitchells in formation over the Pacific and the group's famous Indian chief tail art on Ie Shima to stateside barracks, a hometown marching formation, and sightseeing at the St. Thomas Yuma Indian Mission in Arizona. Handwritten notes on the reverse of prints add a first-person voice to the record.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Cold War readiness and community outreach meet in these National Guard photographs, from Nike Ajax missiles on a hillside battery and scramble alert panels of the 194th Fighter Interceptor Squadron to Patton tanks in an armory drill hall. Christmas toy deliveries by jeep and a VFW Buddy Poppy campaign show the Guard as a neighborhood presence.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Festival and civic life in the early-1900s Philippines fills these pages of the Carl Stone album, from dragon-decorated ferries and bunting-draped parade barges to floats bearing the American eagle. Cavalry columns, harbor fortifications, and veranda portraits set the celebrations within the first years of American colonial rule.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

The making of a naval aviator, told through Edward P. McAleer's earliest photographs: Piper Cub trainers and Civilian Pilot Training classes, rope climbs and labor details, cadet group portraits, and a first Corsair at Santa Barbara. These images capture the pride and camaraderie of American airmen before they reached the Pacific.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

A gallery devoted entirely to the North American B-25 Mitchell, capturing the medium bomber banking above cloud layers and coastlines, taxiing through snow, and resting on the ramp in postwar natural metal. Serial numbers and shifting national insignia let these air-to-air studies trace the aircraft from wartime service to its long afterlife.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Images from the closing months of the Pacific War center on Ie Shima and Okinawa, including the memorial and grave of war correspondent Ernie Pyle and the green-cross Japanese envoy aircraft that carried surrender delegates in August 1945. Philippine street scenes, aerial reconnaissance views, and preserved V-J Day newspaper extras round out a personal record of the war's end.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A documentary sequence records the ruins of a New England dairy barn destroyed by fire, from surviving fieldstone foundations and silo footings to blackened milk cans left atop a stone wall. Alongside it are a wartime Boston parade, steeple repairs in Penacook, and historic graves at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and beyond, tracing rural life, loss, and remembrance in the 1940s.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Newspaper clippings, gunnery memoranda, flight report forms, and base handbooks from the Pat McAleer collection follow a Marine Corsair pilot from wartime training through the Korean War recall of Bay Area reserve units. Together they balance the hazards of aerial combat and training accidents against the quieter administrative texture of life on a Marine air station.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Spanning prewar prototypes to early Cold War jets, this set of official and manufacturer photographs gathers B-25 Mitchells in flight, a KC-97 Stratofreighter, a B-57 Canberra, and Navy Panthers ranged along a carrier deck. Convair stamps on the versos mark them as press and technical images from the aviation industry itself.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Pages from a 1930s personal album kept by a crew member of the battleship USS Maryland blend shipboard views of New York Harbor and fleet exercises with snapshots of shore leave, mountain vacations, and family life ashore. Kept alongside clippings and keepsake album pages, the collection offers an intimate portrait of peacetime Navy life on the eve of World War II.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Biplanes drawn up beside canvas hangars, air-to-air views of roundel-marked aircraft, and reconnaissance photographs of French villages fill the personal album of a World War I French aviator. Alongside them sit portraits in fur flying coats and street scenes from Florina, Macedonia, near the Allied airfields of the Salonika front.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Thule Air Base, Greenland, takes shape in these early 1950s color slides: snow camps and weather equipment, barracks raised on pilings above the permafrost, construction yards, and sled dog teams hauling supplies. Harbor stopovers along the North Atlantic transit route complete a portrait of Cold War service in the high Arctic.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Opening pages of "Scott Field, A Pictorial and Historical Review" introduce the Illinois base whose motto, Sustineo Alas, declared its mission to sustain the wings. Radio school labs, heliograph and high-speed code instruction, the post office, hospital, band and staff officers together portray a technical training center at full wartime stride.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Drawn from a personal 35mm slide collection tied to service aboard USS Yorktown, these images range from liberty calls in the Philippines and harbor logistics at Yokosuka, Japan, to a Castro Valley backyard pool in 1954. The mix of duty and home life shows how servicemen's collections preserved both worlds side by side.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A serviceman's personal photo album from South Vietnam in 1971 pairs snapshots of colonial-era buildings, transport aircraft, beach R and R, and improvised holiday celebrations with the handwritten cards he used to label them. Together they preserve an unofficial, first-hand view of daily life during a tour of duty.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Crewmen's photographs from USS Ticonderoga follow a Vietnam War-era Pacific deployment, from Skyraiders ranged on the flight deck and escorts steaming through tropical haze to guitars in the berthing compartment. Liberty ashore adds junks in Hong Kong harbor, the Great Buddha of Kamakura, and rice fields worked by water buffalo.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A 1945 personal album from VMF-214, the Marine Corps "Black Sheep" squadron, pairs gull-winged F4U Corsairs in hangars, on airfield ramps, and behind carrier crash barriers with tented encampments and supply trucks. Formations and parade ground reviews at stateside bases round out a portrait of the squadron in the final year of the Pacific War.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Battlefield remains in the Aleutian Islands, including abandoned gun emplacements, spent shell casings, and the wreckage of a twin-boom fighter, sit alongside portraits and vehicle scenes from the 1945 Okinawa campaign. Barracks interiors from the Joe Vieira collection add an intimate view of the improvised domestic life servicemen built in the Pacific.

Part 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs from a U.S. Army Quartermaster depot album trace the working life of an occupation-era supply installation in Germany, from stockpiled rations and stencilled crates to the graphics workshop, joiner's shop, and crane crews. Together they document the road-building, platform construction, and warehouse labor that kept supplies moving through postwar Europe.

PANAMA CANAL ZONE RUDY F MAJEWSKY

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Drawn from the Rudy F. Majewsky collection, these 1930s photographs document military and civilian life in the Panama Canal Zone, from Boeing P-12 pursuit biplanes at France Field to coast artillery emplacements, the Panama Air Depot, and a Carnival parade in Colon. Handwritten annotations on the reverse sides help researchers identify buildings, units, and dates with unusual precision.

PAGE LITERARY SOCIETY RULE BOOK

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Pages from the pocket rule book of the Page Literary Society at Millersville State Normal School, preserved among the personal papers of WWI soldier Pvt. Willis W. Wagener. Its constitution, officer duties, and rules of order reveal how debate and parliamentary procedure trained a generation of young Americans for civic life before wartime service.

Other

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Service papers from the Korean War-era career of Navy patrol pilot Wayne Eugene Bancroft, from his 1950 Naval Aviator certificate and instrument ratings with Patrol Squadron VP-47 to officer data cards, a correspondence-course manual, and a memorial Honor Roll certificate. Together the documents trace one aviator's path from qualification to remembrance.

original

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Rare color frames from the 16mm film shot by naval aviator Francis R. Ferry show US Navy carrier operations in the Pacific, including Avengers and a Dauntless in flight, ordnance handling on deck, and sailors at the base of a carrier island. The reel is tied to Operation Ten-Go of April 1945, preserving an amateur eyewitness view of the strikes that sank the battleship Yamato.

OKINAWA WWII LOOSE PHOTOS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Loose snapshots from the 1945 Okinawa campaign pair U.S. Navy shipboard life, destroyers and auxiliary vessels at anchor, with scenes of Okinawan civilians washing clothes, weaving baskets, and moving along coastal roads. Together they give the battle a rare civilian counterpoint alongside its naval record.

OKINAWA PHOT INFO

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Printed pages from the unit history "Lucky Sweetbrier" carry the war diary of USS LST-808 off Ie Shima and Okinawa in the spring of 1945, recording ammunition expenditures and the mounting kamikaze threat. Firsthand entries describe an attack repelled on 6 May and another on 11 May, foreshadowing the assaults that would destroy the ship later that month.

Occupied Japan photo album

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A soldier's personal album from the Allied occupation of Japan gathers street scenes of Fukuoka and Kurume, rice paddies and bomb-damaged factories, guard duty and parade ceremonies, and a disarmament checkpoint. Insignia of the 24th Infantry Division, occupation currency, and food-distribution snapshots give the collection a rare ground-level immediacy.

NOSE ART

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A single wartime photograph records pin-up nose art painted on a 345th Bomb Group aircraft at Ie Shima. Personal markings like these were a signature form of expression among American bomber crews in the Pacific theater of World War II.

NO LABEL 2

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Personal snapshots of American servicemen in the China-Burma-India Theater capture life between missions: portraits in aircrew wings and CBI patches, laundry washed in a jungle river, letters written beneath mosquito netting. Taken on private cameras rather than for official record, these images preserve the everyday texture of a distant, demanding war.

NO LABEL 1

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographed by American servicemen stationed in India during World War II, these images look outward from the bases toward village families, women carrying head-loaded baskets, a Hindu sadhu amid a crowd, and the busy streets and Maidan of Calcutta. They record the civilian world that surrounded the China-Burma-India supply lines.

NewsPaper

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Pages of the Chicago Daily Tribune and Chicago Herald-American from late December 1952, saved among Lt. Bancroft's Korean War papers, carry Cold War headlines beside comics, box scores, recipes, and Oldsmobile advertisements. Preserved newsprint like this documents the American home front that servicemen carried with them overseas.

NEWSPAPER

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Newspaper front pages and clippings saved in the Lt. Bancroft collection report the December 1952 crash of a Navy PBM Mariner patrol bomber of Squadron VP-47 in the Sea of Japan, which claimed ten crew members including Lt. (jg) Wayne Eugene Bancroft of Alameda. Survivors' first-person rescue accounts, a photograph of a patrol flying boat, and reference maps trace how the loss reached families through the press.

new scans

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Newspaper clippings preserved in a Korean War scrapbook chronicle the December 1952 ditching of a U.S. Navy PBM patrol bomber in the frigid Sea of Japan, which claimed ten of the fourteen men aboard. Casualty lists, survivor interviews, and hometown profiles show how the war's losses reached American families through the local press.

NEW JERSEY CIVIL DEFENSE

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A New Jersey Civil Defense poster from the era of Governor Robert B. Meyner explains the "Alert" and "Take Cover" warning sirens and points residents to CONELRAD radio frequencies. It survives as a vivid record of the nuclear preparedness campaigns that reached into ordinary American homes.

New folder (3)

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Personal snapshots from the collection of Lt. Wayne Bancroft Sr. follow a naval aviator from his 1950 training class at NAS Pensacola into the Korean War years. Portraits in flight helmet and dress whites, taken alongside comrades at naval stations, offer an intimate counterpoint to the official record of a wartime career.

New Folder (2)

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Drawn from the personal photographs of veteran Joe Vieira, this collection follows American servicemen through the China-Burma-India and Pacific theaters of World War II, from unit formations and studio keepsake portraits to barracks life, jeeps on hillside tracks, and aircraft wreckage. Taken by soldiers for themselves, these candid snapshots preserve the ordinary hours that official photography rarely recorded.

New Folder

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Panoramas and detail crops record the motor pool and encampment of Battery "C," 4th Field Artillery Battalion in Manila during 1946, its trucks, buses, and vehicle sheds set against a skyline still broken by the 1945 Battle of Manila. Creased and fragmentary prints among them testify to both the fragility and the enduring value of wartime photographic archives.

New folder

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Contact sheets of personal 35mm color slides trace one sailor's Vietnam War deployment aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga, from Skyhawk launches and five-inch gun crews to the cavernous hangar deck. Interleaved with liberty in Japan and Hong Kong, they form an intimate counterpoint to official Navy documentation of the Seventh Fleet.

New Folder

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs taken from USS Ticonderoga during the Vietnam War capture carrier aircraft in flight alongside the Soviet intelligence trawlers and bombers that shadowed American task forces at sea. Together they document a quieter Cold War contest of surveillance and signals unfolding in the same waters as the shooting war in Southeast Asia.

New folder

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Sailors pose beside folded-wing F4U Corsairs at Naval Air Station Jacksonville while VP-47 aircrewmen stand bundled in fur-hooded cold-weather suits atop their PBM Mariners. Drawn from the Joseph Smith interview materials, these photographs put faces to the aircraft and gear that carried Navy patrol and fighter squadrons through the Korean War.

New folder

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Certificates from The Infantry School at Fort Benning record Private George P. Coman's completion of the Basic Airborne Course in 1949, qualifying him as a parachutist and gliderman. They are paired with hand-tinted and real photo postcard studio portraits from the J.C. Bardell studio of San Francisco, keepsakes that soldiers sent home to family.

New Folder

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Oversized 1945 "Jumbo Post Card" souvenirs picture downtown San Antonio, Texas, from the River Walk and Arneson River Theatre to the Alamo, the Tower Life Building, and Randolph Field. Their reverse sides carry the "Keep 'Em Flying" emblem and blunt security warnings, a reminder that home-front secrecy reached even tourist keepsakes sold to airmen in training.

New folder

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Frames lifted from home-movie and interview footage show PBY Catalinas and PBM Mariners moored along the ramp at Naval Air Station Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, tended by ground crews and mustered squadrons. Faded and grainy though they are, these stills preserve everything from routine Pacific patrol operations to the wreckage left by the December 7, 1941 attack.

New folder

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Harbor and shipboard photographs trace American troop movements across the Atlantic, from New York piers and the tug Coordinator guiding a troopship to heavy seas, warship gun decks, and a surrendered German U-boat at Bremerhaven. Farewell scenes and a Sherman tank on maneuvers round out this record of wartime and postwar transit.

NEGATIVES WWII KESSLER GEN EISEN 1946

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Negatives from the Kessler collection record American military life in 1946, from B-17 Flying Fortresses and Air Transport Command aircraft at Keesler Field to Quonset-hut airfields, Army camps in occupied Europe, and a general officer reviewing troops. The images capture the transition from wartime operations to peacetime occupation duty.

NEGATIVES VIETNAM 1963

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A serviceman's negatives from South Vietnam in 1963 and early 1964 show C-123 Providers lining airfield ramps and armed UH-1 Hueys, one named "Prissy," being loaded with rocket pods. Taken during the advisory years before major escalation, they document the first American experiments in helicopter gunship warfare.

NEGATIVES VIET NAM JET REFUELING

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Shot largely from tanker aircraft over Southeast Asia, this Vietnam War-era negatives collection places the viewer at the boom operator's window as F-4 Phantom IIs close in on a KC-135's flying boom. Island coastlines, propeller nacelles, and a spartan barracks interior round out a record of the refueling missions that kept American strike aircraft on station.

NEGATIVES SASEBO JAPAN

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Negatives made at Sasebo, Japan, capture the U.S. Navy's principal Far East base during the Allied Occupation and the Korean War, from underway replenishment and cargo barges to sailors at deck maintenance and mugging on a ship's railing. A street scene of pedicabs and a horse-drawn carriage glimpses the rebuilding city ashore.

NEGATIVES CHINA

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Shot ashore by a sailor from USS Ticonderoga, these Vietnam-era color images survey Hong Kong from the Peak: Victoria Harbour with a U.S. carrier at anchor, hillside apartment towers, reservoirs, the Tiger Balm Garden, and crowded beaches. Together they capture the Seventh Fleet's most cherished liberty port at a moment of rapid change.

NEGATIVES ARMY NAVY GAMES

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A run of mid-century negatives captures the Army-Navy football game at Philadelphia's Municipal Stadium, from the snap of the ball and running plays at midfield to the Western Union clock tower rising above capacity crowds. Ceremonial field guns, card stunts, the midshipmen brigade, and Navy's mule mascot record the pageantry of a rivalry played annually since 1890.

NEGATIVES 187th AIRBORN KOREA

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Personal negatives kept by a member of the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team trace the "Rakkasans" through the Korean War, from mountain encampments and hillside field activity to garrison barracks and street scenes in Japan. Taken with a soldier's own camera, they preserve the everyday life that official combat photography rarely reached.

NEGATIVES

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Drawn from the personal album and negatives of Jack T. Kelley, these snapshots move between Pacific tent camps and the American home front, from off-duty horseplay and a recreation-hall costume night to park portraits, family gatherings, and travel stops at Meteor Crater and Hoover Dam. The mix of service and civilian scenes builds a fuller portrait of one serviceman's world.

Navy5052

The Snapshots in Time Collection

The personal photographs of Lt. Bancroft turn away from the flight line toward the lives servicemen led between postings: lakeside outings in wooden runabouts, couples in vintage sedans, and quiet family moments in the park. Set beside barracks scenes and dress-white portraits, they show how home-front bonds framed a naval officer's Korean War service.

NAVY DOCS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Letters, annotated maps, and official records from the Lt. Bancroft Korean War collection document patrol and weather observation flights over Korea, the 1952 loss of an aircraft off the Korean coast, and the condolence letters sent to grieving families. Later correspondence from 1999 and a 2008 Defense Department report trace decades of searching by relatives and veterans for crewmen never recovered.

NAS Kaneohe

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Color home-movie stills from Naval Air Station Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, catch officers in dress whites walking the base paths, sailors mustered before PBM Mariner seaplanes, and one man passing an idle afternoon throwing knives at a target post. Together they offer an unusually candid portrait of daily life at a key Pacific patrol station during the Korean War era.

MISC EPHEMERA RELATED

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A 1973 substitution of trustee document from Sacramento County, California, executed by Edna A. Hannibal Wagener of Palo Alto, survives among family papers. Administrative records like this one help genealogists and historians follow families forward in time, connecting later generations to earlier holdings such as the World War I letters of Pvt. Willis W. Wagener.

MILITARY PHOTO ALBUM JERVEY MAKING FILM

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Drawn from the Jervey military photo album, this "Making Film" sequence shows U.S. Army Signal Corps crews at work with tripod cameras, sound trucks, and mobile photographic laboratories during the interwar years. Alongside naval air station hangars and a 1930s view of the Capitol, the images document the birth of military filmmaking.

McCLELLAN FIELD PERSONAL GUIDE BOOKLET

The Snapshots in Time Collection

The pages of a wartime personal guide booklet issued at McClellan Field, the Army Air Forces depot near Sacramento, walk civilian employees through civil service rules, performance reviews, separations, and the base suggestion program. Section dividers carrying the slogan "We Keep 'Em Flying" and a map of eleven air service areas reveal the administrative machinery behind American air power.

McAleer Part f

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Drawn from the personal albums of Marine aviator Pat McAleer, these snapshots range from Corsairs on carrier decks and a plane-guard helicopter rescue to tent camps, Tarawa's scarred beaches, and a Hawaiian souvenir portrait. Handwritten scrapbook pages give a first-person account of the Pacific war and its Korean-era aftermath.

McAleer Part e

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Drawn from the personal album of Pat McAleer, these images follow naval and Marine aviators through their World War II service in the Pacific, from cockpit inspections and air-to-air fighter photography to card games outside canvas tents. Together with newspaper clippings and a scrapbook relic recovered from a strafing run, they preserve both the danger and the daily rhythm of island air war.

McAleer Part d

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs and scrapbook pages from the McAleer family record American advance bases in the Pacific, where Marston Mat walkways, squad tents, Corsairs, and captured Japanese guns defined the island-hopping campaign. Clippings that follow the same young aviators into the Korean War give the collection an unusual reach across two conflicts.

McAleer Part c

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Camaraderie is the through line of this selection from the McAleer family album, where aircrews pose beside folded-wing fighters and radial engines while friends sail small boats, muster among pyramidal tents, and share a drink between missions. Handwritten names and later annotations turn casual snapshots into an intimate roster of wartime service.

McAleer Part b

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Marine aviation in the Pacific anchors this run of McAleer album pages, with VMF-441 Corsairs on the flight line, ground crews servicing Wildcats, a captured Japanese motorcycle, and a reserve aircraft pool staged before the invasion of Okinawa. Album annotations pair the logistics of air war with the men who lived it.

McAleer Part A

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Beginning with a 1942 Civilian Pilot Training class taught by future WASP Evelyn Sharp, this McAleer sequence follows young Americans from small-town streets and college snapshots into wartime flight lines, B-24 ramps, and Pacific squad tents. Memorial captions naming friends killed in action give the collection its quiet weight.

McALEER LOG BOOK OCT 1948 JAN 1952

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Continuing Pat McAleer's flight record from October 1948 to January 1952, these logbook pages trace Corsair, Hellcat, and Skyraider training out of NAS Oakland and observation flights with Marine squadron VMO-6. Written in the pilot's own hand, they show peacetime carrier qualification hardening into wartime readiness as Korea drew near.

McALEER LOG BOOK OCT 1948 JAN 1952

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Covering October 1948 to January 1952, Pat McAleer's naval aviator log book records Corsair and Hellcat training out of NAS Oakland, camera gunnery runs, and carrier qualifications aboard USS Monterey. Its pages capture the pivotal passage from the postwar drawdown into the Korean War, one flight at a time.

McALEER LOG BOOK JAN 1942 SEPT 1948

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Marine aviator Edward P. McAleer kept this Aviators Flight Log Book from his 1942 Civilian Pilot Training flights through wartime service with VMF-441 and VMF-914 and on into postwar Corsair sorties from NAS Oakland. Page by handwritten page, it charts one pilot's accumulating hours and the arc of American naval aviation from combat readiness to peacetime routine.

McALEER LOG BOOK JAN 1942 SEPT 1948

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Handwritten pages from the flight log book of Marine aviator Edward P. McAleer chart a career from Stearman primary training in 1943 through Corsair gunnery and night tactics with VMF-441 and into the postwar years. Certified hour by hour, these ledgers turn one pilot's wartime service into a precise documentary record.

McAleer DOCUMENTS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Orders, bulletins, inspection forms, and a squadron commander's Christmas letter make up the documentary heart of the McAleer collection, spanning Corpus Christi flight training, Quantico orientation, and combat service with VMF-441. Official and personal by turns, the papers show how paperwork and sentiment alike recorded a Marine aviator's war.

MATHER FIELD

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Squadron portraits from Mather Field near Sacramento document the U.S. Army Air Service personnel who trained there in 1918, several dated precisely to September 25 of that year. Formal four-row musters, biplane trainers, wooden barracks, and candid shirt-sleeve groupings record a wartime flight training program that the Armistice would end within weeks.

Mash Unit

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Frontline U.S. Army medicine is documented here in canvas operating tents, crowded receiving wards, and muddy ambulance rows, spanning Seventh Army field hospitals of 1943-1945 and Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals of the Korean War era. Surgeons at work, plasma transfusions, and litter bearers loading a wounded soldier trace the evacuation chain that carried casualties from the battlefield to lifesaving care.

LOG BOOKS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Worn aviator's flight log books from the McAleer collection, including the Bureau of Aeronautics Form AER. 4111 volume kept by 2nd Lt. Edward P. McAleer, USMCR, are photographed cover, spine, and fore-edge. Recording every flight hour, aircraft type, and mission flown, such books remain among the richest primary sources for reconstructing an individual airman's wartime career.

letters2

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Handwritten letters sent to Lt. Wayne Bancroft during the Korean War bring rent payments, a suburban Chicago house hunt, a runaway dog, and a daughter's longing for her father into the same envelope as the war. Written by his wife Peggy and his parents, they ground the conflict in the ordinary rhythms of family life.

LETTERS FROM MISC

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Beyond the wartime letters, the Wagener family archive preserved correspondence reaching from World War I into the 1950s: a condolence letter of 1922, genealogical research from New Hampton, Iowa, in 1935, and a warm 1951 note closing with an original poem. Domestic news, illness, and affection fill these pages, showing how family collections keep whole lifetimes rather than single moments.

Letters

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Correspondence from the Lt. Bancroft archive travels in both directions, from a patrol aviator describing fourteen-hour flights out of Sangley Point to Christmas notes, camera instructions, and requests for photographs of a new baby. Naval Supply Depot stationery, a snowman greeting card, and a postmarked envelope complete this intimate wartime record.

LETTER PARTIAL

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Two 1918 letters from Private Willis W. Wagener of Company B, 30th Engineers, written from France with the American Expeditionary Forces. Describing worn overseas caps, relaxed uniform rules, and extra duties writing to the regimental chaplain, they capture an ordinary soldier's optimism as the tide of the First World War turned.

LETTER FROM UNCLE HENRY AUNT ANNA

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Handwritten pages sent to Private Willis W. Wagener by his Uncle Henry and Aunt Anna carry news not of the war but of home: a brutal winter, a growing cattle herd, stolen horses, and a neighbor's lost heifers. These intimate letters show how ranch families kept an American soldier tied to everyday life during the First World War.

LETTER FROM MARY WAGENER-MOTHER

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Handwritten letters from Mary Wagener to her son, Pvt. Willis W. Wagener, carry family news, shopping errands, and San Francisco Bay Area life across the distance of World War I. Ordinary and affectionate, this correspondence preserves the home-front world that soldiers left behind and held onto through the mail.

LETTER FROM MARY AND CHILDREN 08 18 1904

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Written over two August days in 1904, these letters and their postmarked envelope carried news from Mary Wagener and her children in San Francisco and Modesto to "Dear Papa," J. A. Wagener. Preserved alongside the World War I correspondence of Pvt. Willis W. Wagener, they capture ordinary family life more than a decade before the war reached him.

LETTER 8

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Written from France in July 1918, this group of letter pages and a "Soldiers Mail" envelope carries the words of Private Willis W. Wagener of Company B, 30th Engineers, home to Ceres, California. He describes anti-aircraft fire over Allied observation planes, a change of company command, and his transfer through a replacement company during the Second Battle of the Marne.

LETTER 7

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Dated July 10, 1918, this letter from Private Willis W. Wagener of the 30th Engineers to his father moves between camp routine, magazines and awaited mail, and worry over his father's health. Later pages weigh the war's staggering cost, hopes of promotion to Private First Class, and a longing for home-grown strawberries and news of the family ranch.

LETTER 5

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Begun on July 2, 1918, this run of pages from Private Willis W. Wagener of the 30th Engineers describes a rotation up at the lines, billets in an abandoned French village, and the artillery, machine guns, and observation balloons of the Western Front. Censored passages, a Fourth of July reflection, and talk of a Signal Corps spruce-inspection transfer show a soldier's world as he wished his family to understand it.

LETTER 4

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Private Willis W. Wagener wrote to his mother on June 20, 1918, describing camp life, long-awaited mail, and duties from kitchen police to stevedore work. Accompanying pages note a money draft, scarce newspapers, an anticipated pass into a French town, and cautious optimism about the Austrian offensive in Italy, all carried home in a censored 30th Engineers envelope.

LETTER 29

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Written largely on American Y.M.C.A. stationery issued to the American Expeditionary Forces, these letters from Private Willis W. Wagener of the 1st Gas Regiment recount his path from Chateau-Thierry to the Meuse-Argonne and his evacuation to hospital. Composed at St. Aignan after the Armistice, they convey the cold billets, crowded mess halls, and long uncertain wait for demobilization.

LETTER 25

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Letters home from Private Willis W. Wagener of the 1st Gas Regiment, written from Vichy, France, in the autumn of 1918, describe hospital duties, French town life, and the jubilant celebrations of the premature "False Armistice" of November 7-8. Together with his censored soldier's mail envelope, these pages preserve one doughboy's voice in the closing days of the Great War.

LETTER 24

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Three handwritten letters from Pvt. Willis W. Wagener of Co. B, 1st Gas Regiment, Chemical Warfare Service, written home from France in the final weeks of the First World War. Writing from Vichy on November 1, 1918, he describes recovering from illness, evening walks through a curfewed town, pay and service stripes, and news of Turkey's surrender.

LETTER 23

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Letter 23, written from Vichy, France in 1918 by Pvt. Willis W. Wagener of the 1st Gas Regiment, recounting a day of unexpected reunions with hometown friends. In a French bookstore he goes looking for a map and finds an unlikely connection — an elderly gentleman who turns out to be a cousin of San Francisco merchant Raphael Weill.

LETTER 22

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Letter No. 22, written October 24, 1918 on American Red Cross stationery by Pvt. Willis W. Wagener of the Gas Regiment, from a billet in a French town known for its Vichy water. He describes autumn foliage from a train window and French farm life, weighs the war's progress, hopes to send Christmas gifts, and asks after the family's bean harvest in Ceres, California.

LETTER 20

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Letter 20 carries Pvt. Willis W. Wagener through the final Allied offensives of 1918 — German soldiers emerging from the fog crying "Kamerad," captured machine-gun nests, and columns of prisoners. He notes his promotion, the death of the officer who once censored his mail, an illness that sent him by night train to a hospital in a converted resort hotel, and the rules governing Christmas parcels from home.

LETTER 1919 02 04

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Pvt. Willis W. Wagener's account of coming home in February 1919: weeks of waiting at Brest, shipboard delousing and quarantine, and the liner Celtic steaming into New York harbor. Bands, ferries around Manhattan, and volunteers handing out coffee, cake, and cigarettes greet him at Camp Mills as demobilization begins.

LETTER 1918 04 28

The Snapshots in Time Collection

An April 28, 1918 letter on YMCA "With the Colors" stationery, in which Pvt. Willis W. Wagener tells his family of his new assignment to the Gas and Flame Service in France. He walks a French market town noting shops, cafes, and wartime prices, tries his hand at the language, and finds a young giant sequoia in a park — a homesick echo of California.

LETTER 1918 01 19

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Letters written from the base hospital at Camp Lewis in January 1918, where Pvt. Willis W. Wagener records the death of a fellow soldier from pneumonia and scarlet fever in his ward. Around that loss run the ordinary rhythms of camp life — kitchen duty, doctor's inspections, cribbage, and news of the family ranch back in Ceres, California.

LETTER 1918 01 16

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A January 16, 1918 letter from Pvt. Willis W. Wagener, written from Ward 40 at Camp Lewis, Washington, where he recovers in an isolation ward as scarlet fever moves through the camp. Between K.P. duty and draft-classification news, he passes along camp rumors of an unmasked spy and the shared hope that the war will soon end.

LETTER 19

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Letter No. 19, written September 21, 1918 from a French YMCA hut by Pvt. Willis W. Wagener of the 1st Gas Regiment, describing troop trains in the famed "40 Hommes, 8 Chevaux" boxcars. He recounts an overnight march under full pack, distant artillery and night flares along the front, and the constant expectation of sudden orders to move.

LETTER 17

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Letter 17, written from France during the Aisne-Marne fighting of 1918, in which Pvt. Willis W. Wagener describes observation balloon duty, night patrols, and German artillery fire. He watches a dogfight end with a plane falling in flames and a wounded French pilot's landing, then turns to burial customs, commissary lines, and the price of canned fruit.

LETTER 16

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Letter 16, written August 30, 1918 on American Y.M.C.A. stationery by Pvt. Willis W. Wagener of the 1st Gas Regiment in France, describing dump guard duty and improvements to camp. He records German artillery fire, enemy reconnaissance flights, and an air battle in which anti-aircraft guns drive attackers off the American observation balloons.

LETTER 14

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Letter No. 14, written August 21, 1918, finds Pvt. Willis W. Wagener of the 30th Engineers sheltering from German shellfire in a converted wine-cellar dugout he calls a cave dweller's home. He describes a town's civilians evacuating, moonlit nights ideal for enemy air raids, the need to stay hidden from observation balloons, and his recovery from dysentery — with one passage naming a wounded comrade cut away.

LETTER 13.5 TO WINNIE

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A censored 1918 letter home from Pvt. Willis W. Wagener of Company B, 30th Engineers — a Gas and Flame unit — writing to Winnie from the Western Front in France. Between a Y.M.C.A. money transfer and the struggle to learn French, he jokes that he needs mosquito netting less for mosquitoes than for flies.

LETTER 13

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Letter No. 13, written to his mother on August 15, 1918, in which Pvt. Willis W. Wagener describes blistered feet from road-building work with the A.E.F. Engineers in France. He notes the growing swarm of aircraft overhead and the improvised comforts of billet life — scavenged bedding, and civilians beginning to return to their villages.

LETTER 12

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Letter No. 12, written August 8, 1918 by Pvt. Willis W. Wagener of the 30th Engineers, describing constant movement near the front and the unceasing rumble of artillery. His eyewitness account of a German aircraft sending an American observation balloon down in flames — its observer escaping by parachute — sits alongside notes on gas-tainted mud and money sent home.

LETTER 11 24 1918

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Letters written from St. Aignan, France on November 24, 1918, as Pvt. Willis W. Wagener of the 1st Gas Regiment waited out life in a replacement camp weeks after the Armistice. With censorship just lifted, he writes freely of the coming winter and the uncertain wait to sail home, enclosing an embroidered silk Christmas card stitched by French artisans.

LETTER 10

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Letter 10, written in camp in July 1918, as Pvt. Willis W. Wagener billets in a French village newly abandoned by German forces and follows Allied gains near Soissons-Rheims. He describes his gas mask, jokes about an ill-composed portrait by a French photographer, hunts for an English-French dictionary, and recovers from illness with local help.

LETTER 03 04 1918

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A March 4, 1918 letter home from Winnie Wagener at Stanford University, covering Junior Week festivities, spring clothing, finances, and a Serbian war-relief benefit. Preserved with its postmarked envelope, the correspondence follows her brother Willis through training at Camp Lewis and captures American home-front life during World War I.

LETTER 02 10 1911

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A February 10, 1911 letter from Camp Keithley on Mindanao, describing daily routines at an American military post in the Philippines during the early colonial period. The writer catalogs unfamiliar tropical trees, coconut and betel-nut groves, local customs, army pay, and plans to re-enlist and test for Sergeant.

LETTER 01 04 1917

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A handwritten letter of January 4, 1917, in which Winnie Wagener describes her first week at Stanford University, from placement exams to dormitory dances and Friday suppers. Written months before America entered World War I, the pages mix college life with family pride and worry over her brother, Pvt. Willis W. Wagener.

Large curled Negatives

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Large-format negatives from Ie Shima in 1945, where the 345th Bombardment Group's "Air Apaches" flew gun-nosed B-25 Mitchell strafers against Japanese shipping. Hand-painted nose art — "Honey," "Lady Luck," "Slightly Dangerous," a shark's mouth — shares the frame with air-to-air formation shots, a P-38 Lightning, and a captured Japanese aircraft up on jacks for inspection.

LARGE ARIAL

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Large-format aerial imagery from the Pacific war's final year: a 345th Bombardment Group strike photo over Byoritsu, Formosa, practice runs against a wrecked target hulk, and a confidential radarscope frame from the 90th Group's "Jolly Rogers." Reconnaissance flights of August and September 1945 then map the defeated home islands — Sasebo, Omura, Moji, Kurume, and the parked aircraft at Waifu airstrip.

Lapel

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Close studies of U.S. Navy shoulder boards from the personal effects of LT Bancroft, who served during the Korean War. Gold bullion stripes, the unrestricted line officer's star, and eagle-and-anchor buttons are shown from several angles, including a junior grade pair.

LABELED THE TAJ

The Snapshots in Time Collection

The Taj Mahal at Agra as American servicemen saw it on leave from the China-Burma-India Theater, framed through the Great Gate and mirrored in its reflecting pool. Minarets against a dramatic sky, marble staircases, and the inner tomb chamber's carved screens make up these treasured wartime souvenir photographs.

LABELED THE BODY

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Portraits from across the China-Burma-India Theater: a craftsman at his adze, a folk fiddler, a village elder in a turban, and young women in longyi, parasol, and beaded hill-tribe headdress. A crash-landed liaison plane in tall grass and a moat-side Burmese pavilion set these encounters against the wartime landscape.

LABELED SQUADRON STUFF

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Off-duty squadron life at remote China-Burma-India airfields, where airmen built officers' clubs from woven bamboo, wicker, and canvas and gathered for toasts, briefings, and mess-tent meals. Between the basha huts and rest areas, aircraft lift off from rough jungle strips and a bombed-out building marks the war's cost to local communities.

LABELED SCENICS-KASHMIR

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Scenic views of Kashmir taken by a serviceman on leave from the China-Burma-India Theater, from houseboats and shikaras on Dal Lake to Hari Parbat Fort above Srinagar. Pine forests, turf-roofed hill towns, and pack caravans on wooded mountain trails round out this souvenir record of the Himalayan valley.

LABELED PEOPLE KASHMIR

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Allied personnel at leisure in Kashmir during World War II — shikara rides on Dal Lake, pony treks beneath Himalayan peaks, and formal dinners in colonial-era hospitality. Candid portraits on houseboat balconies and a serviceman clowning in a straw hat capture the human side of rest and recreation from the China-Burma-India Theater.

LABELED NOSE IN

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A brief pairing of home and away: a young Army private posing lakeside with his mother during a wartime visit home. Opposite it, a twin-engine B-25 Mitchell faces the camera head-on as ground crew work the flight line in the China-Burma-India Theater.

LABELED NATIVES

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Village life along the Burma Road and the China-Burma border, recorded by American servicemen: women at looms and thread-winding tools, children in stilt-house doorways, and an elder smoking a cheroot. Bamboo rafts, thatched shelters, and a suspension bridge crossing round out this portrait of the hill communities Allied troops lived among.

LABELED MANDALAY

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Mandalay after its recapture in 1945, from the landmark clock tower and street vendors to aerial reconnaissance views of the moated palace fort and the Irrawaddy valley. Colossal chinthe guardian lions watch over the stairways of Mandalay Hill, where an Allied encampment sits at the foot of the sacred, hard-fought ridge.

LABELED LAB REPORT PLANE CRASH

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Official accident-investigation photographs of a burned P-38 Lightning fighter that crashed at Tingkawk Sakan airstrip along the Ledo Road in northern Burma. Marked confidential and annotated with technical codes, the images record fire and impact damage as personnel examine the shattered fuselage and separated engine.

LABELED LAB REPORT

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Technical laboratory photographs of aerial camera installations in the nose and fuselage bays of WWII photo-reconnaissance aircraft, stenciled with servicing instructions for ground crews. Inside bamboo huts and canvas tents, the 9th Photo Reconnaissance Detachment's field labs, supply rooms, and interpretation workrooms turned that film into intelligence for the China-Burma-India Theater.

LABELED L-5

The Snapshots in Time Collection

The world of the Stinson L-5 Sentinel in the China-Burma-India Theater: aerial views of jungle-covered mountains, a liaison plane down in tall grass, and laborers clearing elephant grass for improvised airstrips. On the ground, Americans work alongside village guides and Chinese porters, and a military cemetery gate marks the cost of the campaign.

LABELED KATHA TRIP MAJOR TURNER

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Images from a wartime survey trip to Katha, Burma, documenting infantry patrols on jungle tracks, aerial views of supply corridors, and the wrecked hulks of Irrawaddy river steamers. Quieter frames show a serviceman at a colossal ruined Buddha and Commonwealth troops gathered socially, reflecting the multinational character of the China-Burma-India Theater.

LABELED KAREN CHURCH SERVICE

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A Karen church service in wartime Burma, with villagers gathered in a bamboo-and-thatch sanctuary, a gong calling worshippers, and hymns recorded by an American serviceman. Portraits of Karen women and girls in woven skirts and layered silver jewelry document a community whose alliance proved vital to Allied operations in the Burma campaign.

LABELED IFR 429 IN - A SELO PACKAGE

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Rice paddies, thatched-roof villages, and crowded market alleys photographed by American servicemen in the China-Burma-India Theater during World War II. Alongside the landscapes are quiet portraits of young women in saris and traditional dress, capturing the civilian world that continued far from the front lines.

LABELED FOLHLORE

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A serviceman's "folklore" negatives from the China-Burma-India Theater, recording bamboo river rafts, hand-weaving frames, inscribed temple bells, and tiered monastery roofs. Alongside them are a memorial cross in Chinese script, a mass outdoor prayer gathering on an Indian maidan, and a boy walking past shattered trees left by the fighting.

LABELED DINJAN- TIBET

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Life around Dinjan, Assam, the airbase that launched the "Hump" airlift over the Himalayas, seen through tea gardens, estate roads, and colonial bungalows. American servicemen mingle with the local community at a village wedding and folk dance, and pose with Naga and other hill-tribe neighbors of the Assam-Burma frontier.

LABELED BUROWAN

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Base life in the China-Burma-India Theater, from a loft hung with drying parachutes to softball games, river outings, and a shave at an improvised camp washstand. Servicemen pose with a C-46 Commando that flew the Hump, a dispatch motorcycle at a camouflaged encampment, and the chinthe guardians of a Burmese pagoda.

LABELED BURMA INDIA 1944-45

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs from the Burma-India frontier in 1944-45, following mountain trails and pack animals beneath snow-capped peaks along the routes that supplied the war in China. The collection then turns to Kashmir, where houseboats on Dal Lake, the Jhelum riverfront at Srinagar, and Mughal garden cascades served troops on rest and recreation leave.

LABELED BURMA IN BOX

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Wartime Burma at close range: Americans in council with Kachin villagers, a P-40 skimming a river as children watch, jeeps before shell-pocked colonial buildings, and a GI shaving at a helmet washbasin. Portraits of hill-tribe women in silver-studded dress and a backstage moment with a USO entertainer round out this China-Burma-India Theater collection.

LABELED BURMA DUTY MIL BOX

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Everyday life in wartime Burma through an American serviceman's lens: hill-tribe portraits, an elderly woman at her bamboo stilt house, women at a backstrap loom, and GIs sharing a meal with villagers. Tucked among them are snapshots of home, including a small-town bank and barber shop and a playful afternoon at the beach.

LABELED BURMA

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Forward airstrips in wartime Burma, where crews service a P-38 Lightning named "Happy Har...", a B-25 Mitchell, and the film magazines of aerial reconnaissance cameras. Between missions come officers' club gatherings, a phonograph played on a jungle riverbank, and quiet studies of bamboo groves, banana plants, and roadside wreckage.

LABELED B-25 FORMATION REVIEW

The Snapshots in Time Collection

North American B-25 Mitchell medium bombers lined up for formal review on wartime airfield ramps, including one aircraft carrying the nose art "Darling Jill." A low four-ship formation pass over the home field rounds out this record of squadron readiness in the China-Burma-India Theater.

LABELED AROUND MJIT

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Scenes from around Myitkyina, Burma, where requisitioned colonial buildings, monsoon-flooded jungle camps, and wire suspension footbridges defined daily service in the China-Burma-India Theater. Riverbank leisure, group portraits at a unit stand-down, and an operations map plotted with long-range flight routes complete the picture.

JPG

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A bomb fuze safety pin kept as a souvenir, its handwritten tag recording a December 2, 1944 raid on the Blechhammer oil refineries at 23,500 feet aboard "White Sugar." Censored envelopes and handwritten letters accompany it, describing a first combat mission, a first combat jump, and the ration barter that ran between troops.

Joseph Smith interview

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Photographs from a recorded oral history session with Korean War Navy veteran Joseph Smith, surrounded by family, researchers, and service-era photographs spread across the table. Part of the LT Bancroft documentation project, the session also brought forward digitized 16mm film of a PBM-5 Mariner squadron at NAS Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.

Johnston Island

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Johnston Island in 1945, a coral atoll 800 miles from Hawaii that Navy engineers dredged and enlarged into a mid-Pacific air and sea way station. Aerial views trace the runway, Quonset huts, fuel tanks, and lagoon pier, while personnel stand in formation as a four-engine transport passes low overhead.

joe telegrams

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Western Union telegrams and newspaper clippings following the December 1952 crash of a Navy PBM Mariner off the Korean coast, which killed ten of the fourteen men aboard. The family of Aviation Machinist's Mate Joseph Oliver Smith learns of his rescue from icy water and recovery at Yokosuka, while headlines name Lt. (jg) Wayne E. Bancroft among the lost.

JEFFERSON J TURNER

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Family papers of Jefferson G. Turner, a Civil War veteran of Company F, 13th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, from an 1880 warranty deed to the 1906 congressional bill raising his pension. Odd Fellows and Rebekah memorial ribbons, an 1866 temperance lodge card, a silk S.S. Minnesota souvenir, and a 1925 California water-wars pamphlet fill out the collection.

JAP MONEY

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A collection of World War II Pacific Theater artifacts documenting the Okinawa campaign and the final months of the war against Japan, including troop newspapers announcing General Buckner's death and Japan's surrender, YANK magazine features, and a captured Japanese intelligence document. Rounding out the group are Japanese wartime currency and savings bonds, Allied occupation "B-Yen" scrip, and real-photo postcards of a devastated Japanese city.

JACK KELLEY ALBUM

The Snapshots in Time Collection

The wartime photo album of Jack T. Kelley, preserved in his fiberboard footlocker: scrapbook pages, snapshots, and official combat photographs tracing his service from the Panama Canal Zone to Kwajalein and the Philippines. Alongside the battlefield images are the personal keepsakes of a soldier's life GÇö training days in El Paso and San Diego, studio portraits from home, and candid moments that carried a piece of home overseas.

J A WAGENER THE SQUARE 04 23 1882

The Snapshots in Time Collection

An 1882 handwritten composition titled "The Square," penned by J.A. Wagener in elegant period cursive, recounting courtyard pumps, dormitory bells, and spirited student life. Preserved among the Wagener family papers alongside the WWI letters of his son, Pvt. Willis W. Wagener, it bridges two generations of a single family's written history.

IE SHIMA ENVOY

The Snapshots in Time Collection

On August 19, 1945, Japanese surrender envoys landed at Ie Shima airfield in white-painted "Betty" bombers marked with green crosses of truce, where American servicemen crowded in to witness the moment. These photographs from the 345th Bombardment Group GÇö the "Air Apaches" GÇö document that historic stopover on the delegation's way to Manila and the terms that ended World War II in the Pacific.

HAWAI WWII

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A wartime-era portrait of Hawaii from the air and on the ground GÇö Quonset hut camps, coastal airfields, and sugarcane valleys alongside quiet palm-shaded streets and lava-rock shorelines. Rounding out the collection is a series of unidentified photographs documenting a single-engine aircraft wreck deep in the forest.

Hat

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Flight helmets and garrison caps from the Korean War-era collection of Lt. Bancroft, a U.S. Navy carrier aviator. Cloth flying helmets with integrated headsets, boom microphones, and oxygen masks are shown alongside garrison caps bearing V-5 Naval Aviation Cadet and winged "NAVY" insignia.

GERMANY NEGS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A collection of 35mm film leader strips from a Germany negative archive, each bearing handwritten cataloging notes in ink. Faded references to Cologne, its cathedral, and late-1950s winter dates offer archivists rare clues to the rolls' origins and provenance.

GERMANY

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Rare WWI-era photographs of the colossal airship hangar at Trier-Euren, Germany, built to shelter rigid Zeppelins hundreds of feet long. These original negatives capture the corrugated-metal shed's curved retractable doorway and the staggering scale of early military aviation infrastructure.

germany

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A photographic record of Germany in the WWII and postwar years, from the port of Bremerhaven and its bomb-scarred skyline to the medieval streets of Rothenburg ob der Tauber. German sailors, American occupation troops, gutted factories, and roofless churches together trace a country caught between devastation and reconstruction.

GERMAN WWII RUSSIAN POST CARDS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Original German WWII photographs and Russian postcards from the Eastern Front, including Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS servicemen, a Tiger I heavy tank, and dust-choked invasion roads. Many bear Cyrillic cancellation stamps and Soviet archival markings on the reverse, tracing their journey from wartime keepsake to captured document.

GENERAL JIRON

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A photographic record of General Jiron's world, from U.S. Marine and Nicaraguan Guardia Nacional operations in Managua during the Sandino Rebellion to bullrings, lakeshore pumphouses, and everyday Nicaraguan street life. Interwoven with these expeditionary scenes are quiet American images GÇö snow-covered farmsteads, a 1928 Colorado touring car, a brick schoolhouse GÇö tracing the private life behind the uniform.

FATHER J A WAGENER JUNE 27 1903

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A two-page handwritten letter from J. A. Wagener to his son Willis and daughter-in-law Winnie, written near El Paso, Texas on June 27, 1903. Signed simply "Papa," it recounts travels along the Rio Grande and a stop near Deming, New Mexico, offering an intimate window into early 20th-century family life in the American Southwest.

FATHER J A WAGENER JULY 27 1900

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A two-page handwritten letter from J. A. Wagener, Superintendent of Schools for Stanislaus County, California, written to family on July 27, 1900. Touching on weather, household matters, and warm family affection, it captures turn-of-the-century rural life in the collection connected to Pvt. Willis W. Wagener, who later served in World War I.

FATHER J A WAGENER JULY 26 1903

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A July 26, 1903 letter from J. A. Wagener of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, sent home to his family in Modesto, California, with news of travel, a duck farm visit, and a lantern-slide presentation. Preserved alongside its illustrated advertising envelope and postmarked cover, this correspondence predates the WWI service of his son, Pvt. Willis W. Wagener.

FATHER J A WAGENER JULY 20 1905

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Handwritten letters and postmarked envelopes from the Wagener family of Modesto, California, dated July 1905 and sent from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Written by J. A. Wagener on family travels, business ventures, and daily life, these pages predate his son Pvt. Willis W. Wagener's World War I service by more than a decade.

FATHER J A WAGENER JULY 19 1900

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Handwritten letters from J.A. Wagener, Superintendent of Schools for Stanislaus County, California, written to his wife Mary and children on July 19, 1900. Penned on official letterhead, these pages capture small-town civic and family life two decades before his son Willis served in World War I.

FATHER J A WAGENER JULY 10 1903

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Handwritten letters and an illustrated advertising cover sent by Modesto school superintendent J. A. Wagener in July 1903, written home from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Preserved with the WWI correspondence of his son, Pvt. Willis W. Wagener, these pages capture family life in the years before the war.

FATHER J A WAGENER 09 07 1919

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A four-page handwritten letter written by J. A. Wagener from Ceres, California, on September 7, 1919, to his son, Private Willis W. Wagener. Its pages trade war news for home-front life GÇö a late-night drive from Oakland, an automobile road race, the fig crop and laying hens, theater outings, and talk of selling the family ranch.

FATHER J A WAGENER 07 26 1903

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A handwritten letter and envelope from J. A. Wagener of Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, dated July 26, 1903, describing family visits, a public lecture, a local real estate matter, and a planned trip to his parents' gravesite near Franklintown. Preserved within the Willis W. Wagener family correspondence archive, this pre-war letter offers genealogical detail and a window into early twentieth-century family and civic life.

FATHER J A WAGENER 07 16 1903

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A July 1903 letter from J. A. Wagener to his family, preserved page by page alongside its cross-country postmarked envelope from Millersville, Pennsylvania to Modesto, California. Written more than a decade before his son, Pvt. Willis W. Wagener, served in World War I, it records the farm work, travel, and family news that shaped a soldier's background.

EUROPE

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Rare glimpses of wartime Europe through the lens of an American serviceman GÇö French villages, terraced vineyards, and quiet country lanes far from the trenches. From marching AEF infantry columns to civilians at work and at play, these WWI-era negatives capture the everyday life of the communities that hosted America's soldiers.

Elmer800bpi

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Illustrated pages from the Sperry "Gyropilot Operating Bulletin," a Korean War-era training series nicknamed "Elmer Carries On" that taught aircrew and ground technicians to operate and maintain early autopilot systems. Preserved in the Lt. Wayne Bancroft collection, the manual pairs cartoon instruction with detailed diagrams covering ground tests, flight limits, and 25- to 600-hour maintenance checks.

ebay

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A World War II-era photographic collection documenting the bombed-out streets and gutted buildings of Bremerhaven, Germany, alongside the harbor, rail sidings, and occupation forces of this strategic North Sea port. Also included are scenes of stateside Army training camps, a visit to medieval Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and service records from Captain Robert J. Cierno of the 17th Major Port.

EBAY

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Original wartime photographs from the Western Front and liberated Europe, capturing bombed-out streets, abandoned German armor, and roadsides littered with the wreckage of retreating columns. Taken largely by servicemen with personal cameras in 1944GÇô45, these images offer an unfiltered record of the war's final months GÇö its soldiers, its ruins, and its human cost.

DofN

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Declassified Korean War-era Navy records from Patrol Squadron 47 (VP-47), documenting the December 1952 loss of a PBM-5 Mariner off Korea's east coast and the crew lost with it, including Lt(jg) Hayne E. Bancroft. Squadron histories, accident investigations, and late-1990s family correspondence trace the search for answers across nearly five decades.

DOCUMENTS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Military commissions, discharge certificates, and service records documenting the career of Carl L. Stone, from the Minnesota National Guard in 1892 through the Spanish-American War and Philippine campaigns. Signed by governors and presidents including McKinley and Wilson, these documents trace a citizen-soldier's path from state militia to the Philippine Scouts.

DOCS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Wartime paperwork and printed ephemera from the McAleer family collection GÇö post guidebooks, flight and swimming certification cards, ration and toll receipts, and a newspaper clipping. Together these documents trace the administrative texture of Marine Corps life from Quantico and Corpus Christi to Sicily and the Pacific.

DESTROYER DIVISION 152 SAN DIEGO 1948

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Four destroyers of Destroyer Division 152 lie nested together at Buoy 18 in San Diego Harbor on 5 June 1948, hull numbers 869, 851, 870, and 852 in clear view. Official U.S. Navy photography from VU Squadron 7 captures the postwar Gearing-class fleet at the dawn of the Cold War.

DAMAGED NEGATIVES

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Deteriorated color negatives from the Kotec China-Burma-India collection preserve rare glimpses of World War II air operations GÇö B-25 Mitchells on snowy airfields, jeeps and Army launches, parades and troop reviews. Chemical damage has left rainbow staining and emulsion loss across these frames, yet the images still document the airmen, aircraft, and ceremonies of American wartime service.

CORREGIDOR 1923

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Rare 1923 photographs of Bottomside, the bustling waterfront barrio at the foot of Corregidor Island in Manila Bay. Nipa houses, piers, and native outrigger boats reveal everyday Filipino life nearly two decades before the island became a WWII battleground.

CORPUS CHRISTI NAS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Vintage postcards and souvenir photographs from Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, the sprawling WWII training complex known as "the Annapolis of the Air," where thousands of Navy and Marine pilots earned their wings. From Link Trainers and obstacle courses to flag ceremonies, hangar dedications, and the USO clubs and South Texas landmarks that shaped life off base.

Consolation For The Jilted_files

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A digitized reproduction of "Consolation For The Jilted," a wry WWII troop newsletter feature inviting soldiers left behind by home-front sweethearts to join a mock "Brush-Off Club." Framed by patriotic red-white-blue rule graphics and preserved by the Texas Military Forces Museum as part of the 36th Infantry Division's wartime publication record.

color negs BEAR NO 17 CDR CANCHER-VF162

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Rare color negatives from Fighter Squadron VF-162 aboard USS Ticonderoga (CVA-14), capturing Cold War intercepts of Soviet Tu-95 "Bear" bombers over the South China Sea during the Vietnam War era. Attributed to a squadron commander, the collection also documents F-8 Crusader buddy tanking, air-to-air flight operations, and quiet moments of daily life aboard the carrier.

COLOR LOOSE NEGATIVES

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Rare color slides from the World War II China-Burma-India Theater, capturing India and Kashmir as American servicemen saw them on leave. Highlights include the Taj Mahal at Agra and the houseboats of Dal Lake beneath the snow-capped peaks of Srinagar.

Civil War CDV's

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Cartes de visite from the Civil War era GÇö portraits of Union soldiers posed in studio settings with painted backdrops, prop rifles, and insignia-marked caps, alongside the reverse sides of their mounts. Photographers' backmarks from field studios near the 24th Army Corps and handwritten inscriptions from New York hometowns reveal the personal stories behind these small keepsake photographs.

Case

The Snapshots in Time Collection

The personal leather cases carried by Lt. W. E. Bancroft, a U.S. Navy aviator who served during the Korean War, from his embossed document briefcase to the flight case pinned with gold aviator wings. Alongside them, a weathered camera case and its photographic accessories GÇö the field equipment behind the images preserved in this collection.

CAMP GRAYLING MICHIGAN 1915

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Rare 1915 photographs capture the sprawling tent city of Camp Grayling, Michigan, where Michigan National Guard units gathered each summer for field training. Panoramic views by G.F. Sterling Studio show civilian visitors touring the grounds in the years just before America entered World War I.

BUCHENWALD

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Firsthand photographs taken by American soldiers at Buchenwald concentration camp in April 1945, documenting the camp's gatehouse, its rail siding, and the remains of victims found upon liberation. Preserved as irrefutable primary evidence of Nazi atrocities, these images stand as a solemn record of the Holocaust and the collapse of the Third Reich.

blue side a

The Snapshots in Time Collection

World War II U.S. Army Air Forces silk escape and evasion maps from the 345th Bombardment Group collection at Ie Shima, showing the oceanographic "blue side" panels covering Japan, Korea, Manchuria, China, and French Indochina. Printed on lightweight waterproof cloth for durability and silence, these charts packed ocean current, wind, and magnetic variation data into a compact survival aid for downed aircrew navigating hostile territory.

Big Bear military album

The Snapshots in Time Collection

A soldier's personal photo album GÇö bound in a Big Bear Lake souvenir cover GÇö holding candid snapshots from World War II service in Europe. Troopship crossings, Paris landmarks, military government Jeeps, and off-duty moments in occupied towns.

BATTLESHIP RPPC UNKNOWN

The Snapshots in Time Collection

An early 20th-century real photo postcard capturing an unidentified pre-dreadnought warship GÇö likely a U.S. Navy armored cruiser or battleship GÇö with its distinctive cage foremast, four funnels, and anti-torpedo nets rigged at anchor. The unused divided-back verso, marked with an AZO stamp box, preserves the card exactly as it was sold, a small souvenir of the fleet in its original blank state.

barbara rufus mounce

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Letters home, snapshots, and official records trace the Korean War service of Aerographer's Mate Rufus "Bud" Lloyd Mounce, from training in San Diego to a remote Aleutian posting. The Bancroft/Mounce family collection closes with letters returned undelivered and an Honor Roll record of the December 1952 patrol crash that left him among the missing.

BANCROFTLOGBOOK1 tiff

The Snapshots in Time Collection

The personal flight logbooks of U.S. Navy aviator Lt. Wayne E. Bancroft, documenting his training and operational flying in the Martin PBM-5 Mariner patrol flying boat from 1950 through the early 1960s. Handwritten pages record trans-Pacific ferry routes, Formosa Strait patrols, and certified flight hours from the Korean War era.

BANCROFTLOGBOOK1 jpeg

The Snapshots in Time Collection

The personal flight logbook of U.S. Navy aviator Lt. Wayne E. Bancroft, spanning his SNJ Texan training flights of 1949 through Korean War patrol missions in the PBM-5 Mariner flying boat. Handwritten entries trace long over-water routes from Alameda and Ford Island to Sangley Point, Okinawa, Hong Kong, and the Formosa Strait.

AZORES HICKEM ENGLAND AIRCRAFT

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Cold WarGÇôera photographs from a serviceman's travels through the great transoceanic air bases GÇö Lajes Field in the Azores, Hickam Field in Hawaii, England, and Wake Island. B-29 and B-50 Superfortresses, B-47 Stratojets, C-97 Stratofreighters, and C-124 Globemasters rest on far-flung ramps along the routes that kept American airpower connected across two oceans.

ARMY REGISTER

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Pages from the U.S. Army Register documenting officers of the Philippine Scouts, the Filipino corps raised under American command after the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars. The 1915 rosters list captains and lieutenants across the battalions, including Capt. Carl L. Stone of the Fifth Battalion.

Armed Forces Radio Tele Service

The Snapshots in Time Collection

From Korean War broadcast booths to the Hollywood studios of the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, these photographs and documents trace the network that piped news, music, and sports to American troops overseas. Station staff, shortwave press releases, and grateful fan mail together tell the story of radio as a lifeline to home.

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The Snapshots in Time Collection

Technical manual pages from Lt. Bancroft's Korean War collection, diagramming the instrument panels, switch boards, and control pedestals of U.S. Navy and Air Force multi-engine aircraft. Each labeled illustration GÇö from gyro horizons and propeller feathering to torpedo release and JATO switches GÇö reveals the systems knowledge pilots and flight engineers mastered before takeoff.

April49

The Snapshots in Time Collection

April 1949 at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida GÇö the Navy's "Cradle of Naval Aviation" GÇö captured in personal snapshots from the Lt. Bancroft collection. Flight cadets in helmets and goggles, sailors beside trainer aircraft and anchor monuments, and quiet home-front moments from the year before the Korean War.

APACHE POW WOW

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Issues of "Apache Pow-Wow" and "An Air Apache Weekly," the field newsletters of the 345th Bombardment Group GÇö the famed "Air Apaches" GÇö published from Ie Shima in August 1945 as World War II drew to a close. These pages carry the group's victory message, a Special Victory Edition cover, an editorial on "The Challenge of Peace," and a firsthand unit history tracing the Air Apaches from New Guinea and Rabaul to their escort of Japan's surrender delegation.

AIR APACHE JOURNAL 1979 NEWS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Pages from the 1979 Air Apache Journal, the newsletter of the 345th Bombardment Group Veterans Association GÇö the WWII "Air Apaches" who flew B-25 Mitchell bombers across the Southwest Pacific. Membership rosters, reunion coverage from Colorado Springs and Peterson Air Force Base, and photographs of aging airmen and their families gathering decades after the war.

AAEBAY

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Personal letters and family papers from the Wagener household of Modesto and Stanislaus County, California, spanning 1900 to 1904 GÇö school district business, Fourth of July firecrackers, Tivoli Theatre evenings, and an illustrated "Water is Wealth" irrigation cover. Preserved alongside the World War I correspondence of Pvt. Willis W. Wagener, these prewar documents capture turn-of-the-century civic life, travel, and family ties in California's Central Valley and beyond.

552nd Iceland

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Airmen of the 552nd Airborne Early Warning and Control Wing on rotational duty at Naval Air Station Keflavik, Iceland, photographed alongside their EC-121 Warning Star radar aircraft. These crews flew long overwater patrols across the GIUK Gap, extending NATO's early-warning net against Soviet aircraft throughout the Cold War.

35MM NEGATIVES RUSSIAN IVAN SPY SHIP

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Original 35mm negatives capturing Soviet "Ivan" AGI intelligence trawlers shadowing U.S. Navy carrier task forces at sea during the Vietnam War era. Photographed from USS Ticonderoga and her aircraft, these frames document the Cold War's constant, close-range surveillance duel in the Pacific.

21Planes

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Naval and military aircraft from the Korean War era, captured on the flight lines and ramps of Naval Air Station Pensacola and beyond. From Corsairs and Catalinas to Mariners hoisted aboard seaplane tenders, these images document the planes that trained a generation of aviators and sustained American operations across the Pacific.

215237-35MM NEG WWII SHIPS

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Original 35mm negatives capture the warships of the Second World War at sea GÇö cruisers, destroyers, carriers, and submarines underway on open water from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Scanned from a wartime naval negative collection, these images preserve the silhouettes of the Allied fleet as sailors and observers saw them.

1950s Atomic Bomb Test Bikini Atoll

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Historic photographs of U.S. nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, capturing towering mushroom clouds from palm-lined shorelines and reconnaissance aircraft. Taken during the Pacific Proving Grounds program between 1946 and 1958, these images document the atomic detonations that reshaped the islands and defined the early Cold War.

1946 WWII JAPANESE SUPPORT FAIR PLAY

The Snapshots in Time Collection

In 1946, California's Proposition 15 sought to tighten the state's discriminatory Alien Land Law, threatening the farms of Japanese American families GÇö including those of decorated Nisei war veterans. These campaign mailers and postcards document the broad civic, religious, labor, and academic coalition that urged voters to reject it.

1945 NAVAL ACADEMY

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Programs, invitations, and dance cards from the U.S. Naval Academy's October 1945 Centennial celebration in Annapolis, held just weeks after the end of World War II. Preserved alongside scrapbook pages tracing Midshipman Dean Taylor's Academy years and hometown clippings from the College of Wooster Girls' Chorus.

1942 USNTS AIRCRAFT RECOGNITION BOOK

The Snapshots in Time Collection

Issued December 8, 1942 at the U.S. Naval Training School in Columbus, Ohio, this recognition manual taught sailors and aircrew to identify aircraft at a glance GÇö from the Grumman F4F Wildcat and P-51 Mustang to enemy types like the Focke-Wulf FW 200 Condor and Heinkel He 177. Each card pairs photographs with multi-angle silhouette drawings, the split-second visual training that helped lookouts tell friend from foe and prevent friendly-fire losses across every theater of World War II.