Dear Ms. Stachnik,

Thank you for posting your request on History Hub! We branched your request into a new discussion.

Although there may be yearbooks and crew photos intermingled with textual records of the units, ships or crews, they are not considered permanent records unless the photographs were taken by the Army Signal Corps or other official military photographers usually for publicity. These photographs were considered permanent records are part of the photograph collections listed in the blog postings highlighted below.

Sometimes, the officers of a unit or crew will pay for a photographer to come to their base to take pictures, These photographs sometimes are filed in the records of the unit or crew but oftentimes they are just distributed to the individual members with no permanent copy kept.

There were several “The Unwritten Records” blog postings that explain about researching for the unit or crew photographs during WWII using records at the National Archives in College Park - Still Pictures (RDSP). If you have any questions about the records listed, please contact RDSP via email at stillpix@nara.gov :

• How to Research: Photographs Relating to World War II Army Units

• How to Research: Photographs Relating to WWII Air Force Units

• How to Research: Photographs Relating to World War II Navy Ships

• How to Research: Photographs Relating to WWII Marine Corps Units

We have updated our blog posting titled: Researching for Photographs of World War II Military Units & Crews with this information as well.

We hope this is helpful. Best of luck with your research!

Joan,

Some Presidential Libraries such as the Eisenhower Library may have Army Unit photographs in their collections. Depending on the unit and theater, many photographs were taken by the US Signal Corps so you might reference them in your research. Good luck!

Thomas