 This was Navy photography, one man, and a machinist mate at that. Walter L. Richardson took his own graph-flex camera aloft at one of the first naval aircrafts, and someone in Washington saw the pictures. Richardson never turned an engine valve again. He became the Navy's first photographer, and all Navy photography, afloat as well as along, has been a part of naval aviation ever since. The photographer became an officer and a naval aviator. Ensign Richardson established the School of Aerial Photography and became its first commanding officer. He introduced motion picture photography to the Navy, one of the first to recognize its potential, and he led Navy photography into its first scientific investigation. With Walter L. Richardson, officer, cameraman, pilot, Navy photography was born. Since Walter Richardson pioneered in photography, the Navy cameras have become increasingly sophisticated. Methods and techniques more refined, and the uses of photography many times expanded. The basic principle, however, remains the same, the perpetuation of an image, the stopping of a moment in time. The moments in time stopped by Navy cameraman today ranged from a single frame, high altitude perspective of enemy territory, to the heart of an explosion at the rate of millions of frames a second. Film tells us about the environment in which the Navy operates. It analyzes the tools the Navy uses to get the job done. It makes a permanent record of the Navy's impact on this day and age. The Navy camera, whatever its size or special purpose, shows the face of the Navy in a thousand ways every day. Captures on film the vital elements of the Navy's day-to-day operations, contributing to the combat effectiveness of the fleet. The Chief of Naval Operations sets photographic policy and establishes requirements. The Chief of Naval Materiel provides guidance and direction, and has assigned the Naval Air Systems Command as the principal naval technical assistant for photography. This command, through the director of the photographic division, develops, evaluates, and buys the equipment and supplies. It sees that Navy photographic personnel are professionally able. It designs and fits out shore-based and shipboard photo labs, and serves as program manager for the Navy film programs for training and information. Because Navy photography is involved in a broad spectrum of land, sea, and air operations, a number of fleet commands and major field activities support the overall photographic effort. The Naval Air Development Center, Johnsville, Pennsylvania. Development of aerial cameras. Technical support center, Suitland, Maryland. Photo intelligence. The Pacific Missile Range, Point Magoo, California. And the Navy Weapon Center at China Lake. The job of using photography to develop and sharpen our firepower. The Naval Ordnance Laboratory, White Oak, Maryland. Aerobolistic research and undersea warfare. And the Naval Photographic Center, Washington, D.C. Volume still and motion picture production. Film library for the Navy and film distribution. Research and development in handheld cameras. In film. And in film processing. From the Navy a photographic pioneer, Walter Richardson. But aerial reconnaissance is still the prime mission of Navy photography. Besides an analytical record of the Earth's surface and of everything that moves on that surface, that's aerial reconnaissance. Barriers are completely equipped and staffed for every step in photographic reconnaissance from operation and maintenance of the cameras to complete film processing equipment and stereoscopic devices for viewing and interpreting the photographs. The fleet's photo reconnaissance system, a float and a loft, is backed up by the Navy's shore establishments. The Naval Air Development Center tests and develops aerial cameras and other airborne reconnaissance equipment. A gigantic collimator, testing a 40-inch lens many times larger than the aerial camera to which it will be fitted. The development center's own aircraft run flight tests of cameras, camera pods, and devices for night photography. Photo intelligence techniques and systems are developed at the Naval Reconnaissance and Technical Support Center. Photo interpreting equipment begins here as an idea. The idea becomes reality in the form of a prototype, which is then tested, not just for technical performance, but for operating efficiency in the bouncing, salt-laden, humid environment of a ship. The equipment that reaches the fleet is practical, workable, indispensable in the job of analyzing enemy activities and of briefing the attack pilots for their strikes. The pilots see their targets in advance. They build graphic images of checkpoints, enemy defenses, the final objective. The Navy has prepared the airmen for their strikes, and it has contributed, too, to the aircraft they fly and the weapons they use. At the Naval Ordnance Laboratory, photography is a specific science, part of the research on missiles, explosives, and underwater weapons. In this 1,000-foot ballistic range, a complex electronic and optical system films a missile's trip down the tube at over 7,000 miles an hour. Color-slearin photography makes turbulence and changes in air density visible as a ballistic missile moves through the tunnel. The color techniques give an observer three factors to evaluate. Hue, color saturation, and brightness, not merely shades of gray. The pattern of shock waves, the pitch and yaw of the missile, speak volumes to the photographic interpreter. Underwater high-speed photography, an evaluation of a submerged explosion. Photography documents the wind tunnel behavior of a ballistic missile, encountering air speeds of up to 17 times the speed of sound. The instrumentation camera follows the flank path of a mine from time of release until it hits the water. Photography documents an event from beginning to end, even though the life of the event may be reckoned in microseconds. These scenes were made with a Jacobs camera, developed at the Naval Ordnance Lab. It produces pictures at the incredible rate of over a million frames per second with no loss of information between frames. Deep in the Mojave Desert of California at China Lake, the Naval Weapons Center conducts a program of warfare analysis. Ride the weapons and the test slits or observe from near and far, registering changes and movements imperceptible to the naked eye. Photography tries to show the why of every malfunction. It can be projected in ultra-slow motion. They can be stopped, backed up, viewed again until the engineers know why that parachute failed to open in time. This can begin again, with equipment modified through the lessons of photography. The action system which can save astronauts even when used from ground level. Specific missile range at Point Magoo. Every firing is photographed. Every type of missile checked before it's released to the fleet. Fans prove themselves here, too, at the Navy Missile Center. Cameras track the flight of a new missile and check its behavior pattern. Pods developed here are used to record combat strikes as well as test runs. They must perform without attention. The pilots have their hands full with other matters. This pod carries a television camera and its transmitter in addition to a conventional high-speed camera. Missile launching 100 miles at sea can be televised back to the engineers at Point Magoo with instant playback, too. When these planes strike, their weapons will function properly because photography has found their weaknesses and proved their strong points. Now photography records the strikes themselves for intelligence, for tactical information, for training. Pilot is probably the most photographed American fighting man. When he returns to his ship, he is the subject of a special camera, part of a television system called PLAT, or Pilot Landing Aid Television. Every recovery is televised. As the aircraft approaches the carrier, the PLAT television cameras pick it up and keep it in constant view, recording the landing signal officers running talk with the pilot. Later, each pilot can study his landing performance on video tape. In the event of a mishap, the tape becomes a valuable investigative tool. Training film production is another mission for Navy photography. Professional filmmakers from both the Navy and commercial studios produce hundreds of motion pictures each year for fleet distribution. The Navy's own photo crews often mix service personnel with civilian employees, all contributing to a single goal. Whatever the subject matter, simple or sophisticated, each training film finds its viewers. Any group of men with a need to know and a need to learn, whether at a stateside shore station, aboard a combat ship, or at a remote outpost. Navy photography informs as well as teaches. Picture supplement words, amplify ideas, clarify policies. And pictures are the stock and trade of the more than 400 Navy photo labs from the Arctic to the Antarctic, aboard ship and ashore. The largest and most modern of these laboratories is the installation in Washington, D.C., the Naval Photographic Center. Here under one roof is the central photographic facility for the Navy. NBC has complete motion picture production capability from the inception of the film idea to the release print for distribution. The photo center's still facilities are geared to the mass production of photography, serving a variety of purposes in the Navy. A still picture library and motion picture film depository assure that valuable film records will be safeguarded and available when needed. Specialists in the research and development department test, develop and evaluate new photographic chemicals, films and photographic equipment before volume purchases are made by the Navy Department. The Atlantic and Pacific Fleet Combat Camera Groups headquartered at Norfolk and San Diego cover combat operations and special assignments in their areas. Wherever the Navy operates, Navy photography is at hand to record, to inform, to document. The cameramen have reported most of what the world knows of conditions on the great white continent of Antarctica. Posing film under the most extreme conditions imaginable, Navy photographic personnel, accompanying explorers and scientists in their search for evidence of the Earth's history beneath the polar ice cap. The Navy records the daily life of South Polar citizens and the hazardous behavior of ice and weather. The Navy is vitally concerned with man's ability to live and work beneath the sea. Every step of the Navy's research in the ocean depth is recorded by Navy photography, which has had to develop its own techniques for work on this new frontier. Photography in the Navy is no less a weapon than a missile slung under the wing of a fighter bomber. With this photographic weapon, the Navy learns more about the physical forces it must use. It explores new approaches to old problems since its capacity to carry out its statutory mission. Walter Richardson made his first aerial photograph. The need for photography has continually expanded. New uses have been discovered. And new cameras and processes developed. The growth of photography reflects the growth and change of the fleet itself. As long as man continues to cross new thresholds in the sky, continues to probe the frontiers of the sea, seeks out answers to the eternal questions posed by his planet and universe. There will always be a need for some way to graphically record that moment in time. Preserving our place in history, our moments in time, as others have done before us, is Navy photography.