There was a group of photographers that I understand were the first designated as Combat Documentation Photographers in the Air Force since WW II. They (we) were trained as such as crew members and combat photography courses: Mountain Survival at Fairchild AFB, Jungle Survival at Clark AFB, Small arms training, the altitude chamber, Combat Photojournalism at Lowery AFB and others.
This training came about in 1967 due to losses and injuries to photographers during combat flying operations. At the time I believe that we were told that our group of thirty nine photographers to go through extensive training for the our deployment in Southeast Asia. Does anyone have any information about this group?
Selah,
John Brink
I was in the first or second mopic cameraman class at Orlando AFB in 1966 during the big build-up of cameramen for Vietnam. They trained over 350 of us, then realized they had too many and offered cross-training for the last 100 or so. I was one of the first group to go to Vietnam from our class. I was sent first to USAF Jungle Survival School in Panama in January 1966. This course was to teach airmen how to seek-out civilization, assuming we weren’t downed in enemy territory. They dropped us off on the top of the mountains and we moved down the hill to the river below, finishing up eating boiled iguana, served-up by a local indigenous family that had a contract with the Air Force. It was the highlight of the week for these people. Everyone from grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and all the children came to watch the Americans eat iguana. Next was USAF Global Survival School, out of Fairchild AFB. The latter felt like “Mountain” Survival School when they ran us up hills that seemed like mountains each morning. This included a mock POW experience for several days. Then, on my way to the 600th Photo Sq, I attended a second USAF Jungle Survival School out of Clark AB, Philippines, where this was escape and evade, moving up to the top of the hills to await rescue. It’s always fun to watch the TV series “Survivor,” which bring back memories of our youth.
George,
Its good to hear from guys with similar experiences. I was stationed at Eglin AFB as a ByPass specialist after basic training. I did my OJT as a lab specialist and then got my AFSC (I think that was what it was called) changed to a cameraman and soon after I got orders for Southeast Asia. The first stop of training was at Lowery AFB for two courses there in combat photojournalism and getting experience on the versimat processor and the BiMat process that processes we never used) and experience using the newly adopted Graflex XL, which I also never saw again which was good. It was a fine camera and it was to be used as the combat camera of choice by the Air Force but the drawback was that it had lots of shiny glass and metal which could draw fire. It was at Lowery that we heard that our group was the first designated as combat still photographers. Some of the guys had already been to Panama and were on flying status. We all kept meeting up again at Fairchild AFB for Survival School (actually I think it was called Mountain Survival School) and at Clark AFB for Jungle Survival School. At both locations we had the “trek” but it got cancelled at Clark due to a congressional investigation when a mud slide caused some deaths and loss of equipment. I know you MoPic guys had a busy time over there since there were fewer of you to cover assignments. I worked with quite a few from both Udorn and Korat RTAFB.
Selah, John
Nice to hear from you guys
John
I was a combat camerman (mopic) from ’66 to the end of ’69. I attended photo school in Orlando over the summer of ’66. We were told at the time that our futute assignment, after training, would be Viet Nam (or Thailand if one was lucky!). From the end of school until I left for Viet Nam in November of ’67, I went to Escape and Evasion School at Fairchild (the mountain survival portion was dropped for whatever reason), Sea Survival School at Homestead, Jungle Survival in Panama, and another Jungle Survival at Clark en route to Viet Nam. We also had altitude chamber training as you mention for our status as air crew members and small arms training at Hamilton AFB. When in Viet Nam, I was stationed at Tan Son Nhut in Saigon but, like everyone else, traveled the country and even spent time in Thailand flying with the Jolly Green Giant group that was charged with picking up downed pilots across the Mekong from Thailand.
I don’t recall being part of a group of 39 although our group at Orlando AFB was roughly that size. I remember our buildup in photo was in line with the general increase in troops being sent to Viet Nam during this time frame.
Brad,
Thanks for your information. As you can see, I have not checked in with this site in quite awhile. I appreciate hearing from others that had similar and unique experiences. I wish I could remember the names of some of the mopic guys in the area. I mostly worked with the ones from Udorn and Korat and Nakhon Phanom RTAFB. I arrived at Udorn in September of 1967 so we were in Southeast Asia in the same time period.
John