Military

Discover how the people and places of Missouri helped delivery victory to a war-torn Europe.

The state of Missouri played a unique role in World War I—as the birthplace of Gen. John J. Pershing, the commanding officer of the American Expeditionary Forces, and Maj.Gen.Enoch Crowder, the primary author of the military draft—and it is an impressive legacy featuring a colorful cast of characters, events, and communities.Missouri was home to two flying aces of the war as well as Bennett Champ Clark, the youngest colonel in the American Expeditionary Forces and the first national commander of the American Legion. During the war, the state was home to farms and ranches that provided an army of mules that assisted Allied forces in hauling critical materials and equipment in the harshest of conditions. Additionally, 156,000 of the state’s citizens served in the military with approximately 10,000 wounded or killed in action.

Jeremy Paul Amick, a former Missouri National Guardsman and military historian/public affairs officer with the Silver Star Families of America, has collected a unique set of photographs illustrating the impact of the Great War on the people of the state of Missouri.

The United States Naval Academy was founded in 1845 in Annapolis, Maryland, after experience showed that the policy of training naval officers solely through shipboard experience was ineffective. The development of aircraft in the early 20th century was a technological change that impacted the academy. The efforts of naval aviation advocates, led by Capt. Washington I. Chambers, resulted in the Navy acquiring its first aircraft in 1911 and basing them near the US Naval Academy where sufficient land and material resources were available to support flight operations. Later, under Supt. Adm. Louis W. Nulton, aviation entered the curriculum as an element of fundamental naval education, taking a place among major subjects such as seamanship and gunnery. Classroom instruction and indoctrination flights provided all midshipmen with a familiarization in aviation as an important element in their development as naval officers before circumstances forced a shift of training to other facilities by 1962.

Ocracoke, a unique part of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore with it's own dialect, captures a unique charm and spirit of community developed from its beginning in the 1580s as Wokokon Inlet.

Wokokon Inlet appeared on maps drawn by Englishman John White as early as the 1580s. The name evolved into Ocracoke, and by 1715, pilots were established on the island in order to safely navigate ships through the dangerous shoals. The village itself, once called Pilot Town, is rich with history that includes pirates, ponies, shipwrecks, hurricanes, and the oldest operating lighthouse in North Carolina. The infamous Blackbeard died here in 1718. Throughout its history, Ocracoke has been accessible only by mail boat, ferry, or private boat or plane. The Navy base established here during World War II and the Coast Guard have both made lasting impressions upon the island. Ocracoke grew into a vibrant fishing village for commercial and sport fishermen as well as a destination for hunters. The people of Ocracoke made this island a true treasure, having a distinctive brogue all their own. Today, the pristine, unspoiled beaches of Ocracoke remain part of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore and are maintained by the National Park Service. The village itself has retained its unique charm and community spirit.

Fort Devens is the first book to trace the military activity in this area. Throughout the twentieth century, troops were trained and deployed from Fort Devens for every major conflict the United States was involved in. During World War II, Fort Devens inducted more than six hundred thousand men into the army from the New England area. The list of individuals who have served here included Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Bill Mauldin, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, and Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Even NASA can trace its birth to Fort Devens by way of Dr. Robert Goddard's liquid-fueled rocket experiments.

Explore Florida's everglades, its history, the native tribes that called it home, and the fight to preserve the grassy wetlands documented through a collection of images.

The Everglades once blanketed a quarter of Florida. Stretching from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay, its saw grass prairies, mangrove swamps, and hammocks were home to a profusion of animals, plants, and prehistoric Native Americans, as well as Seminoles, Miccosukees, and Gladesmen of historic times. In 1904, Napoleon Bonaparte Broward ran for Florida governor with the political platform of creating farmland by dredging the Everglades and spilling its water into the ocean. By 1914, this spectacular natural feature was on the verge of destruction, and environmentalist May Mann Jennings led a grassroots movement to preserve Royal Palm Hammock. In the 1930s, Ernest Coe and Marjorie Stoneman Douglas fought to preserve a larger area, culminating in the creation of Everglades National Park in 1947.

MacDill Air Force Base--through global war, regional conflicts, and counterinsurgencies--has repeatedly answered the clarion call to arms and proven itself to be an unrivaled military juggernaut within America's strategic arsenal.

MacDill Air Force Base was first recognized as a suitable location for an airfield by US Army aviators flying mock warfare maneuvers over Tampa in May 1938. Satisfying the US War Department's geographical requirements for providing air defense of America's southern Atlantic coast and supporting air operations over the Caribbean, the site was approved in July 1939 to become the location for the Army Air Force-planned Southeast Air Base. It was later renamed MacDill Field in honor of Army Air Force aviator and pioneer Col. Leslie MacDill. The base was formally dedicated on April 16, 1941, and B-17 Flying Fortress and B-26 Marauder combat crewmen began training in the business of making war. From bomber and tactical fighter wings to combatant commands and aerial refueling squadrons,

Brooklyn Navy Yard details the beginnings and history of this significant military site.

Not much larger than a few city blocks (219 acres, plus 72 acres of water), the Brooklyn Navy Yard is one of the most historically significant sites in America. It was one of the U.S. Navy's major shipbuilding and repair yards from 1801 to 1966. It produced more than 80 warships and hundreds of smaller vessels. At its height during World War II, it worked around the clock, employing some 70,000 people. The yard built the Monitor, the world's first modern warship; the Maine, whose destruction set off the Spanish-American War; the Arizona, whose sinking launched America into World War II; and the Missouri, on whose deck World War II ended. On June 25, 1966, the flag at the Brooklyn Navy Yard was lowered for the last time and the 165-year-old institution ceased to exist. Sold to the City of New York for $22.4 million, the yard became a site for storage of vehicles, some light industry, and a modest amount of civilian ship repair.

The Portsmouth Naval Prison, now vacant, sits on Seavey Island on the Maine and New Hampshire border. Discover its intriguing history and fearsome reputation.

For over a century, the Castle or the Rock, with its deceptively appealing exterior, has kept both visitors and New Hampshire residents in its thrall. Since its opening in 1908 to its decommissioning in 1974 and into the present day, myth and lore have surrounded this iconic building. For the 66 years it functioned, any prisoner who escaped was brought back dead or alive - or so it has been said. Although the prison's fearsome reputation is cemented in Darryl Ponicsan's The Last Detail, Portsmouth was a forerunner in many ways. Routine inside often reflected the latest advancements in the field. Yet, designed or deserved, the prison's legacy remains an intriguing mix of dread and redemption.

Over 200 vintage photographs from the archives of the Air Mobility Museum and other sources provide a sampling of the way it was at Dover Air Force Base through the years.

Dover Air Force Base is the largest aerial port in the United States and home to gigantic jet air transports that are lifelines for our modern military. It started as a municipal airport and has grown and expanded nearly continuously since opening a week after the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. Its saga is the story of the evolution of the U.S. Air Force from World War II to the present. The pictures in Images of Aviation: Dover Air Force Base represent the thousands of people who called Dover AFB their home, the hundreds of aircraft that have been assigned there, and the dozens of various missions assigned to the facility over the past seven decades.

More than 14,000 people of Japanese descent—two-thirds of them US citizens—were exiled from August 1942 to November 1945 to the Heart Mountain Incarceration Site on the high desert prairie of Wyoming’s Big Horn Basin.

The site was the temporary home for Japanese Americans forced from their homes in California, Oregon, and Washington. Believed to be saboteurs or spies or both, the prisoners were viewed with fear, hatred, and sometimes acceptance by their neighbors in nearby Cody and Powell. During their time at Heart Mountain, the incarcerated people lived like the residents of any American city. Under the eye of the federal War Relocation Authority, they taught school, worked at the fire and police departments, ran stores and barbershops, and spent much of their time wondering what had happened to their former lives. Today, the site is part of the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center and Mineta-Simpson Institute.

Ray Locker is the director of communications and strategy for the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation. The foundation’s staff consists of experts on Japanese American history, the intersections between Wyoming’s Indigenous community and World War II’s incarcerated people, and museum professionals dedicated to telling the story of this sad chapter of American history. They used donations from those incarcerated and their families, collections in the foundation archives, the National Archives, the Library of Congress, and museums from around the country.

Through the lens of over 200 vintage images, uncover the history and contributions made at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.

Situated in southeastern Harford County and edged by the Chesapeake Bay and the Bush and Gunpowder Rivers, the U.S. Army bases known as Aberdeen Proving Ground, Edgewood Arsenal, and Fort Hoyle have been home to ordnance, chemical, technology, and artillery commands. The photographs in this volume include scenes of the fertile farmlands of Aberdeen, Edgewood, and Michaelsville, and their transformation, which began in 1917, into the military base known today as Aberdeen Proving Ground, or APG. Views of daily life on base include the Toonerville Trolley, a small-scale train that shuttled commuting personnel between the main gate and the buildings on post. The images document changes in the ways wars have been fought and changes in society as a result of war. Brave officers voluntarily tested the effects of mustard agent and other chemical weapons on protective clothing and gas masks. Local women sewed gas masks for troops and civilians. Women moved into key jobs on base during World War II, manufacturing and maintaining tanks and weapons systems as the need for great numbers of troops depleted the workforce of civilian males. APG scientists led the way into the computer age when they developed ENIAC, the first electronic digital computer.

This striking volume presents the military history of Fort Drum and the missions it continues to support in defense of the United States.

Northern New York State has boasted a prominent military presence since the War of 1812. Beginning in 1816 with the establishment of Fort Drum's predecessor, Madison Barracks, troops have trained there throughout the summer months and the harsh winters. Today, Fort Drum is the largest military facility in the northeastern United States, home to the 10th Mountain Division, a tactical unit deployed on missions around the world. Beginning with the history of Madison Barracks, Fort Drum depicts its birth as Pine Plains, a ten-thousand-acre training area, and its continued evolution into a military asset. By 1908, soldiers from Madison Barracks began summer maneuvers at Pine Plains under the command of Brig. Gen. Frederick Dent Grant, son of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. Historic images in Fort Drum show these training camps and what are known today as the greatest military maneuvers in peacetime history during 1935. Today, Fort Drum supports the training of almost eighty thousand troops annually.

Join author Evelyn L. Wheeler as she recounts the origins and  history of the Navy's Flight Demonstration Team: The Blue Angels.

Every year, more than 11 million people attend air shows that feature the Blue Angels, who call Pensacola, Florida, their home. The Navy's Flight Demonstration Team, with its six gleaming blue-and-gold F/A-18 Hornets, never fails to thrill the crowds. Flying from heights of over 15,000 feet and dropping as low as 50 feet, the shows are nonstop, high-energy, heart-stopping excitement. The Blue Angels were established in 1946 by Adm. Chester W. Nimitz to showcase the pride and professionalism of the United States Navy and Marine Corps by inspiring a culture of excellence and service to country through flight demonstrations and community outreach. The Blue Angels pilots and flight crew visit 50,000 people a year in schools, hospitals, and other community events, in addition to performing for those who attend their air shows.

The April 1917 declaration of war on Germany hastened the need for US training camps. Camp Custer, named for Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, was established on July 18, 1917. Thousands of soldiers were inducted at Camp Custer, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers would start their military training at Camp and later Fort Custer, which became a permanent base in 1940. Images from Camp and Fort Custer gives the reader insight into camp life during both world wars, including the German prisoners of war experience. Images of America: Fort Custer in the World Wars features the influence Camp and Fort Custer had on military training. The young soldiers trained here served their country honorably and are deserving of gratitude.

Brenda Glover Leyndyke, board member and volunteer librarian for the Fort Custer Historical Society, is the daughter of a Fort Custer veteran. Leyndyke updated the Research in Michigan book published by the National Genealogical Society. Along with her volunteer work, Leyndyke writes an award-winning blog. She works closely with the Fort Custer Historical Society board and draws on the society’s collection of over 2,000 photographs.

The Georgia Air National Guard units in Marietta, Savannah, Warner Robins, and other locations have played a role in major conflicts around the world. Clint Smith, a retired member of the Georgia Air National Guard uses images from the Georgia National Guard history office and the Historical Society of the Georgia National Guard to illustrate its history since the guard's official creation in 1947.

The founder of the colony of Georgia, Gen. James Oglethorpe, served as the first Georgia Guardsman. He embodied the legend of the minuteman, a tradition carried forward by the Georgia Army National Guard. In May 1941, the first distinct aviation unit was created at Candler Field in Atlanta—the 128th Observation Squadron. In September 1947, a federal act officially created the Air National Guard. 

Clint Smith served at state headquarters at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, Georgia. He had many responsibilities, including command historian. A board member of the Historical Society of the Georgia National Guard, Smith served eight years in the Georgia Legislature, where he led on military and security issues. The author of two novels, Smith has published columns on public policy and history.

Revisit the former U.S. Naval Training Center at Bainbridge, MD by viewing photos of long closed PX,  and silent drill fields... up to 350,000 sailors trained here once!

After the federal government purchased the Tome School for Boys in the northeasternmost county of Maryland in 1941, more than 1,200 acres were cleared for the United States Naval Training Center, Bainbridge. Preparing 350,000 sailors for battle in World War II, Bainbridge became a city in itself, with a PX, officer's club, chapel, post office, drill fields, indoor pools, and hospital. Because of the training center, Cecil County's population more than doubled. After 1976, when the center fell into disuse, the buildings were demolished. They live on, though, through the vintage photographs in this volume, collected from the archives of the Paw Paw Museum, the USNTC Bainbridge Museum, the U.S. Navy, and historic yearbooks and guidebooks. Images of America: United States Naval Training Center, Bainbridge aids in the efforts to preserve the center's memory for veterans and their families.

Camp Forrest was a training, induction, and combatant prisoner-of-war (POW) facility located on the outskirts of Tullahoma, Tennessee.

It was a self-sustaining city where over 70,000 soldiers were stationed and approximately 12,000 civilians were employed throughout World War II. In 1942, the camp transitioned to an enemy alien internment camp and was one of the first civilian internment camps in the United States. By the middle of 1943, it had transitioned into a POW camp and housed primarily German and Italian prisoners. After the war ended, the base was decommissioned and dismantled in 1946. In 1951, the area was recommissioned and expanded into the US Air Force's Arnold Engineering Development Complex. Few remains of this important World War II facility exist today; however, the images within provide a glimpse into the effects and realities of a global war on American soil.

Join Mark D. Hanson as he chronicles the long-standing and cohesive relationship between the farming town of Rantoul and the Chanute Air Force base.

Rantoul and the former Chanute Air Force Base are inseparably intertwined as primary players in a single historical narrative. Rantoul was first founded as an agriculturally based community in 1848 near an area known as Mink Grove. The settlement boomed with the coming of the Illinois Central Railroad in 1854; a railroad championed by the town's namesake, Robert Rantoul Jr. Disaster followed in 1899 and again in 1901 with devastating fires. Then, in 1917, a U.S. Army flying field was built on the outskirts of Rantoul. Named after the aviation pioneer Octave Chanute, Chanute Field, later Chanute Air Force Base, became a premier technical training facility. A mutually beneficial relationship quickly developed between these civilian and military establishments that would last for over 75 years. Chanute Air Force Base closed in 1993, ushering in yet another new era for the village of Rantoul.

Through historic photographs discover how the citizens of Boulder City contributed to the war effort in World War II.

During the early years of World War II, the United States Army established a camp on the federal reservation in Boulder City, Nevada. This camp consisted of barracks, a mess hall, officer quarters, a hospital, a guardhouse, a commissary, and a theater for several hundred men. Most of the men were being trained for military police duty. The citizens of Boulder City were not aware of much of the activity that took place at Camp Williston as they were finally settling down into everyday life after the construction of the Hoover Dam. On December 7, 1941, though, the town of Boulder City had the busiest Army camp in the West. Established only a decade earlier in 1931, the camp’s “Be Generous, Equal Victory” slogan was one the community lived by, even more so throughout the war effort.

Tiane Marie is a writer, historian, and photographer. She is dedicated to preserving history by sharing the information for anyone who is wanting to learn. She is the author of Past and Present: Boulder City.

The story of Camp Grant cannot be told simply through the forming of the camp, the training that took place, or the camp's eventual demise. Each part is a story unto itself, retold through the memories and photographs from the World War I troops, Illinois National Guardsmen, World War II draftees, medical personnel, and German POWs that passed through. Those photographs are gathered together here, narrating and preserving the story of Camp Grant.

This volume will highlight more than 140 years of images that capture Fort Monroe's varied missions, historic buildings, the families who lived there, the resort hotels, and other aspects of this unique national landmark.

Fort Monroe was once a powerful symbol of America's national defense system. From 1823 to 1945, its primary military mission was to protect Hampton Roads and the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay from enemy attacks. Over the years, as military technology advanced, Fort Monroe's defensive posture changed. To counter potential threats, American coastal defense installations such as Fort Monroe developed sophisticated steel disappearing guns, mortars, anti-aircraft weapons, and submarine mines. As the site of the army's Coast Artillery School, Fort Monroe trained thousands of soldiers. After World War II, Fort Monroe's role as a coastal defense installation ended, and the post took on new missions as a training headquarters facility. With more than 200 original photographs, this volume unveils the layered history of this massive stone-and-brick installation from the end of the Civil War to the present.

The United States Naval Air Station at Quonset Point, Rhode Island, originally built as a Neutrality Patrol seaplane base, became a unique and fundamental asset to our nation's armed forces.

In World War II, more than half of all U-boats sunk by U. S. aviation were destroyed by Quonset-trained shore and carrier-based squadrons. In the years following World War II, Quonset Point Naval Air Station remained a premier industrial naval air station, sending squadrons or overhauling equipment for use in the Korean, Vietnam, and Cold War conflicts. For 34 years and through four wars, the Quonset Point Naval Air Station stood proud and tall on behalf of the U. S. military. This second volume of Quonset Point images uncovers nearly 200 more scenes of the installation's achievements and activities during the entire period of its service.

An interesting history of Camp William Penn, featuring vintage and never-before-seen photographs.

Camp William Penn, established in 1863, was the largest federal facility to train black Northern-based soldiers during the Civil War and is steeped in Civil War history. Almost 11,000 troops and officers trained at the sprawling facility outside of Philadelphia and a special officers' training school in the city. The camp, backed by the Union League of Philadelphia, was located near the home of anti slavery abolitionist Lucretia Mott. The area, today known as Cheltenham Township's LaMott, was also instrumental in the Underground Railroad, with such great abolitionists as Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass addressing the troops. The soldiers were a part of Abraham Lincoln's Bureau of United States Colored Troops, and several earned the Congressional Medal of Honor for heroics during battle. The vintage photographs in Camp William Penn were obtained from government agencies, universities, historical organizations, and the personal collections of soldiers' descendants.

The United States Air Force Academy became the fifth US Federal Service Academy on April 1, 1954, a mere six and a half years after the Air Force became an independent service branch. The Air Force Academy has distinguished itself from other institutions of higher education not only by its iconic modern architecture and dedication to technological advancement, but also through its rigorous and innovative academy and military training programs. Air Force Academy cadets have a unique college experience-guided by core values and bound by an honor code-and upon graduation, they are commissioned into the US military. Over the last 70 years, the academy has built a tradition of excellence and honored its mission: to educate, train, and inspire leaders of character ready to serve the nation in the Air and Space Forces.

Author Amanda K. Hess has spent the last 10 years immersed in the history and heritage of the United States Air Force Academy. With the support of the Friends of the Air Force Academy Library, she has curated this book from the extensive photographic collection located in the Clark Special Collections Branch of the Air Force Academy McDermott Library.