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300+ Historic USMC 8x10 photographs


Bob Hudson
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Bob Hudson

Got a call yesterday from a guy who had a box of photos he'd rescued from the trash a few years back. Well, it was worth the drive to the next county, as it turned out be about 300 8x10 inch photographs, all apparently from original negatives. Some are period prints, others appear to have been made direct from the original negatives. Most of them are of Marines in action in the Vietnam War in 1966, but there are some WWI and WWII photos and one image from Korea. Most of them have stamps or labels on the back. I have scanned these in black and white, so the labels, which are often in blue ink, come out and black and white.

 

There was one photo that was a real treat. I've always remembered a headline from the Navy Times in the 1960's about a new device that could detect the VC by body odor. The headline was:

 

BO KO'S VC PDQ

 

Well, one of the photos I got this morning was of the BO detector!

 

USMCplanes013.jpg

 

Here's the caption on the back:

 

USMCplanes013cap.jpg

 

In order to better show details in this and many other of the photos, I show enlarged sections of photos instead of the whole image, but here's an example of how this one looks without being cropped:

 

USMCplanes013full.jpg

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Bob Hudson

Here's some pre-WWI images, including some Marine vehicles and classroom at Quantico in 1918 and this original 1931 print of an aircraft getting ready to fly to Haiti:

 

USMCplanes003.jpg

 

USMCplanes003cap.jpg

 

USMCplanes001.jpg

 

This one is from WWI and shows Marines inflating a balloon:

 

USMCplanes005.jpg

 

And here's some 1918 Marines in class learning about the Lewis gun -

 

USMCplanes007.jpg

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Bob Hudson

Some more 1918 photos (and again these are sections of the larger photos):

 

USMCplanes006.jpg

 

USMCplanes008.jpg

 

Jumping ahead to 1942 and one of a few such prints of Guadalcanal air ops in 1942:

 

USMCplanes009.jpg

 

USMCplanes009cap.jpg

 

This is the only Korean War photo from the lot:

 

USMCplanes011.jpg

 

USMCplanes011cap.jpg

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Got a call yesterday from a guy who had a box of photos he'd rescued from the trash a few years back. Well, it was worth the drive to the next county, as it turned out be about 300 8x10 inch photographs, all apparently from original negatives. Some are period prints, others appear to have been made direct from the original negatives. Most of them are of Marines in action in the Vietnam War in 1966, but there are some WWI and WWII photos and one image from Korea. Most of them have stamps or labels on the back. I have scanned these in black and white, so the labels, which are often in blue ink, come out and black and white.

 

There was one photo that was a real treat. I've always remembered a headline from the Navy Times in the 1960's about a new device that could detect the VC by body odor. The headline was:

 

BO KO'S VC PDQ

 

Well, one of the photos I got this morning was of the BO detector!

 

post-214-1274817350.jpg

 

Here's the caption on the back:

 

post-214-1274817382.jpg

 

In order to better show details in this and many other of the photos, I show enlarged sections of photos instead of the whole image, but here's an example of how this one looks without being cropped:

 

post-214-1274817475.jpg

 

Nice photos! Please post more!

 

CPT Flanigan earned a Silver Star in 1964 while serving as an advisor to a Vietnamese Ranger BN. http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/go6431.pdf

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Bob Hudson

As I said, most of these photos are from Vietnam, showing Marines in the field. But, there a lot showing various Marine General in Vietnam, including several of Commandant Wallace M. Green. Notice his HBT's and the writing on the young Marines helmet covers: I am going to do a thread showing closeups of the helmet graffiti in many of these photos.

 

USMCplanes015.jpg

 

USMCplanes015cap.jpg

 

Here's one of the period photos - while all of these are from period negatives, there are a few that are also clearly period prints:

 

USMCplanes017.jpg

 

USMCplanes017cap.jpg

 

Being 8x10 photos, the ones of the Marines in the field are a great source of details. On this one you can even see the fly on his shoulder:

 

USMCplanes019.jpg

 

And here's the full image:

 

USMCplanes019full.jpg

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Bob Hudson

I like this one - notice the Army officer.

 

USMCplanes021.jpg

 

USMCplanes021cap.jpg

 

And seeing the full image helps put this into perspective: that's a lot of water to cross with that many people in a small rubber boat. Luckily they did not get stopped by the Cost Guard and cited for lack of PFD's.

 

USMCplanes021full.jpg

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Bob Hudson

I need to scan some more. Since these are 8x10 photos, I am scanning them at 600DPI in order to show some details. That makes for 15Mb files for each photo, but of course by the time they are cropped and reduced to post here, each photo is 30-50Kb, or 0.002 percent of their original file size.

 

Speaking of cropping, I have discovered that some of the photos have crop marks on them: these are lines in the white space around the image and are used by editors to show which parts of a photo should be used in a newspaper or magazine. This leads me to believe that these photos were tossed out by a publication, , perhaps something at nearby Camp Pendleton.

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The Meatcan

good job on rescuing these photos FS! and thanks for the effort of scanning and posting. There are some excellent reference shots there not to mention just plain old cool photos! Love the enlargement of the fly :thumbsup:

Terry

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A lot of the photos that show up on the market are UPI/ AP wirephotos, with an occaisionaly DoD photo of the same nature. Most of these are prints off of wirephoto machines which were early versions of the FAX machine. While the originals would be sharp and clear, the wirephotos vary in quality depending on the machine that received them. I have some which are close to photo quality while others are as muddy as can be.

 

These are obviously original prints. These are far superior for scanning and drawing off details and enlargements.

 

You can see with these the quality of the camera equipment that was being used, as well as the development process and quality of paper. Unless you've adjusted these in your scans, I don't see any signs of yellowing.

 

This is so much better than many of the photos you see published in books. I've seen that photo of the Wildcat on Guadacanal being saved before, but never so clear. Nice find!

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Bob Hudson

Okay here's some more grunts at work: most of the above photos are no more than 620 pixels wide, but these are up to 1,000 pixels wide so you may need to click them to see the larger sizes:

 

USMCplanes026.jpg

 

USMCplanes027.jpg

 

USMCplanes028.jpg

 

USMCplanes029.jpg

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Bob Hudson

As mentioned above, photos like this, even when seen on a computer screen, give us a view of history unlike what we're used to which is the very low resolution book, newspaper and magazine photos and even the old films. I have to say that in going through this almost five-inch high stack of photos I was stunned by what I was seeing.

 

USMCplanes030.jpg

 

USMCplanes031.jpg

 

Check out that one pack load:

 

USMCplanes031cu.jpg

 

USMCplanes032.jpg

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Bob Hudson

Marines and machines.....

 

 

I believe these birds were part of squadron HMM-362 -

 

USMCplanes035.jpg

 

 

The rations were just flown in by chopper, according to the caption on the back:

 

USMCplanes036.jpg

 

USMCplanes037.jpg

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The Vietnam photos are excellent, but I am really struck by how clear that photo of the class on the Lewis gun is. It is full of detail, right down to the stripes on the arm of the instructor. The 1930's aviation photos are very sharp as well.

 

As you know, a lot gets lost in the publishing process. Computers allow us a lot clearer image. It's also an advantage when publishing on CD.

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Bob Hudson

Here's some with captions naming individuals.

 

USMCplanes038.jpg

 

USMCplanes038cap.jpg

 

Notice the general (and the chinstrap):

 

USMCplanes041.jpg

 

USMCplanes041cap.jpg

 

USMCplanes042.jpg

 

USMCplanes042cap.jpg

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Bob Hudson

If you enjoy seeing old photos in such detail, don't forget to check out the Life Magazine digital archive in which they have scanned millions of original negatives and posted them at Google Images. To learn more about that go to http://www.usmilitariaforum.com/forums/ind...showtopic=30740

 

To illustrate how a digital image from an original negative is different than a scan from something printed in a book or magazine, I scanned a photo from a book and enlarged it 300% and then did a screen capture of one of the LIFE/Google archive photos and enlarged that 300% - the halftone dots used published photos makes it a whole different ballgame, because enlarging it just shows you larger dots, not more detail. The photos have "grain," but it rather fine and still allows us to see more detail from extreme enlargements.

 

halftone1.jpg

 

halftone2.jpg

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my brother in law was just recently in Vietnam and passed through Hue City...will have to post his photos when he sends them for the then/now comparrison

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Fantastic pics, Bob, VERY interesting! Also, plenty of shots of 1st and 2nd pattern HBT helmet covers in use, I especially like the shot of the BGen with the pin-on EGA on his helmet!

 

Thanks again...

 

Semper,

 

Ski

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Sgt. Boghots

Great find, Bob ! - Appreciate the time and effort you've put into scanning and posting.

 

. . . think I'll stay tuned.

 

Best regards,

Paul

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