As World War II unfolded in Europe, a Navy officer was sent to England to observe and adopt British photo interpretation methods. He returned to set up the Navy's first photographic interpretation school. As the war expanded, Navy photographers were trained by Movietone News, Kodak, and Fairchild Camera and Instrument company. Many civilian photographers fulfilled their military obligation by serving in combat photography units (CPUs). The war saw 1,500 naval officers and 5,300 enlisted men trained at the Navy photography school. The Navy Photographic Science Laboratory established in Washington, D.C. in 1943, was later renamed the Naval Photographic Center.[3]
In 1948, the photographer's mate abbreviation changed from PHOM to PH, and the symbol of the camera on the rating badge was replaced by divergent light rays passing through a lens. As jet aircraft appeared, the old 9 in (230 mm) film width was replaced by 70 mm (2.8 in) and then 5 in (130 mm) film in larger cameras. The RF-8 Crusader was replaced by the RA-5 Vigilante aboard Forrestal-class super carriers equipped with a chute from the flight deck to a photo darkroom so film packages detached from the aircraft upon landing could be fed into developing machines to be available for debriefing when the pilot reached his ready room. Navy photographers were sent to the University of Southern California to study motion picture production techniques, and to Syracuse University for photojournalism training.[3]
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