OD/NG wrote:
Wow, fantastic series of images, August! Thank you for posting those!
Question - How did you come into possession of those photos?
Long story. I'll try to summarize without derailing this thread too much.
Dick Kamm was a mechanic in the AF from 1947 to 1962. He was in one of the first classes of jet mechanics, crewed RF-80As in Panama then F-80Bs and F-84Es in Germany, then from 1952 was at Whiteman Field in Arizona as B-29 and B-36 flight engineer and B-47 navigator/bombardier. A short memoir of his first years in the service can be read
here. Later he worked for a defense contractor and finally as a mechanic instructor at Parks College. He was an avid photographer of airplanes all his adult life.
I met Dick at Oshkosh in 1980 and he fostered my interest in taking pictures of planes and learning an excessive amount about them. Off and on for 26 years, we would meet up and watch, shoot or just talk about airplanes. When he passed in 2006, his wonderful spouse and I agreed that if his photos were sent to some museum or library, they would end up ignored at best, pilfered or accidently destroyed at worst. I took custody of them on the understanding that I would scan and share them with enthusiasts as the exigencies of life permit. Thus I came into possession of, I estimate, about 65,000 airplane photos, mostly 35mm slides, some medium and large format, spanning 1947 to 2006. This is why I started my web site (click orange box below). I guess about 90-95% of them are just the sort of pics any enthusiast takes at museums and airshows; the early ones are becoming more interesting, but they are notable mainly for their comprehensiveness as a collection. The cream, however, consisting of photos from Dick's service days, and from other occasions like 1968-69 when he went to Vietnam as some kind of tech rep and photographed pretty much every operational USAF type at the combat base at Cam Ranh Bay, are something special.
I have posted batches of Dick's pics to this forum several times over the years, but have lost track of the links to most of the threads. They've shown up in several books and magazines, but one of these days I have to do some kind of a publication of his best stuff.
August