America's North Shore Journal

Air Force

The 1^st Com­bat Cam­era Squadron is a ten­ant unit at Charleston Air Force Base, South Car­olina, and the only active duty Com­bat Cam­era unit in the United States Air Force. It is aligned under the 21^st Expe­di­tionary Mobil­ity Task Force, based at McGuire AFB, NJ, 18^th Air Force, and Air Mobil­ity Command.

Com­bat Cam­era (COMCAM) acquires still and motion imagery in sup­port of clas­si­fied and unclas­si­fied air, sea, and ground mil­i­tary oper­a­tions. 1^st CTCS imagery is a fun­da­men­tal tool of com­man­ders and decision-makers through­out the Depart­ment of Defense. Their imagery pro­vides a visual record for use in oper­a­tional analy­sis, train­ing, pub­lic infor­ma­tion, and as a per­ma­nent his­tor­i­cal record. It is a timely, accu­rate infor­ma­tion resource, pro­vid­ing a "you-are-there" per­spec­tive, and is essen­tial bat­tle­field infor­ma­tion in sup­port of strate­gic, oper­a­tional, and tac­ti­cal mis­sion objec­tives. Com­bat cam­era per­son­nel are an inte­gral part of Joint exer­cises, con­tin­gency oper­a­tions, human­i­tar­ian relief efforts, and dis­as­ters of every kind. The squadron con­sists of tech­ni­cal experts in Visual Infor­ma­tion career fields Still Pho­tog­ra­phy (3V0X2) and Videog­ra­phy (3V0X3) and ded­i­cated sup­port pro­fes­sion­als. 1 CTCS imagery is also archived for his­tor­i­cal pur­poses and can be recalled through the Joint Com­bat Cam­era Cen­ter at the Pen­ta­gon and the Defense Visual Infor­ma­tion Cen­ter at River­side, CA. COMCAM does not include imagery specif­i­cally acquired by Intel­li­gence activities.

Com­bat pho­tog­ra­phy began dur­ing the Civil War when Pres­i­dent Lin­coln com­mis­sioned Matthew Brady to doc­u­ment the war. The first Air Force com­bat cam­era unit was acti­vated in the Air Force Reserves on 10 August 1948 at Long Beach, CA. The unit was returned to inac­tive sta­tus on 27 June 1949. Once again redes­ig­nated and acti­vated, the 1^st Com­bat Cam­era Unit stood up on 2 Sep­tem­ber 1950 at Bolling AFB, MD. The unit was sub­se­quently moved to Alexan­dria, VA, in Jan­u­ary 1951 and redes­ig­nated the 1^st Pho­to­graphic Squadron on 16 April 1951. The unit was again inac­ti­vated on 8 June 1954.

Mod­ern day Com­bat Cam­era per­son­nel trace their roots to the acti­va­tion of the Aero­space Audio­vi­sual Ser­vice (AAVS) in Jan­u­ary 1966. One of their first mis­sions was to man­age all pho­to­graphic func­tions, except recon­nais­sance, in South­east Asia, espe­cially dur­ing the Viet­nam War. "Project Com­bat Pix" began Octo­ber 1966, expand­ing the AAVS mis­sion to include all base photo labs, com­bat doc­u­men­ta­tion and arma­ment record­ing pho­tog­ra­phy. AAVS Head­quar­ters was relo­cated to Nor­ton AFB, CA in July 1968. By the late 1980's, AAVS adopted the unof­fi­cial name "Com­bat Camera."

Fol­low­ing the stand down of AAVS on 1 April 1992, the 1361^st Audio­vi­sual Squadron was deac­ti­vated and redes­ig­nated the 1^st Com­bat Cam­era Squadron under the Air Com­bat Cam­era Ser­vice (Air­CCS). In 1994, Air­CCS was deac­ti­vated leav­ing the 1^st Com­bat Cam­era Squadron as the sole active duty Com­bat Cam­era squadron aligned under the 621^st Air Mobil­ity Oper­a­tions Group. In 2005, the 21 EMTF was acti­vated and the 1 CTCS was realigned under it.

When­ever, wher­ever there is a world­wide cri­sis, a con­tin­gency oper­a­tion, an exer­cise, or a wartime oper­a­tion, the highly skilled pro­fes­sional men and women of 1^st Com­bat Cam­era Squadron are acquir­ing the imagery nec­es­sary to sup­port the mis­sion. By its motto "Global Reach…Global Images," it is your eyes to the world. Recent mis­sions include involve­ment with Oper­a­tion Iraqi Free­dom, Oper­a­tion Endur­ing Free­dom, Uni­fied Assis­tance, Pak­istan Earth­quake Relief, Hur­ri­canes Kat­rina and Rita, and doc­u­men­ta­tion of the evac­u­a­tion of Amer­i­can cit­i­zens from Lebanon.