Navy·Consolidated / merged·In Memoriam
Photographer's Mate
PH
Served: 1921–2006
Shot recon film, aircraft gun-camera footage, official portraits, and crime-scene photos for NCIS predecessors.
The Story
The rating badge changed in 1948 from a literal camera to abstract light rays through a lens — the Navy aestheticizing its own modernization 60 years before it disestablished the rating entirely.
Epitaph
“Shot the war. Then the wedding portrait. Then got compressed into a JPEG.”
Sources
- Wikipedia — Photographer's Mateen.wikipedia.org