History office photo project hits milestone

  • Published
  • By Mike Joseph, Senior Writer
  • Public Affairs
Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas --  An online project created by the 37th Training Wing Office of History and Research at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland reached a milestone Jan. 28.

The 10,000th Air Force Basic Military Training flight photo was posted to http://www.bmtflightphotos.af.mil, a project started with only 60 flight photographs in 2004.

"The most common request back then was, 'Do you have a copy of my BMT flight photograph?'" said Tracy English, 37th TRW Office of History and Research chief, a retired Air Force technical sergeant.

"I knew how much the flight photos meant to people. I didn't want to just collect and archive those photos," he said. "They needed to be accessible; it had to be a project that could be viewed online. So the 10,000-mark is a huge one for us."

The project is an effort to collect more than 100,000 trainee flight photographs from the inception of the Air Force in 1947 to the present. The collection includes photos from bases that have conducted Air Force basic training: Lackland; Sampson Air Force Base, N.Y.; Parks Air Force Base, Calif.; Keesler Air Force Base, Miss.; Amarillo and Sheppard Air Force Bases in Texas, as well as basic training sites overseas.

There's also been a side benefit from the project. The Veterans Administration and several other agencies have used flight photos when accompanied by names as proof of service.

English teamed with then 37th TRW Communications Squadron to develop the initial Lackland website so that it could be searched by squadron, flight number or month and year. The site was eventually converted to the common Air Force web page.

"When we started this, I thought it might be just a trickle coming in. After a story in an Air Force retiree newsletter came out, we were swamped. It was Korean War-era veterans sending us their photos, hundreds of them," English said.

"All the photos in the project are because of the veterans, family members or friends who had a copy and sent it to us. That says a lot about the Air Force family."

The history office now receives between 10 and 15 flight photos daily via email as a number of veterans and organizations with web pages have a link to the site, in addition to the 37th TRW and history office page links.

The site also displays first on Google when searched by "BMT flight" or "BMT photos."
"The nice thing is so many people go to our site every day," English said. "We get a lot of traffic."

He said office staff and volunteers have spent long days and weekends processing and uploading pictures.

"I've had some truly awesome people work on this project," English said. "We do this between all of our other jobs."

He credited Minnie Martinez, current 37th TRW Office of History and Research administrative assistant; Jennifer Alley, a former office intern as a University of Texas at San Antonio student; Christine Peterson, a former volunteer; and Geoffrey Lewis, a former active duty Airman, for keeping the project moving forward.

While the majority of flight photos now come electronically, on graduation days photos are brought into the history office, and with them also come the back stories.

"We'll get a family member, say a mother or father, come into the office with their photo because they're here for graduation," English said. "In tow is their son or daughter. That's when we get to hear all the stories, which makes for a pretty cool time."

"If your flight photograph is not on our web page, we don't have it," English said. "Please send them to us. The Lackland Gateway archives will be better for it."

Trainee flight photos can be sent electronically to lacklandbmt.photo@us.af.mil or mailed to 37th TRW/HO, 2320 Carswell Avenue, Suite 2, JBSA-Lackland, TX 78236-5155.