Navy Pre-Flight School Photos, Part 1
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Today we begin a mini-series on the photos taken by the U.S Navy during World War II at the Navy Pre-Flight School at St. Mary's College in Moraga, California, a bit east of San Francisco. This was one of several U.S. facilities where the Navy trained men to be pilots.
Above is a photo showing nude front, rear and side views of naval cadet L. J. Atkisson, taken on June 13, 1942.
I got this photo from the blog Vintage Muscle Men. Thanks, Jerry!
But first, a little background. There has been a lot of confusion about the Navy photos, with many websites claiming that they are Ivy League posture photos. No! The true Ivy League posture photos can easily be distinguished from the Navy photos.
Most of the Ivy League posture photos have been destroyed. All the surviving photos that show male frontal nudity seem to be from Yale. (I have a separate series showing those Yale photos.) There is a book with some Harvard posture photos, but the frontal nudity is censored. Above are some Yale posture photos. The one on the left shows nude front, rear and side views of the student, like the Navy photo, but this photo is clearly marked "Yale."
The Navy photos are surrounded by rulers, which the Ivy League photos are not, and the Navy photos have a grid superimposed on the photo.
The photo on the right, an earlier Yale posture photo, does have a grid in the background, but the grid is not superimposed over the entire photo. And in all the Yale photos, the subjects have pins stuck onto their back and chest, which the Navy photos do not have.
Another set of similar photos (above) was taken at Fort Sheridan, an Army base near Chicago that processed over half a million inductees in World War II. These Army photos all clearly say "Ft. Sheridan."
Once you become familiar with the style of these photos, it's very clear which ones are Ivy League photos, which ones are Army photos, and which ones are Navy photos.
Another thing that has contributed to the confusion is that Navy photos on the Internet have often been cropped (above), with the telltale rulers cut away (a hint of a ruler remains here). However, the grid superimposed over the entire photo is still a dead giveaway that it's a Navy photo. Above is new recruit Perry Belmont Miller, taken on June 13, 1942.
Although these photos may resemble posture photos, the Navy's purpose was different. The Navy took photos of each new recruit, and then a second set of photos after months of intensive training at St. Mary's.
This is the second set of photos of Perry Belmont Miller, taken on August 28, 1942. He looks a little different than the first set because his hair has been cut shorter, but it's him. Also, he's wearing a jockstrap in the second photo. It seems that all of the nude photos were taken on June 13, 1942. In all the later photos, the cadets wear jockstraps. I don't know why the Navy made this change.
Finally, the Navy kept records about each cadet's physical measurements and performance on various physical tests, at the beginning of training and at the end. The card above is the record for Perry B. Miller, who we just saw. Note the words at upper right: "3 posture pictures."
Bottom line: although the Navy called them posture photos, these photos were used to document the physical changes to the cadet's body as a result of training at St. Mary's.
Now that we understand the Navy photos, let's look at some more of them. I will only be showing the nude photos, which I collect, not the jockstrap photos. All of the nude photos were taken on June 13, 1942. Above, P.J. Carter.
Sidney A. Henmon. It's safe to say that all these men have passed away. Since they were 18 or older in 1942, they would all be 100 years old or older today.
J. W. King. Another thing to note in the nude Navy photos is that in each side view photo, someone is holding the cadet's arms up horizontally. I don't know what this hand-holding was for, but it had the fortuitous side effect of ensuring that the cadet's hands are not blocking our view of his penis.
Clifford C. Livermore.
W. D. Lundgren.
S. L. Meek. For some reason the side view is repeated.
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We end today with D. W. Noonan. I also got this photo from the blog Vintage Muscle Men. Thanks, Jerry!
Next time: more Navy pre-flight training school photos.
18 comments:
I don't think these would have elicited much, if any, comment back then. The public (and thus, women) would have had no access to them. The doctors/naval personnel would have all been male, so...no big deal if the peters were hanging loose.
Thanks for these posture photos i really like st mary's posture photos. i hope you continue posting more. i also like fort sheridan photos because there are no pins on the body.
Looks like Perry Miller had an interesting life.
https://www.recorderonline.com/perry-belmont-miller-sr/article_7016d6ef-56ac-517c-bcf8-fd1f08adffb6.html
I wonder why they thought posture photos were important to pilot training....
They probably NEVER thought that old geezers, like me, would look at these pictures with such interest!!!
I appreciate all of the research you do for your posts. And, I also appreciate the fine asses.
@whkattk - Pat, they weren't used as posture photos. They were "before & after" photos to document the effects of the training regimen.
@Filipenis - I will be posting more St. Mary's photos. This is part 1 of a 3 part mini-series.
Nice research! The one who impressed me the most was J. W. King!!!!
Didi you see, activist Robert Opel ran naked across the Academy awards stage 50 years ago! Does anyone have the video?
Interesting note about the arms in side views. Wouldn't have noticed it. In "posture" context, it makes sense to better be able to note angles between spine and legs. But if these aren't posture photos, I have to wonder about what they were looking for.
They managed to have the names of the recruits "properly" added to the images. Not sure if this was just a sticker on printed photograph, or done in darkroom to "burn" in the name. But the logistics of keeping track of who is who so the name can be added later on are interesting.
If they have "before and after" images of the training, I have to wonder how many have a foreskin in the "bfore" and no foreskin in the "after" training as was rumoured to be common back then. (of only one had access to all these archives, one could get to see actual statistics of whether this happened a lot , a little or never).
@Anon - Regarding foreskins, these photos taken on June 13, 1942 appear to be the earliest photos taken at St. Mary's, so presumably they are all "before" images. In all subsequent photos, including all the "after" images, the cadet is wearing a jockstrap, so it is impossible to see his foreskin status.
Are the nude Ft. Sheridan photos showing American or German soldiers? It was my impression that Ft. Sheridan was primarily used as a POW processing center during WWII.
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/the-story-of-german-pows-held-in-chicagoland/
very interesting!
@Anon - Primarily? No. Although Ft. Sheridan was a processing center for about 15,000 German POWs late in the war (1944-1945), it was a gigantic induction center for over 500,000 American soldiers, starting with the peacetime draft in 1940 and greatly accelerating after war was declared in 1941. The German POWs were a footnote compared to the number of American soldiers that went through Ft. Sheridan.
OK, but how do we know if the nude Ft. Sheridan photos show American or German soldiers, since Ft. Sheridan had both?
@Anon - I don't absolutely know whether the Ft. Sheridan photos were of American inductees or German POWs. One of the sources that I found online says they are "American or German"; all of the other sources say that they are American inductees, but how do they know? I have never seen any primary source, such as an interview or memoir, describing the photo program, so it remains somewhat of a mystery. I'm still going to assume they were American inductees. All of the possible reasons for such a program (checking for medical conditions such as scoliosis that might excuse the man from military service, which Yale checked for in their posture photos among other things; or "before" and "after" photos to document the results of physical training, like the Navy photos; or photographing to aid in identification if the man was killed in battle) all might apply to American inductees but would not apply to POWs.
Thanks. A very thoughtful reply. It's just a suspicion on my part, but I felt the nude Ft. Sheridan men were Germans, in that, if they ever escaped, the nude photos would give a more clear description of the men (tattoos, birth marks, that sort of thing). Also, there were induction centers all over the United States for American soldiers during WWII. To my knowledge, none of these bases (San Antonio, TX, for example) ever took totally nude photos of the recruits. Why would Ft. Sheridan be the exception? I will continue to research this very interesting topic.
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