Photo Sources: Official U.S. Military Websites
The Air Force Historical Research Agency is the repository for Air Force historical documents. The Agency's collection, begun in Washington, DC, during World War II, moved in 1949 to Maxwell Air Force Base, the site of Air University, to provide research facilities for professional military education students, the faculty, visiting scholars, and the general public. It consists today of over 70,000,000 pages devoted to the history of the service, and represents the world's largest and most valuable organized collection of documents on US military aviation.
Air Force Link has an image gallery with hundreds of photos of current U.S. Air Force activity.
The US Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio provides a huge collection of photos of aircraft, ordnance, equipment of various kinds and other items, both current and historical, from their exhibits and archives. (Thanks to Billy P. Whyde for reminding me to get this one posted.)
Air War College links to multi-media resources. Very broad coverage of all types of military photo, clip art, film, and other materials. Especially good for ships, planes and truck see Defense Visual Information Center photos.
HQ, Department of the Army, Action Officers Online Reference, has this page of Clip Art and Graphics links from official and civilian sources (including Olive-Drab).
U.S. Army Center of Military History has a wealth of material, including photographs, from all periods of U.S. Army history. Click on this link for Artwork and Photos from the US Army Center of Military History. Click on this link for the matrix of active divisions, some with historic photos of the division in past conflicts.
Army Images: A gallery of over 1000 current Army photos.
The US Army Corps of Engineers Digital Visual Library provides images to visually communicate programs, projects and events of the US Army Corps of Engineers. The searchable library consists of photographs, illustrations, artwork, clipart, logos, maps, and posters of a majority of the Corps of Engineers civil and military projects from around the world.
U.S. Army Military History Institute (USAMHI) offers a searchable collection of on-line photos and other research materials from all time periods. Click on the link in the previous sentence, then click on Research Catalogs. You can also find selected images from the U. S. Army Military History Institute Special Collections Branch at this link.
Army Visual Information provides the National Command Authority, Secretary of Defense, Joint Staff, military departments, and Army Commanders with combat camera (COMCAM) and record documentation, multimedia/VI products, and services to satisfy official requirements. The website offers images and image search.
U. S. Coast Guard Photography: historic photos and other images including special sections on Coast Guard operations on D-Day, CG in Vietnam and many other categories.
Use this link to reach the U.S. Coast Guard Visual Imagery photo database.
DefenseLink Official DOD Photos indexed by topics. This is current and posted daily. Lots of high quality, action photos on HMMWVs, tanks, and other military vehicles, but can be a little hard to find. Format is jpg or you can display it and do a screen capture. If you request a full size photo to be downloaded, they ask you some questions. If you don't have an organization, or don't want to say, just fill in "Personal Interest", "Other" for organization type, and "None" for organization name -- they don't stop you from downloading. DefenseLink also has extensive clip art and graphics, including insignia and seals for the US services, on their multimedia page.
Defense Visual Information Center provides access to many DoD resources for photos, movies, audio-visual productions in their libraries. Among many other things, you can order CD libraries of photos covering Somalia, Haiti, Desert Storm and other campaigns. This page is an index to DVIC image files covering ships, aircraft, vehicles, many weapons systems, ordnance, and more.
Gulf War Photographs by the XVIII Airborne Corps History Office and its attached 116th 130th, and 317th Military History Detachments (MHDs) are presented on this website. They are representative of the types of photographic products generated during combat and contingency operations as historical evidence by the Army's historical program.
Eye on the Fleet Photo Gallery is a collection of current U.S. Navy images.
U.S. Marines in World War II Commemorative Series. This series of pamphlets was published for the education and training of Marines in their proud history. All titles from this series have been converted to the Web and can be accessed from links on this page. Many photos are with the text.
U.S. Marines Image Archive has hundreds of photos of current activity of the Marines.
The Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Health Affairs) and the TRICARE Management Activity have photos related to military medical organizations.
U.S. Navy News has a library of photos showing what is happening around the fleet. Weapons, ships, aircraft from current operations.
The Naval Historical Center's Photographic Section has extensive pictorial reference files on all aspects of naval history. The web site now includes a growing selection of on-line images.
Redstone Arsenel (Huntsville, AL) has an archive of historical photos that includes many missile and weapons programs.
Find More Information on the Web
There are many fine websites that have additional information on this topic, too many to list here and too many to keep up with as they come and go. Use this Google web search form to get an up to date report of what's out there.
For good results, try entering this: military photos. Then click the Search button.
