On Fri, 4 Jan 1998 THOMAS E JORDAN Email address wrote: AAVS (Combat Camera) a short (very short) History Me I came in at the tail end of WWII did the Korean thing and got some of the Viet Nam story, retired in 71 with 25 years. We were still Army Air Forces and did 17 weeks of Basic at Lackland then on to Motion Picture Tech School at Ft. Monmouth NJ (I had been working after school at Paramount Newsreel Corp. out in Long Island City near the Signal Corps Motion Picture studios). From there to Eglin FL and on to a long tour in Philippine, returned to Travis CA. to complete enlistment, then traveled down to March and reenlisted, they were in the process of reactivating George at Victorville. Then the call came out. The Korean conflict broke out, they discovered that there Combat Cameramen were scattered all over the Air Force. The Air Pictorial Service under the Secretary of the Air Force was created. I was transferred to Wright-Paterson where they were putting together the nucleus of what was to be AAVS (Wright-Pat was just a staging base) the plans called for sending two Combat Camera Sqdns (1st & 2nd) for immediate deployment to Germany and Japan and setting up Hqs in Calif at Burbank Apt, but first we (the 3rd) was sent first to Long Beach CA while they were getting Burbank ready. When we moved up to Burbank and activated two more Sqdns the 4th & 5th. The 3rd CCS was slated for Japan to reinforce the 1st, the 4th CCS to England to backup the 2nd which was in Germany. The 5th CCS was a Hqs & Training Sqdn and to stay at Burbank. Later we were transferred to MATS (MAC) as a Sub-Command. We had moved our Hqs and Training was moved to Orlando after Korea, winding up at Norton AFB (Ironic the base closed and we deactivated) AAVS Combat record KOREA - VETNAM - GRENADA - PANAMA - DESERT SHIELD/STORM. So you can say AAVS was activated in the 1950's and was deactivated in 1993. That was the beginning of Aero Space Audiovisual Service (AAVS - Combat Camera), there was a lot more between Korea and Desert Storm.