U.S. NAVY PHOTOGRAPHER'S MATE (PH) RATING BADGE

When the Photographer’s Mate (PH) rating was merged into the newly established Mass Communication Specialist (MC) rating along with Lithographer (LI), Illustrator Draftsman (DM), and Journalist (JO), many of the duties performed by Sailors in the PH rating were allocated to the job of Photographer job within the MC rating. But certainly not all of them were—and a look at the history of the rating makes it clear why this is so.

The rating of Photographer was established in 1921, but changed to Photographer’s Mate in 1942. Six years later the Aviation Photographer’s Mate (APH) service rating was created—but at the same time the PH rating was augmented by the absorption of a slew of Specialists and their duties: Photographic Specialists, Motion Picture Production, Laboratory, Photogrammetry, and V-Mail.

(V-Mail, or “Victory Mail,” deserves a special note here. Designed to reduce the costs of mailing hundreds of thousands of paper letters sent from U.S. troops overseas as well as ensure no operational secrets were revealed within correspondence, the letters were opened, censored, and transferred to film for shipment to Stateside. Once there, the filmed versions would be printed on paper and delivered to the recipient.) In 1952, The Aviation Photographer’s Mate rating was merged back into the PH rating.)

Because such a wide variety of specialists had been subsumed by the Photographer’s Mate rating, the scope of jobs under the umbrella of the rating was astonishing. Photogrammetry, for example, is the process of making surveys and maps based upon photographs; PH Sailors were tasked with providing visual documentation of events in the air, on the surface, and even below the surface, which could then be used in direct support for intelligence center functions and to support aerial reconnaissance systems—pretty much what Photogrammetry is all about

Motion Picture Production also fell under the purview of Photographer’s Mates, as they were given the job of providing “motion media” for use in a variety of fields. And the job of Laboratory Specialists? That was now a duty for Photographer’s Mates, who exposed and processed light-sensitive material.

Given all this—along with the rapidly changing world of media technologies and media—it made nothing but sense for the Navy to bring PH Sailors into the Mass Communication rating 2006. But the Photographer’s Mate lives on in the form of a specific MC job title of “Photographer,” and in a format that’s more true to the spirit of the rating rather than the catch-all it had become under the system prior to the change.

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U.S. NAVY PHOTOGRAPHER'S MATE (PH) RATING BADGE