With regard to availability of old photos and such, it just seems hard to believe that there weren't ANY great close up photos of A-004. And that's what keeps me believing there is a super-secret warehouse somewhere in Houston with thousands of shoe-boxes filled with development photos from the early space program. Someday we'll find it (unless of course that's where they're keeping the Roswell photos
)
Well, for all I know, there indeed might be a shoebox full of the original negatives of great A-004 photos....but that shoebox may be in the attic of a former scale champ who left the hobby nearly 40 years ago (“mine-mine-mine” syndrome).
But I suspect it is one of two sort of related things. Even though NASA tends to have some pretty long photo numbers, I suspect there may have been more taken for preflght than were officially logged in. Or else, maybe they were all logged in, but only certain more interesting “good ones” made the cut to go into the photo archives, or at least make it into a photo index. Because I too find it hard to believe that there were not a lot more photos taken than the ones that have been found.
Or, the negatives may all exist in places but there are no prints, and no indexes, so if there was say a warehouse of photo negatives and you wanted to see all of the ones related to the Little Joe-II program....it would not be possible. You’d have to at the least have some photo number ranges to work with.
But my impression from the few times I got some prints (or tried to get some) in the early 1990’s, was you had to somehow come up with the photo numbers, that it was not too likely anyone at NASA would be able to help much, if at all, beyond maybe a printed list of “popular” photos or maybe a file folder with prints in it. The example of the file folder with prints is exactly what I ran across at the NASA History Office in 1993, literally some photo prints in file folders. Except there was nothing new (and little old) there on the Little Joe-II, it was a limited number of Saturn-IB photos, with some very nice assembly photos of SA-201 and very notably no similar types of assembly photos of SA-205 (Apollo-7).
Also, as far as a printed list of Joe photos, the only one I’ve ever been aware of is the one Tom Beach compiled from what he found, no NASA list. Much of which Tom derived from when he got to personally go thru photo prints at JSC during a NARAM in the early 1980’s, to write down photo #’s to then get prints made from. And some from the photo #’s listed in the Centuri Brochure.
If NASA ever were to get around to digitizing every negative they have, then it might be possible for people like us to find the photos we want. Even if the scans were low-res to just ID the image for later getting a print made but in these modern times, it would be best to scan them at high res (heck, even if they had lo-res thumbnails and charged $2 to $5 for hi-res files to pay for scanning EVERYTHING, it would still be way better and cheaper than doing photo prints, and not being able to find many great “lost” photos).
But back to photos stashed in shoeboxes. Well, here is a link to a website where someone’s old photo collection is being sold off, one by one. This link alone is just for the Little Joe-II, for QTV and A-001. Unfortunately, there are no high-res scans, only moderate sized samples, and lots (most?) of the prints are already sold. For many of these pics, NASA Photo #’s do exist. Of these pics, I think the only close-up one I have EVER seen is #S-63-13544/2, seen about half-way down the page (LJ II QTV Fin Attaching). That one was in the old Centuri Historical Brochure. Some of the other photos on that page, the Pad assembly, QTV parts arrival, and photos of the Recruit and Algol motors, are amazing to see now. Five samples attached below, plus the link here:
https://www.apollomissionphotos.com/index_apollo_littlejoe.html
So, armed with those photo numbers, we just contact the NASA-approved photo contractors about getting prints made up for us, right? Well....not so fast. Remember that warehouse of negatives? Well, WHICH warehouse, where? The “S” umbered photos means photos at JSC in Houston. “H” numbers mean NASA HQ in Washington. Well, it seems like all the photo #’s on that website are S numbers, so the negatives are at JSC. Well, not so fast, again. In the mid-1990’s, when Tom Beach contacted JSC about getting some more prints done up, they told him they no longer had the negatives. Since the program was flown at White Sands, they shipped the negatives to White Sands. OK, so Tom contacts White Sands. And White Sands says “What photos?”. So, “Lost Ark of the Covenant” Warehouse Syndrome. The negatives might well be in a warehouse in White Sands, or a warehouse at JSC, or maybe that past scale champ hijacked the shipment and his attic is even more full of Joe data. Neither Tom or I have tried contacting them since then to see if anyone ever did find where the Joe-II negatives were. Frankly, I had already bought the photos I was interested in buying, so I did not have a big reason to check into it more. Certainly that does not mean that because I have photos, that I do not care that others could also buy prints. But anyone who does want to get prints can contact JSC Public Affairs to find out about the status of the photos, if they ever found the negatives, or if White Sands finally found them.
Or, and I hate to even think of how likely this may be, that nobody at JSC or White Sands has tried to find them for nearly 15 years later, so they are not only still lost but nobody may even remember they were lost. Or, hey, it’s not Apollo-11, it’s not shuttle, and it’s not about Orion-Ares....so does anyone there care?
Oh, two years ago I did want to get a print of something totally different. A Black Brant-V. I had a known NASA Photo number, an “S” number (it is in Peter Alway's Rockets of the World). Provided it to someone at JSC public affairs to look it up, but they could not find it. Of course, that was not a White Sands photo, offhand I do not recall but it likely was a Wallops photo....but again being an “S” number, the negatives were supposed to be at JSC. And even if they moved them elsewhere....JSC should have some record of that, but they did not.
- George Gassaway
