I found some photos of the battle of midway in a stack of photographs. How can I tell if they are real?

by StinkerAce

here is the link to the pictures I found. How can I tell if they are real? They all say J.R. REED on the back of them. They could possibly be photos of photos but is there any way of finding out who took them and if they are the originals?

Bacarruda

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Some of your photos match up with official U.S. Navy photos of the battle (mostly from this collection here - https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/wars-and-events/world-war-ii/midway.html). A couple of interesting things.

  1. Your photos are large prints of the original photos, not the cropped images the Navy has published.
  2. Some of your photos don't match any I've been able to find in the Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC) website or the ibiblio online archive of Midway photos. So you seem to have found some unpublished and not-widely-known Midway photos! I don't know if your photos count as unknown or "lost," since the Navy may have copies in their archives that they haven't published online.

I would reach out to the NHHC as see if they have photos that match your shots! https://www.history.navy.mil/about-us/contact.html

You may also want to reach out to the National Archives, which now holds the originals of many Midway photos, including some of the ones you have.

Here are the matching photos:

  1. https://i.imgur.com/5IbcZyY.jpg (uncropped) and a photo taken just a few minutes apart https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineLibrary/photos/images/g20000/g22231.jpg
  2. https://i.imgur.com/FdlpF9p.jpg and https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineLibrary/photos/images/g410000/g414423.jpg (cropped)
  3. https://i.imgur.com/qdUeTDa.jpg and https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineLibrary/photos/images/g20000/g21694.jpg
  4. https://i.imgur.com/MwBTh67.jpg and https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/wars-and-events/world-war-ii/midway/80-G-32241.html

And some unmatched ones:

  1. https://i.imgur.com/8kYFlz7.jpg (same scene, but different angle from another photo) https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineLibrary/photos/images/g10000/g17061.jpg
  2. https://i.imgur.com/LHrcg0p.jpg
  3. https://i.imgur.com/pHbDNyD.jpg
  4. https://i.imgur.com/OPbvNPC.jpg - a D3A "Val" dive bomber is shot down during the 1st air attacks on Yorktown around noon.
  5. https://i.imgur.com/ajD3N71.jpg - A B5N "Kate" torpedo bomber attacks at around 2:45

The two photos of the air attacks are from Hiryū's 4 June attack on the USS Yorktown. They're probably the most interesting of the "unmatched" photos!

Resident Midway expert u/When_Ducks_Attack would be a good person to ask about this, as well.