166th Signal Photo Company (United States)

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166th Signal Photo Company was the official photo unit in the 89th Division of George S. Patton's Third Army during World War II. Those serving with the US Army Signal Corps' 166th Photographic Unit landed in Normandy with the 29th Infantry Division. Many of the unit's veterans, such as Russ Meyer and Stanley Kramer, went on to success in the world of cinema and photography.

The 166th was comprised of a five-man team- a driver, a motion picture photographer, a still photographer, a clerk and an officer. The footage would be gathered up and sent to London or France where it would be deemed newsworthy and unclassified.The 166th sent three hundred thousand photographs to the army Pictorial Service during the war. Another twenty thousand feet of film was shot weekly.

While serving in the U.S. Army Signal Corps as a cameramen during World War II, troops filmed groups of prisoners being trained in Britain for a suicide mission behind enemy lines prior to D-Day. This outfit was the genesis of the storyline behind the movie The Dirty Dozen (1967).

Cult film director and 166th Sergeant Russ Meyer also filmed General George S. Patton's Third Army in its penetration into Germany in 1945. Some of the footage he shot can be seen in Patton (1970) and Eisenhower: True Glory (1945) an Oscar winning short subject documentary.

References

• McDonough, Jimmy (2005). Big bosoms and square jaws : the biography of Russ Meyer, king of the sex film. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0-224-07250-1. 

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