For almost seven decades, sailors attached to Fleet Combat Camera Pacific at Naval Air Station North Island deployed with air, ground and sea combat units to document action in overseas hot-spots.

On Friday, a ceremonial bell tolled one last time for this historic Navy unit.

Fleet Combat Camera Pacific — “ComCam” — was known over the years by several names, but its mission never changed. According to a statement from the unit, it provided “direct imagery capability” to the Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Military Departments, combatant commands and joint task forces during wartime operations, worldwide crisis, contingencies and joint exercises.

The total number of “billets” — military jobs — being eliminated are four officers, 50 enlisted personnel and 31 enlisted reserve components.


Sailors assigned to Combat Camera could expect to be trained for highly-specialized roles, such as Diver, Aircrew and Search and Seizure.

About 200 Combat Camera veterans, sailors and civilians gathered at the Island Club on NAS North Island in Coronado for an emotional, bittersweet ceremony.

The orders shuttering Combat Camera, read at the end of the ceremony, said the closure was part of a “budget-saving initiative to eliminate billets that do not directly contribute to improving war-fighting capability.”

Earlier Friday morning, the Atlantic Fleet’s Combat Camera element was also decommissioned in Norfolk, Virginia.


Combat Cameraman Yeoman 1st class Anthony Ardisone with some of the memorabilia he has collected related to Combat Camera uniforms and equipment representing roughly the years 1944 to 1991. (John Gibbins / San Diego Union-Tribune)

The mood of the day was summed up in a speech by retired Lt. Cmdr. Rick Naystatt, who once served as Combat Camera’s commanding officer.

“Events like this are kind of like a funeral of sorts that brings together far-flung family one last time,” he said. “We all feel the loss, but we’re happy to see each other again.”

One attendee, Mark Elder, served at Combat Camera during Vietnam. When he left active duty, he came back as a reservist.


He said Combat Camera gave him a pass to go anywhere.

“They gave you an assignment, you got in a plane, you got to go,” he said, describing his experience deploying with a squadron in Vietnam in 1970. “They knew you were coming and they took care of you. You had a special card from (Combat Camera) that said you will render assistance to (us) in all things...It was kind of like a get out of jail card. I wish I’d kept it.”

Elder remembered one squadron — VAL-4 — and how the commanding officer took him under his wing.

“The Black Ponies,” Elder said, “were a light attack squadron. They were the only (Navy) squadron that was fixed-wing in Vietnam.”


He said he got to eat, sleep and fly with the officers in the squadron.

Elder was emotional about the Combat Camera’s closure.

“It hurts so bad,” he said. “I don’t know.”

Navy Cmdr. Doug Houser, the last commanding officer of Combat Camera, called the experience an honor, and told attendees to be proud of what they accomplished when they were there.


“I cannot tell you how proud I am to be part of your team,” he said. “Take comfort in knowing you are part of something much bigger than yourselves.”

Before the end of the ceremony, Houser had Combat Camera veterans stand and be acknowledged by the decade they served. Veterans from each decade since the 1940s stood.

Chief Petty Officer Jon Rasmussen was the last “Officer of the Deck” for Combat Camera, a watch from which he was relieved as the orders to close the command were read. He said the ceremony was emotional for him.

“I’ve grown as a sailor, photographer, and the things I’ve experienced at this command have done a lot to make me who I am,” he said.


Combat Cameraman Yeoman 1st class Anthony Ardisone, on the right, a reservist with the unit, and Dave Weideman, left, who served 15 years of his career in Combat Camera before retiring in 2004, looked at a vintage Speed Graphic camera. (John Gibbins / San Diego Union-Tribune)

Petty Officer Third Class Jason Isaacs was one of the last sailors to report to Combat Camera. He said he was intimidated reporting to the historic unit.

“I felt really nervous at first when I first got here, when I looked at the history and saw the men and women who served before me, and the work that they’d done,” he said. “It looked like I had a lot to live up to.”

Isaacs is staying in San Diego at a Navy public affairs unit.


Rear Adm. Robert Durand, the Navy’s vice chief of information, said to preserve Combat Camera’s legacy, the Navy needed to add capacity to its communication units.

“Where that capacity’s going to reside will be in different places,” he said.” Some of it will be in our Navy pub affairs support element, some of that is going to be organic in the ships themselves.”

Durand said sailors who had served at Combat Camera should be proud.

“I think each sailor who served here will always feel that Combat Camera was part of what made them who they are” he said. “They look back at the past and they look to the future and they feel they’ve been part of something really special.”


Naystatt, reservedly defiant in his speech, said he didn’t agree that Combat Camera had worn out its usefulness.

“I’ll be honest with you, I don’t agree with it,” he said, adding that change was always part of the mission. “Situations change. Adaptations have to be made. Hell, every ship I was ever stationed on is decommissioned now.”

At the end of his speech, Naystatt told sailors to save their command rocker-patches somewhere special — “so you’ll have them when Combat Camera is re-established,” he said.

80 year old Kurt Kinnamon, left, who was with the Combat Camera Group for 57 years of the 67 years of it’s existence, shook hands with Commander Tom Cotton at the Disestablishing ceremony for the unit. Kinnamon served as both enlisted and as a civilian. (John Gibbins / San Diego Union-Tribune)


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