In mid-March of 1943, an unnamed US Army photographer visited Ondal Air Base, then under construction northwest of Calcutta in British India. He was a combat photographer with the 10th AAF Combat Camera Unit, but this was a noncombat project: accompanying an American Red Cross team as they opened “Club 690” for the base’s enlisted men. The photographer’s assignment, it seems, was to obtain pictures appropriate for release through US newspapers to inspire and reassure the American public. He completed that assignment, capturing newspaper-ready photos of heroic bomber crews, hard-working mechanics and more. He took other photos as well, some showing less pleasant realities of an American military base in colonial India. Twenty-six of his Ondal photographs (together with brief notes about each) are preserved in the US National Archives, and 18 are available here.

All wartime bases hold secrets. Some secrets involve military tactics, such as the struggle by B-25 bomber crews to find an effective technique for destroying the bridges they targeted in Burma.  Other secrets were related to propaganda, such as the colonial government’s claim there was no shortage of food at a time when the price of rice was rising dramatically and the region was on the verge of a devastating famine. Ondal’s biggest secret in March of 1943, however, was both local and broadly strategic. The US was developing Ondal not just as a base for medium-range B-25 bombers but also as the site of Ondal Advanced Chemical Park. By early 1945, Ondal ACP would house a stockpile of nearly 100,000 mustard, phosgene, cyanogen chloride and other chemical bombs that could have been—but never were—delivered to the Japanese home islands on long-range B-29 bombers operating through China.

Which secrets, if any, do you think the photographer knew when he took his photos at Ondal?