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Guide to the Persian Gulf Command - Iran Photo Album
Bernath Mss 144
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Table of contents
Title: Persian Gulf Command - Iran Photo Album
Date (inclusive): ca. 1942 - 1945
Collection number: Bernath Mss 144
Extent: .2 linear feet (1 half-size document box)
Repository: University of California, Santa Barbara. Library. Department of Special Collections
Santa Barbara, California 93106-9010
Physical location: Del Sur
Language of Material: Collection materials in English
None.
Copyright has not been assigned to the Department of Special Collections, UCSB. All requests for permission to publish or
quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Head of Special Collections. Permission for publication is given
on behalf of the Department of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply
permission of the copyright holder, which also must be obtained.
Persian Gulf Command - Iran Photo Album. Bernath Mss 144. Department of Special Collections, Davidson Library, University
of California, Santa Barbara.
Purchase, 2005.
Scope and Content of Collection
During World War II, the U.S. Army's Persian Gulf Command maintained a supply line through Iran for the benefit of our Soviet
allies. The first American troops of the PGC arrived in Iran in December 1942 and quickly took control of the Trans-Iranian
Railway, which had been completed only three years earlier. The Persian Gulf Command moved material and supplies from port
cities on the gulf through the mountains to Iran's border with the Soviet Union, by train and by truck, until the end of the
war in Europe in the spring of 1945.
The album contains photographs of American military personnel, buildings, and equipment; Iranian civilians; the Iranian landscape
all along the supply route; and famous mosques in the cities of Teheran, Isfahan, and Qum. Many of the photos are amateur
snapshots, while a number were taken by Army service photographers and are credited to Covello, Wilkinson, Campbell, and Mitchell.
Some of these have been reproduced elsewhere. The cover of the album features the Persian Gulf Command insignia.