Webmaster's Note: This document will be expanded in the near future.

WW I Portable Searchlight A French unit deploys a small searchlight in trenches somewhere in the Vosges Mountains sector of the Western Front. The second soldier from the left is handling the light, while the soldier at the bottom seems to be carrying the power cables (from the Webmaster's collection).

WW I Motorized Searchlights Wills' Cigarettes cards from 1916 depict searchlights mounted on trucks used by both the British (top) and the French (bottom) (from the Webmaster's collection).

Between the Wars A precursor to the 60" carbon arcs used by WW II AAA units, this photo shows a General Electric high-intensity open-type searchlight mounted on Cadillac truck, circa 1918 (photo courtesy General Electric Co.).

A Navy Model A U.S. Navy version of an early Sperry searchlight, ca. 1930 (photo courtesy Corbis, from the Hulton-Deutsch Collection).

Sperry AA Searchlights November 22, 1933 — The Army Engineers today announced the awarding of a contract to the Sperry Gyroscope Company, Brooklyn, New York, amounting to $2,015,900 for 104 sixty-inch high intensity anti-aircraft searchlights. 61 of these lights will be of the portable type and 43 of the mobile type. These searchlights are of very high powered type producing about 800,000,000 beam candlepower (largest in the world). The beam of these lights is visible for as much as 100 miles. They will be used to supplement the present very limited number of antiaircraft lights possessed by the United States Army. The funds for this contract, awarded the Sperry Gyroscope Company, are part of the National Recovery program and are released by the Public Works Administration. It is estimated that this contract will mean the employment of over 1,000 men for a period of 15 months, including the work to be carried on by some 72 subcontractors who will furnish parts to the Sperry Company for use in the assembly of the searchlights. The distribution of work and its consequent effect on reemployment due to the awarding of this contract may be gauged by the fact that the manufacture of parts will be carried on in some 16 states. The purchase of these searchlights is an important step in the modernization of the equipment of our Army. [ Photo and caption courtesy Science Service. ]

Secret Searchlight This old-model searchlight, perhaps of 1930s vintage, was mounted on a disused railroad flatcar (note the "trucks" sans wheels right below the two men) and was hidden from sight during the day in the garage-like structure at right. The photo appears to be from early in WW II and was taken somewhere in the Pacific (from the Webmaster's collection).

Cathedral of Light Massive searchlight beams surround the stadium in Nuremberg, Germany, during one of Hitler's rallies in support of the Nazi Party, 1936. Rally "designer" Albert Speer conceived of using vertical-pointing searchlights to create a symbolic "Cathedral of Light" (photo courtesy Corbis, from the Hulton-Deutsch Collection).

Nazi's Symbolic Use of Searchlights A grand review of party leaders fills the searchlight-illuminated Zeppelin Field in Nuremberg during the Nazi Party rally of September 1937, another example of Speer's use of vertical-pointing searchlight beams to lend a Wagnerian aura to such bombastic proceedings. Within five years, Nazi searchlights would be directed against the Allied bomber streams aimed at the heart of Germany (photo courtesy Corbis, from the Hulton-Deutsch Collection).

Still Used by Modern Forces A Hungarian airman operates a kerosene-fired searchlight used to illuminate an airfield in Southern Hungary, 1994. (photo courtesy Corbis).

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