Lt Colonel Dan McGovern was a witness to some of the most momentous events of the twentieth century. But he was far more than just a witness. He was very much a participant.

As a pioneering and courageous combat cameraman, Dan provided his adopted country with compelling visual records of some of history's most critical moments – so compelling and significant in fact that they now reside in the Library of Congress and the National Archives.

Born in Ireland in 1909, Dan witnessed the Irish War of Independence as a young boy. In 1922, after the partition of Ireland took place at the conclusion of the war, his family was forced to emigrate to the United States. Only six years later, at the age of eighteen, he was in the American military, earning the nickname “Big Mack” due to his lanky 6 foot 5 inch frame.

Dan was proficient with both still and motion picture cameras, and that talent served him well. At the onset of World War II, he was chosen to be President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s photographer and cameraman, and later was tapped to establish the Army Air Force's Combat Camera training school in Hollywood, California.

Dan deployed to Britain with one of the first Combat Camera units he organized at the school, and went on several dangerous bombing raids with the Eighth Air Force. He managed to survive two crash landings – and kept fiming all the way down! His footage was used in the classic 1944 documentary Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress, which you can watch below. In October 1943, he received a combat commission.

With the war in Europe winding down, now Lieutenant McGovern was sent to Japan to help document the impact of the U.S. bombing campaign, and ended up producing an invaluable record of the aftermath of the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was among the first outside witnesses allowed into Japan after the attacks, filming in those two devastated cities and throughout the defeated country for the next eight months.

Reluctant to let the general public see how devastating the destruction in Japan was, military authorities classified much of Dan's work. Fearing censorship that could continue indefinitely, Dan quietiy made copies of the footage. When a congressional committee debated a proposed bill about the safety of civilian nuclear power plants in 1966, they requested the now declassified footage, but it was lost in a vault somewhere and couldn't be found. Dan knew where to find the backup copies, ensuring the committee had access to crucial documentation.

When the war was over, an almost Forrest Gump-like Dan continued to find himself present at historical events. He worked with the former German scientist Wernher Von Braun to document testing of captured German V2 rockets. He filmed atomic detonation tests in the Nevada desert and on Enewetok and Bikini Atolls in the Pacific. While stationed at Holloman AFB, New Mexico, he took footage for Project Bluebook and debunked the claims that UFOs with aliens on board had crashed in nearby Roswell.

Lieutenant Colonel McGovern was the commander of the Audiovisual Squadron at Vandenburg AFB, California, when he retired from active duty in 1963, but not from his speciality. He joined the civil service, working as chief of the Photographic Division at the Air Force Flight Test Center Laboratory at Edwards AFB, California, and later at Aerospace Audiovisual Service at Norton AFB. He also spent 15 years working for General Dynamics at Wright Paterson AFB, Ohio. After an undoubtedly unique life, he passed away in 2005 at the age of 96.

That’s only a short, very inadequate summary of a truly amazing career. But you can learn a lot more from Dan himself, thanks to the Library of Congress. Dan’s oral history resides in the Library’s Veterans History Project collection. You can watch it below. (There will occasionally be a few seconds of test patterns during the video.)

Ready for even more? Joseph McCabe, an Irish journalist who lives in Dan’s hometown, spent 20 years in a labor of love researching Dan’s exploits. He detailed his meticulous research in a fascinating 432-page book about Dan entitled Rebels to Reels – A Biography of Combat Cameraman Daniel A. McGovern USAF. You can get a taste for the book and some of its many illustrations of Dan's work – and view film footage he took at Hiroshima – at the Rebels to Reels website that accompanies the book.