I knew the photo, but it takes on a new life with the caption:
Gary Austin surfing Texas style!!
That's what a surfboard needs; four big radials, a nose, tail
and ventral gunners positions.
As to this photo:
I've never believed it's genuine, unlike many others. Why not? It exhibits all the hallmarks of a wartime paste-up composite of two photos - a view of a B-17F flying overhead, added onto a pretty standard vertical recon shot of landcape. The telling points to that are:
- A distinct 'outline' drawn in all the way around the aircraft
- Note how the port-outer's join to the wing is 'fatter' than the real thing, while the wingtip's the wrong shape.
- Touched in props - note the port inner's overlap onto the fuselage...
-the 'dent' in the rear of the wing behind that engine - sure you might get a dent, but there'd be crumpling or damage, and that trailing edge is thin around that, not thick as 'drawn' here
- the 'missing' wing is created, I believe, by making a rough cut-off to a complete wing - note no debris, or wing interior is visible, just a nice sharp edge.
- The nose is also telling - the 'guns' are credible, but (I think) drawn in, and there's that complete outline again, which visually doesn't match the guns in the same area.
Contributory factors are the touching up of the star on the fuselage, and a 'soft' graininess often seen on re-photographed composite photos. Also, where was the photographer? The ground shows he's looking exactly straight down (the street grid at the bottom) yet this B-17 has swung right under his own aircraft. Sure, it could be a ball turret gunner's photo, but they didn't usually have cameras in there, it was cramped enough. It could be a waist gunners show with his aircraft in a bank, but...
Sure, it
could be a genuine shot badly retouched.
My money is it's a German propaganda photo, someone's taken at face value, and then taken as genuine since.
No criticism of Jack's excellent selection, but sometimes things aren't what they seem. Proof either way welcome, and
please don't even
mention PhotoShop...
Regards,
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