Survivors

[Sisemen]

This is cribbed from a Facebook post but thought it worthy of an airing here:

Two crews from No. 106 Squadron RAF Bomber Command photographed in front of Lancaster ZN-B R5573, at Syerston, Nottinghamshire, on the morning after the raids on Genoa 22-23 October 1942. The fantastic colourisation is by Richard James Molloy, the image is from the collections of the Imperial War Museum.

The two men who went on to fly on the Dambusters raid are easily recognisable – ninth from the left, Flg Off David Shannon and fourth from the left, his navigator, Plt Off Danny Walker. Three more members of Shannon’s crew are also identified: Sixth from the left is Flt Sgt Bernard Holmes, rear gunner; seventh from left, Flg Off Douglas McCulloch, mid upper gunner; tenth from left, Sgt Arnold Pemberton, wireless operator.

Bomber Command crews suffered an extremely high casualty rate of 44.4 percent: 55,573 killed out of a total of 125,000 aircrew, with a further 8,403 wounded in action and 9,838 becoming prisoners of war. So it was surprising to learn that all those identified in this photograph survived the war unscathed.

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[Mrs Ex-Ascot]

Fantastic photo! Just out of interest, how did they manage to colourise this picture so well?

Amazing that so many of one crew seemed to come away unscathed.

[ian16th]

Fantastic photo! Just out of interest, how did they manage to colourise this picture so well?

In the dim distant past as a young lad, I used to hand 'tint' photographs.

It was a matter of practice, practice and gain experience. I thought I got quite good at it.

Then the price of colour film and its processing became affordable.

Edited to add his link

[ExSp33db1rd]

Colouring photo's. My father was the town photographer in the days before colour photography, requests for "coloured" photographs were printed on the usual black and white Matte ( not glossy ) paper then bleached and dunked in a solution of Pot.Bromide, which brought them back as a pale sepia image, which was then hand coloured by an artist on the premises employed for this specific purpose. Took a few days to produce the final result.

As a lad I was allowed to "assist" the bleaching and re-developing process, the bleach being a highly poisonous liquid, yellow - can't remember the name ! - product created from mixing crystals in water, after which I would eat my tea, probable not bothering to wash my hands first. No 'Elf and Safety considerations in those days. I've survived.

[Mrs Ex-Ascot]

Ian Thankyou for the interesting link. Wonderful artsmanship!