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Vintage bomber photos including inflight crews at work


Bob Hudson
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I picked up a box full of old 35mm black and white negatives this week. I knew there were a couple of images of aircraft in them, but as I go through them there are some surprises.

 

They came from the estate of a pilot who started flying in WWII and went on to B-52's, B-47's, etc.

 

The photos appear to start with his college days at The Citadel before he entered the Army.

 

I've scanned some random film strips. These first ones appears to be WWII:

 

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I think this must be Army nurses. Near the end of WWII he was flying B-29's out of the Marians, so perhaps that's where these were taken.

 

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These are sometime after the US Air Force was formed. The uniforms still have SSI's. This appears to be some big event, perhaps a rollout of some new aircraft.

 

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These are from another filmstrip (a film strip is four-six frames of film).

 

I like how he photographed crew at work. So often wartime photos are mostly buddies mugging for the camera in front of the barracks. These are nice candids.

 

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These are sometime after the US Air Force was formed. The uniforms still have SSI's. This appears to be some big event, perhaps a rollout of some new aircraft.

 

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Great photos! Thanks for posting.

 

The rollout of the new aircraft is the B-50, the re-engined successor to the B-29.

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I am scanning the slides at 2400dpi which allows me to crop out small sections and see enlarged details:

 

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I love finding old military photo albums with the black and white prints, but most of the prints are rather small. You can scan and enlarge them to see details, but not at all like you can with camera negatives. Here's an example of a film strip (about six inches long) with four images. Some are taken too bright or too dark and don't show any detail, but two do:

 

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Here's what the negatives look like on the computer screen after scanning and getting reversed so it's a positive image.

 

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Now i extract one of those images and scale it down to fit better on the forum:

 

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And here are a couple of details from the control panel:

 

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Again, the original size of each image on film is 24×36 mm or less than one inch by 1.5 inches: there's a lot of detail packed into that small image. One website says that to scan most of the detail on a 35mm image, you'll need to scan it as an 87 Megapixels image. But if you had an 87 megapixel camera you still could not shoot an image with the same level of fine detail as film.

 

The moral of this story is to take good of those old negatives and slides: they are among the most valuable visual archives of the past.

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I love finding old military photo albums with the black and white prints, but most of the prints are rather small. You can scan and enlarge them to see details, but not at all like you can with camera negatives. Here's an example of a film strip (about six inches long) with four images. Some are taken too bright or too dark and don't show any detail, but two do:

 

Again, the original size of each image on film is 24×36 mm or less than one inch by 1.5 inches: there's a lot of detail packed into that small image. One website says that to scan most of the detail on a 35mm image, you'll need to scan it as an 87 Megapixels image. But if you had an 87 megapixel camera you still could not shoot an image with the same level of fine detail as film.

 

The moral of this story is to take good of those old negatives and slides: they are among the most valuable visual archives of the past.

 

What scanner are you using? That's some good resolution and clarity.

 

I can fix a lot of the under/over exposed images...been doing that for years. Most images made in the 30s 40s were contact prints from medium format negatives. 35mm is a different story with regards to making contacts. 10 years ago, I was using a nice Agfa Duoscan that had great transparency-scanning functionality and had hi resolution (optical) that made extremely clear, high rez scanning a breeze.

 

True that DSLRs aren't big, fat 80+mp images, but when shot it RAW, the detail is there...even when poorly exposed...and can be easily corrected. I am going to be looking in the next year or so for my next DSLR body (I wait a couple of gens before I upgrade).

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What scanner are you using? That's some good resolution and clarity.

 

I can fix a lot of the under/over exposed images...been doing that for years. Most images made in the 30s 40s were contact prints from medium format negatives. 35mm is a different story with regards to making contacts. 10 years ago, I was using a nice Agfa Duoscan that had great transparency-scanning functionality and had hi resolution (optical) that made extremely clear, high rez scanning a breeze.

 

True that DSLRs aren't big, fat 80+mp images, but when shot it RAW, the detail is there...even when poorly exposed...and can be easily corrected. I am going to be looking in the next year or so for my next DSLR body (I wait a couple of gens before I upgrade).

 

 

It's an Edson Perfection V500: I hate Edson printers, but their scanners do a good job. I started scanning on dedicated film scanners that cost $10K in the early 1990's when we were scanning color slides for use in fine art books, but since my needs now are not so ambitious, this works just fine, although it's a pain loading curled up film strips into the film adapter that sits on top of the glass scanning bed. Most of the images shown here had some exposure adjustments done in Photoshop and a lot were cropped.

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I totally agree! These are some amazing photos! ...Kat

 

You just don't often see photos taken inside the aircraft in flight. Also, the shots of bombers in flight were taken by someone else flying in the same formation, again unusual.

 

This negatives came in a metal box with a built-in image viewer (basically a light behind a piece of white plastic). They were not labeled, so it's been a random process pulling them out and scanning. Each film strip takes about four minutes to scan, after the film holder has been loaded up and placed in the scanner, so between that and going to through negatives, it's a slow process, but fun seeing what comes up.

 

This looks like flyers on a ship: i suspect this is leaving the Marianas to head back to the states.

 

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The 20th AF patch is on the right shoulder now:

 

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Outstanding FS! A veritable treasure trove of original images! It's candid pics such as these which often unexpectedly provide proof that item "x" was actually worn at a given time or that insignia "y" was used...etc.

 

 

Ian :thumbsup:

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Outstanding FS! A veritable treasure trove of original images! It's candid pics such as these which often unexpectedly provide proof that item "x" was actually worn at a given time or that insignia "y" was used...etc.

Ian :thumbsup:

 

So true. I found some more photos from the group shown above of what appears to be a rollout of a US Air Force aircraft. I haven't scanned it yet, but I found an image showing it was at Boeing in Washington State.

 

Here's some photos of Air Force personnel, and this really has the look of being VERY early USAF uniforms:

 

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In going back and looking at a previous image from this event, I now think this was the June 1948 introduction of the B-50 Superfortress. The guy who took these photos was a B-29 flyer at the end of WWII and this aircraft was a revision of the B-29.

 

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This Three-star was there for the show, wearing the new blue USAF hat, but Army shoulder patches:

 

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I wonder if this was the General's ride? The engines are running and it appears ready to taxi out to the runway.

 

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