Here's One For Dej, (and all other Lanoe Hawker fans)

[RAF_Louvert 101]

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This weekend I ran across a page from "Popular Flying" magazine, February 1935 issue. The scan of the portrait was beautiful but it was distorted, and the original page was heavily stained on the hinge edge and the text was very fuzzy. So I spent an hour or so fixing those issues and relettered the bulk of the text.

 

 

 

 

Enjoy.

 

Cheers!

 

Lou

 

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[Dej 17]

Very nice, Lou. Good clean up job. Thanks for posting it.

 

I suspect that photo was taken when Hawker was back in England prior to taking No. 24 Squadron out to France. Sometime between October 1915 when he was invested with the V.C. and February 1916 when he was promoted Major. Strange that the caption author forgot to mention the D.S.O. though, as the ribbon's clearly visible.

Edited October 25, 2010 by Dej

[RAF_Louvert 101]

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My pleasure Dej, you are more than welcome Sir. I imagine you are correct about the timing of the photo, and I was puzzled as well about the failure to mention Hawker's DSO. This photo also reminded me of another item that has puzzled me in the past regarding the RFC maternity jacket, and that is the collar brass, (or in this case, the lack of same). I'd have thought official regulations would have required the wearing of collar brass to designate branch of service, yet you only see them about half the time on this article of RFC clothing, while on the general service tunic it is there always. Perhaps they were not required and instead it was left to the wearer's personal preference.

 

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[Dej 17]

Interesting observation. Whilst I can't currently back up the hypothesis I'd make a stab at it changing as the War goes on rather than being random.

 

I'm also half-recalling, half conjecturing that with the general service tunic, the collar brasses were oft employed to denote the wearer's former unit and 'attached' status, but early in the war of course because the RFC hadn't recruited 'off it's own bat' so to speak.

 

However, you're very much more the uniform expert than I.

[Dej 17]

Inspired by Lou's cleaning up of the Hawker picture, I thought I'd respectfully have a go at putting some colour to it.

 

Here's the result:

 

[RAF_Louvert 101]

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Oh that is just OUTSTANDING! Very well done, Dej. You could have had a job a century ago hand tinting B&W photographs. Who knows, maybe you did.

 

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[Olham 164]

Well done, Dej - you hit the right touch of tinting this photograph, as if you earned your livelyhood with it.

[NS13Jarhead 6]

Very nice job with the color (or is it colour?). It looks just like many of the period pieces that I've seen.