Mystery Cranwell Photo
 

Can anyone help explain this photo, which hangs on the wall in Operations at Cranwell? One of the participants in the centre of the photo has been painted out at some point. As can be seen from the close up his legs are still there, but the rest of him has been removed!

Anyone know who it was or why he was expunged from history??


http://s29.postimg.org/eww7mn9fb/image.jpg

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That would be the rotten sod who habitually piddled in the Met. rain-gauge.

S Met O. Roger Hackwell and I probably called down a murrain on him during one of our "Harp lager and an omelette" lunches. I think Harp had just been introduced in the Mess, and the glasses [empty] were sold at 2/6- each.

I still have half a dozen of the chunky glasses with handles. Indestructible.

I remember this photo hanging in the briefing room at Leeming circa 1980.

When I graduated from Sleaford Tech, the graduation photo was taken some days before the graduation - wings were held in place by Velco. Can only surmise that the deleted failed to graduate and was crudely air-brushed from history. At least his legs graduated!

Can only surmise that the deleted failed to graduate and was crudely air-brushed from history.


Perhaps its the first student to be "Chopped"?

Fairly poor job on reconstructing the roundel too.

I blame Stalin.

Seems a tad harsh on the bloke.
Could have just "airbrushed" the Wings rather than the whole body:eek:

Perhaps he left the RAF under "less than honourable circumstances"?

IIRC in the course photo album on TWCU if you were chopped your face was inked over. If you VW'd the graffiti was less politically correct.....

Seems to me inadequate organisation, whereby you can set up the graduation photo, when there's still a chance of students being chopped

Maybe he went back to the future......

If memory serves, there were a couple of pics like this at Cranwell. As stated above, course photo taken before graduation, chap fails FHT and gets chopped. "Airbrushed" out.

langleybaston - even Google Translate is struggling with your post. A few early Friday afternoon shandies perchance?

Must have been the legs issued to Douglas Barder?

Talking about airbrushing people out of photos, at second son's wedding to a beautiful and very clever Danish girl, there were 8 "parents - parents of both were divorced and remarried or re-partnered. The photo of the bride and groom with the "parents" arrived - with a gap between Mrs W and bride's Father - in the week after the wedding the bride's mother had sacked her boyfriend, and had him airbrushed out of the photo. Made it look like Mrs W and bride's Dad were not talking!

I've also been one of 8 'parents' at a wedding ... interesting/scary/tense scenario. ;)

Brilliant!

On our Graduate Entry course at RAFC, one chap broke an ankle not long before he was due to take his FHT.

So The System decided to take 2 grad photos; one included him (with his plaster cast carefully concealed) while the other did not - in case he bonged his trip.

We took rather a dim view of this, so the 'without' photo had people holding hands, pulling silly faces, picking their noses, flies unzipped etc. and could never have been used. Fortunately he passed his FHT and the final grad photo was fine!

,

Things never were the same.........................

IMHO where it all stated to go downhill..............hat, coat...............

I was on a Flt Cdt entry, then went to University for a few years of applied Chipmunkery and drunken debauchery interspersed with the odd lecture - it beat the heck out of Knocker, Ferris and Chimay! But when I returned to RAFC to finish off OT and to do my JP course, the atmosphere just wasn't the same.

I think it went downhill when they let oiks from that secondary modern place in Bedforshire become Cranwell Flt Cdrs..... Things became even worse when it merged with the College...:eek:

Maybe the chap under the roundel has four legs.

After 11 years as a civilian and TA Officer (not necessarily in that order) I returned to the RAF, but in the Admin Sec Branch, as a flt lt with no seniority. My first F1369 debrief from my OC Admin, who had filled every rank in TG 17 from SAC to WO, then made wg cdr started as follows " Flt Lt W is an ex Cranwell cadet, and it shows in all he does." One of the best moments of my life.