Article Death in the Air
Type: Photo Hoax.
Summary: Photographs of World War One aerial dogfights were, decades later, discovered to have been faked.
A book called Death in the Air: The War Diary and Photographs of a Flying Corps Pilot was published in 1933. It contained numerous pages of spectacular aerial photographs of World War One dogfights supposedly taken by a pilot in the Royal Air Force.
Since very few photos of aerial fighting had been taken by the military, the photographs caused a great sensation. Interest in them grew even greater when they were exhibited at galleries in New York and Philadelphia.
It wasn’t until 1984 that the photos were discovered to be fake. Far from being authentic pictures of aerial dogfights, they were actually the darkroom creations of Wesley David Archer, a model maker in the film industry. All the planes seen in the photos were merely small models superimposed on aerial backgrounds.
The Photos
Below are examples of three of the faked photographs, along with the captions that accompanied them in Death in the Air.
“His wings suddenly collapsed and floated past me”
“Just as he left the burning plane”
