The Hoax Photo Archive: Military

About the
Hoax Photo Archive

Images are categorized by theme, technique of fakery, and time period. Click on a thumbnail for more details about each photo. Included in the database are photos that are "real," but which have been suspected of being fake, as well as images whose veracity remains undetermined.

Techniques of
Photo Fakery

There are six basic techniques of faking a photo:

1: Inserting details. This includes placing an element from one photo into another to create a composite image, reproducing a detail of the photo by cloning it, superimposing an image onto another, or drawing-in details.

2: Deleting details. This is usually done by extending background elements over the unwanted detail. Or one can crop out the unwanted detail.

3: Manipulating elements within the photo. For instance, adjusting the color, resizing details, or rotating or moving details.

4: falsifying the caption.

5: Staging the scene. This is considered fakery particularly in photojournalism. Varieties of staging a scene include using models and cutouts and inserting a prop into the scene.

6: Taking a photo at a trick angle. The most common example of this is the use of forced perspective.

The Hoax Photo Archive
A catalog of photo fakery throughout history

Years Archived:
1840-1900 | 1900-1919 | 1920-1939 | 1940-1959 | 1960-1979 | 1980-1999 | 2000-2004 | 2005-Present

Category: Military

Interior of the Secundra Bagh. Human bones were disinterred and scattered around to recreate the aftermath of a battle. (March or April 1858)	A Sharpshooter’s Last Sleep. Civil War photographers used a corpse as a movable prop. (Taken in 1863. Exposed as a fake in 1961.)	Ada Emma Deane’s Armistice Day Series. Spiritualists claimed this image showed the spirits of dead war heroes. A newspaper identified the faces as living football players. (November 1924)
Bloody Sunday, 1905. Soviet textbooks claimed this was a photo of 1905's Bloody Sunday massacre in St. Petersburg. It was actually a reenactment of that event. (1925)	Death in the Air. Spectacular images of World War I dog fights were eventually exposed as photos of model airplanes. (Published in 1933; debunked in 1984.)	The Falling Soldier. Despite allegations that Robert Capa staged this famous war photo, historical research shows that he did not. (September 5, 1936)
The Nazi Air Marker Hoax. Pictures of unusual shapes in farmers' fields led to fears that the Nazis were planning an air attack on the United States. (August 10, 1942)	The Master Race. The British Army created this picture of an unkempt German soldier as part of its propaganda efforts. (May 8, 1943)	Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima. This is probably the most famous photo from World War II. It was not staged, despite persistent rumors to the contrary. (February 23, 1945)
Red Army Flag Over Reichstag. This photo was both staged and doctored in an attempt to create a Soviet version of the Americans' Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima image. (May 2, 1945)	Missing in Action. The Pentagon concluded that the men in this photo were not American fliers missing in action in Vietnam. Instead, they were Soviet farmers. (July, 1991)	A Sonic Boom. An unmanipulated photo of a cone of condensation forming around a Navy jet. (Taken in 1999. Found online in 2001.)
Helicopter Shark. Despite what this photo shows, a Great White shark has never attacked a helicopter in San Francisco Bay. (Circulating online since Aug 2001)	British Soldier in Basra. This digital composite slipped past the editors of the LA Times and ran on the paper's front page. (Created March 29, 2003.)	Trophy Turkey. Newspaper captions failed to mention that the turkey Bush was holding was a decorative centerpiece not intended for consumption by the troops. (Thanksgiving 2003)
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