Recently we have been contacted by collectors about a comment on a photo which is published in our book “The References” 1930’s-1940’s on page 514-515. It shows a group of German “Kampfschwimmer” units in the summer of 1944. The orignal paper photo (17.5 x 23.5 cm, see photo on the left) belongs to our library and has been scanned in 2015 to be published in our book on watches of the Ref. 3646 / Type D.

The comment in question was provided to us as following (read grey underlined text):

It’s IMPOSSIBLE say the color of one strap viewing one pic in black and white, ALSO when the pic are digitalized and manipulated with color filters. The straps appear here in “clear” colors are simply because the original pic are edited with “warm filters” for get more contrasts in the final results.

So, I’m absolutely sure (because I check the image and turned to his real black&white tones, the color of this picture you see here are NOT REAL.

Its easy for a photographer see this image are turned with filters, if you see the skin of the people are unreal, and some clothes are unreal color, because are turned for make more “beautiful” the pic.

The photo, which is part of a photo album that belonged to a veteran who took the photos by himself during his service in the navy, has been published in a preview earlier here. Further photos of this veteran’s album are published on page 274, 284, 414, 474, 475 (chapter II.IV) and page 671 (chapter IV). It is interesting to see how the colors of the straps have changed over the decades, knowing that not many of these original straps survived until today.

The photo above was taken today (December 14, 2017) with a mobile phone to show that we hold the original photo in our library and did not used any filters or manipulated the photo to create a wrong impression to the reader. [Ralf Ehlers & Volker Wiegmann]