Restoring the Sierra-Sue Halifax bomber photo
The photo arrived in poor shape. Torn across one corner, the emulsion lifting in patches, a heavy stain spreading over the fuselage where the image had sat against damp card for decades. Two lines of handwriting cross the sky above the aircraft. “For Sierra” reads one. “The Bomber, Halifax” reads the other, in the same hand.
The aircraft is a Handley Page Halifax, nose art reading Sierra-Sue, a pin-up figure painted below the cockpit and a row of bomb symbols marking completed operations. I don’t know yet who wrote the inscription or who Sierra was. What I do know is the man who flew in her.
The Gunner
Sergeant Maurice “Bobby” Singer served as an air gunner with RAF Bomber Command. He trained first in Oklahoma, then in Canada, before taking his position as tail gunner in Halifaxes. He was 21 when his aircraft, LK759, was shot down over Germany on 25 February 1944.
A German night fighter caught the crew and put the bomber into a spin. Flying Officer Alfred Wilson Shirley, flying as second pilot alongside Captain James Milton, opened the escape hatch and told Flying Officer Thompson to jump. Thompson got out. He was the only one of the crew to survive, injured on landing and taken prisoner. He later gave an account of that night, naming the crewmates he lost by the nicknames they used for each other, “Taffy,” “Higgy,” “Paddy,” and the rest.
Bobby Singer died alongside five other crew members that night. All were RAFVR. Sergeant Frederick Barker, the flight engineer, was 20. Pilot Officer Kenneth “Higgy” Hignett, the bomb aimer, was 31. Pilot Officer Albert “Paddy” Middleton, an air gunner like Bobby, was 23. Flight Lieutenant James “Taffy” Milton, the pilot, was 22. Flying Officer Alfred Wilson Shirley, the second pilot, stayed at his post to let Thompson reach the hatch first.
The six men were buried first in Bueren, Germany. In May 1948, their remains were moved to Cologne Southern Cemetery, where they lie together still.
A photo this old carries damage in layers. The tear needed rebuilding from the surrounding texture, matching grain and tone so the repair sits invisibly against the original. The stain across the fuselage had eaten into the midtones, so I worked section by section to recover the metal’s sheen without flattening the detail underneath. The handwriting stayed untouched.
I kept this one in black and white. Colourising a photo like this risks guessing at details nobody can verify eighty years later, the exact shade of the nose art, the paint on the aircraft.
Bobby Singer’s nephew brought me this image along with a photo of Bobby himself as sergeant, and others from the same collection, each one a marker in a short RAF career. I’ll be working through more of them in the coming weeks.
If you have a damaged photo from a family archive, wartime or otherwise, get in touch. I’d like to see what’s in it.