A good understanding of eyewitness memory is invaluable in criminal investigation. However, we frequently see eyewitness principles operating in other fields in which accurate observation is important as well. These range from geographic exploration to physical science (e.g., Sharps, 2024) to history—even to relatively simple, elemental facts of relatively recent history.

This is readily demonstrated in a comparatively unimportant but very basic aspect of relatively recent history: military colors used in the Second World War. This is not, of course, an area of major historical concern. However, it is a realm in which we would expect a relatively high degree of accuracy to be available. Examples of the relevant military hardware still exist, there are still living first-hand witnesses to that hardware, and there is a vast hoard of historical references to the subject.

Most of those historical references contain black-and-white photographs, of course, which are of very limited utility in ascertaining original colors. But if we want to know, for example, the interior color of the cockpit of a Liberator bomber, why can't we just go to the excellent aviation museums in Atwater, California, or Pima, Arizona, and take a look?

Because it won’t really help. The aircraft interiors, thoroughly illuminated for decades through transparent turrets and cockpits, have faded from their original shades. We can, of course, develop a reasonable approximation of the colors involved; the aircraft........

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