Talk:Frank Kelso

Awards and decorations

Noticing that he had more ribbons in the picture than awards mentioned in the article, I set about reconciling them. It seemed at first that the pic has a strange color balance, such that some of the ribbons did not match well against the graphics in the WP articles for those decorations. This seems to be partially true – gold-colored bands show as white in the picture, perhaps because they are partially metallic and more reflective than the ribbon material around them. Make sense?

Others, though, like the Legion of Merit, point out that our article's graphic (File:Legion of Merit ribbon.svg) may well be wrong, too. Looking at the Institute of Heraldry description, that ribbon is supposed to be crimson. I've mentioned that at Talk:Legion of Merit § Color.

So, here are the best matches I can come up with, based on our docs, the IoH site, and the ribbon checker, in the positions shown in the pic:

		Submarine Warfare insignia
	Defense Distinguished Service Medal[Note 1]		Navy Distinguished Service Medal
Legion of Merit		Meritorious Service Medal		Navy Commendation Medal
Navy Achievement Medal		Navy Unit Commendation		Navy Meritorious Unit Commendation
Navy Expeditionary Medal		National Defense Service Medal		Sea Service
		SSBN Deterrent Patrol insignia
		Joint Chiefs of Staff badge

^{Note 1} Not pictured. Probably awarded late in career – after the 1993 picture.

Look right? Any problems with adding these additional awards to the list in the article? They are supported by the picture, which is official. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 00:13, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

While I concur with your interpretation of what the photo shows, I'm not so sure I would count on the photo itself as a reliable source. It may not show some of his awards (e.g. Defense Distinguished Service Medal) so this would certainly not be a source for those, and it's always possible we could be misinterpreting something. Though I certainly would not accuse him of it, there is also a disturbing and well-documented trend of military officers assuming awards which they were never officially given, in order to further distinguish their career. I've seen a few such notable cases chronicled in Army Times in the past few years. For these reasons, I would stick to print sources for anything more than photo captioning. That's my 2¢ anyway. Wilhelm Meis (☎ Diskuss | ✍ Beiträge) 04:46, 12 July 2013 (UTC)