It’s perhaps the most iconic photograph in the history of the United States military. The snap the Associated Press’s Joe Rosenthal took of U.S. Marines of the 28th Regiment, 5th Division raising the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima, Japan during one of the bloodiest battles of the Second World War. You know, the one that inspired the memorial above in Arlington, Virginia.

It’s as American as Abe Lincoln’s top hat or Mount Rushmore or baseball.

And it might be wrong.

That is, the identities of the service members we’ve been told all these years are in the photograph, could be incorrect. One military man specifically.

So the Marine Corps have officially opened up an investigation, thanks to two amateur historians asking a bunch of very good, educated questions.

Navy Corpsman John Bradley, whose own son wrote a bestselling book on the subject titled “Flags of our Fathers” (which was later turned into a movie directed by Clint Eastwood), might not be in the picture after all.

The others ID’ed — and always have been — are Marines Rene Gagnon, Ira Hayes, Harlon Block, Michael Strank and Franklin Sousey.

So what caught the two history buffs eyes? What threw Eric Krelle and Stephen Foley off? It had to do with Bradley’s job (as the only non-Marine) as a corpsman — i.e. a combat medic.

This from the Washington Post:

According to the two, and reported by the AP, Bradley is wearing a cartridge belt designed to hold rifle magazines and has wire cutters hanging from one of his pockets. As a corpsman, he would likely not have a rifle and have no need for wire cutters. Corpsman, in World War II, were mostly only armed with a pistol so that their hands were free to work on patients.

The historians also point out issues with Bradley’s pants and the presence of a hat underneath his helmet in the photo. According to the AP report, Bradley’s pants are not cuffed in the photo but other pictures from that day show his pants cuffed. Also, in other photos from the day he is not wearing a hat under his helmet, according to the report.

Stay tuned to the blog for more on this developing story.

UPDATE: The United States Marine Corps finally admitted it. They messed up.

This from USA TODAY:

The Marine Corps acknowledged Thursday it had misidentified one of the six men in the iconic 1945 World War II photo of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima.

The investigation solved one mystery but raised another. The Marine Corps investigation identified a man who has never been officially linked to the famous photo: Pvt. 1st Class Harold Schultz, who died in 1995 and went through life without publicly talking about his role.

“Why doesn’t he say anything to anyone,” asked Charles Neimeyer, a Marine Corps historian who was on the panel that investigated the identities of the flag raisers. “That’s the mystery.”

“I think he took his secret to the grave,” Neimeyer said.

The Marine officials came to two certain conclusions after their research. John Bradley, a U.S. Navy corpsman, was NOT in the photo. Schultz, they say, definitely was.

Schultz, who was described by family as “quiet and self-effacing”, might have only mentioned that he was one of the flag-raisers one time, while sitting down to dinner with his stepdaughter, decades after the monumental event.

“Harold, you are a hero,” she said she told him. “Not really. I was a Marine,” he said.