EDIT: Still can't find it, but here's a list which includes a number of other wartime photos which are proven or suspected to have been staged in various ways: https://militaryhistorynow.com/2015/09/25/famous-fakes-10-ce...
When I volunteered for a small newspaper I did my usual, sometimes significant, editing (Lightroom-level, not PS) and didn't see anything wrong with it (neither did they; of course edits look better than plain JPGs). But I can appreciate how this becomes much more important with increasing range. Imagine if Pete Souza spoiled 8 years' worth of Obama presidency imagery just because he edited them in some obscure way.
On the other hand, there certainly is a difference between working with the information (pixels) you've captured, and inventing information by either drawing on the image or creating new data.
This methodology falls squarely into the gray area between those two.