Photos Colour and Colourised Photos of WW2 & earlier conflicts

BravoZulu said:

First shot of WW2: Pre-dreadnought battleship Schleswig-Holstein attacks Polish positions in Westerplatte, from the harbour of Danzig, on the early morning of September 1st, 1939.
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On August 25 1939, German Battleship SMS Schleswig-Holstein enters the Harbour of Danzig. Under the pretext of making a courtesy call, she anchors just 150 meters from the Westerplatte WST. The Polish forces are immediately aware of the threat and put on alert. When the next day, Captain Gustav Kleikamp moves the ship to anchor just a little further upstream into the Port canal, Major Sucharski the commander in charge of the WST garrison puts his forces on an even higher alert.

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I would say the first shots were actually fired were during the Gleiwitz incident - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleiwitz_incident

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Connaught Ranger said:

I would say the first shots were actually fired were during the Gleiwitz incident - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleiwitz_incident

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Well done @Connaught Ranger, I'd actually forgotten about that raid

An SBC-4 of the New York Naval Air Reserve in flight, 1940. The red band indicates a section leader.

American MPs toasting bread over Mt. Vesuvius lava 1944.

On 29 January, 1936 in Vlissingen a contract was signed for the construction of two submarines in the Netherlands for the Polish Navy

Richard Rohmer (1924, Hamilton, Ontario), signed up in 1942 with the RCAF at the age of 18 and, in June 1944, flew a P51 Mustang Mk1 from RCAF No.430 Squadron over Normandy, France.


At 5:05 p.m. on July 17, 1944, while leading a section of four Mustangs on a low level reconnaissance, Rohmer spotted a 'huge' German staff-car with 'Brass' (High rank German officers).

"one in the right front seat, reading a map, and three in the back'. They knew i wouldn't attack so they kept going. "At that time, i didn't know it was Erwin Rommel but I could see it was Brass".


Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (Commander of German Defenses along Normandy), was located south east of Caen heading for Paris. Rommel was returning from visiting the headquarters of the I SS Panzer Corps.


Rohmer was not allowed to attack 'targets of opportunity' and called "Group Control Center" to report his sighting. Two Spitfires were sent in. A Spitfire piloted by either Charley Fox of 412 Squadron RCAF, Jacques Remlinger of No. 602 Squadron RAF, or Johannes Jacobus le Roux of No. 602 Squadron RAF strafed the staff car near Sainte-Foy-de-Montgommery.


The driver sped up and attempted to get off the main roadway, but a 20 mm round shattered his left arm, causing the vehicle to veer off of the road and crash into trees.


Rommel smashed with his head against the windscreen post and was thrown from the car, suffering severe injuries to the left side of his face from glass shards and three fractures to his skull. He was brought to a Luftwaffe hospital with major head injuries (assumed to be almost certainly fatal). (To this day it is not clear who of these pilots did actually hit the staff car)


Rommel eventually survived the attack but the incident forced him essentially out of the war and is considered by many as a turning point for the allies in Europe.


Rohmer later took part in the liberation of, Belgium and Holland. He returned to Canada after the war and studied law while still in the RCAF. He attained the rank of Major General after his retirement, as Chief of Reserves of the Canadian Armed Forces.


Rohmer currently lives in Collingwood, Ontario where he still flies and writes and has become one of Canada's most decorated citizens in history.

1939 Polenfeldzug (Polish campaign).
Three SdKfz 10/4 or 10/5 SP AA tractors, each mounting a 2cm FLAK.

German motorized troops advance into Polish territory; the speed of movement of the Wehrmacht compared to the Polish army allowed it to carry out the first large encirclements of the Second World War.

Rear Admiral John McCain Sr. Arriving in Guadalcanal, 11 August 1942

A YANK RUNAWAY NOW - A Navy PBY plane lands at the Guadalcanal airport shortly after the US Marines had captured the base. The Japanese had just completed the airport and had planned to use it as a jumping off point for air attacks on American ships.

"This is the eleventh of August 1942, and this is interesting because it is the first plane to land on the runway. And it is the commander for air in the South Pacific, a Rear Admiral McCain. He came in to inspect and decide whether it was possible to land fire planes or not. He decided it was, though really it wasn't."

From the Thayer Soule Collection (COLL/2266) at the Archives Branch, Marine Corps History Division.

A Northrop P-61 ‘Black Widow’

In a Fighter Group that was filled with larger than life personalities and characters, Major Pierce W. “Mac” McKennon stood out.

He was a showman who had an acute sense of mimicry and a gift for slapstick.

At the piano, he was the group’s one-man morale section.

The late Captain Robert H. “Von “ Wehrman of Old Greenwich, Connecticut explains

“Mac had the greatest method of dealing with pre-mission jitters not just for himself but for everybody.

You could always tell who was set for a mission that day - they got fresh eggs and bacon. A lot of us would be so worried or scared we could not eat. Not Mac, he ate like a horse and he would eat yours if you were going to leave it.

When he was through he would walk over to the piano in the corner of the mess, turn and look at each of us and say, ‘for those of you who are about to die’, then he would sit down and play “The Old Rugged Cross’ all the way through. When he was finished he would launch into the most outrageous boogie-woogie version of that tune that you ever heard and he never played it the same way twice!

You could not sit there in a funk while this was going on. When he was through, everybody was raring to go.

Mac loved boogie-woogie more than anything and I watched him countless times play ‘Tiger Rag’ on the piano in the Officers’ Club with a full pint of ‘bitters’ clenched between his teeth.

He would drain the glass never spilling a drop and he never missed a note!!” McKennon, earned his wings in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) prior to joining the USAAF's 4th Fighter Group.

Seventy-six years ago, the surrender of Nazi Germany's Sixth Army marked the end of the Battle of Stalingrad. It was a major turning point in the war.

The city fought fiercely for 200 days and nights.
At the final stage of the Battle of Stalingrad, more than 90,000 Wehrmacht soldiers, including 24 generals, were captured by the Soviet soldiers. On the occasion of the fall of the 6th Army, Hitler declared a three-day mourning in Germany.
Out of the 90,000 German prisoners captured in Stalingrad, only about 5,000 returned. Weakened by disease, starvation and lack of medical care during the encirclement, they were sent on foot marches to prisoner camps and later to labour camps all over the Soviet Union. Some 35,000 were eventually sent on transports, of which 17,000 did not survive. Most died of wounds, disease (particularly typhus), cold, overwork, mistreatment and malnutrition. Some were kept in the city to help rebuild.
Color by Olga Shirnina

French soldier looks from damaged building with a Michelin ad on it 1916.




Russian Moslem soldiers at prayer 1915



Russian scouts collecting battle debris for scrap. Aircraft MG and helmets.

Tiger 1 tanks of Heavy Tank Battalion 505, during the battle of Kursk, July 1943.

‘Iron Fists’: Two early production Stug III Gs secure a road towards Lysyanka in frozen wastelands of the Korsun-Cherkassy pocket in February 1944. The two assault guns belong to the 5. SS-StuG.-Abt. (Wiking) - then part of the famous ‘Gruppe Stemmermann’.


Colour by RJM

Russian soldiers prepare chlorine cylinders for a gas attack against German positions near Ilūkste, 1916
The soldiers are part of the Imperial Russian Fifth Army.


They are preparing a chemical attack against the German positions in Ilūkste area (modern Latvia).
In November of that year 1915 and in February, March and June 1916 the Russians tried in vain to regain the almost completely devastated the city of Ilūkste.
Chlorine was first introduced in the battlefield by the German Army in 1915. As described by the soldiers it had a distinctive smell of a mixture between pepper and pineapple. It also tasted metallic and stung the back of the throat and chest. Chlorine can react with water in the mucosa of the lungs to form hydrochloric acid, an irritant that can be lethal.
The damage done by chlorine gas can be prevented by the activated charcoal commonly found in gas masks, or other filtration methods, which makes the overall chance of death by chlorine gas much lower than those of other chemical weapons. Chlorine gas was pioneered by a German scientist later to be a Nobel laureate, Fritz Haber of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, in collaboration with the German chemical conglomerate IG Farben, who developed methods for discharging chlorine gas against an entrenched enemy.
(Color by Jecinci)

The Warsaw Uprising 1944


Insurgents on a barricade on Zgoda Street, Warsaw, Poland.



Transporting a wounded man.
Photo taken in the garden in the back of the



German light machine gun training, in the garden at the back of the property at the 7 Mazowiecka Street.


Love in the times of the apocalypse

US Marines clearing a bunker with an M2-2 flame thrower at Iwo Jima, February 1945.

Quite interesting to see how close civilians could get to ships like Tirpitz. Taking pictures was strictly forbidden though, which makes this picture all the more special

In the foreground, the starboard 6" guns of a Nelson-class battleship's secondary armament. In the center, the other Nelson sister. In the background, several Queen Elizabeth and Revenge-class battleships. Colorized by Alex Wolf.

"3rd Battlecruiser Squadron" HMS Inflexible and HMS Indomitable , as seen from their sister HMS Invincible. Late 1915 or early 1916