Photos Colour and Colourised Photos of WW2 & earlier conflicts

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Air Chief Marshal Sir Frederick Bowhill (1880-1960), Air Officer commanding RAF Transport Command, England, July 1943.

 

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French troops in Italy. July 1944.

 

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Portrait of Air Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory (1892-1944), new chief of RAF Fighter Command, pictured seated at his desk holding a model aircraft (possibly Avro Manchester or Handley Page Hampden) in his office in England in December 1942.

 

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Two United States Army Air Forces crew members of the 8th Army Air Force, stand together beside the tail guns of a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress at an airbase in England in May 1943.

The aircraft carries the emblem 'Meet the Fifty Twins' on its tail.

 

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The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CV-6) arriving in New York City (USA) on 17 October 1945. She was in New York City for the Navy Day celebrations on 27 October.
17 October 1945

 

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Portrait of Commander in Chief of the Belgian Army and Free Belgian forces, General Victor van Strydonck de Burkel (1876-1961), posed wearing military uniform in London in January 1944.

 

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Portrait of Major General Stanley Woodburn Kirby (1895-1968), recently appointed as Deputy Chief of Staff, British Element, Control Commission for Germany posed in uniform in September 1944.
Stanley Kirby is Head of Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories in Germany at the end of World War Two.

 

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Allied leaders pose in the courtyard of Livadia Palace, Yalta, during the conference. Those seated are (from left to right): Prime Minister Winston Churchill (UK); President Franklin D. Roosevelt (USA); and Premier Josef Stalin (USSR). Also present are USSR Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov (far left); Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew Cunningham, R.N., and Air Chief Marshall Sir Charles Portal, R.A.F. (both standing behind Churchill); and Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, USN, (standing behind Roosevelt). Note ornate carpets under the chairs.

 

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Interior view of a state room in the New Reich Chancellery in Berlin, Germany circa 1940.

The building was designed by the architect Albert Speer and completed in 1939.

 

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View of a Fairey Barracuda torpedo dive bomber pilot assisting the training of prospective deck landing control officers as they learn the job with a dummy landing deck at an airfield in the United Kingdom in July 1944.

 

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View of General Frederick Alfred Pile (1884-1976) General Officer Commanding Anti-Aircraft Command pictured standing on left holding field glasses whilst out on an inspection visit to a defensive position Anti-Aircraft gun crew in England in December 1942.

 

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Nepalese Gurkha Tul Bahadur Pun (1923-2011) with his wife Thanmati following the presentation of his Victoria Cross Nepal, March 1945.

 

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Portrait of Lieutenant General Lewis H. Brereton (1890-1967), Commander of the First Allied Airborne Army, September 1944.

 

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British gunners having to man their coastal defense naval battery gun in a reinforced bunker, wearing dresses, during the rehearsal for a pantomime. - Shornemead Fort, Kent, England - 1940

 

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Commander Richard Hetherington "Dick" O'Kane
(February 2, 1911 – February 16, 1994)

United States Navy submarine commander in World War II, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for commanding USS Tang in the Pacific War against Japan to the most successful record of any United States submarine ever. He also received three Navy Crosses and three Silver Stars, for a total of seven awards of the United States military's three highest decorations for valor in combat. Before commanding Tang, O'Kane served in the highly successful USS Wahoo as executive officer and approach officer under noted Commander Dudley "Mush" Morton. In his ten combat patrols, five in Wahoo and five commanding Tang, O'Kane participated in more successful attacks on Japanese shipping than any other submarine officer during the war.

 

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Belgium, late 1944.
A US Technician Fifth Grade works on his typewriter.

It’s possible that this is the Henri Chapelle Cemetery, which started out as a temporary cemetery in September 1944, but became a permanent cemetery after the war.

 

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Two US soldiers attend to the wounds of an Australian solider in New Guinea, taken during the actual advance during the early weeks of the Battle of Buna-Gona, 28 December 1942.

Following the Allied victory at Milne Bay across August and September, the Japanese advance across New Guinea had been brought to a virtual stand-still. As the historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote a few years after the end of the war, in 1950:

'...the enemy had shot his bolt; he never showed up again in these waters. The Battle for Milne Bay was a small one as World War II engagements went, but very important. Except for the initial assault on Wake Island, this was the first time that a Japanese amphibious operation had been thrown for a loss ...

Furthermore, the Milne Bay affair demonstrated once again that an amphibious assault without air protection, and with an assault force inferior to that of the defenders, could not succeed.'

US General Douglas MacArthur now turned his attention to liberate New Guinea, as an initial step towards the Allied push northwards to reclaim the Phillipines, beginning with the Battle of Buna-Gona, on New Guinea's north-east coast (16 November 1942 – 22 January 1943).

The experience of the US 32nd Infantry Division - just out of training camp and utterly unschooled in jungle warfare - was nearly disastrous however. Young officers, with no field experience, were completely out of their depths in the most challenging of conditions and circumstances.

MacArthur relieved the division commander and on 30 November instructed Lieutenant General Robert L. Eichelberger, commander of the US I Corps, to go to the front personally with the charge "to remove all officers who won't fight ... if necessary, put sergeants in charge of battalions ... I want you to take Buna, or not come back alive."

The Australian 7th Division under the command of Major General George Alan Vasey, along with the revitalised US 32nd Division, restarted the Allied offensive. Gona fell to the Australians on 9 December 1942, Buna to the US 32nd on 2 January 1943, and Sanananda, located between the two larger villages, fell to the Australians on 22 January.

New Zealand-born George Silk (1916-2004) was Australia's second official war photographer, joining photographer Damien Parer in the Middle East in May 1940.

It was, however, in the Pacific theatre that Silk made his preeminent reputation. Profound problems with Department of Information’s refusal to pass for publication photographs Silk had taken at great risk of Australians in action against Japanese troops around Buna, around New Year’s day of 1943 led the photographer to resign his position with the department, both in protest and because he was in a state of complete exhaustion. Silk then worked for the American Life magazine, for whom he photographed action in the Pacific and in Europe.

 

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German Grenadiers carrying a casualty in an improvised stretcher, behind them is a Panzer IV Ausf.G Nr. 212 of Panzer-Abteilung 21, 20 Panzer Division.
Russia, January 1944

 

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Lt. Ernest Childers is awarded the Medal of Honor.

Official caption on reverse:
"Signal Corps Photo 12 Apr 1944 (Italy) A 100% American receives his nations highest award! Lt. Ernest Childers, a Native American from Tulsa, Oklahoma, is here being decorated with the Medal of Honor by Lt. General Jacob L. Devers, Commander of American Forces in Mediterranean Theatre."

Childers was born in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, on February 1, 1918. A Muscogee (Creek) Indian, he graduated from the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School in north-central Oklahoma. Coincidentally, Jack C. Montgomery, who also earned the Medal of Honor in World War II for service in Italy, graduated from the same school.

In 1937, Childers joined the Oklahoma Army National Guard and was assigned to the 180th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division. After the U.S. entry into World War II, he was sent to Europe and by September 22, 1943, he was a second lieutenant serving with 45th Infantry Division, 180th Infantry Regiment, in Italy.

On that day, at Oliveto, he single-handedly killed two enemy snipers, attacked two machine gun nests, and captured an artillery observer. For these actions, he was awarded the Medal of Honor seven months later, on April 8, 1944.

He was the first Native American to earn the medal since the Indian Wars of the 19th century.

Childers' official Medal of Honor citation reads:
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at risk of life above and beyond the call of duty in action on 22 September 1943, at Oliveto, Italy. Although 2d Lt. Childers previously had just suffered a fractured instep he, with 8 enlisted men, advanced up a hill toward enemy machinegun nests. The group advanced to a rock wall overlooking a cornfield and 2d Lt. Childers ordered a base of fire laid across the field so that he could advance. When he was fired upon by 2 enemy snipers from a nearby house he killed both of them.

He moved behind the machinegun nests and killed all occupants of the nearer one. He continued toward the second one and threw rocks into it. When the 2 occupants of the nest raised up, he shot 1. The other was killed by 1 of the 8 enlisted men. 2d Lt. Childers continued his advance toward a house farther up the hill and, single-handed, captured an enemy mortar observer. The exceptional leadership, initiative, calmness under fire and conspicuous gallantry displayed by 2d Lt. Childers were an inspiration to his men.

Childers reached the rank of lieutenant colonel before retiring from the Army. He died at age 87 and was buried at Floral Haven Memorial Gardens in his birthplace of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.

 

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Portrait of Brigadier Sir Fitzroy Maclean (1911-1996), 1st Baronet and politician, June 1944.