Photos Colour and Colourised Photos of WW2 & earlier conflicts

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SS-soldiers test the beach of Scheveningen on their motorcycles, 1940, Scheveningen, The Netherlands.

German soldiers stationed on the coast regularly do agility exercises with their motorcycles on the beach along the North Sea.
In the relatively calm first year of the war, things seem quite relaxed
like here at Scheveningen with the Pier in the background. Many German soldiers took camera's with them from the 'Heimat' and made holiday snapshots to send home.
It's a misconception btw that the complete Wehrmacht used modern vehicles in the beginning of the second world war. In 1940, when Germany advanced into Western Europe only 10 percent of the attacking forces (sixteen out of the 157 divisions) were fully motorized. The Germans still relied heavily on horses and bicycles at that stage of the war.
Colourised PIECE of JAKE

 

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August 1943, near Catania, Sicily, Italy. A German paratrooper 1.Fallschirmjäger-Division defender of route 115 in a hole in the ground, wearing the typical Fallschirmjägerhelm with binoculars in his hands.

Credit Kriegsberichterzug XI.Flieger-Korps.
The Fallschirmjäger-Stahlhelm was a variant of the iconic German Army M1935 steel helmet (Stahlhelm) with a shell lacking the projecting visor and deep, flared rim, and issued to Fallschirmjäger Truppen, paratrooper units, within Luftwaffe. The helmet was so designed in order to lessen the risk of head injury on landing after a parachute jump; also to reduce the significant wind resistance and resulting neck trauma. Early Fallschirmjäger helmets were manufactured from existing M1935 helmets by removing the undesirable projections, which were omitted when the new design entered full production. The modified shell also incorporated a completely different and more substantial liner and chinstrap design that provided far more protection for German airborne troops.

 

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Freddy Marky, Brian Pettit, Billy Few, Bobby Few and Peter McDermott (from left to right) 'playing' Air Raid Warden near the railway tracks in the South London working-class area of Lambeth. Freddy's dog Bob lays down comfortably in the sun.

During the Battle of Britain, approximately 7,736 children are killed and an equal number is seriously injured. At the outbreak of
the war, the British government has a huge evacuation plan in operation codenamed Operation Pied Piper, ironically a reference to the menacing German fairy tale of the Pied Piper.
Some three million British, most of them children, are displaced from
the cities to the countryside. But some are also sent to Canada, United States, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
For the children left behind in London, the Blitz is not only terrifying, but also endlessly boring during those eight months.
Most schools are used to accommodate civilians, or were destroyed by bombs. In the West Ham district by the beginning of 1941, only sixteen out of the sixty municipal schools were still operational.

 

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De Havilland Mosquito Mk II of No. 157 Squadron RAF refuelling at Hunsdon, Hertfordshire. 16 June 1943

No. 157 Squadron was the first squadron to use the Mosquito as a night fighter, reforming on 13 December 1941 specifically to operate the type (after a short incarnation towards the end of the First World War).
The first patrols were flown on the night of 27-28 April 1942 over East Anglia but the first confirmed kill did not come until 22/23 August 1942.
As the threat from German bombers faded, No. 157 squadron received a number of Mosquito FB.Mk VIs, and began to fly intruder missions over occupied Europe. In November 1943 the squadron moved to Cornwall and increasingly concentrated on the intruder role. After a brief interlude flying defensive patrols over the Irish Sea, in May 1944 the squadron moved to East Anglia, where it joined No.100 Group and carried out intruder missions to support the heavy bombers.
(Source - IWM Non Commercial Licence - CH 10312
P/O H V Drees, Royal Air Force official photographer)
(Colourised by Benjamin Thomas from Australia)

 

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British 7th Armoured Division officers and a Canadian captain inspect a German PzKpfw IV Ausf H tank of Panzer Lehr Division, one of two knocked out by a 6-pdr anti-tank gun of the 6th Durham Light Infantry, 50th (Northumbrian) Division, near Douet, on 10 June 1944.

 

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US Captain Willard V. Horne, Communications Officer hands the BC-603 receiver of the SCR-528 mobile radio to Lt. Stanley James.
They are an M4A3 Sherman B-17 from 'B' Company, 25th Tank Battalion, 14th Armored Division in the Alsace town of Ohlungen. March 24, 1945.

(Note the M-1 Carbine leaning against the Sherman turret)
(Willard V. Horne died in January 2015 aged 93)
(Photo source - US Army Signals Corps)
(Colourised by Royston Leonard from the UK)

 

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Two 5Th Army US soldiers observe the wreckage of a Sherman tank that went off the road and fell on the beach in the area of Terracina, Italy,1944,

 

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RAF armourers clean the barrel of a Hispano cannon removed from a Bristol Beaufighter NF Mark VI of No. 96 Squadron RAF, as WAAFs unload boxes of 20mm cannon shells by the aircraft at Honiley, Warwickshire.

Colour by RJM

 

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Hawker Hurricane Mk I flown by Flight Lieutenant John Evelyn Scoular, commander of 'B' Flight, No. 73 Squadron RAF, being refuelled and re-armed between sorties at Reims-Champagne, May 1940.

(Photo source - © IWM C 1551)
Colourised by Doug

 

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German paratroopers in North Africa, WW2

 

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Warsaw insurgents at the barricade on Zgoda Street, Warsaw, 1944.

Colonel Kazimierz Iranek-Osmecki, head of Department II (information and intelligence) of the Home Army Headquarters, describes the need to take part in the patriotic uprising:
“It took five years of occupation in Warsaw to feel what the people and soldiers felt. You had to live day by day, hour by hour for five years in the shadow of Pawiak Prison, you had to see your friends disappear one by one during those months, you had to feel your heart contraction in your chest each time.
You had to hear the sounds of gunfire every day until you stopped hearing them, got used to them like church bells, had to silently assist on a street corner on a sad winter evening or a bright spring morning, at the execution of ten, twenty, fifty friends, brothers or strangers, randomly taken from crowd, huddled against the wall, with stiff lips and eyes expressing despair....or pride. You had to experience all this to understand that Warsaw had no other option but fight.
Colour by Mikolaj Kaczmarek

 

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WW2 - December 1943. Shortly after Operation Taifun, on the deck of a Kriegsmarine Raumboot, heading for Samos, Greece.

© Karl Ottahal/ECPAD
The R boats (Räumboote in German, literally "clearing boats) were a group of small naval vessels built as minesweepers for the Kriegsmarine (German navy) before and during the Second World War. They were used for several purposes during the war, and were also used post-war by the German Mine Sweeping Administration for clearing naval mines.

 

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Battle of Albert - 7 July 1916.

13th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers resting on the Albert-Bapaume road near Albert after the attack on La Boisselle
The jubilant soldier wearing braces, just behind the shoulder of the French soldier to the right is Horace Foakes.
(Photo source - © IWM Q 777)
Brooks, Ernest (Lieutenant) (Photographer)
Colourised by Doug

 

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Polish Navy ORP Piorun's gun crews watching ships moving along the horizon. One of her 4.7 inch QF Mark XII guns can be seen in the background, 1943.

 

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Forest Guth of Easy Company Band of Brothers photographed in Normandy after making his first combat jump.

T/5 Guth would fight with Easy Company in Normandy, Market-Garden, and The Bulge.

 

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June 23, 1944
US Marine lunches on C-rations in Saipan.

Photo by Cpl. C.G. Jolly. USMC
Colourised by Doug

 

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An officer of the 444th Siege Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery (RGA), smokes his pipe as he supervises a kitten balancing on a shell of a BL 12 inch railway howitzer Mk.V near Arras, Pas-de-Calais on the 19th of July 1918.

(© IWM Q 6860)
(Photographer - Lt. John Warwick Brooke)
Colourised by Benoit

 

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January 24th, 1941, Belgian soldiers apparently carelessly pose with an aerial bomb. Near Chimay, in the Ardennes, against the French border, the Germans force them to clear explosives.

The Munitions Destruction Service (Dienst voor Vernietiging van Munities - DVM) of the 'Groot Legerpark' (GLP, the manager of the Belgian ammunition depots) is kept in uniform after the capitulation and deployed as a clearing squad of explosives.
Demobilized soldiers and prisoners of war must search all over Belgium for bombs, grenades and land mines and defuse them. The deminers had to carry out this life-threatening work until August 1941, while often, fatal accidents occurred. In the early autumn of 1941 most soldiers are discharged and the prisoners of war are released.
Colourised PIECE of JAKE
Photo: courtesy Walter van Opstal

 

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Evan Jones was born Patrick Cosgrove in 1859 at Bedwelty, Ebbw Vale, Wales. He enlisted (under the pseudonym Evan Jones) on 20th July 1877 and fought at the Battle of Rorke's Drift with B Company during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879.
He continued his service and earned medals for service in India and Burma. In 1898 he married Alice Evans, a widow with 4 children.
By the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Jones was one of the few original Rorke's Drift survivors. Due to his age, when he was deployed to the Western Front, he became a regimental drummer (indicated by his white drum belt), but would regularly be called upon as a stretcher bearer and orderly.
The photo shows Jones in 1918 at the age of 59, having soldiered through World War 1 in the Welsh Fusiliers.

He died at Welshpool on 12th Aug 1931 and was buried with military honours.
© Colourised by Tom Marshall (PhotograFix).

 

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RFC Captain (MC medal) using a telescope on a stand improvised from a front wheel of a bicycle on a wooden tripod. Nº2 Aircraft Repair Depot at Rang du Fliers, Pas-de-Calais, France. 12 July 1918.

Aircraft, l-r SE.5a B8424, DH.9 D1720
(Photo source - © IWM Q 12083)
McLellan, David (Second Lieutenant) (Photographer)
Colourised by Doug