Photos Colour and Colourised Photos of WW2 & earlier conflicts

[Conhoon]

French stretcher bearers and one of their dogs sheltered in the ground.

The numbers of French casualties during the Great War were appalling: it is estimated that around 1.4 million French soldiers were killed during the conflict fighting against enemy forces, facing terrible conditions in the trenches, disease, hunger and cold. Over 4 million of them were injured in the fighting, with injuries often leading to permanent disability or death.

 

[Conhoon]

Evacuation of wounded Polish soldiers from the battlefield. Monte Cassino, Italy, May 1944

photo: Felicjan Maliniak/collections of the Józef Piłsudski Institute in London.

 

[Conhoon]

Members of the crew of the Polish submarine ORP Wilk, who are now coopereting with the Royal Navy, receiving their pay, January 1940.

ORP Wilk (Wolf in English) in 1939

 

[Redav]

The launch of the mighty Tirpitz battleship, Wilhelmshaven, April 1939.

 

[Redav]

A picture of August Von Mackensen, a field marshal in the German army in World War I, 1915.

 

[Conhoon]

Brewster Buffalo of the Finnish Air Force, 1941.

 

[Redav]

German Tiger II, Hungary 1944.

 

[Conhoon]

Battle of Hazebrouck.
12 April 1918
6-inch howitzer of the 277th Siege Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery firing in a lane in front of the railway line near Merris, in the Nord department of northern France.

 

[Redav]

Type VIIC U-376 in Bergen harbor (Norway, 1942)

The submarine was laid down on 3 April 1940 in Kiel, launched on 10 July 1941, and commissioned on 21 August 1941 under the command of Oberleutnant zur See Friedrich-Karl Marks.
U-376 was attached to the 6th U-boat Flotilla, and was ready for front-line service from 1 March 1942. Operating from Norwegian bases, from 1 July 1942 she served with the 11th U-boat Flotilla, and was transferred to the 3rd U-boat Flotilla, based in France on 1 March 1943.
U-376 sailed on eight combat patrols, sinking only two merchant ships totalling 10,146 GRT before she went missing in the Bay of Biscay since 7 April 1943.

 

[Redav]

Engelbert Endrass, wearing his Knight's Cross, welcomes Erich Topp back after a successful war patrol in 1941.

 

[Newtonk]

Somewhere in Leningrad, aT 50

 

[Redav]

U-201 of Adalbert ''Adi'' Schnee in the port of Brest after returning from patrol in March 1941

 

[Redav]

Ju 87 Stuka

 

[Conhoon]

An abandoned Hetzers in Żagań aka Sagan, Lower Silesia, Poland, spring 1945.

 

[Conhoon]

Australian soldiers washing their gum boots outside the gum boot store at Houplines, near Armentieres. January 1917

Infantry and working parties were issued with dry boots from this store before going into the line, and on returning handed them back, after washing off the mud in the tubs provided for the purpose.
Unknown Australian Official Photographer
(Australian War Memorial - E00120)
Colourised by Doug

 

[Conhoon]

23 July 1916
Back at rest after the taking of Pozieres, by the 1st Australian Division. An Australian soldier having a shave while wearing a captured German pickelhaube (helmet) .

(Photo source - © IWM Q 4041)
Colourised by Doug

 

[BravoZulu]

Town class light cruiser HMS Chatham on the New Zealand Station ((New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy) 1920-24

 

[BravoZulu]

5th Battle Squadron; Queen Elizabeth class battleships HMS Valiant, Warspite & Malaya about to open fire; taken from HMS Barham. 5th Battle Squadron fought at the Battle of Jutland on 31st May 1916 as part of Admiral Beatty’s Battle Cruiser Fleet.

 

[Redav]

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

German soldiers stationed on the coast regularly perform agility exercises with their motorcycles on the beach along the North Sea.

In the relatively quiet first year of the war, things seem quite relaxed as here in Scheveningen with the pier in the background.

Many German soldiers took cameras from the 'Heimat' and took vacation snapshots to send home.

 

[Redav]

Admiral Graf Spee