Photos Colour and Colourised Photos of WW2 & earlier conflicts

[BravoZulu]

Nevada class battleship USS Oklahoma (BB-37) salvage. Looking aft from the forward turrets. March 26, 1943.

On 7 December 1941, during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, several torpedoes from torpedo bombers hit the Oklahoma's hull and the ship capsized. A total of 429 crew died; survivors jumped off the ship 50 feet (15 m) into burning oil on water or crawled across mooring lines that connected Oklahoma and Maryland. Some sailors inside escaped when rescuers drilled holes and opened hatches to rescue them. The ship was salvaged in 1943. Unlike most of the other battleships that were recovered following Pearl Harbor, Oklahoma was too damaged to return to duty. Her wreck was eventually stripped of her remaining armament and superstructure before being sold for scrap in 1946. The hulk sank in a storm while being towed from Oahu, Hawaii, to a breakers yard in San Francisco Bay in 1947.

 

[BravoZulu]

Revenge class battleship HMS Ramillies in 1939

 

[BravoZulu]

Mosquito PR XVI, (RF993) of 34 Wing, RAF at Melsbroek. 1944. Original colour image

 

[BravoZulu]

10cm guns of 16.Panzer-Division, August 1942.

 

[Redav]

A German soldier with a saw tooth bayonet stands in a dugout during WW1. His brow plate, which is an attachment on his helmet, is slid down to his neck. It provided additional protection from things like grenade shrapnel.

Colorized by @marinaarts

 

[Redav]

A German Wehrmacht soldier with an MG34, somewhere on the Eastern Front. Exacte date and location unknown. Note the Panzer Vernichtungsabzeichnen (Tank Destruction badge) on his sleeve.

The Machinengewehr 34, or MG34, is a German recoil-operated air-cooled machine gun, first tested in 1929, introduced in 1934, and issued to units in 1936. It introduced an entirely new concept in automatic firepower. The Einheitsmachinengewehr (Universal machine gun) is generally considered the world's first general-purpose machine gun.

 

[Redav]

Loading anti-aircraft ordnance, France 1944.

 

[Redav]

A German soldier in the midst of capturing a Russian soldier, somewhere in the Soviet Union, 1941-/42. It is likely that this specific picture was staged for propaganda reasons due to the German soldier not having a magazine in his MP40.

 

[Redav]

German Prisoners Of War captured by American troops at Anzio, Italy, await transportation to a POW-camp. March 17th, 1944.

Note the camouflaged dress worn by a German soldier in the centre. German soldiers re-used Italian camouflage often during the Italian Campaign.

 

[Redav]

Three Fallschirmjäger and a motorcyclist wearing a coverall drillich and gauntlets, are poised on a BMW R75 and sidecar on the Route de Rouen in Grand-Bourgtheroulde, during the retreat from Normandy, late August 1944.

 

[Redav]

An aerial view of Battleship Row taken by a pilot of the Japanese aircraft dropping his bombs on the vessels next to Ford Island Pearl Harbor 7th of December 1941

 

[Kadir93]

A camouflaged Springfield M1903 rifle with telescopic sight used by snipers is shown by a soldier in Badonviller, France, 18 May 1918.

 

[Redav]

A Tiger I tank from German Army Schwere Panzer-Abteilung 508 drives through the Porta del Popolo in Rome, Italy, 1944.

 

[Conhoon]

A pair of Panthers move out on September 23rd, 1944 as part of the German counteroffensive known as the Battle of Arracourt.

 

[BravoZulu]

The glazed chin-gunner's position in a Douglas B-18 “Bolo" bomber at Barksdale Field, Louisiana - 1941
A mid-1930s design, the Bolo was approaching obsolescence by WW2 with better medium bombers in the pipeline or just enetering service.
Nevertheless, surviving B-18s were deployed as transports and maritime patrol aircraft...one was actually credited with sinking a U-Boat in the Caribbean in 1942.
Original Colour Picture

 

[Redav]

Portrait of a German soldier by photographer August Sander, 1940.

August Sander (November 17, 1876 – April 20, 1964) was a German portrait and documentary photographer. His first book, Antlitz der Zeit (Face of Our Time), was published in 1929. Sander has been described as "the most important German portrait painter of the early 20th century." His work includes landscape, nature, architectural and street photography, but he is best known for his portraits.

 

[Conhoon]

A submariner at the forrard torpedo firing controls on board of Polish Navy ORP Sokół, 1944.

Successful Commanding Officer of ORP Sokół, Lt Cdr Jerzy Koziołkowski (32 yers old) at the periscope, 1944.

 

[Conhoon]

French soldier posing for a photograph inside the Fort de Vaux at Verdun, November 22, 1916.

Colourised by DUIRIEZ Frederic

 

[BravoZulu]

USS Iowa (BB-61), shown during her commissioning ceremony, February 22nd, 1943. She would depart on her shakedown cruise two days later.

 

[Redav]

January 1946, the battleship Gneisenau frozen in winter ice. She was sunk by the Germans on March 27th 1945 to block the port of Gotenhafen in Poland. Her turrets were removed and re purposed as coastal defense batteries. She was finally cut up and scraped between 1951 and 1953.