Photos Colour and Colourised Photos of WW2 & earlier conflicts

Turkish Airforce Officier 40's

LT(JG) George T. Glacken and his gunner Leo Boulanger in their SBD-5 Dauntless of VB-16 from USS Lexington CV-16 off of Palau - March 30, 1944


LT(JG) George T. Glacken and his gunner Leo Boulanger in their SBD-5 Dauntless of VB-16 from USS Lexington CV-16 off of Palau - March 30, 1944

Wing Commander Ian “Widge” Gleed, sat in his Spitfire Mk VB at RAF Ibsley, Hampshire, where he led the Wing until June 1942.

Gleed was a veteran of the Battle of Britain flying Hurricanes with No. 87 Squadron, rising to the rank of Squadron Leader. Sadly, he was killed during a fighter sweep in French Tunisia, 16th April 1943

This photo of "Poilus" of the French 70th Infantry Regiment returning from the first line was taken, probably in the region of Verdun at the beginning of 1916.

(In February 1916, this Regiment was in fact, in Bois de Récicourt.)

Assembling the North American B-25 Mitchell at Kansas City, Kansas (USA).

The Deputy Supreme Commander in Chief of the Red Army, Marshal G Zhukov with the Commander of the 21st Army Group, Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery at the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin after a ceremony in which Field Marshal Montgomery had invested Marshal Zhukov as a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath and bestowed other decorations on General K Rokossovsky and Marshal V Sokolovsky of the Red Army who are seen on the right of Marshal Zhukov. The Commander of the British 7th Armoured Division, Major General L O Lyne is on the left. The 7th Armoured Division formed a Guard of Honour at the ceremony and afterwards marched past the saluting base. July 12th 1945

Conhoon said:

A view inside “Chalk 1”, the C-47 Skytrain carrying General James Gavin (a.k.a. "Jumpin' Jim" or "the jumping general") and the headquarters staff of the 82nd Airborne Division. In the foreground to the left is Col. John Norton, the divional G-3 (operations), and next to him, Capt. Hugo Olson, Gavin’s aide.

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Gavin assumed command of the 82nd Airborne Division on August 8, 1944, and was promoted to major general in October. For the first time, Gavin would lead the 82nd Airborne into combat. On Sunday, September 17, Operation Market Garden took off. Market Garden, devised by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, consisted of an airborne attack of three British and American airborne divisions.
The 82nd was to take the bridge across the Maas river in Grave, seize at least one of four bridges across the Maas-Waal canal, and the bridge across the Waal river in Nijmegen. The 82nd was also to take control of the high grounds in the vicinity of Groesbeek, a small Dutch town near the German border. The ultimate objective of the offensive was Arnhem.
In the drop into the Netherlands, Gavin landed on hard pavement instead of grass, injuring his back. Five years later, he had his back examined at Walter Reed Hospital, where he learned that he had, in fact, fractured two discs in the jump.
Gavin failed to prioritise the capture of the bridge over the Waal and instead chose to concentrate his troops initially further south on the Groesbeek Heights. This failure led to the vital bridge being heavily reinforced and in German hands for a further four days and seriously delaying XXX Corp relief of 1st Airborne Div at Arnhem. The 504th took the bridge across the Wale river, but it was too late as the British paras of the 2nd Parachute Battalion, 1st Parachute Brigade of the British 1st Airborne Division, could not hold on any longer to their north side of the Arnhem bridge and were defeated. The 82nd would stay in the Netherlands until November 13, when it was transferred to new billets in Sisonne et Suippes, France.
Colour by Jake
Photo: NARA

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General James M. Gavin and the 82nd Airborne Division

Sopwith 7F.1 Snipe E8015, Lt. Edward Mulcair of 'A' Flight, 43 Sqn RAF, ready for a patrol over the German lines. France, October 1918.

Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus (Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Paulus, 1890-1957) commander of the German 6th Army is photographed by Abram Kazakov (1903-1989), director of photography for the Stalingrad Front film group. February 1943, Stalingrad.

Colour by Facundo (FGF Colourised)

Roza Rubanenko, born in 1924, combat medic of the Red Army rifle battalion of the 105th Guards Rifle Regiment, 34th Guards Rifle Enakievo Red Banner Division

From the award list for the Order of Glory 3rd degree:

'In the extremely difficult conditions of the battle in the area of the Bug River, Roza Rubanenko carried 20 wounded from the battlefield along with their weapons and transported them to the other side of the river.

In the battles for the village of Strassburg on April 8, 1944, she carried 15 wounded from the battlefield along with their weapons and, being slightly wounded, did not leave the battlefield and continued to provide medical assistance to the wounded, while taking out two officers from the battlefield and assisting four soldiers . In this battle, Roza Rubanenko was seriously wounded for the second time.

Winston Churchill celebrating his 69th birthday on November 30, 1943 during the Tehran Conference, in Iran, accompanied by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin. The conference was disappointing for the British Prime Minister as he noted that the US president preferred to deal with the master of the Kremlin. Roosevelt had little bargaining power at the time and was in poor physical condition. Instead, Stalin arrived strengthened by the recent victories of the USSR on the Eastern Front. Churchill, despite the valiant attempts to carry out his projects, could not avoid granting the Soviet leader practically all his requirements.

An aerial view of a Vought oszu Kingfisher float plane at the U.S. Navel Air Base in Bermuda 1943.

santana said:

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Winston Churchill celebrating his 69th birthday on November 30, 1943 during the Tehran Conference, in Iran, accompanied by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin. The conference was disappointing for the British Prime Minister as he noted that the US president preferred to deal with the master of the Kremlin. Roosevelt had little bargaining power at the time and was in poor physical condition. Instead, Stalin arrived strengthened by the recent victories of the USSR on the Eastern Front. Churchill, despite the valiant attempts to carry out his projects, could not avoid granting the Soviet leader practically all his requirements.

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Roosevelt looks like he'd rather be with Eleanor and that's sayin' something!

A few more pictures of the Vought´s Kingfisher float plane

WOW, GREAT Kingfisher photos........Thanks for sharing with us!!!

Soviet Aerosled RF-8/GAZ-98 on patrol, said to be Northern Front, 1943.*


Soviet snowmobiles were first used for military purposes in 1915 mainly as transport or as a means of communication. During the winter campaign of 1939/40, the Red Army had several aerosled detachments, which were quite successfully used in winter operations against the White Finns. (…)
Snowmobiles were most widely used in World War II, especially during the winter campaign of 1942/43. During this period, for the first time, they were used in significant numbers (…). Records show that the most successful aerosled units operated in open areas: on the lake areas of the Ladoga, Ilmen, Seliger lakes, frozen rivers, in the coastal areas of the sea, and in the Gulf of Finland. (1)
With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, all the available snowmobiles were mobilized. In an expeditious manner, designers developed new machines: transport and landing snowmobiles NKL-16/41 and NKL-16/42, combat snowmobiles with an armored shield and machine-gun installation NKL-26, GAZ-98 (RF-8), and the large amphibious aerosled ASD-400.(2)
The agile Aerosled RF-8/GAZ-98 was powered by a GAZ-MM truck engine driving a two-bladed aircraft propeller mounted on the back of an unarmoured plywood body, the vehicle carried a crew of two and was armed with a 7.62mm DT machine gun mounted on an aircraft-style ring. Combat loaded, the Gaz-98 weighed 892 Kg (1966 lbs) and was capable of speeds up to 31 mph (50 km/h). The GAZ-98K was an upgraded version with a more powerful GAZ M-11 110-hp aviation engine in place of the standard automotive engine.
At the end of December 1941, the first batches of machines of the RF-8 type, which received the factory index GAZ-98, had already arrived at many sectors of the front serving in combat aerosled battalions (2). These often operated in close cooperation with ski-troops.
(1) “Review of combat operations of aerosled units in the Patriotic War (1942-1943)”. Office of the Commander of BT and MV of the Red Army. Military Publishing House, 1944.
(2) “Snowmobiles in battles for the Motherland” Part.2 (article) I. Yuvenaliev, 1979.
* Other sources give the location and date as Central Front, February 1942.
Credit: Photo by Georgy Petrusov, Soviet Army's war correspondent
Color by Rui: @InColoreVeritas

nfantry of the 2nd Gordon Highlanders, 15th Scottish Div. searching a 16 year old German prisoner in Kleve, in northwestern Germany. 11 February 1945.
(Most likely a Churchill tank of 6th Guards Tank Brigade)
(Photo source - © IWM B 14610)
Wilkes (Sergeant)
No. 5 Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit
(Colour by Doug)

Tankers and soviet M4A2 76(W) Sherman Tank somewhere near Tangermünde Germany - May 1945 - Written on the side of the Sherman is "Russian always beaten the Prussians!"


(LIFE Magazine Archives - William Vandivert Photographer)
More than 4000 examples of the famous diesel-fueled M4A2 Sherman tank were sent to the Soviet Union during the Second World War under the Lead-Lease program. These American-built vehicles were operated by Red Army crews against the Germans during some of the bitterest fighting on the Eastern Front .
The first 76mm-armed M4A2 diesel-fuel Shermans started to arrive in Soviet Union in the late summer of 1944. By 1945, some Red Army armoured units were standardized to depend primarily on them and not on their ubiquitous T-34. The Sherman was largely held in good regard and viewed positively by many Soviet tank-crews which operated it before, with compliments mainly given to its reliability, ease of maintenance, generally good firepower (referring especially to the 76mm-gun version) and decent armour protection.

A Bren Carrier crew of the Irish Guards, Troop 1, C-Sqd. Machine Gun Company get treated on cigars by Mr. Ros, a resident of Aalst, Noord-Brabant Province, The Netherlands, September 18th, 1944.

Mr. Ros holds an orange flag. Orange is the national colour of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and during ww2, the colour of resistance and support for the Royal Dutch family. (which was strictly forbidden to show by the Germans). If you did, you were in serious trouble. Some people even ended up in concentration camps for doing so.
Every Universal carrier of the Machine-Gun Company has a Vickers machine gun installed on the left side of the vehicle. Behind the head of the soldier we see a small part of the machine gun and the ammo box.
The picture is taken when British XXX Corps was passing through the village driving towards Eindhoven to link up with the paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division.
Caption: http://www.ww2marketgarden.com/photographofthemonth.html
Collection Anefo / Archive : Photo: Van de Poll

Chazman said:

nfantry of the 2nd Gordon Highlanders, 15th Scottish Div. searching a 16 year old German prisoner in Kleve, in northwestern Germany. 11 February 1945.
(Most likely a Churchill tank of 6th Guards Tank Brigade)
(Photo source - © IWM B 14610)
Wilkes (Sergeant)
No. 5 Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit
(Colour by Doug)

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I believe the water bottle cup is the model for medics a round black cup as opposed to the more normal aluminium or tin cup.