Color Photos of World War II Part 7

December 1942: An Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) 'spotter' at a 3.7-inch anti-aircraft gun site, most likely in London.

This is another in my continuing series on color photographs of World War II. These are all portions of more complete photographs contained in the Imperial War Museum's "The Second World War In Colour" (2017). If you like these samples, you definitely should consider hunting down the book.

December 1942: Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) plotters at work at Coastal Artillery Headquarters in Dover.

These types of pages enable us to step back a bit and get a bigger perspective on the war than simply battles and winning and losing. War is a complex organization of people committed toward a common objective. Many of those people are never recognized afterward, never remembered, and there is no place for them in a chronological recounting because they are always there, in the background, but never stand out from the pack.

1943: Lancaster bombers in Avro's factory at Woodford near Manchester.

As I've stated on other pages of this type, most color photographs of World War II that you will see anywhere on the Internet are colorized. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with colorized photographs, especially when it is done well. They make the war more accessible to modern audiences. However, these particular photographs are, as noted above, color originals.

April 1943: Local workers helping RAF fitters change the engine of a Lockheed Hudson at Yundum in Gambia.

It is tempting to think that technology began yesterday when we first picked up a smartphone. However, color photography was very well developed during World War II. The reason that almost all photographs from the war are in black and white is simply that color film was several times as expensive as black-and-white film, and there were very few ways to use it in days when newspapers and magazines were almost always in black and white.

May 1943: B-17F Flying Fortress 'Mary Ruth - Memories of Mobile' of the 91st Bomb Group, US Eighth Air Force. The bombers are on a mission to attack the U-boat pens at Lorient. 

Another oddity about color photographs of World War II is that they tend to cluster around certain themes. That is because certain themes are simply more interesting to audiences. Like it or not, photos of Adolf Hitler and German troops are the most common subjects of colorized photographs, followed closely by female Soviet troops. That may change in the future, but it seems to be a definite pattern at the moment.

1943: Land Army girls sawing larch poles for use as pit props at the Women's Timber Corps training camp at Culford, Suffolk.

So, with this page, we aim to correct the balance a bit. This entire page is original color photographs of the Allied side during World War II.

May 1943: A crew from the 16th/5th Lancers, 6th Armoured Division, cleaning the gun barrel of their Crusader tank at El Aroussa in Tunisia. 

I have put the photographs in chronological order, though a few I don't have dates on, so they are just put in wherever seemed most suitable.

1943: Farmers cutting grass for winter silage at Eynsford in Kent. Don't sneer at this kind of photo, this type of thing is what really won World War II.

If you like these color photos, you may wish to check out my other pages of color photos of World War II.

You may find more color photos of World War II on page 1 and page 2 and page 3 and page 4 and page 5 and page 6 and page 7 and page 8 and page 9 and page 10 and page 11 and page 12 and page 13 and page 14 and page 15 and page 16 of this series.

August 1943: Local children crowding aboard a Sherman tank of the 3rd County of London Yeomanry in Sicily.

Thanks for visiting, and I hope you enjoy your time here.

August 1943: Nurses and convalescent aircrew at Princess Mary's Royal Air Force Hospital at Halton in Buckinghamshire.

September 1943: A 5.5-inch gun crew from 75th (Shropshire Yeomanry) Medium Regiment, Royal Artillery, in action at Salerno, Italy.

1944: Lieutenant Vernon R Richards of the 361st Fighter Group escorting some bombers in his P-51D Mustang.

February 1944: General Dwight D Eisenhower and his senior commanders at Supreme Allied Headquarters (SHAEF) in London. I don't recognize everyone offhand, but you should be able to pick out Eisenhower, General Omar Bradley and Field Marshal Montgomery.

1944: B-24 Liberator bombers of the 491st Bomb Group, US Eighth Air Force on their way to bomb Germany.

Unknown date: An Air Raid Precautions (ARP) warden inspects damage in Holborn, London.

March 1944: Private Alfred Campin of the 6th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry demonstrating proper bayoneting technique.

April 22, 1944: British paratroopers preparing for a practice jump from an RAF Dakota based at Down Ampney in Wiltshire.

July 1944: The RAF's top-scoring fighter pilot, Wing Commander James 'Johnnie' Johnson, with his Spitfire and pet Labrador Sally in Normandy.

August 1944: A Churchill Crocodile flamethrower tank in action, You can just barely see the wheel of its armored trailer behind it which contains the fuel.

September 1944: Liberation of Eindhoven by Allied forces. The Germans took a rather dim view of this sort of thing, so the Luftwaffe bombed the town, which they knew well from having had their own base there, a few hours later.

October 1944: Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery pointing out the German West Wall region to King George VI in his command caravan in Holland. The King outranked Montgomery - and not just by virtue of being King - and thus could at least in theory override any decision that Monty made.

October 1944: British soldiers have arrived, and, just like the Germans in April 1944, they pause to admire the Caryatids on the Acropolis. They thought the hard part of the war was over, but in fact it was just beginning in Athens.

1945: Women producing bullets and cannon shells in an underground munitions factory on the Wirral, Merseyside.

May 1945: German heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper in dry dock at Kiel. Sold for scrap a few years later. 

May 8, 1945: VE Day in England, at the Cenotaph in Whitehall.

This one of Winston Churchill is colorized.

2020