WW2 for the day

Via War History Online, a series of colorized World War Two photos, done by Doug Banks and his team of colorizers:

An SAS jeep in the Gabes-Tozeur area of Tunisia. The vehicle is heavily loaded with jerry cans of fuel and water, and personal kit. The ‘gunner’ is manning a .50 cal Browning machine gun, while the driver has a single Vickers ‘K’ gun in front, and twin mounted Vickers behind. Circa 1943.

Pilot Officer Albert Gerald Lewis, DFC (at the age of 22) in his Hawker Hurricane Mk.1 (VY-R) P2923 with 85 Squadron RAF at Castle Camps, the RAF Debden’s satellite airfield in Cambridgeshire. Circa July 1940.
Albert Gerald Lewis (10 April 1918 – 14 December 1982) was a South African-born fighter ace during the war, who was featured in a Life magazine article (of which this was the cover photo) about the Battle of Britain. Lewis received his Distinguished Flying Cross (the DFC) in July of 1940. His citation read that, during the Battle of France on 19 May, he shot down five enemy aircraft before he himself was shot down over Lille.
He then joined No. 249 Squadron RAF on 15 September 1940. One the same day he shot down a Heinkel He.111 and, on the 18th, a Messerschmitt Bf. 109 (his twelfth confirmed enemy aircraft).
On 27 September, he claimed six kills (three Bf 109s, two Bf 110s, and a Ju 88), two probables, and one damaged.  While on a patrol on 28 September, he was shot down and baled out of his Hurricane over Faversham. He was taken to Faversham Cottage Hospital, blind for two weeks, shrapnel in his legs and severe burns on the face, throat, hands, and legs. He returned to the Squadron in December of 1940, having been promoted to Flight Lieutenant on 29 November. He was flying by 17 January 1941, became “A” Flight Commander, and was awarded a bar to the DFC.
His final tally was eighteen kills.

USAAF Captain Dewey E. Newhart alongside his Mud N’ Mules Republic P-47D-15-RE Thunderbolt LH-D s/n 42-76141 of the 350th Fighter Squadron, 353rd Fighter Group, 8th Air Force.
Captain Newhart was killed in action on 12 June 1944 during a mission over Northern France.
He was leading the squadron down to strafe an enemy truck convoy near Saint-Saëns in Normandy when he was jumped by eight to ten Bf.109s whilst flying a P-47D LH-U named Soubrette, he was hit and radioed that he was attempting to make landfall. Before he could escape, he was attacked by two more fighters, and was shot down and killed.
The pictured aircraft was re-assigned to Captain Lonnie M. Davis, who renamed it Arkansas Traveler, but retained the mule artwork out of respect for Newhart.

A German paratrooper (Fallschirmjäger) with an MG 42 (Maschinengewehr 42) machine gun positions himself to fire on Allied forces near Sainte-Mère-Église in Normandy, France, on 21 June 1944. Although the Fallschirmjäger were actually Luftwaffe troops, these units were, by the time of the Allied Invasion of Normandy, tactically subordinated to German Army (Heer) command.
Source: Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-582-2106-24
Colorized by Jiří Macháček from the Czech Republic.

A M4 Sherman of ‘A’ Company, 763rd Tank Battalion, and troops from the 96th Infantry Division in battle on Okinawa in April of 1945.
Source: US Army Signal Corps. Colorized by Royston Leonard

Major General Erwin Rommel and an early Panzer IV of the 7th Panzer Division, in France in May of 1940.
Rommel, pictured here with his Leica III rangefinder camera, is reported to have been given such a camera by his friend and patron, Joseph Goebbels, before the 1940 Western campaign; many ‘photos of his authorship or probable authorship survive, and crop up with a fair degree of frequency in propaganda/publicity contexts.
Rommel was given the command in the place of the both older and more experienced commanders. Inevitably, any account of the German 7th Panzer Division’s actions in France in 1940, to a large extent involves Rommel. Nevertheless, Rommel often showed audacity, and never hesitated to take command of a situation, no matter how big or small. He was a man of action, and it seems that he often reacted in a spontaneous and somewhat impulsive manner. His style of command and personality characterized much of the actions of the division.
At the time of the campaign in France, Germany did not possess an overwhelming military strength. The Germans had 135 divisions, compared to 151 for the Allied side. Germany had some 2500 tanks, while the Allies had more than 4000. The German tanks were not technically superior to those of the Allies. Only in the air did the Germans have superiority both in numbers of aircraft and in their technical performance. The German superiority, instead, lay in their tactics with narrow and deep penetrations. The Germans only had ten Panzer Divisions, but they were used with a devastating effect when they were concentrated on a narrow front.
(www.thegermanarmy.org/)

British Sherman tanks and 6-pounder anti-tank guns of the 11th Armoured Division, advancing through the village of St. Charles-de-Percy in Calvados, Normandy, on the N 177 road to Vire. 2 August 1944,
Source: Sergeant Laing, Number 5 Army Film & Photographic Unit
Colorized by Allan White from Australia

Flying Officer Philip Ingleby 137140, the navigator of an Avro Lancaster B Mark III of Number 619 Squadron RAF based at Coningsby, Lincolnshire, seated at his table in the aircraft in February of 1944.
Taking off at 1050 hrs on 7 August 1944, the de Havilland Mosquito VI (s/n NT202) AJ-N of 617 Squadron, was on a training exercise from RAF Woodhall Spa in Lincolnshire. It had completed three runs over the Wainfleet Sands bombing range and, at 1112 , whilst pulling up in a climbing turn to port the starboard engine failed, followed immediately by structural failure of the starboard wing. Out of control, the Mosquito plunged into shallow water by the foreshore. The pilot, Warren Duffy and Navigator P. Ingleby were both killed.

Technical Sergeant Benedict “Benny” Borostowski (photo) was the ball turret gunner of Captain Oscar D. O’Neil’s B-17 Flying Fortress , named Invasion 2nd (serial 42-5070) of the 401st Bomb Squadron of the 91st Bomb Group.
The B-17 and her crew were on a bombing run destined for the Focke-Wulf factory in Bremen, Germany on 17 April 1943 when it was hit by flak and crashed in the region of Nikolausdorf, near Oldenburg.
Invasion 2nd formed the lead plane of the first element of six aircraft making up the lowest squadron. Taking flak hits and attacks by German fighters over the target, the number two engine was completely shot away. The left wing caught on fire and spread to the fuselage. Captain Oscar D. O’Neill called for the crew to bail out but waist gunners Lapp and King were prevented from leaving by a stuck escape hatch. The ball turret gunner, Technical Sergeant Benedict B. Borostowski, came up into the fuselage from the ball turret and went to the partly open waist door. He found Lapp and King unable to force the door and used his foot to push both of them through. All of the crew members were able to leave the aircraft and survived the jump. They all spent the remainder of the war as POWs.
The ‘Sperry’ ball turret, meant for ventral defense needs on aircraft, was used on both the B-17 Flying Fortress and the B-24 Liberator, as well as the Navy’s Liberator, the PB4Y-1. The Sperry ball turret was very small, in order to reduce drag, and was typically operated by the shortest man of the crew. To enter the turret, the turret was moved until the guns were pointed straight down. The gunner placed his feet in the heel rests and then crouched down into a fetal position. He would then put on a safety strap and close and lock the turret door. The gunner sat in the turret with his back and head against the rear wall, his hips at the bottom, and his legs held in mid-air by two footrests on the front wall. This left him positioned with his eyes roughly level with the pair of light-barrel Browning AN/M2 .50 caliber machine guns which extended through the entire turret, and located to either side of the gunner. The cocking handles were located too close to the gunner to be operated easily, so a cable was attached to the handle through pulleys to a handle near the front of the turret. Small ammo boxes rested on the top of the turret and the remaining ammo belts were stowed in the already cramped turret by means of an elaborate feed chute system. A reflector sight was hung from the top of the turret, positioned at head height, there was no room inside for a parachute, which was left in the cabin above the turret. A few gunners wore a chest parachute.
The turret was directed by two hand control grips with firing buttons similar to a one-button joy stick. Hydraulics normally powered elevation and azimuth. Hand cranks were available for backup. The left foot was used to control the reflector sight range reticle. The right foot operated a push-to-talk intercom switch.
Colorized by Paul Reynolds of Historic Military Photo Colourisations

A British paratrooper taking aim with an American M1 carbine from the first floor balcony of the Hartenstein Hotel in Oosterbeek, near Arnhem in The Netherlands in September of 1944.
The photograph was taken by Sergeant D M Smith of the Army Film and Photographic Unit on 23 September 1944.) Sergeant Dennis Smith, the photographer, wrote: “We have had a very heavy shelling this morning, September 23rd, and now the situation is serious. the shelling is hellish. We have been holding out for a week now. The men are tired, weary, and food is becoming scarce, and to make matters worse, we are having heavy rain. If we are not relieved soon, then the men will just drop from sheer exhaustion”.
The British 1st Airborne Division headquarters had been established in the hotel during Operation Market Garden and it is now the Airborne Museum Hartenstein.
Colorized by Doug

American troops from Combat Command B of the 14th Armored Division entering the Hammelburg Prison in Germany by opening the main gate with bursts of their M3 “Grease Guns” on 6 April 1945.  Hammelburg was a large German Army training camp, set up in 1893. Part of it had been used as a POW camp for Allied army personnel in World War One. After 1935, it was a training camp and military training area for the newly reconstituted German Army. In May of 1940, the camp was established in wooden huts at the south end of the training ground. The first prisoners included Belgian, Dutch, and French soldiers taken during the Battle of France. In May through June of 1941, Yugoslavian (predominantly Serbian) prisoners arrived from the Balkans Campaign and, soon after, in June and July of 1941, Australian and other British Commonwealth soldiers arrived, captured during the Battle of Crete.
American soldiers that had been captured during the Battle of Normandy arrived in June and July of 1944, and more from the Battle of the Bulge in January of 1945. In March of 1945 a large group of prisoners arrived in deplorable condition after marching the five hundred miles from Stalag 13-D in severe winter conditions.
It seems the opening of the gates with machine gun fire is most likely symbolic and a show for the camera’s. There are other photos of this POW liberation that show Sherman tanks rolling easily through the fences – which is far safer IMO than the method used in photo.
(Colorizing and text by Paul Reynolds of Historic Military Photo Colourisations

Lieutenant Colonel Robert Wolverton, commander of the 3 Battalion, 506 Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, checking his gear before boarding the C-47 Dakota, 8Y-S, “Stoy Hora” of the 440th Troop Carrier Squadron at an airfield in Exeter, England on the evening of 5 June 1944.
On that evening, he gathered his men in an orchard adjacent to what is now Exeter airport, and said: “Men, I am not a religious man and I don’t know your feelings in this matter, but I am going to ask you to pray with me for the success of the mission before us. And while we pray, let us get on our knees and not look down but up with faces raised to the sky so that we can see God and ask his blessing in what we are about to do. 

“God Almighty, in a few short hours we will be in battle with the enemy. We do not join battle afraid. We do not ask favors or indulgence but ask that, if You will, use us as Your instrument for the right and an aid in returning peace to the world. We do not know or seek what our fate will be. We ask only this, that if die we must, that we die as men would die, without complaining, without pleading and safe in the feeling that we have done our best for what we believed was right.
Oh Lord, protect our loved ones and be near us in the fire ahead and with us now as we pray to you.”

Sadly, within hours, the orator himself was dead; a cruel twist of fate meant his feet never touched French soil. Wolverton (only thirty years old), was killed by ground fire and left suspended by his parachute from an apple tree in an orchard just north of the hamlet of St. Côme du Mont in Normandy.
(Of the fifteen men in his ‘stick’, five were KIA on D-Day, eight were taken as POWs, and two are still unaccounted for.)
Colorized by Johnny Sirlande from Belgium.

From left to tight, B-25 crew members: Sergeant John C. Bellendir from Chicago, Illinois; Sergeant Raymond J. Swingholm from Lebanon, Pennsylvania; Sergeant. Harris B. Pate from Hamlet, North Carolina; Red Cross Clubmobile Worker Peggy Steers from White Plains, New York. and Technical Sergeant Aubrey Chatters from Milington, Michigan. All are from the 321st Bombardment Group, 447th Bombardment Squadron,12th Air Force at Alesani Airfield in Corsica, France on 2 July 1944. They had just returned from a bombing mission over targets in Ravenna, Italy and are enjoying coffee and doughnuts.
Photographed by Ollie Atkins, a reporter for the American Red Cross.
Colorized by Lori Lang

German troops accepting a drink from a French villager somewhere in Normandy in mid-June 1944, after the commencement of the Allied invasion.The soldier on the left is carrying a Sturmgewehr (STG.44) and in the center is a Panzerschreck (RPzB.54, anti-tank rocket launcher) and at front right are the Gr.4322 rockets used with the launcher.
Bundesarchiv. Bild 101I-731-0388-38. Colorized by Doug.

Garapan, Saipan, Mariana Islands. 3 July 1944:

Marine infantrymen move fast to take up new positions in Garapan, principal city of Saipan. Japanese buildings and installations were set afire by supporting artillery barrages and the Marines entered the town to engage the enemy in street fighting for the first time in the Pacific theatre.”
Garapan, on the west coast of Saipan, was captured by the Second Marine Division. About two thousand Japanese out of the original garrison of nearly thirty thousand on Saipan were taken prisoner. American casualties were approximately three thousand killed, three hundred missing, and thirteen thousand wounded.
From the Marine Corps Archives Colorized by Royston Leonard

Two German medics, one a Feldwebel and the other a Gefreiter, helping an injured comrade in Colombelles, Normandy in France in July of1944.  (Colorized by Vitaly Lopatin from Russia)

July of 1943 in Greenville, South Carolina. Men of the Quartermaster Truck Company of the 25th Service Group, Air Service Command having a card game in one of the barracks.” (Colorized by Retropotamus)

Stanisław Franciszek Sosabowski, CBE; 8 May 1892 to 25 September 1967) was a Polish general in World War Two. He fought in the Battle of Arnhem in the Netherlands in 1944 as commander of the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade.
(Colorized by Marcin Pasiak from Poland)
Rico says he was admirably played by Gene Hackman in A Bridge Too Far:

Supermarine Spitfire Mark VCs of Number Two Squadron, South African Air Force (SAAF) based at Palata, Italy, flying in loose line-astern formation over the Adriatic while on a bombing mission to the Sangro River battlefront, October to December of 1943.

(Colorized by Tom Thounaojam, Imphal, India)

A 7.2-inch howitzer of the British Army’s 75th Heavy Regiment, Royal Artillery being towed through the narrow Via Giuseppe Mazzini by the corner of Via Oreste Bandiniin in the commune of Borgo San Lorenzo, Florence in the Italian region of Tuscany. 12 September 1944.
Colorized by Royston Leonard

Wehrmacht troops on the Eastern Front, circa 1942, carrying the Maschinenpistole MP 40:

“Although the MP 40 was generally reliable, a major weakness was its 32-round magazine. Unlike the double-column, dual-feed magazine insert found on the Thompson M1921-28 variants, the MP 38 and MP 40 used a double-column, single-feed insert. The single-feed insert resulted in increased friction against the remaining cartridges moving upwards towards the feed lips, occasionally resulting in feed failures; this problem was exacerbated by the presence of dirt or other debris. Another problem was that the magazine was also sometimes misused as a handhold. This could cause the weapon to malfunction when hand pressure on the magazine body caused the magazine lips to move out of the line of feed, since the magazine well did not keep the magazine firmly locked. Soldiers were trained to grasp either the handhold on the underside of the weapon or the magazine housing with the supporting hand to avoid feed malfunctions.”

Fallschirmjäger in Florence, Italy. mid-August of 1944.

A French maquisard carrying a German MP40 at the time of the liberation of Paris during August of 1944. 

Photo © Lithuanian-born photographer, Izraelis Biderman wbo, as Izis, found refuge in the region of Limoges, where he joined the French Resistance fighters. During the Liberation, in August of 1944,  he made portraits of his fellow Maquisards.
The maquis increased rapidly, with the reinforcement of many young men trying to escape the invasion by German troops in November of 1942 and the STO (Service du travail obligatoire) in early 1943. Maquis operations changed from sabotage in 1943 to massive attacks against occupation troops in 1944. At its peak, the Limousine maquis is estimated to have been between eight thousand and twelve thousand fighters.(Colorization by Doug UK)

]Troops from the 101st Airborne in a C-47, with full packs and a bazooka, just before take-off from RAF Upottery Airfield to Normandy, France for Operation Chicago. 5 June 1944.
F-Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th PIR, 101st Airborne Division en route to Normandy aboard their C-47 #12. At 0120 hours they jumped over DZ C (Hiesville). Left to right: William G. Olanie, Frank D. Griffin, Robert J. “Bob” Noody, Lester T. Hegland. This photo took on a life of its own after it was published. Bob remembers he must have weighed at least 250 pounds, encumbered with his M-1 rifle, a bazooka, three rockets, land mines, and other assorted “necessities”.
The division, as part of the VII Corps assault, jumped in the dark before H-Hour to seize positions west of Utah Beach. As the assault force approached the French coast, it encountered fog and antiaircraft fire, which forced some of the planes to break formation. Paratroopers from both the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions missed their landing zones and were scattered over wide areas.
At 0015 in the darkness of 6 June 1944, Captain Frank L. Lillyman, of Skaneateles, New York, leader of the Pathfinder group, became the first American soldier to touch French soil and, for 33 days the 101st Airborne carried the attack to the enemy.
Colorized by Paul Reynolds of Historic Military Photo Colourisations

An American soldier says farewell at Pennsylvania Station in New York City before being posted overseas in December of 1943.
When speaking of the time he photographed American soldiers saying farewell to their wives and sweethearts in 1943 on assignment for Life magazine, Alfred Eisenstaedt said: “I just kept motionless like a statue.” he said. “They never saw me clicking away. For the kind of photography I do, one has to be very unobtrusive and to blend in with the crowd.”
Colorized by Gisele Nash

Private L.V. Hughes, 48th Highlanders, Canadian First Division, sniping a German position near the Foglia River, on the Gothic Line in Italy, late August of 1944, using a Nº4 Mk.1(T) Lee Enfield Sniper Rifle with a Canadian-made Nº32 R.E.L. Mk.III Telescopic Sight.
While the Canadian 3rd Division troops had been in battle in France for almost three months, the Canadian 1st Division had landed in Italy from Sicily almost one year before, on 3 September 1943. The 48th Highlanders (Toronto) approached the Gothic Line, the next German line of defense and the next grand battle.
In the last week of August 1944, the entire Canadian Corps began its attack on the Gothic Line with the objective of capturing Rimini. Six rivers lay across the path of the advance. On 25 August 1944, the Canadians crossed the Metauro River, but the next, the Foglia, was more formidable. Here the Germans had concentrated their defenses, and it required days of bitter fighting and softening of the line by Allied air forces to reach it. On 30 August, two Canadian brigades crossed the Foglia and fought their way through the Gothic Line. On 2 September, General Burns reported that “the Gothic Line is completely broken in the Adriatic Sector, and the 1st Canadian Corps is advancing to the Conca.”
The announcement was premature, for the enemy recovered quickly, reinforced the Adriatic defense by moving divisions from other lines and thus, slowed the advance to Rimini to bitter, step-by-step progress. Three miles south of the Conca, the forward troops came under fire from the German 1st Parachute Division while, to the west, heavy fighting was developing on the Coriano Ridge. By hard fighting the Canadians captured the ridge and it appeared that the Gothic Line was finally about to collapse, but this was not to be. For three more weeks, the Canadians battled to take the hill position of San Fortunato, which blocked the approach to the Po Valley. On 21 September, the Allies entered a deserted Rimini. That same day, the 1st Division was relieved by the New Zealand Division to sweep across the plains of Lombardy to Bologna and the Po. But the rains came. Streams turned into raging torrents, mud replaced the powdery dust and the tanks bogged down in the swamp lands of the Romagna. The Germans still resisted.
Colorized by Doug

A trainee tank driver at the controls of a Crusader Mk.II tank of the 6th South African Armoured Division in the desert at Khataba, northwest of Cairo, Egypt in September of 1943.

American 4th Infantry Division troopers and German POWs take cover from crossfire beneath an M10 tank buster somewhere in Germany in early 1945.

Hit and wounded by Soviet fire, a German medic gives first aid to his comrade in Potschlowaj, in the Ukraine in August of 1942.

Colorized by Mike Gepp from Australia.

Fallschirmjäger with a Granatwerfer (8 cm GrW. 34) at Monte Cassino, Italy in 1944 (Photo: Bundesarchiv)

An early PzKpfw V. Panther between Florence and Ravenna in Italy in March of 1944. (Photo: Bundesarchiv)