My WW2 photos/Vids album

[Smokey Stover]

Ju-88 in color

 

[Smokey Stover]

 

[Wurger]

That's a pity these were colourized but not colour..

 

[Smokey Stover]

That's a pity these were colourized but not colour..

Yes, its a common problem. But as long as the pic itself is authentic i believe it brings a degree of realness to the shot. Where as the old black and white pics can often create a form of disconnect, depending on the quality of the image. Having said that i am more of a traditionalist when it comes to authenticity.

 

[Smokey Stover]

14 inch shells on the deck of the USS New Mexico in 1944

 

[Smokey Stover]

Akagi steaming off Osaka on October 15, 1934. Her deck is loaded with Mitsubishi B1M and B2M biplane bombers

 

[Smokey Stover]

Something a little different....
Flt. Lt. Juliette Fleming, RAF Fast Jet pilot - Tornado GR.4

 

[Smokey Stover]

This is the aircraft that intercepted the "uninterceptable" U2 and almost caused an international incident. To RAF Lightnings DIVED on a U2 which was at maximum altitude over Britain on the way to spy on the Russians; frightened the bejeezuz out of the U2 pilot apparently, who was at 80,000 feet and didn't expect fighters to be within 20,000 feet of him, let alone attacking from above. Apparently they spotted the American jet, lit up their afterburners to generate absolute maximum speed, then zoom climbed to getting close to 90,000 feet to dive on the poor unsuspecting guy... The story has it that they came up on his radio making machine gun noises in his headphones and calling the obligatory "tally ho!" as they screamed by on each side. It was hushed up for a long time because the performance of the P1 was classified....
In a rather unusual romantic gesture, Mike proposed to his wife by rolling the aircraft on its back and asking her to marry him. Except he threatened to eject her if she said no.....lol
R.I.P Mike Beachy Head

View: https://youtu.be/c2BVsNdT0ec

 

[Smokey Stover]

Waiting for the Order to Take Off - Russia Stalino airport.

 

[Smokey Stover]

 

[Smokey Stover]

"Reaching Newchurch airfield at 480 mph I held "RB" down to 20 ft from the runway and then pulled her up to a 60 ° climb holding it as the speed dropped slowly off and the altimeter needle spun round the dial as if it were mad. At 7000 ft the speed was dropping below 180 mph and I rolled the Tempest lazily inverted, then allowed the nose to drop until the horizon, at first above my head, disappeared below (or rather above) the now inverted nose, the fields and woods steadied into the centre of the windscreen and then whirled around as I put the stick hard over and rolled around the vertical dive. Steadying again I pulled out over the tree tops at 500 mph, throttled back and pulled hard over towards the airfield in an over-the-vertical climbing turn, lowering the wheels and flaps in a roll as the speed dropped. What a magnificent aeroplane! They could have all their Spitfires and Mustangs!"
("My part of the sky", Roland Beamont)

 

[Smokey Stover]

A rare WW2 colour picture of a Whitley Mark V Z6743 having last minute adjustments to one of its Merlin engines. This aircraft from No. 77 Sqn at Topcliffe crashed at Snaaskerke 5 km SE of Oostende on the night of 10th July 1941. The plane was on a raid on Aachen, all five crew died.

 

[Smokey Stover]

Big gun! US soldiers with a captured Me 262 BK 5

 

[Smokey Stover]

A Krupp railway gun firing at a distant target. Probably somewhere in the east, maybe Sevastopol....

 

[Smokey Stover]

Only a marginally later design than the British Fairey Battle, but just as much a disaster the Soviet Sukhoi Su-2, designed by Pavel Sukhoi, previously of the Tupolev design bureau, entered service with the V-VS early in 1941 and is one of the lesser known aircraft of ww2. Probably because of its appalling loss rate. As far as is known, was not encountered during the Winter War which ended the previous year. Derived from Sukhoi's ANT-51 and designated BB-1 during its early trials, the aircraft was fairly efficient by current standards once the M-87 engine had been replaced by the M-88 and then the M-88B. Tactical concepts changed swiftly during the first two years of the war, however, and the use by the Germans of large forces of single-seat fighters in support of their advancing armies came as a body blow to the Soviets in mid-1941. Despite being further improved by installation of the 746kW M-88B radial, the Su-2 was found to be desperately vulnerable and virtually unable to defend itself with its single small-calibre machine-gun in the unwieldy manually- operated dorsal turret. Estimates suggest that about 100 were in service with the Frontovaya Aviatsya at the time that the German army rolled into the Soviet Union m June 1941, but that dozens were shot down by Flak and fighters in the first few disastrous weeks; moreover, such was the generally poor standard of training in the Soviet air force that the Su-2 proved almost useless as a weapon against mobile battlefield targets.

 

[Smokey Stover]

US soldiers take a pew next to a Sherman tank during a lull in fighting in Normandy

 

[Smokey Stover]

 

[Smokey Stover]

 

[Crimea_River]

Big gun! US soldiers with a captured Me 262 BK 5

The BK 5 designation is the cannon itself, meaning "Bordkannone 5cm". The actual Me262 fitted out in this fashion was called out as an Me 262 A-1a/U4.

 

[Gnomey]

Nice shots!