Photographs

USS Idaho battleship shelling Okinawa sometime in late March 1945. The USS Idaho joined Task Force 54 as the flagship of Bombardment Unit 4 for the invasion of the Japanese island of Okinawa. Shelling began on March 25th in preparation for the landings which occured one week later. The battleship …

Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers fly over Japan’s Mount Fuji en route to blitzing Tokyo sometime in 1945. During the war, the US Intelligence Center actually considered the option to dye the snow capped Mount Fuji by dropping black or red paint on it. The plan was part of a psychological …

Mexican Air Force Captain Radames Gaxiola Andrade and members of the maintenance team photographed in front of a US P-47 Thunderbolt fighter aircraft after returning from a combat mission during the Philippines Campaign in 1945. The team was part of Mexico’s 201st Fighter Squadron, which assisted the Allied efforts during …

Soviet soldiers of the 1st Baltic Front during an attack in the Latvian city of Jelgava on August 16th 1944, towards the end of Operation Bagration. The 1st Baltic Front was a major formation of the Red Army during World War II and was involved in multiple important battles, most …

USS Pennsylvania battleship heading towards Lingayen Gulf before landing in Luson, Philippines, in January 1945. Behind USS Pennsylvanya we can see USS Colorado, USS Louisville, USS Portland and USS Columbia in a real show of force by the US Navy. Laid down in October 1913, USS Pennsylvania was not sent …

Camouflaged Tiger I tank number 222 of German Schwere Panzer Abteilung 502, pictured while soldiers are operating work for the snowy weather on the Eastern Front. The Tiger 1, a heavy tank produced between 1942 and 1944, was quite a remarkable design at its time, but it was also expensive …

Albanian guerrilla fighters pose under a sign identifying their hometown of Tirana on November 28th 1944, the end date of the German occupation of the country. Albania was set up as a protectorate state following the Italian invasion of April 1939 and was later occupied by German forces. The fascist …

Adolf Hitler and high ranking German officials photographed in front of the Compiegne Wagon on June 21st, 1940. In the picture we can see Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler, Erich Raeder (mostly obscured) and Walther von Brauchitsch. The famous carriage hosted Germany’s virtual surrender …

A British RAF Lancaster bomber over the German city of Hamburg in the Summer of 1943, during Operation Gomorrah. Operation Gomorrah was carried out by the US Air Force and British Royal Air Force, lasting for 8 days starting with July 24th 1943. It was the heaviest aerial assault in …

U.S. Army Air Force Lieutenant Robert L. Hite is carried from a Japanese transport plane after he was flown from China to Tokyo along with seven other captured US airmen. Lt. Robert L. Hite was co-pilot of crew 16 (B-25B s/n 40-2268 Bat out of Hell, 34th Bomb Squadron) of …