Showing posts with label war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Pictures of Korea in 1945

Korean mother and child. Korean countryside near Seoul in fall of 1945

Korean Teahouse, 1945 in Seoul

Refugees: Fusan 1945, now named Busan

Korean Fisherman, Samch'ok, November 1945

Many Korean women carried heavy loads on their heads in 1945

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Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Korean War

The Korean War (25 June 1950 – armistice signed 27 July 1953) was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China (PRC), with military material aid from the Soviet Union. The war was a result of the physical division of Korea by an agreement of the victorious Allies at the conclusion of the Pacific War at the end of World War II. The Korean peninsula was ruled by Japan from 1910 until the end of World War II. Following the surrender of Japan in 1945, American administrators divided the peninsula along the 38th Parallel, with United States troops occupying the southern part and Soviet troops occupying the northern part. [via]

A US howitzer position near the Kum River, 15 July

Korean civilians pass an M-46 tank

A GI comforts a grieving infantryman

The U.S. Air Force attacking railroads south of Wonsan on the eastern coast of North Korea

General Douglas MacArthur, UN Command CiC (seated), observes the naval shelling of Incheon from the USS Mt. McKinley, 15 September 1950

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Sunday, July 17, 2011

Gustav Gun - The Largest Gun Ever Built

Schwerer Gustav (English: Heavy Gustaf, or Great Gustaf) and Dora were the names of two massive World War II German 80 cm K (E) railway siege guns. They were developed in the late 1930s by Krupp for the express purpose of destroying heavy fortifications, specifically those in the French Maginot Line. They weighed nearly 1,350 tonnes, and could fire shells weighing seven tonnes to a range of 37 kilometers (23 miles). Designed in preparation for World War II, and intended for use against the deep forts of the Maginot Line, they were not ready for action when the Wehrmacht outflanked the line during the Battle of France. Gustav was used in the Soviet Union at the siege of Sevastopol during Operation Barbarossa. They were moved to Leningrad, and may have been intended for Warsaw. Gustav was captured by US troops and cut up, whilst Dora was destroyed near the end of the war to avoid capture by the Red Army.






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Sunday, June 12, 2011

Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) 1939-1949

The work undertaken by the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) was wide ranging; from cooking to meteorology; from administrative duties to maintaining and repairing aircraft.

Women replaced RAF personnel in those trades where there were shortages. There was an ebb and flow of requirements. The safety and physical well-being of the women were primary concerns. Except for nursing orderlies, aircrew duty was never approved.

Assistant Section Officer Elizabeth Weightman. Photographic interpretation played an important role in assessing targets

WAAF armourers preparing a bomberaircraft for an operation

WAAFs helped to bring back casualties and prisoners of war from Europe soon after D-Day

WAAFs in the Middle East, circa 1944

RAF station dance, Bradwell Bay 1944

WAAF Flight Mechanics

Friday, March 4, 2011

Quang Duc’s self-immolation

Quang Duc’s self-immolation on June 11, 1963 was captured on film by Malcolm Browne, alerting the world to the growing anti-Diem nationalism in Saigon.

Monday, February 28, 2011

35 years after the fall: The Vietnam War in picture

U.S. military action in Vietnam was a piece in the global Cold War struggle. After Vietnamese nationalists overthrew French colonialists in the 1950s, the country was divided between the Communist north and the anti-Communist south. In the ensuing conflict, Washington backed the south, fearing that a Communist takeover could cascade through Southeast Asia. The first U.S. forces engaged in the conflict in secret, by way of Cambodia. As the civil war intensified in the 1960s, the United States expanded its operations in the region, deploying some 3 million American troops over time, but U.S. forces struggled to gain ground as they fought in difficult and unfamiliar terrain against extremely capable in guerrilla fighters. As the war dragged on and casualties mounted, opposition to the war exploded. By the time American forces withdrew in 1975 and Saigon fell to Ho Chi Minh's Communists, 58,000 Americans and between 1 million and 2 million Vietnamese had died. It was the longest war in U.S. history and the most unpopular American war of the 20th century. In this 1965 photo, paratroopers cross a river in the rain near Ben Cat, in the south.

The South Vietnamese regime backed by the United States in the early days of the conflict was notoriously corrupt and authoritarian. President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was part of the Catholic minority, populated his government and military with Catholics, fomenting widespread unrest among the country's Buddhist majority. In this image taken June 11, 1963, Buddhist monk Quang Duc burns himself to death at a busy Saigon intersection to protest persecution of Buddhists. The picture came to represent the failure of the Diem regime and a growing public relations problem for the U.S. Several months later, Diem was overthrown, executed and buried in an unmarked grave.

Hovering U.S. Army helicopters pour machine gun fire into a tree line to cover the advance of South Vietnamese ground troops in March 1965. The troops were moving to attack a Viet Cong camp northwest of Saigon near the Cambodian border.

A Vietnamese man holds the body of his child as South Vietnamese Army Rangers look down from their armored vehicle near the Cambodian border on March 19, 1964.

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Friday, February 25, 2011

Unseen World War II Photos

World War II photos taken in the former USSR during World War II on the occupied territories. These are photos from family archives posted online by grandchildren of those who took part in the war: the authors of most of them remain unknown. Some of the photos belong to the Soviet journalists: Dmitri Baltermants and Vladimir Lupejko. The photographs are cruel and shocking, but they should teach us about life and how precious it is. We are all equals during our short life on this planet and all nations should embrace others and cease all conflicts. For the better future of our children, may the history never repeat itself.






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Friday, January 21, 2011

"V-J Day, Times Square, 1945", a.k.a. “The Kiss" by Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1945


V-J Day in Times Square, a photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt, was published in Life in 1945 with the caption, In New York's Times Square a white-clad girl clutches her purse and skirt as an uninhibited sailor plants his lips squarely on hers.