Saturday, January 28, 2012

Reference Photo Photos....


March of the Churchills!

I've been in Kingston on course since the beginning of January and will be there until the end of March so I have been more than a little busy, hence no real posts.  One of the really cool things about the course is the number of black and white photos of the 2nd World War that they have hanging in the halls of the buildings.  I asked if they had digital copies of the pictures and no one really knew, so I snap these with my iPhone.  Here is the first of the collection, I don't know what everything is in these photos so some of the captions will be best guesses.  Hope you enjoy!




The Netherlands

Oratona, Italy

 Churchills supporting infantry in Dieppe (thanks Sean)

25 Pdr crew jumping into action (literally!)
 Brit Calvary, JJ

 Brit HMGs in shell scrapes in WWI (Thanks Bob)

 Luftwaffe POW being escorted

 The Royal Canadian Regiment dug in ready to hold the line (thanks Bob!)

 Staghound after crossing bridge

 Fighting in built up areas

 Admin movements onto the secured beach heads

 Engineer made tank and man bridge with Shermans

 Canadians in Korea (you were right Rob)

 Canadian Sherman E8 in Korea (Steve and Rob you guys were bang on)

Sherman with Crab fail

16 comments:

  1. Great pictures! The "march of the churchills" looks very much like dieppe.

    ReplyDelete
  2. i would agree that really looks like Dieppe.

    ReplyDelete
  3. @sean, I think you might be right so I updated accordingly. There is an awesome picture in one of the other buildings of Wasps firing. Hopefully I can get some more pictures this week.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I think that the second and third last photos are from Korea. Note the infantry is wearing Brit ammo pouches, I don't think the FSSF would be wearing that, they would have been using US gear. It also looks like they are wearing cold weather gear, which might lean more towards Korea. The Sherman is an Easy 8, which we used in Korea. I'm fairly confident that we didn't use them in Italy, let alone NW Europe. Great photos though. Keep 'em coming. Need more artillery photos.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yeah was gonna say that Sherman is definitely an E8. great pics!

    ReplyDelete
  6. @Rkelly and indierockclimber, I was thinking that it could be a E8 but I haven't seen one that has the; skirting like that one. All the E8's that I've seen have a straight side down vs the lip for the skirting.

    ReplyDelete
  7. http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1095/966556938_3d8a1c8afc_m.jpg there's 1 other image I've found of an E8 with skirts, though that may even be post-Korea

    ReplyDelete
  8. Dang I keep coming back to that picture. Though it's really difficult to tell- the marking on the turret side looks a bit like the blue circle with crescent moon at the bottom used by the Israelis.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I'll ask around at the college and see if anyone knows for sure. After seeing the other picture of the E8 with skirts I totally agree it could definitely be one.

    I also totally agree that what I have called the FSSF could totally be Korea, I'll see if anyone knows any more about the pictures.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I'm 99.9% sure that's an Easy 8. You can see the extension of the superstructure. Plus it has a muzzle break on the gun, so it's definitely post 1944. Maybe even an E8 HVSS?

    ReplyDelete
  11. @Rob and Indie, you guys were right on all accounts, I've updated the post to reflect the Korean pictures.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I wish I could say that made me proud! Instead it made me wonder what good information that kicked out of my brain to make space :)

    Thanks again for the pics!

    ReplyDelete
  13. Drew,

    The pic titled "Brit Infantry" is actually "The Royal Canadian Regiment in Italy". For those that read this blog.....that's Drew's regiment.

    The HMGs in Shell Scraps is actually a WW I pic. You can tell because they're wearing MK 1 helmets.

    Cheers.

    Bob

    ReplyDelete
  14. @Bob, thanks for sorting me out! I've updated the post accordingly.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Excellent pictures. I used to work in a factory office building in Essex (East of London) which had loads of old post war pictures in their lobby. As you found out the origin of these photo's and even details of what is in them can be devilishly hard to find out. No-one in the building could identify the photo's I saw, which was a great pity.

    ReplyDelete
  16. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete