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Grumman F6F-3 "Hellcat" fighters landing on USS Enterprise (CV-6) after strikes on the Japanese base at Truk, in the Caroline Islands. 17-18 February 1944.
Flight deck crewmen are folding planes' wings and guiding them forward to the parking area.
Truk in the Caroline Islands had been the main base for Combined Fleet since the pre-WW2 days and had since been the home-away-from-home for the Combined Fleet vessels operating in the South and Central Pacific. For the first two years of the conflict, Truk was considered an unassailable bastion. However, by early 1944 the American carrier forces in the Pacific had grown so monumentally in strength that attacks that would have been unthinkable a mere six months earlier became possible. In early Feb 1944, Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher's Task Force 58 was so powerful and had such a good recent history that he thought he could arrange an attack on Truk, which was code named Operation Hailstone. The presence of Japanese land-based aircraft on the island did not deter his wish to conduct this raid. Strategically, an attack on Truk by the Americans was also important, as the Japanese garrison might interfere with American operations in the Marshall Islands.
After a follow up attack in April, 1944, Truk was reduced to rubble with over 70 shipwrecks, 400 aircraft destroyed or sunk, and the menace of this big fortress completely eliminated. The U.S. forces declined direct engagement with the 40,000 troops at Truk, and after these attacks, starvation consumed many of the defenders and native people before a complete Japanese surrender late in 1945.
(Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives)
(Colourised by Doug)
Colourising History
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WW2 Colourised Photos
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US Marines blast Japanese positions near the base of Suribachi on Iwo Jima. February 19, 1945

The American amphibious invasion of Iwo Jima during World War II stemmed from the need for a base near the Japanese coast. Following elaborate preparatory air and naval bombardment, three U.S. marine divisions landed on the island in February 1945. Iwo Jima was defended by roughly 23,000 Japanese army and navy troops, who fought from an elaborate network of caves, dugouts, tunnels and underground installations. Despite the difficulty of the conditions, the marines wiped out the defending forces after a month of fighting, and the battle earned a place in American lore with the publication of a photograph showing the U.S. flag being raised in victory. (history.com)

(Photo source - Pvt. Campbell /U.S. MARINE CORPS)

(Colorized by Jared Enos from the USA)
www.facebook.com/JenosColor?fref=ts

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It was #OTDIH in 1945, 75 years ago today, that AP Photographer, Joe Rosenthal snapped the iconic photograph "Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima" of six United States Marines raising the American flag atop Mount Suribachi. The Pulitzer-Prize-winning photo is one of the most significant and recognizable images of WWII.

This photo was actually the SECOND flag-raising atop the mountain that day. A smaller flag had been raised there in the morning when Suribachi was initially captured. This larger flag was raised in the afternoon by 5th Division Marines Sgt. Michael Strank, Cpl. Harlon Block, PFC Franklin Sousley, PFC Ira Hayes, PFC Harold Schultz, and PFC Harold Keller. Strank, Block, and Sousley were all killed in the Battle of Iwo Jima.
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by: Commemorative Air Force
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Famous image of Avro Lancaster III (ED592), on it's maiden test flight dated 26th August 1942. She was later delivered to No. 50 RAF at Skellingthrorpe, and designated the letters VN-B.
She would be shot down on the 2nd March 1943 on a mission to bomb Berlin, reportedly by night fighter pilot Oblt Horst Pause of the 1./NJG 1, flying a Bf 110 G-4 from Gilze-Rijen airfield.
Badly crippled the Lancaster crash Wadenoyen sw of Tiel, killing all the crew:
Pilot F/O. F.E. Townsend
Flight engineer Sgt. A. Sandow
Navigator Sgt. H. Wood
Nav ba Sgt. W.C. Yetton
Wo ag Sgt. D.G. Hobbs
Air gunner Sgt. P.J. Rose
Air gunner Sgt. W.A. Dawe
Photographer: Charles E. Brown.
Image Credit: Authors Personal Collection (Via RAF Museum).
Image Repair & Colourisation - Nathan Howland @HowdiColourWorks.
WW2 Colourised Photos
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AMERICA REMEMBERS -- , Rosalind P. Walter, the First ‘Rosie the Riveter,’ Dies at 95.
Rosalind Palmer Walter — friends called her Roz, not Rosie — was born on June 24, 1924, in Brooklyn, one of four children of Carleton and Winthrop (Bushnell) Palmer. Her mother was a professor of literature at Long Island University.
Rosalind P. Walter grew up in a wealthy and genteel Long Island home. Yet when the United States entered World War II, she chose to join millions of other women in the home-front crusade to arm the troops with munitions, warships and aircraft.
She worked the night shift driving rivets into the metal bodies of Corsair fighter planes at a plant in Connecticut — a job that had almost always been reserved for men. A newspaper column about her inspired a morale-boosting 1942 song that turned her into the legendary Rosie the Riveter, the archetype of the hard-working women in overalls and bandanna-wrapped hair who kept the military factories humming.
The family settled in Centre Island, a village in the town of Oyster Bay on Long Island’s North Shore. Its 400 or so well-heeled residents have since included the singer Billy Joel, the lyricist Alan Jay Lerner and the media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Her parents sent Rosalind to the Ethel Walker School in Simsbury, Conn., one of the first college preparatory boarding schools for upper-class women.
By the time she graduated, Europe was at war, and after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 spurred the United States to declare war on Japan, Germany and Italy, she was recruited, at 19, as an assembly line worker at the Vought Aircraft Company in Stratford, Conn.
Her story caught the attention of the syndicated newspaper columnist Igor Cassini, who wrote about her in his “Cholly Knickerbocker” column. And that, in turn, inspired the songwriters.
Ms. Walter was not the only Rosie the Riveter. There were at least four other women who became models for the character as the War Production Board sought to recruit more women for the military factories.
Norman Rockwell drew his version of Rosie for the cover of the May 29, 1943, issue of The Saturday Evening Post — a grimy-faced, muscular woman in denim overalls, work goggles perched on her forehead and a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf trampled underfoot. His model was a Vermont woman, Mary Doyle Keefe, who died in 2015.
And J. Howard Miller drew a Rosie poster for Westinghouse war factories. He portrayed her in a red and white polka dot bandanna as she flexed a bicep under the words “We Can Do It!” The image became a feminist symbol starting in the 1980s, reprinted on T-shirts and coffee mugs. The model for that Rosie was most likely Naomi Parker Fraley, a California waitress who died in 2018.
So Rosalind Walter cannot alone claim the crown of being the real Rosie the Riveter. But she was there first.
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From: The Ninety-Nines, Inc, International Organization of Women Pilots
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Air France first flight cover - Paris, France - San Juan, Puerto Rico, Boeing 707, April 1, 1964.
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From: P.R. Aviation History
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Wow did not know there were direct flights from France to the island at one point in time. So cool!
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Nice historical source !
indestructible bond i hope

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Raymonde de Laroche
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(22 August 1882 – 18 July 1919) was a French pilot, thought to be the first woman to pilot a plane. She became the world's first licensed female pilot on 8 March 1910.
The day Raymonde de Laroche made her solo flight, creating history as the first woman to do so is also befittingly celebrated as International Women’s day. From been known as an aspiring actress, Baroness (cheekily bestowed by the Flight Magazine), daughter of a plumber etc. to been hailed as the champion of the air, de Laroche beat all the odds against her.

It was a casual suggestion by aviation pioneer Charles Voisin that made de Laroche set her sights on this perilous life-staking endeavor. Planes were a rather new phenomenon, and its technology was in nascent stages. The dangers and challenges of operating something relatively new, that even the ablest men would not attempt did not hamper her aspirations and she started her lessons at the French airfield at Camp de Chalon’s, about 90 miles east of Paris. Her wings first took flight on October 22, 1909, and less than a year from that day, on March 8, 1910, which is also celebrated as International Women’s day – de Laroche was awarded a pilot’s license from Federation Aeronautique International and became the first woman pilot.

Her achievements did not end there. She went on to win the infamous Coupe Femina (a women’s-only aviation competition) in 1913 for a successful flight of more than four hours and also set the women’s altitude record in 1919 by ascending to 15,700 feet cementing her legacy in the world of aviation and inspiring women across the world.
From: sororitie.home.blog/

Photo, 1910.
She lost her husband during the war and also her son to the spanish flu...
After the war, she tackled altitude flights, aboard her Caudron G3, and in this discipline, faced a formidable rival, in the person of the american Ruth Law. On June 7, 1919, the Frenchwoman climbed to 3 900 meters but dis not savor her record, wich Ruth stole from her three days later by reaching 4 270 meters. If this duel at the top effectively takes the two aviators to dizzying heights, the last word goes to the baroness who, on June 12, 1919, takes the record to 4 800 meters ans becomes "the tallest woman in the world".
On July 18, 1919, during a banal training flight, in an experimental aircraft in wich she flies as a passenger, suddenly tips overwhen the pilot begins a loop at low altitude...

Tribute to women's day !!

The Air Show is Back!!!!
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Feel free to post everything related to aviation and war history.  So, reviving this thread with some great pictures i found of this very noisy and cool planes that were flying all over the island of Puerto Rico during the month of February.  Some people said they were at an air show in the neighboring island of Dominican Republic, but no one was able to confirm that information. The fact is they did stay and fly all over the island at all hours.  Very loud little planes I got to see them but no pictures from me sorry.  But this are some i found from a page I follow.
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