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For what I know, there are not real color photos about the Great Patrioctic
War of Soviet sources; eventually, one can find few color photos of German
sources, or of their allies.
Drawing color profiles, I feel their absence very much; as a sort of
compensation, I have tried to make what I would like to find.
All the photos shown here are colorized versions of old grayscale photos
from many sources.
The choice of colors should be close to real ones, but misinterpretations
are always possible.
The colorization work has been done with Adobe Photoshop, respecting
the original luminosity of each pixel, and acting on the hue and saturation
values only.
The work was made combining these techniques:
| This example was piloted by Lt. N.M.Estyen and made a forced landing
after being hit by AA fire near Utti air base in southern
Finland on July 12, 1941. The unit was a detached fighter squadron (OIAE) of the Baltic fleet. Many remains are still in the Vesivehmaa museum in Finland. |
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| This photo represents two Luftwaffe officers on a captured MiG-3. The
man on the ground looks to have a Soviet pilot leather helmet on his hands.
About all the captured MiG-3 wore the same green/light blue painting, with stars on fuselage, wings uppersurfaces and undersurfaces. Strangely, this scheme rarely appears on Soviet photos, probably because most of the pre-war built MiG-3s were lost in the first days of the war, or were overpainted with camo stripes. |
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photo from Alex Ruchkovski via Ilya Grinberg, colorized
by Massimo Tessitori
This excellent unpublished photo shows many Soviet pilots and ground
crew with different styles of uniforms, some of archaic army type.
The aircraft is a late production MiG-3 with pipe for inhert gas near
the exhaust stack, with radio mast, with slats and underwing gun
pods.
Note the unusual painted propeller blades . I've darkened the blades
on the photo to make them look black, but they were lighter (possibly green)
on the original image.
I have slightly faded the background to give the idea of a slight mist;
the background was sharper on the original photo.
A compressed air bottle is visible on the ground.
The aircraft and the pilots are of 180 IAP (later made a Guard regiment
as 30 GIAP), 6 IAK PVO, on the Borki airfield near Moscow..
In August 1941 the 180IAP faced combat in Rzhev region.
On October 13th, 1941 the regiment was located in the airfield Yorshi,
north to Rzhev. After this airfield
was sieged by Germans the regiment moved into Taldom, near Tver. They
landed at Borki airfield on 17th of October 1941.
As a date for the photo, one could hypothize late October or November
1941 because of traces of snow in combination with some archaic elements
(uniform and gun
pods) and the apparent absence of mud.
| This interesting image shows a winter camouflaged MiG-3 of unknown unit during the winter 1941/42. |  |
| These MiG-3s were collected from spare parts by the Moscow Aircraft
Factory (Zavod 1), and delivered to 122 IAP in February 1942.
They are probably between the last MiG-3s even built.
The slogans are: "Za rodinu" (For the homeland), pilot D. Latyshev "Za Stalina" (For Stalin), pilot A.K. Popov "Za Partii Bolshevikov" (For the Bolshevik Party), pilot V.V. Rybalko. The arrows are believed to be red, even if they look a bit darker than the stars. Note the unusually immaculate white color. The objects on the ground are compressed air bottles to charge the pneumatic system of the aircrafts. |
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| A MiG-3 of 2 GSAP/VVS-SF at Vayenga airport in 1942.
Particularly noticeable are the Lapps with their reindeer helping the VVS ground crew. Sleighs were used on the unsnowed ground too. The objects on the canisters look like bombs, probably for bombers SB that were in the 72 SAP; this SAP got Pe-2 as well since July 1942. |
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photo of G. Zhidov via Ilya Grinberg
This is the early type Yak-1 of the pilot Georgiy Nikanorovich Zhidov,
later Hero of the Soviet Union (not visible on this photo), of the 123
IAP of the 7th IAK PVO (Leningrad Air Defense).
We see a mechanic refueling it. Note the parachute on the wing, thus
the photo is taken right before the mission.
The photo was taken 15 April 1942 on the ice of Ladoga Lake. That day
the regiment performed ground attack sorties.
Here is an image of Captain V.P. Mironov on his LaGG-3 in spring 1942; he was the commander of 609th IAP, and shot down shooting down twenty-one enemy aircrafts; later he was made Hero of the Soviet Union.
This was the aircraft of Leonid Galachenko of 145th IAP in summer 1942.
The pilot is approaching the aircraft and the technician is marching towards
him.
Note the absence of red stars on all the aircraft, except for the spinner.
This image represents the delivery of an aircraft to an operative
unit in presence of a delegation of the Collective farm of Pavlovskiy
district, Gorky region, winter 1942.
The aircraft was paid with funds collected by the workers, and entitled
to the Hero of the Soviet Union Valeriy Chkalov, a famous test pilot.
The image was obtained by merging two different images, and then colorized.
Here is an old photo colorized on request of Ilya Grinberg, that comments:
The names on my photos are: Captain Semen Grinberg (on the left,
with field shoulder boards), Captain Semen Nayshuller (on the right, with
golden shoulder boards), Polina Nayshuler, his wife, and my mother Yevgeniya.
She was 10 at that time.
The photos were taken on July 10 1943, station Platonovka, Tambov
area.
Another photo from Ilya Grinberg:
The photo of my grandfather alone, Captain Semen Nayshuller, was taken in Nikolaev in 1940, when he was still a lieutnant and returned after the Bessarabia campaign.
Another image colorized on request of Ilya Grinberg.
The engineer on the photo is Captain Skok of 13 Guards Bomber Regiment
of the ADD( Long-range Aviation), equipped with B-25.
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