History should always be remembered so as not to be repeated. There's something about colorized photographs of WWII that bring the humanity and heartache back into images we've long glanced over. For people who grew up in the 1930s and 40s, it was a harsh reality that we only get a glimpse of from colorized WWII photos. The most common tank in the Army at the time remained the M3 Stuart, a good design but already behind the times.It's hard to imagine living in a war-torn world while we're sitting on our comfy couches browsing the Internet. The M4 and M4A1 Shermans shown here initially made a good showing in battle, but instead of continuing the development of ever more powerful guns and thicker armor, the Army concentrated on production, believing from the good reports from Sherman’s initial battles against German tanks in North Africa that development could wait.Īs it turned out, it couldn’t, and while the Sherman was not the “death trap” some called it, especially after modifications, the failure to continuously refine and improve the design ultimately cost Allied lives. Army, at the time, but they were essentially 1939 technology, developed as a stopgap that could be manufactured in large numbers very quickly. The M3 Lee tanks in the photo represented the largest number of medium tanks in the U.S. 1st Armored Division had been stripped of its new M4A1 Shermans so that they could be urgently shipped to North Africa to cover British tank losses in the Western Desert. M4 Sherman production had just begun in February 1942, and it was around the time these photos were taken that the U.S.

These photographs depict at least four different variants of two different tanks, some of them lacking armament, cobbled together for the photographer.

Color ww2 tank battle images