Public domain World War II pictures

I have some originals of this set of pics.

Reminds me a little of the Japanese knee mortar.

Wiking had volunteers from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Holland, and Flanders.

Like the Italian Brixia these light mortars were rapidly outdated by the modern ww2 warfare, but they were studied in times when conceptually the infantry should had attack trenches without the artillery support in the last 200-300 meters, and these light mortars were apparently the solution.

St Lo was the most "beat-up" city I was in during my war years in the ETO. When I motored thru there with C Btry 229th FA Bn 28th Inf Div on 28 July 1944 there were still dead civilians lying in the street. We hit the city early and kept it up until roughly 26 July.

This is a model F2 with a L/43 length 7.5 cm. KwK 40 gun and globular shaped muzzle brake. 175 were produced, plus 25 converted from the F1 model, from March to July, 1942 by Krupp-Gruson, Vomag and Nibelungenwerke.

The 5 cm. leichter Granatwerfer 36 entered service in 1936 but was withdrawn from front line service by 1942 due to the small size of it's projectile and short range of 530 meters. It remained in use with second-line and garrison units till the end of the war.

It's Iwo Jima, pretty much EVERYTHING on that island could be considered heavy fighting.

@Chevan

Also, did you just join this site recently? I did, and it looks like we are both going through the archives at around the same pace. :)

@Chevan

I doubt the Nazi's were pioneers, or even the USA. I think this has likely been around for much longer, and is a regrettable part of human nature [fear of the "other"/unknown].