When I was growing up, every WWII documentary was in black and white, so I — along with everyone else — just assumed there was no color footage. Happily, over the past couple of decades, lots of color footage has surfaced.
These clips are from the Battle of the Philippine Sea, June 19–20, 1944, also known as the Marianas Turkey Shoot. The ground campaign of the Battle of Saipan too place 15 June – 9 July 1944.
Color also makes the horrors of war much more apparent.
The Think Tank offers a set of rules for the Home Guard in Britain during World War II. I’ve never seen the show “Dad’s Army,” but can’t stop thinking about the “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” song, Old Home Guard.
Fast Large Air Combats is a set of free wargames rules for WWII air combat game using 1:144 or 1:100 scale miniatures. The rules are designed so that a single player can control multiple aircraft.
Panzer Clash is a free print-and-play card game with a World War II theme for 2-4 players. From the BGG decription:
Pick a side, either Axis or Allies, and build a deck of 40 cards out of a pool of 100 different cards in order to defeat your enemey.
The deck or Supply contains Factories, Units, Events and Terrain Modifiers. Factories are needed to build Units and Terrain Modifiers as well as to power Events. Units and Events, which usually belong to one or more of the four factions (Germans, Japanese, Americans and Soviets) are used to attack and deal damage to the opponent, have certain beneficial effects on the game or are used to weaken the opponent. For each point of damage a Player receives through Units and Events, he or she puts one card from his or her Supply (deck) onto his or her Junkyard (discard-pile). Is a player unable to draw a card from the Supply, he or she loses immediately.
Here’s a photo collage of my WWII Russian Front Game. Figures are mostly Battle Honors. The rules we used were Disposable Heroes. The buildings, roads and river all were hand made by yours truly.