World War II Los Angeles in color

I'm not sure that I've seen color photos of the wartime aircraft workers, and certainly not any like these from the Library of Congress stash on Flickr. That's been a black and white era for me. The woman above, from 1942, is an inspector at the Vega Aircraft plant that used to adjoin Lockheed at what's now Bob Hope Airport in Burbank.

The photostream also includes Depression-era color photos from across the U.S taken by photographers for the United States Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information. I got onto the collection via Larry Harnisch at the Times' Daily Mirror blog. Below, the Grand Grocery in Lincoln, Neb. in 1942.