1.
Yom Kippur War
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The fighting mostly took place in the Sinai and the Golan Heights, territories that had been occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat wanted also to reopen the Suez Canal, neither specifically planned to destroy Israel, although the Israeli leaders could not be sure of that. Egyptian and Syrian forces crossed ceasefire lines to enter the Sinai Peninsula, both the United States and the Soviet Union initiated massive resupply efforts to their respective allies during the war, and this led to a near-confrontation between the two nuclear superpowers. The war began with a massive and successful Egyptian crossing of the Suez Canal, after crossing the cease-fire lines, Egyptian forces advanced virtually unopposed into the Sinai Peninsula. After three days, Israel had mobilized most of its forces and halted the Egyptian offensive, resulting in a military stalemate, the Syrians coordinated their attack on the Golan Heights to coincide with the Egyptian offensive and initially made threatening gains into Israeli-held territory. Within three days, however, Israeli forces had pushed the Syrians back to the ceasefire lines. The Israel Defense Forces then launched a four-day counter-offensive deep into Syria, within a week, Israeli artillery began to shell the outskirts of Damascus. He therefore ordered the Egyptians to go back on the offensive, on October 22 a United Nations–brokered ceasefire quickly unraveled, with each side blaming the other for the breach. By October 24, the Israelis had improved their positions considerably and completed their encirclement of Egypts Third Army and this development led to tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. As a result, a ceasefire was imposed cooperatively on October 25 to end the war. These changes paved the way for the subsequent peace process, the 1978 Camp David Accords that followed led to the return of the Sinai to Egypt and normalized relations—the first peaceful recognition of Israel by an Arab country. Egypt continued its drift away from the Soviet Union and left the Soviet sphere of influence entirely, the war was part of the Arab–Israeli conflict, an ongoing dispute that included many battles and wars since 1948, when the state of Israel was formed. During the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel had captured Egypts Sinai Peninsula, roughly half of Syrias Golan Heights, and the territories of the West Bank which had been held by Jordan since 1948. On June 19,1967, shortly after the Six-Day War, the Israeli government voted to return the Sinai to Egypt, the Arab position, as it emerged in September 1967 at the Khartoum Arab Summit, was to reject any peaceful settlement with the state of Israel. Prior to that, King Hussein of Jordan had stated that he could not rule out a possibility of a real, permanent peace between Israel and the Arab states. Armed hostilities continued on a limited scale after the Six-Day War and escalated into the War of Attrition, a ceasefire was signed in August 1970. President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt died in September 1970 and he was succeeded by Anwar Sadat. A peace initiative led by both Sadat and UN intermediary Gunnar Jarring was tabled in 1971 and it resembled a proposal independently made by Moshe Dayan
2.
Gun barrel
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A gun barrel is a part of firearms and artillery pieces. The hollow interior of the barrel is called the bore, a gun barrel must be able to hold in the expanding gas produced by the propellants to ensure that optimum muzzle velocity is attained by the projectile as it is being pushed out by the expanding gas. Modern small arms barrels are made of known and tested to withstand the pressures involved. Artillery pieces are made by various techniques providing reliably sufficient strength, early firearms were muzzle-loading, with powder, and then shot loaded from the muzzle, capable of only a low rate of fire. During the 19th century effective mechanical locks were invented that sealed a breech-loading weapon against the escape of propellant gases, the early Chinese, the inventors of gunpowder, used bamboo, a naturally tubular stalk, as the first barrels in gunpowder projectile weapons. Early European guns were made of iron, usually with several strengthening bands of the metal wrapped around circular wrought iron rings. The Chinese were the first to master cast-iron cannon barrels, early cannon barrels were very thick for their caliber. Bore evacuator Bore snake Cannon Muzzle Polygonal rifling Rifling Slug barrel Smoothbore
3.
Muzzle brake
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A muzzle brake or recoil compensator is a device connected to the muzzle of a firearm or cannon that redirects propellant gases to counter recoil and unwanted rising of the barrel during rapid fire. They have been used in forms for rifles and pistols to help control recoil. They are used on pistols for practical pistol competitions, and are usually called compensators in this context, the interchangeable terms muzzle rise, muzzle flip, or muzzle climb refer to the tendency of a handheld firearms front end to rise after firing. Firearms with less height from the line to the barrel centerline tend to experience less muzzle rise. The muzzle rises primarily because, for most firearms, the centerline of the barrel is above the center of contact between the shooter and the grip and stock. The reactive forces from the bullet and propellant gases exiting the muzzle act directly down the centerline of the barrel. If that line of force is above the center of the points, this creates a moment or torque rotational force that makes the firearm rotate. The M1946 Sieg automatic rifle had a muzzle brake that made the rifle climb downward. Muzzle brakes are simple in concept, such as the one employed on the 90 mm M3 gun used on the M47 Patton tank and this consists of a small length of tubing mounted at right angles to the end of the barrel. Brakes most often utilize slots, vents, holes, baffles, the strategy of a muzzle brake is to redirect and control the burst of combustion gases that follows the departure of a projectile. All muzzle brake designs share a basic principle, they partially divert combustion gases at a sideways angle. The momentum of the diverted gases thus does not add to the recoil, the angle toward which the gases are directed will fundamentally affect how the brake behaves. If gases are directed upward, they exert a downward force. Construction of a brake or compensator can be as simple as a diagonal cut at the muzzle end of the barrel to direct some of the escaping gas upward. On the AKM assault rifle, the brake also angles slightly to the right to counteract the movement of the rifle under recoil. Another simple method is porting, where holes or slots are machined into the barrel near the muzzle to allow the gas to escape, more advanced designs use baffles and expansion chambers to slow escaping gases. This is the principle behind a linear compensator. Ports are often added to the chambers, producing the long
4.
Shell (projectile)
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A shell is a payload-carrying projectile that, as opposed to shot, contains an explosive or other filling, though modern usage sometimes includes large solid projectiles properly termed shot. Solid shot may contain a pyrotechnic compound if a tracer or spotting charge is used, originally, it was called a bombshell, but shell has come to be unambiguous in a military context. Words cognate with grenade are still used for an artillery or mortar projectile in some European languages, shells are usually large-calibre projectiles fired by artillery, combat vehicles, and warships. Shells usually have the shape of a cylinder topped by a nose for good aerodynamic performance, possibly with a tapering base. Solid cannonballs did not need a fuse, but hollow munitions filled with something such as gunpowder to fragment the ball, needed a fuse, percussion fuses with a spherical projectile presented a challenge because there was no way of ensuring that the impact mechanism hit the target. Therefore, shells needed a fuse that was ignited before or during firing. The earliest record of shells being used in combat was by the Republic of Venice at Jadra in 1376, shells with fuses were used at the 1421 siege of St Boniface in Corsica. These were two hollowed hemispheres of stone or bronze held together by an iron hoop, as described in their book, these hollow, gunpowder-packed shells were made of cast iron. At least since the 16th Century grenades made of ceramics or glass were in use in Central Europe, a hoard of several hundred ceramic greandes were discovered during building works in front of a bastion of the Bavarian City of Ingolstadt, Germany dated to the 17th Century. Lots of the grenades obtained their orignal blackpowder loads and igniters, most probably the grenades were intentionally dumped the moat of the bastion before the year 1723. Early powder burning fuses had to be loaded fuse down to be ignited by firing or a portfire put down the barrel to light the fuse, other shells were wrapped in bitumen cloth, which would ignite during the firing and in turn ignite a powder fuse. Nevertheless, shells came into use in the 16th Century. By the 18th Century, it was known that the fuse towards the muzzle could be lit by the flash through the windage between the shell and the barrel, the use of exploding shells from field artillery became relatively commonplace from early in the 19th century. Until the mid 19th century, shells remained as simple exploding spheres that used gunpowder and they were usually made of cast iron, but bronze, lead, brass and even glass shell casings were experimented with. The word bomb encompassed them at the time, as heard in the lyrics of The Star-Spangled Banner, typically, the thickness of the metal body was about a sixth of their diameter and they were about two thirds the weight of solid shot of the same calibre. To ensure that shells were loaded with their fuses towards the muzzle, in 1819, a committee of British artillery officers recognised that they were essential stores and in 1830 Britain standardised sabot thickness as a half inch. The sabot was also intended to reduce jamming during loading, despite the use of exploding shell, the use of smoothbore cannons, firing spherical projectiles of shot, remained the dominant artillery method until the 1850s. By the late 18th century, artillery could use canister shot to defend itself from infantry or cavalry attack and this involved loading a tin or canvas container filled with small iron or lead balls instead of the usual cannonball
5.
Glossary of British ordnance terms
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This article explains terms used for the British Armed Forces ordnance and also ammunition. The terms may have different meanings in the military of other countries. Between decks, applies to a gun mounting in which part of the rotating mass is below the deck. This allows for a profile of turret, meaning that turrets need not be superfiring The term BL, in its general sense, stood for breech loading. The shell was loaded via the breech followed by the propellant charge, sealing the chamber to prevent escape of the propellant gases. The term BL was first used to refer to the Armstrong breechloaders, following the discontinuation of Armstrong breechloaders and the period of British rifled muzzle-loaders, British breechloaders were re-introduced in 1880. Early British Elswick breechloaders in the 1880s used a steel cup obturation method and this was quickly superseded in guns designed by the Royal Gun Factory by the French de Bange method, the basic principle of which is still in use today. In British service this became a Crossley pad with an interrupted thread screw block e. g. a Welin screw, the shell was loaded via the breech, followed by the propellant charge in a cloth bag. A single-use vent sealing tube, a type of primer not dissimilar in appearance to a rifle round, was inserted into the breech for firing the gun. For instance, Britain before World War I had both QF and BL6 inch guns and this presented difficulties for BL guns at high angles. A special cartridge was developed for BL9.2 inch guns on H. A. mountings, using multiple small fabric bags also allows the gunners to use a reduced charge if need be. The term BLC stood for BL converted and referred to a breech and breech mechanism modified from an early long-screw three- or four-motion to modern short-screw single-motion, an example is the conversion of the BL15 pounder to BLC15 pounder. Calibre radius head, the radius of a circle with the curve of the nose on its circumference. The longer and more pointed the nose, the higher the C. R. H. Typical C. R. H. for British shells leading up to World War I was two, e. g. the curve of the nose of a two C. R. H. Six-inch shell was equivalent to the curve of a circle with a radius of 12 inches, shells of four C. R. H. were soon developed in World War I, identified by an A following the shell mark number, B for six and so on. For modern streamlined shells post-World War I, two numbers were necessary to more correctly denote a shells C. R. H, for instance, the World War I6 inch 26 cwt howitzer shell was two C. R. H. The World War II Mk 2D shell was correctly described as 5/10 C. R. H, in this use it is synonymous with round
6.
Breech-loading weapon
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A breech-loading gun is a firearm in which the cartridge or shell is inserted or loaded into a chamber integral to the rear portion of a barrel. Modern mass production firearms are breech-loading, early firearms, on the other hand, were almost entirely muzzle-loading. In field artillery, breech loading allows the crew to reload the gun without exposing themselves to fire or repositioning the piece. The main challenge for developers of breech-loading firearms was sealing the breech and this was eventually solved for smaller firearms by the development of the self-contained metallic cartridge. For firearms too large to use cartridges, the problem was solved by the development of the interrupted screw, breech-loading swivel guns were invented in the 14th century. The breech-loading swivel gun had a rate of fire, and was especially effective in anti-personnel roles. Breech-loading firearms are known from the 16th century, Henry VIII possessed one, which he apparently used as a hunting gun to shoot birds. More breech-loading firearms were made in the early 18th century, one such gun known to have belonged to Philip V of Spain, and was manufactured circa 1715, probably in Madrid. It came with a ready-to load reusable cartridge, patrick Ferguson, a British Army officer, developed in 1772 the Ferguson rifle, a breech-loading flintlock firearm. Later on into the century there were attempts in Europe at an effective breech-loader. There were concentrated attempts at improved cartridges and methods of ignition, the cartridge was loaded through the breech and fired with a needle. The needle-activated central-fire breech-loading gun would become a feature of firearms thereafter. The corresponding firearm was also developed by Pauly, Pauly made an improved version, which was protected by a patent on 29 September 1812. In 1846 another Paris Frenchman, Benjamin Houllier, patented the first fully metallic cartridge containing powder in a metallic shell, Houllier commercialised his weapons in association with the gunsmiths Blanchard or Charles Robert. In English-speaking countries the Flobert cartridge corresponds to the.22 BB, the first centrefire cartridge was introduced in 1855 by Pottet, with both Berdan and Boxer priming. The Dreyse Zündnadelgewehr or Dreyse needle gun, was a single-shot breech-loading rifle using a rotating bolt to seal the breech and it was so called because of its. 5-inch needle-like firing pin, which passed through a paper cartridge case to impact a percussion cap at the bullet base. It began development in the 1830s under von Dreyse and eventually a version of it was adopted by Prussia in the late 1840s. The paper cartridge and the gun had numerous deficiencies, specifically, however, the rifle was used to great success in the Prussian army in the Austro-Prussian war of 1866
7.
Rifled breech loader
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The spin imparted by the guns rifling gives projectiles directional stability and increased range. Loading from the rear of the gun leaves the crew exposed to enemy fire, allows smaller gun emplacements or turrets. This was both a safety issue and one of gun performance - all the propellant gas was needed to accelerate the projectile along the barrel. The second problem was speed of operation - how to close the breech before firing, two solutions were developed more or less in parallel, the screw breech block and sliding wedge or sliding block. Hence, unlike with a rifle cartridge, the breech mechanism itself somehow needed to provide obturation. Hence if the block circumference was divided into two sets of threads and gaps, the only needed to be rotated ¼ turn to lock it instead of several turns. The tradeoff was that only ½ the blocks circumference was threaded, until the 19th century, only muzzle-loaders were used. In 1837 Martin von Wahrendorff patented a design for a breech-loader with a cylindrical breech plug secured by a horizontal wedge, independently, Giovanni Cavalli first proposed a breech-loader gun in 1832 to the Sardinian Army, and first tested such a gun in 1845. Advances in metallurgy in the industrial era allowed for the construction of rifled breech-loading guns that could fire at a greater muzzle velocity. Production started in 1855 at the Elswick Ordnance Company and the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich, a degree of obturation was achieved via a cup on the face of the block being forced into a recessed ring on the chamber face. Whatever obturation that was achieved relied on manual labour rather than the power of the guns firing, however, the British Army and Navy preferred to revert to muzzle-loaders until larger high-powered breech-loaders with secure obturation systems that were relatively simple to operate were developed. In the meantime the French persevered with trying to develop breechloaders which combined faster loading than muzzle-loaders, high power, safety, the Lahitolle 95 mm cannon of 1875 with an interrupted screw breech met the first three requirements to a great extent and partially solved the obturation problem. Finally the de Bange system introduced in 1877 solved the problem with an asbestos pad impregnated with grease which expanded and sealed the breech on firing. The de Bange system formed the system for all subsequent screw breeches to the present day. Britain adopted the de Bange breech when it returned to breechloaders in the early 1880s after some experiments with the inferior Armstrong cup obturation system. Loading required the 3 operations in reverse and this was hence termed a three motion block and was slow to operate. While working as a designer for Thorsten Nordenfelt in London. This allowed the block to be unscrewed and swung out in two motions - the two motion interrupted screw breech, bofors continued to use this in medium artillery into the 20th century
8.
Recoil
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Recoil is the backward movement of a gun when it is discharged. To apply this counter-recoiling force, modern mounted guns may employ recoil buffering comprising springs and hydraulic recoil mechanisms, early cannons used systems of ropes along with rolling or sliding friction to provide forces to slow the recoiling cannon to a stop. Recoil buffering allows the maximum counter-recoil force to be lowered so that strength limitations of the gun mount are not exceeded, however, the same pressures acting on the base of the projectile are acting on the rear face of the gun chamber, accelerating the gun rearward during firing. This results in the required counter-recoiling force being proportionally lower, modern cannons also employ muzzle brakes very effectively to redirect some of the propellant gasses rearward after projectile exit. This provides a force to the barrel, allowing the buffering system. The same physics affecting recoil in mounted guns and cannons applies to hand-held guns, hands, arms and shoulders have considerable strength and elasticity for this purpose, up to certain practical limits. For this reason, establishing recoil safety standards for small arms remains challenging, a change in momentum of a mass requires a force, according to Newtons first law, known as the law of inertia, inertia simply being another term for mass. That force, applied to a mass, creates an acceleration, according to Newtons second law, the law of momentum -- changing the velocity of the mass changes its momentum. It is important to understand at this point that velocity is not simply speed, velocity is the speed of a mass in a particular direction. In a very technical sense, speed is a scalar, a magnitude, in summation, the total momentum of the system equals zero, surprisingly just as it did before the trigger was pulled. There are two conservation laws at work when a gun is fired, conservation of momentum and conservation of energy, recoil is explained by the law of conservation of momentum, and so it is easier to discuss it separately from energy. The nature of the process is determined by the force of the expanding gases in the barrel upon the gun. It is also determined by the force applied to the gun. The recoil force only acts during the time that the ejecta are still in the barrel of the gun, except for the case of zero-recoil, the counter-recoil force is smaller than the recoil force but lasts for a longer time. Since the recoil force and the force are not matched. In the zero-recoil case, the two forces are matched and the gun will not move when fired. In most cases, a gun is very close to a free-recoil condition, an example of near zero-recoil would be a gun securely clamped to a massive or well-anchored table, or supported from behind by a massive wall. For example, placing the butt of a large caliber gun directly against a wall, the recoil of a firearm, whether large or small, is a result of the law of conservation of momentum
9.
Gun carriage
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A gun carriage is a frame and mount that supports the gun barrel of an artillery piece, allowing it to be manoeuvred and fired. The earliest guns were laid directly onto the ground, with earth being piled up under the end of the barrel to increase the elevation. As the size of guns increased, they began to be attached to wooden frames or beds that were held down by stakes. These began to be replaced by wheeled carriages in the early 16th century, from the 16th to the mid-19th century, the main form of artillery remained the smoothbore cannon. By this time, the trunnion had been developed, with the result that the barrel could be held in two recesses in the carriage and secured with an iron band. This simplified elevation, which was achieved by raising or lowering the breech of the gun by means of a wedge called a quoin or later by a steel screw. During this time, the design of gun carriages evolved only slowly, the trunnions of the gun barrel sat on the top of the cheeks, the rearward part of each cheek was stepped so that the breech could be lifted by iron levers called handspikes. Traversing the gun was achieved by levering the rear of the carriage sideways with handspikes and these were designed to allow guns to be deployed on the battlefield and were provided with a pair of large wheels similar to those used on carts or wagons. The cheeks of field carriages were much narrower than those on the naval carriage, when the gun needed to be moved any distance, the trail could be lifted onto a second separate axle called a limber, which could then be towed by a team of horses or oxen. Limbers had been invented in France in about 1550, in recent times, most heavy guns in military service, that were not themselves mounted into a vehicles, have been mounted either with a field carriage or a split trail carriage. The field carriage is simpler - having two legs extend backwards, joining at a tail, being a hardpoint to hook on to a prime mover or set of horses, the split trail carriage, however, is more complicated, but offers distinct advantages. It consists of two legs, able to be spread independently to the sides, or brought together to allow towing or movement, in both cases, the tail of the carriage often serves to balance the gun, and protect it from rolling to any large extent. The split trail, however, allows the gun not only to be fired near the horizontal, as the field carriage does and this is less important for heavier artillery, as the guns already involve a long time to prepare a firing position. While this still limits the ability to track, it allows the guns to fire in any direction with minimal preparation. Furthermore, it part of each of the benefits of the field carriage, being weight, space. The practice has its origins in war and appears in the century in the Queens regulations of the British Army. In the United Kingdom, the visual distinction usually referred to is that in a state funeral and this distinguishing feature is not invariable, however, as shown by the use of naval ratings rather than horses at the ceremonial funeral for Lord Mountbatten in 1979
10.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
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