1.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
2.
United States Army
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The United States Armed Forces are the federal armed forces of the United States. They consist of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, from the time of its inception, the military played a decisive role in the history of the United States. A sense of unity and identity was forged as a result of victory in the First Barbary War. Even so, the Founders were suspicious of a permanent military force and it played an important role in the American Civil War, where leading generals on both sides were picked from members of the United States military. Not until the outbreak of World War II did a standing army become officially established. The National Security Act of 1947, adopted following World War II and during the Cold Wars onset, the U. S. military is one of the largest militaries in terms of number of personnel. It draws its personnel from a pool of paid volunteers. As of 2016, the United States spends about $580.3 billion annually to fund its military forces, put together, the United States constitutes roughly 40 percent of the worlds military expenditures. For the period 2010–14, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found that the United States was the worlds largest exporter of major arms, the United States was also the worlds eighth largest importer of major weapons for the same period. The history of the U. S. military dates to 1775 and these forces demobilized in 1784 after the Treaty of Paris ended the War for Independence. All three services trace their origins to the founding of the Continental Army, the Continental Navy, the United States President is the U. S. militarys commander-in-chief. Rising tensions at various times with Britain and France and the ensuing Quasi-War and War of 1812 quickened the development of the U. S. Navy, the reserve branches formed a military strategic reserve during the Cold War, to be called into service in case of war. Time magazines Mark Thompson has suggested that with the War on Terror, Command over the armed forces is established in the United States Constitution. The sole power of command is vested in the President by Article II as Commander-in-Chief, the Constitution also allows for the creation of executive Departments headed principal officers whose opinion the President can require. This allowance in the Constitution formed the basis for creation of the Department of Defense in 1947 by the National Security Act, the Defense Department is headed by the Secretary of Defense, who is a civilian and member of the Cabinet. The Defense Secretary is second in the chain of command, just below the President. Together, the President and the Secretary of Defense comprise the National Command Authority, to coordinate military strategy with political affairs, the President has a National Security Council headed by the National Security Advisor. The collective body has only power to the President
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Armor Branch (United States)
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The Armor Branch of the United States Army is an active combat arms branch. It was created provisionally in 1940 as Armored Force under Chief of the Armored Force, Brigadier General Adna R. Chaffee, Jr. even though the armor branch traces its lineage back to the original cavalry units, its first beginnings date from the First World War. The Tank Service of the National Army was formed on 5 March 1918. the Armored Force was formed on 10 July 1940 and became a permanent branch of the Army in 1950. The United States Army Armor School is now located at Fort Benning, ARMOR is the professional journal of the U. S. Army’s Armor Branch, published by the Chief of Armor at Fort Benning, GA. training center for the Army’s tank and cavalry forces. It is also one of the oldest publications in the U. S. S
4.
Armoured warfare
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Armoured warfare, mechanised warfare or tank warfare is the use of armoured fighting vehicles in modern warfare. It is a component of modern methods of war. The premise of armoured warfare rests on the ability of troops to penetrate defensive lines through use of manoeuvre by armoured units. Under these conditions, any sort of advance was very slow. Tanks were first developed in Britain and France in 1915, as a way of navigating the barbed wire, British Mark I tanks first went to action at the Somme, on 15 September 1916, but did not manage to break the deadlock of trench warfare. The first French employment on 16 April 1917, of the Schneider CA, was also a failure, in the Battle of Cambrai British tanks were more successful, and broke a German trenchline system, the Hindenburg Line. Despite the generally unpromising beginnings, the military and political leadership in both Britain and France during 1917 backed large investments into armoured vehicle production and this led to a sharp increase in the number of available tanks for 1918. The German Empire to the contrary, produced only a few tanks, twenty German A7V tanks were produced during the entire conflict, compared to over 4,400 French and over 2,500 British tanks of various kinds. Tactically, the deployment of armour during the war was typified by an emphasis on direct infantry support. The tanks main tasks were seen as crushing barbed wire and destroying machine-gun nests, theoretical debate largely focussed on the question whether a swarm of light tanks should be used for this or a limited number of potent heavy vehicles. Though in the Battle of Cambrai a large concentration of British heavy tanks effected a breakthrough, the manoeuvrability of the tank should at least in theory regain armies the ability to flank enemy lines. Following the First World War, the technical and doctrinal aspects of armoured warfare became more sophisticated and diverged into multiple schools of doctrinal thought, during the 1920s, only very few tanks were produced. There were however, important theoretical and technical developments, various British and French commanders who had contributed to the origin of the tank, such as Jean Baptiste Eugène Estienne, B. H. Liddell Hart and J. F. C. Fuller, theorised about a future use of independent armoured forces, containing a large concentration of tanks. Especially Liddell Hart wrote many books about the subject, partly propagating Fullers theories, such doctrines were faced with the reality that during the 1920s the armoured vehicles, as early road transport in general, were extremely unreliable, and could not be used in sustained operations. Mainstream thought on the subject was more conservative and tried to integrate armoured vehicles into the infantry and cavalry organisation. To save weight, such designs had thin armour plating and this inspired fitting small-calibre high-velocity guns in turrets, J. Collins, after Fuller refused the function. The unit carried out operations on Salisbury Plain and was observed by the major nations, the United States, Germany
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Division (military)
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A division is a large military unit or formation, usually consisting of between 10,000 and 20,000 soldiers. Infantry divisions during the World Wars ranged between 10,000 and 30,000 in nominal strength, in most armies, a division is composed of several regiments or brigades, in turn, several divisions typically make up a corps. In the West, the first general to think of organising an army into smaller units was Maurice de Saxe, Marshal General of France. He died at the age of 54, without having implemented his idea, victor-François de Broglie put the ideas into practice. He conducted successful practical experiments of the system in the Seven Years War. The first war in which the system was used systematically was the French Revolutionary War. It made the more flexible and easy to manoeuvre. Under Napoleon, the divisions were grouped together into corps, because of their increasing size, napoleons military success spread the divisional and corps system all over Europe, by the end of the Napoleonic Wars, all armies in Europe had adopted it. In modern times, most military forces have standardized their divisional structures, the peak use of the division as the primary combat unit occurred during World War II, when the belligerents deployed over a thousand divisions. With technological advances since then, the power of each division has increased. Divisions are often formed to organize units of a particular type together with support units to allow independent operations. In more recent times, divisions have mainly been organized as combined arms units with subordinate units representing various combat arms, in this case, the division often retains the name of a more specialized division, and may still be tasked with a primary role suited to that specialization. For the most part, large cavalry units did not remain after World War II, in general, two new types of cavalry were developed, air cavalry or airmobile, relying on helicopter mobility, and armored cavalry, based on an autonomous armored formation. The former was pioneered by the 11th Air Assault Division, formed on 1 February 1963 at Fort Benning, on 29 June 1965 the division was renamed as the 1st Cavalry Division, before its departure for the Vietnam War. After the end of the Vietnam War, the 1st Cavalry Division was reorganised and re-equipped with tanks, the development of the tank during World War I prompted some nations to experiment with forming them into division-size units. Many did this the way as they did cavalry divisions, by merely replacing cavalry with AFVs. This proved unwieldy in combat, as the units had many tanks, instead, a more balanced approach was taken by adjusting the number of tank, infantry, artillery, and support units. A panzer division was a division of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS of Germany during World War II
6.
World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
7.
Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine
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The Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine was a phase in the Western European Campaign of World War II. This roughly corresponds with the official United States military European Theater of Operations Rhineland, German forces had been routed during the Allied break-out from Normandy. The Allies advanced rapidly against an enemy that put up little resistance, but after the liberation of Paris in late August 1944, the Allies paused to re-group and organise before continuing their advance from Paris to the River Rhine. The pause allowed the Germans to solidify their lines—something they had been unable to do west of Paris, while Montgomery and Bradley each favored relatively direct thrusts into Germany, General Eisenhower disagreed. The rapid advance through France had caused considerable logistical strain, made worse by the lack of any major port other than the relatively distant Cherbourg in western France. Although Antwerp was seen as the key to solving the Allied logistics problems, as the campaign progressed, all the belligerents, Allied as well as German, felt the effects of the lack of suitable replacements for front-line troops. There were two major obstacles to the Allies. The first was the natural barriers made by the rivers of eastern France, the second was the Siegfried Line, which fell under the command, along with all Wehrmacht forces in the west, of Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt. Although the breakout from Normandy had taken longer than planned, the advances until September had far exceeded expectations, Bradley, for example, by September had four more divisions than planned and all of his forces were 150 miles ahead of their expected position. One effect was that insufficient supplies could be delivered to the fronts to maintain the advance. Much war material still had to be brought ashore across the invasion beaches, the availability of Cherbourg had been valuable until the breakout, but then the shortage of transport to carry supplies to the rapidly advancing armies became the limiting factor. Although fuel was pumped from Britain to Normandy via the Pluto pipeline, this still had to reach the fronts. The railways had been destroyed by Allied attacks and would take much effort to repair. In an attempt to address this shortage of transport, three newly arrived U. S. infantry divisions—the 26th, 95th, and 104th—were stripped of their trucks in order to haul supplies. Advancing divisions of the U. S. 12th Army Group left all their artillery and half their medium artillery west of the Seine. Four British truck companies were loaned to the Americans, unfortunately,1,500 other British trucks were found to have critical engine faults and were unusable, limiting assistance from that quarter. The Red Ball Express was an attempt to expedite deliveries by truck, the 6th Army Group advancing from southern France were supplied adequately from Toulon and Marseille because it had captured ports intact and the local railway system was less damaged. This source supplied about 25% of the Allied needs, the U. S. supply organization—Communications Zone —is perceived to have failed to expedite solutions and to have been far too bureaucratic, employing 11,000 staff
8.
Battle of the Bulge
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The Battle of the Bulge was the last major German offensive campaign of World War II. It was launched through the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in Belgium, France, the surprise attack caught the Allied forces completely off guard. American forces bore the brunt of the attack and incurred their highest casualties of any operation during the war, the battle also severely depleted Germanys armoured forces on the Western Front, and they were largely unable to replace them. German personnel and later, Luftwaffe aircraft, also sustained heavy losses, the Germans officially referred to the offensive as Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein, while the Allies designated it the Ardennes Counteroffensive. The phrase Battle of the Bulge was coined by contemporary press to describe the bulge in German front lines on wartime news maps, once that was accomplished, the German dictator Adolf Hitler believed he could fully concentrate on the Soviets on the Eastern Front. The offensive was planned by the German forces with utmost secrecy, with minimal radio traffic and movements of troops, intercepted German communications indicating a substantial German offensive preparation were not acted upon by the Allies. The Germans achieved total surprise on the morning of 16 December 1944, due to a combination of Allied overconfidence, preoccupation with Allied offensive plans, and poor aerial reconnaissance. The Germans attacked a weakly defended section of the Allied line, columns of armor and infantry that were supposed to advance along parallel routes found themselves on the same roads. This, and terrain that favored the defenders, threw the German advance behind schedule, improved weather conditions permitted air attacks on German forces and supply lines, which sealed the failure of the offensive. In the wake of the defeat, many experienced German units were left severely depleted of men and equipment, the Germans initial attack involved 406,000 men,1,214 tanks, tank destroyers, and assault guns, and 4,224 artillery pieces. These were reinforced a couple of later, bringing the offensives total strength to around 450,000 troops. Between 67,200 and 125,000 of their men were killed, missing, for the Americans, out of 610,000 troops involved in the battle,89,000 were casualties. While some sources report that up to 19,000 were killed, British historian Antony Beevor reports the number killed as 8,407. It was the largest and bloodiest battle fought by the United States in World War II, after the breakout from Normandy at the end of July 1944 and the Allied landings in southern France on 15 August 1944, the Allies advanced toward Germany more quickly than anticipated. The Allies were faced with several military logistics issues, - troops were fatigued by weeks of continuous combat supply lines were stretched extremely thin supplies were dangerously depleted. General Dwight D. Eisenhower and his staff chose to hold the Ardennes region which was occupied by the U. S, the Allies chose to defend the Ardennes with as few troops as possible due to the favorable terrain and limited Allied operational objectives in the area. They also had intelligence that the Wehrmacht was using the area across the German border as an area for its troops. The speed of the Allied advance coupled with a lack of deep-water ports presented the Allies with enormous supply problems
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Western Allied invasion of Germany
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The Western Allied invasion of Germany was coordinated by the Western Allies during the final months of hostilities in the European theatre of World War II. This is known as the Central Europe Campaign in United States military histories, by early 1945, events favored the Allied forces in Europe. The failure of this offensive exhausted Germanys strategic reserve, leaving it ill-prepared to resist the final Allied campaigns in Europe, additional losses in the Rhineland further weakened the German Army, leaving shattered remnants of units to defend the east bank of the Rhine. On 7 March, the Allies seized the last remaining bridge across the Rhine at Remagen. During Operation Lumberjack and Operation Plunder in February–March 1945, German casualties are estimated at 400,000 men, on the Eastern Front, the Soviet Red Army had liberated most of Poland and were within striking distance of Berlin. The Soviets also pushed deep into Hungary and eastern Czechoslovakia, and these rapid advances on the Eastern Front destroyed additional veteran German combat units and severely limited German Fuhrer Adolf Hitlers ability to reinforce his Rhine defenses. As such, with the Western Allies making final preparations for their powerful offensive into the German heartland, forty-nine of these divisions were American,12 British, eight French, three Canadian and one Polish. Another seven American divisions arrived during February, along with the British 5th Infantry Division and I Canadian Corps, as the invasion of Germany commenced, General Eisenhower had a total of 90 full-strength divisions under his command, with the number of armored divisions now reaching 25. The Allied front along the Rhine stretched 450 miles from the mouth at the North Sea in the Netherlands to the Swiss border in the south. The Allied forces along this line were organized into three army groups, in the north, from the North Sea to a point about 10 miles north of Cologne, was the 21st Army Group commanded by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. Within 21st Army Group the Canadian 1st Army held the left flank of the Allied line, with the British 2nd Army in the center and the U. S. 9th Army to the south. Holding the middle of the Allied line from the 9th Armys right flank to a point about 15 miles south of Mainz was the 12th Army Group under the command of Lieutenant General Omar Bradley, Bradley had two American armies, the U. S. 1st Army on the left and the U. S. 3rd Army on the right, as these three army groups cleared out the Wehrmacht west of the Rhine, Eisenhower began to rethink his plans for the final drive across the Rhine and into the heart of Germany. Originally, General Eisenhower had planned to all his forces up to the west bank of the Rhine. The main thrust beyond the river was to be made in the north by Montgomerys 21 Army Group, 1st Army as it made a secondary advance northeast from below the Ruhr River. If successful, this movement would envelop the industrial Ruhr area. Facing the Allies was Oberbefehlshaber West commanded by Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring, although Kesselring brought an outstanding track record as a defensive strategist with him from the Italian Campaign, he did not have the resources to make a coherent defense. During the fighting west of the Rhine up to March 1945, busch—whose main unit was the German 1st Parachute Army —was to form the right wing of the German defenses
10.
Presidential Unit Citation (United States)
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The unit with the most Presidential Unit Citations is the USS Parche with 9 citations. The Army citation was established by Executive Order 9075 on 26 February 1942, superseded by Executive Order 9396 on Dec.2,1943, as with other Army unit citations, the PUC is in a larger frame than other ribbons, and is worn above the right pocket. All members of the unit may wear the decoration, whether or not they participated in the acts for which the unit was cited. Only those assigned to the unit at the time of the action cited may wear the decoration as a permanent award, for both the Army and Air Force, the emblem is a solid blue ribbon enclosed in a gold frame. The Air Force PUC was adopted from the Army Distinguished Unit Citation after the Air Force became a military branch in 1947. By Executive Order 10694, dated Jan,10,1957 the Air Force redesignated the Distinguished Unit Citation as the Presidential Unit Citation. The Air Force PUC is the color and design as the Army PUC but slightly smaller. The Citation is carried on the units colors in the form of a blue streamer,4 ft long and 2.75 in wide. For the Army, only on rare occasions will a larger than battalion qualify for award of this decoration. The Navy citation was established by Executive Order 9050 on 6 February 1942, the Navy version has blue, yellow, and red horizontal stripes, and is the only Navy ribbon having horizontal stripes. These are only worn by persons who meet the criteria at the time it is awarded to the unit, unlike the Army, those who later join the unit do not wear it on a temporary basis. The current decoration is known as the Department of Homeland Security Presidential Unit Citation. A Coast Guard version of the award was awarded to all U. S. Coast Guard and Coast Guard Auxiliary personnel responding to Hurricane Katrina by President George W. Bush for rescue, the United States Public Health Service Presidential Citation was established in 2015. The design was finalized by the Army Institute of Heraldry on 17 August 2015, two units of the Free French Forces were awarded Presidential Unit Citations during World War II. On April 22,1986, the 1st Fighter Group Força Aérea Brasileira was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for its actions in the Po Valley region of Italy in World War II. The Brazilians, operating in Italy in support of Allied forces, destroyed in one day over 45 vehicles, strafed pontoon bridges on the River Po, eleven missions of 44 sorties were flown destroying nine motor transports and damaging 17. One Belgian-Luxembourgian battalion of the Belgian United Nations Command was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation once for actions during the Battle of the Imjin River, the Colombia Battalion received the citation while attached to the American 21st Infantry Regiment in 1951. One Dutch unit, the Netherlands Detachment United Nations, part of the Regiment Van Heutsz, was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation twice for actions during the Korean War, the first citation was awarded after the battle near Wonju and Hoengson in February 1951
United States
United States Army
