1.
Soviet cruiser Krasnyi Kavkaz
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Krasnyi Kavkaz was a cruiser of the Soviet Navy that began construction during World War I, but was still incomplete during the Russian Revolution. Her design was modified by the Soviets and she was completed in 1932. During World War II she supported Soviet troops during the Siege of Odessa, Siege of Sevastopol, and she was awarded the Guards title on 3 April 1942. She was reclassified as a ship in May 1947 before being expended as a target in 1952. Laid down on 18 October 1913 at the Rossud Dockyard as Admiral Lazarev for the Imperial Russian Navy as a cruiser of the Svetlana class, construction was abandoned in 1917 during the October Revolution when the ship was 63% complete. In the second half of 1918, the Marine Department of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi was engaged in completion of ship, on 25 January 1919, the ship was formally renamed in Hetman Petro Doroshenko, but Mykolaiv was captured shortly afterward by the Entente. The hull was undamaged and the Soviets decided to finish the ship to a modified design. She was renamed Krasnyi Kavkaz on 14 December 1926, and completed to a modernized design, Krasnyi Kavkaz was initially intended to accommodate eight 8-inch guns in four twin turrets, but this was impossible given her small and lightly constructed hull. Three twin turrets mounting the new 57-caliber 180 mm B-1-K gun under development also proved impracticable and her superstructure was massively revised to fit these turrets and all of the original casemated 130-millimeter /55 B7 Pattern 1913 guns were removed. As completed her secondary armament was only four 30-caliber 76.2 mm Lender AA guns mounted between her funnels and her original internal torpedo tubes were replaced by four triple 533-millimetre torpedo mounts mounted on each side of the main deck abaft the forecastle break. She was given an aircraft-handling crane, but a catapult wasnt installed aft of her rear funnel until 1935 when a Heinkel catapult was imported from Germany and she was also fitted for mine rails with a capacity of up to 120 mines. The light cruiser Komintern collided with her in May 1932, shortly after her commissioning and it was extensively rebuilt and increased her overall length by over 11 metres. In 1933 she made visits in Turkey, Greece and Italy. She was refitted before Operation Barbarossa, probably about 1940, her catapult was removed, Two single mounts for 76.2 mm 34-K guns were also fitted, one on each side of the quarterdeck just aft of the rearmost main gun turret. Some of these guns may have been received earlier, the sources are unclear, while under repair at Poti in late 1942 she landed her aft pair of torpedo tubes and received two more Minizini mounts salvaged from the sunken cruiser Chervona Ukraina. Ten single mounts for the version of the 37 mm AA gun was also fitted. By 1944 she was carrying one quadruple Vickers.50 machine gun MK III mount on top of each of her superfiring main gun turrets. Krasnyi Kavkaz, in company with the cruisers Chervona Ukraina, Komintern and she provided gunfire support to Soviet forces defending Odessa and escorted convoys bringing the 157th Rifle Division into Odessa during the month of September 1941
2.
Naval artillery
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Naval artillery is artillery mounted on a warship, originally used only for naval warfare, later also for naval gunfire support against targets on land, and for anti-aircraft use. The idea of artillery dates back to the classical era. Julius Caesar indicates the use of ship-borne catapults against Britons ashore in his Commentarii de Bello Gallico, the dromons of the Byzantine Empire carried catapults and fire-throwers. From the late Middle Ages onwards, warships began to carry cannon of various calibres, the Battle of Arnemuiden, fought between England and France in 1338 at the start of the Hundred Years War, was the first recorded European naval battle using artillery. The English ship Christopher was armed with three cannons and one hand gun, by the 15th century most Mediterranean powers were utilising heavy cannon mounted on the bow or stern of a vessel and designed to bombard fortresses on shore. By mid-century some vessels also carried smaller broadside cannons for bombarding other vessels immediately prior to an attempted boarding and these small guns were anti-personnel weapons and were fired at point blank range to accompany engagement with muskets or bows. From the 1470s both the Portuguese and Venetian navies were experimenting with cannons as anti-ship weapons, in 1489 John of Portugal further contributed to the development of naval artillery by establishing the first standardized teams of trained naval gunners. The 16th century was an era of transition in naval warfare, since ancient times, war at sea had been fought much like that on land, with melee weapons and bows and arrows, but on floating wooden platforms rather than battlefields. Though the introduction of guns was a significant change, it slowly changed the dynamics of ship-to-ship combat. As guns became heavier and able to more powerful gunpowder charges, they needed to be placed lower in the ship. Although some 16th-century galleys mounted broadside cannon, they did so at the expense of rowing positions which sacrificed speed, most early cannon were still placed in the forecastle and aftercastle of a ship where they might be conveniently pointed in any direction. Early naval artillery was a weapon to deter boarders, because cannon powerful enough to damage ships were heavy enough to destabilize any ship mounting them in an elevated castle. Being a crown industry, cost considerations did not curb the pursuit of the best quality, best innovations, the crown paid wage premiums and bonuses to lure the best European artisans and gunners to advance the industry in Portugal. This made broadsides, coordinated volleys from all the guns on one side of a ship, possible for the first time in history, at least in theory. Ships, such as Mary Rose, carried a mixture of cannon of different types and sizes, many designed for land use, and using incompatible ammunition at different ranges and rates of fire. The Mary Rose, like other ships of the time, was built during a period of development of heavy artillery. The heavy armament was a mix of older-type wrought iron and cast bronze guns, the bronze guns were cast in one piece and rested on four-wheel carriages which were essentially the same as those used until the 19th century. The breech-loaders were cheaper to produce and both easier and faster to reload, but could take less powerful charges than cast bronze guns, the majority of the guns were small iron guns with short range that could be aimed and fired by a single person
3.
Coastal artillery
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Coastal artillery is the branch of the armed forces concerned with operating anti-ship artillery or fixed gun batteries in coastal fortifications. The advent of 20th-century technologies, especially aviation, naval aviation, jet aircraft, and guided missiles, reduced the primacy of cannon, battleships. In countries where coastal artillery has not been disbanded, these forces have acquired amphibious capabilities, in littoral warfare, mobile coastal artillery armed with surface-to-surface missiles still can be used to deny the use of sea lanes. Land-based guns also benefited in most cases from the protection of walls or earth mounds. The Martello tower is an excellent example of a widely used coastal fort which mounted defensive artillery, during the 19th century China also built hundreds of coastal fortresses in an attempt to counter Western naval threats. Coastal artillery could be part of the Navy, or part of the Army, in English-speaking countries, certain coastal artillery positions were sometimes referred to as Land Batteries, distinguishing this form of artillery battery from for example floating batteries. In the United Kingdom, in the later 19th and earlier 20th Centuries, then, following the Spanish–American War and the report of the Endicott Board, U. S. harbor defenses were greatly strengthened and provided with new, rifled artillery and minefield defenses. Shortly thereafter, in 1907, Congress split the field artillery, the first decade of the 20th Century, the United States Marine Corps established the Advanced Base Force. The force was used for setting up and defending advanced bases, during the Siege of Port Arthur, Japanese forces had captured the vantage point on 203 Meter Hill overlooking Port Arthur harbor. The battleship Sevastopol, although hit 5 times by 11-inch shells, after 3 weeks, the Sevastopol was still afloat, having survived 124 torpedoes fired at her while sinking two Japanese destroyers and damaging six other vessels. The Japanese had meanwhile lost the cruiser Takasago to a mine outside the harbor, the Blücher had entered the narrow waters of the Oslofjord, carrying 1,000 soldiers and leading a German invasion fleet. The first salvo from the Norwegian defenders, fired from Oscarsborg Fortress about 1 mile distant, disabled Blüchers main battery, fire from the smaller guns swept her decks and disabled her steering, and she received several torpedo hits before the fires reached her magazines and doomed her. Singapore was defended by its famous large-caliber coastal guns, which included one battery of three 15-inch guns and one with two 15-inch guns, AP shells were designed to penetrate the hulls of heavily armoured warships and were ineffective against personnel. The Japanese defended the island of Betio in the Tarawa atoll with numerous 203 mm coastal guns, in 1943, these were knocked out early in the battle with a combined USN naval and aerial bombardment. Nazi Germany fortified its conquered territories with the Atlantic Wall, the intent was to destroy the Allied landing craft before they could unload. During the Normandy Landings in 1944, shore bombardment was given a high importance, using ships from battleships to destroyers, for example, the Canadians at Juno beach had fire support many times greater than they had had for the Dieppe Raid in 1942. In addition, there were modified landing-craft, eight Landing Craft Gun, twenty-four Landing Craft Tank carried Priest self-propelled howitzers which also fired while they were on the run-in to the beach. Similar arrangements existed at other beaches, on June 25,1944 the American battleship Texas engaged German shore batteries on the Cotentin Peninsula
4.
Railway gun
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A railway gun, also called a railroad gun, is a large artillery piece, often surplus naval artillery, mounted on, transported by, and fired from a specially designed railway wagon. Many countries have built railway guns, but the best known are the large Krupp-built pieces used by Germany in World War I, smaller guns were often part of an armoured train. Railway guns have been rendered obsolete by advances in technology and their large size and limited mobility make them vulnerable to attack, and similar payloads can be delivered by aircraft, rocket, or missile. The design of a gun has three issues over and above those of an ordinary artillery piece to consider. The first method of traverse is to rely entirely on movement along a section of track or on a turntable with no provision to traverse the gun on its mount. The second is to traverse the rail car body on its trucks, generally this is limited to a few degrees of traverse to either side unless an elaborate foundation is built with a centre pivot and traversing rollers. The design of the foundation is the limit to the amount of traverse allowed in this latter case. The third choice is to allow the gun mount to rotate with respect to the rail car body. This usually requires the gun to be mounted on a pivot which. There are four methods to absorb the recoil force for railway guns, cradle recoil, top-carriage recoil, sliding recoil. Cradle recoil means that the gun recoils backward in its cradle and it is returned to battery, or the firing position, by either helical springs or by air in a pneumatic recuperator cylinder that is compressed by the force of recoil. This is the most common used for lighter railroad guns. Top-carriage recoil is where the gun is mounted in a carriage that moves on wheels on fixed rails. The gun and upper carriage recoil together, restrained by the hydraulic buffers. Return to battery is effected either by gravity, through the use of inclined rails and it is not well-suited to firing at high elevations because it cannot absorb much of the vertical component of the recoil force. The gun, car body and trucks all recoil together with the friction generated by the sliding on the girders absorbing the recoil force after moving only about 1 to 2 metres to the rear. The sleepers must be jacked up again to allow the gun to roll forward to its firing position and this was often done by handwheels driving gear trains attached to the wheels, or even by electric motors on more modern mounts. Almost all of type of mounts were of the non-traversing type and had to be fired from a curved section of track or turntable
5.
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
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.
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
8.
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
9.
Caliber
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In guns, particularly firearms, caliber or calibre is the approximate internal diameter of the barrel, or the diameter of the projectile it fires, in hundredths or sometimes thousandths of an inch. For example, a 45 caliber firearm has a diameter of.45 of an inch. Barrel diameters can also be expressed using metric dimensions, as in 9mm pistol, when the barrel diameter is given in inches, the abbreviation cal can be used. Good performance requires a bullet to closely match the diameter of a barrel to ensure a good seal. While modern cartridges and cartridge firearms are referred to by the cartridge name. Firearm calibers outside the range of 17 to 50 exist, but are rarely encountered. Larger calibers, such as.577.585.600.700, the.950 JDJ is the only known cartridge beyond 79 caliber used in a rifle. Referring to artillery, caliber is used to describe the length as multiples of the bore diameter. A 5-inch 50 calibre gun has a diameter of 5 in. The main guns of the USS Missouri are 1650 caliber, makers of early cartridge arms had to invent methods of naming the cartridges, since no established convention existed then. One of the early established cartridge arms was the Spencer repeating rifle, later various derivatives were created using the same basic cartridge, but with smaller-diameter bullets, these were named by the cartridge diameter at the base and mouth. The original No.56 became the. 56-56, and the smaller versions. 56-52. 56-50, the. 56-52, the most common of the new calibers, used a 50-cal bullet. Optionally, the weight in grains was designated, e. g. 45-70-405. Variations on these methods persist today, with new cartridges such as the.204 Ruger, metric diameters for small arms refer to cartridge dimensions and are expressed with an × between the bore diameter and the length of the cartridge case, for example,7. 62×51 NATO. This indicates that the diameter is 7. 62mm, loaded in a case 51mm long. Similarly, the 6. 5×55 Swedish cartridge has a diameter of 6.5 mm. An exception to rule is the proprietary cartridge used by U. S. maker Lazzeroni. The following table lists commonly used calibers where both metric and imperial are used as equivalents
10.
Soviet Navy
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The Soviet Navy was the naval arm of the Soviet Armed Forces. The influence of the Soviet Navy played a role in the Cold War. The Soviet Navy was divided into four major fleets, the Northern, Pacific, Black Sea, the Caspian Flotilla was a smaller force operating in the land-locked Caspian Sea. Main components of the Soviet Navy included Soviet Naval Aviation, Naval Infantry, most of the Soviet Navy was reformed into the Russian Navy after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, while some elements became the basis of the Ukrainian, Azerbaijani and Georgian navies. During the revolution, sailors deserted their ships at will and generally neglected their duties, the officers were dispersed and most of the sailors left their ships. Work stopped in the shipyards, where uncompleted ships deteriorated rapidly, the Black Sea Fleet fared no better than the Baltic. The Bolshevik revolution entirely disrupted its personnel, with murders of officers. At the end of April 1918, German troops entered Crimea, the more effective ships were moved from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk where, after an ultimatum from Germany, they were scuttled by Vladimir Lenins order. The ships remaining in Sevastopol were captured by the Germans and then, after November 1918, on 1 April 1919, when Red Army forces captured Crimea, the British squadron had to withdraw, but before leaving they damaged all the remaining battleships and sank thirteen new submarines. When the White Army captured Crimea in 1919, it rescued and reconditioned a few units, at the end of the civil war, Wrangels fleet, a White fleet, moved to Bizerta in French Tunisia, where it was interned. The first ship of the navy could be considered the rebellious Imperial Russian cruiser Aurora. Sailors of the Baltic fleet supplied the fighting force of the Bolsheviks during the October Revolution, some imperial vessels continued to serve after the revolution, albeit with different names. The Soviet Navy, established as the Workers and Peasants Red Fleet by a 1918 decree of the Soviet government, was less than service-ready during the interwar years, as the countrys attentions were largely directed internally, the Navy did not have much funding or training. The greater part of the old fleet was sold by the Soviet government to Germany for scrap, in the Baltic Sea there remained only three much-neglected battleships, two cruisers, some ten destroyers, and a few submarines. Despite this state of affairs, the Baltic Fleet remained a significant naval formation, there also existed some thirty minor-waterways combat flotillas. During the 1930s, as the industrialization of the Soviet Union proceeded, approved by the Labour and Defence Council in 1926, the Naval Shipbuilding Program included plans to construct twelve submarines, the first six were to become known as the Dekabrist class. Beginning 4 November 1926, Technical Bureau Nº4, under the leadership of B. M, malinin, managed the submarine construction works at the Baltic Shipyard. In subsequent years,133 submarines were built to designs developed during Malinins management, additional developments included the formation of the Pacific Fleet in 1932 and the Northern Fleet in 1933
11.
Russian Civil War
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The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war in the former Russian Empire immediately after the Russian Revolutions of 1917, as many factions vied to determine Russias political future. In addition, rival militant socialists and nonideological Green armies fought against both the Bolsheviks and the Whites, eight foreign nations intervened against the Red Army, notably the Allied Forces and the pro-German armies. The Red Army defeated the White Armed Forces of South Russia in Ukraine, the remains of the White forces commanded by Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel were beaten in Crimea and evacuated in late 1920. Lesser battles of the war continued on the periphery for two years, and minor skirmishes with the remnants of the White forces in the Far East continued well into 1923. Armed national resistance in Central Asia was not completely crushed until 1934, there were an estimated 7,000, 000–12,000,000 casualties during the war, mostly civilians. The Russian Civil War has been described by some as the greatest national catastrophe that Europe had yet seen, many pro-independence movements emerged after the break-up of the Russian Empire and fought in the war. Several parts of the former Russian Empire—Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the rest of the former Russian Empire was consolidated into the Soviet Union shortly afterwards. After the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, the Russian Provisional Government was established during the February Revolution of 1917, Political commissars were appointed to each unit of the army to maintain morale and ensure loyalty. In June 1918, when it became apparent that an army composed solely of workers would be far too small. Former Tsarist officers were utilized as military specialists, sometimes their families were taken hostage in order to ensure their loyalty, at the start of the war three-quarters of the Red Army officer corps was composed of former Tsarist officers. By its end, 83% of all Red Army divisional and corps commanders were ex-Tsarist soldiers, a Ukrainian nationalist movement was active in Ukraine during the war. More significant was the emergence of an anarchist political and military movement known as the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine or the Anarchist Black Army led by Nestor Makhno, some of the military forces were set up on the basis of clandestine officers organizations in the cities. The Czechoslovak Legions had been part of the Russian army and numbered around 30,000 troops by October 1917 and they had an agreement with the new Bolshevik government to be evacuated from the Eastern Front via the port of Vladivostok to France. The transport from the Eastern Front to Vladivostok slowed down in the chaos, under pressure from the Central Powers, Trotsky ordered the disarming and arrest of the legionaries, which created tensions with the Bolsheviks. The Western Allies armed and supported opponents of the Bolsheviks, hence, many of these countries expressed their support for the Whites, including the provision of troops and supplies. Winston Churchill declared that Bolshevism must be strangled in its cradle, the British and French had supported Russia during World War I on a massive scale with war materials. After the treaty, it looked like much of material would fall into the hands of the Germans. Under this pretext began allied intervention in the Russian Civil War with the United Kingdom, there were violent clashes with troops loyal to the Bolsheviks
12.
Caliber (artillery)
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In artillery, caliber or calibre is the internal diameter of a gun barrel, or by extension a relative measure of the length. Rifled barrels introduce ambiguity to measurement of caliber, a rifled bore consists of alternating grooves and lands. The distance across the bore from groove to groove is greater than the distance from land to land, the depth of rifling grooves increases in larger calibers. United States Navy guns typically used rifling depth between one-half and one percent of caliber, projectile bourrelet diameter specification was 0.015 inches less than land to land diameter with a minus manufacturing tolerance so average clearance was about 0.012 inches. Driving band diameter was groove to groove diameter plus 0.02 inches, the length of the barrel is often quoted in calibers. For example, US Naval Rifles 3 in or larger, the effective length of the barrel is divided by the barrel diameter to give a dimensionless quantity.81 As an example, the main guns of the Iowa-class battleships can be referred to as 16/50 caliber. They are 16 inches in diameter and the barrel is 800 inches long, the bore to barrel length ratio is called caliber in naval gunnery,81 but is called length in army artillery. Before World War II, the US Navy used 5/51 caliber as surface-to-surface guns, by the end of World War II, the dual purpose 5/38 caliber was standard naval armament against surface and air targets. All three had a diameter of 5 inches. At sea, a weapon had to perform, without fail, there was no ready replacement, nor one that could be readily supplied. Over time, the terms of pound and bore became confused and blurred, eventually, when the technology existed, the bore came to be the standard measure. For naval rifles, the change was to actual bore. They then began to measure the length of the weapon in calibers. These were a measure of the bore of the barrel versus the rifled bore of the barrel. In other words, a 12/45 is 12×45= the length of the bore of that gun in inches. This explains the differences in both penetration and long range performance of naval rifles over the years. In addition to the improvements in overall performance, the increase in barrel length also allowed, in some circumstances. For example, the American 14/45, as introduced in the New York-class battleships, later improvements to the design, lengthening the rifle itself and also altering the breech, allowed a 1400 lb. projectile and, overall, a greater barrel life
13.
Gun turret
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A gun turret is a location from which weapons can be fired that affords protection, visibility, and some cone of fire. Rotating gun turrets have the protection, the weapon, and its crew rotate, when this meaning of the word turret started being used at the beginning of the 1860s, turrets were normally cylindrical. Barbettes were an alternative to turrets, with a barbette the protection was fixed, in the 1890s, armoured hoods were added to barbettes, these rotated with the platform. By the early 20th Century, these hoods were known as turrets, modern warships have gun-mountings described as turrets, though the protection on them is limited to protection from the weather. They may be manned or remotely controlled and are most often protected to some degree, the protection provided by the turret may be against battle damage, the weather conditions, general environment in which the weapon or its crew will be operating. A small turret, or sub-turret set on top of a one, is called a cupola. The term cupola is used for a rotating turret that carries a sighting device rather than weaponry. Before the development of large-calibre, long-range guns in the mid-19th century, firepower was provided by a large number of guns, each of which could traverse only in a limited arc. Additionally casemate mounts had to be recessed into the side of a vessel to afford a wide arc of fire, designs for a rotating gun turret date back to the late 18th century. The Lady Nancy proved a success and Coles patenting his rotating turret design after the war. Coless aim was to create a ship with the greatest possible all round arc of fire, the Admiralty accepted the principle of the turret gun as a useful innovation, and incorporated it into other new designs. Coles submitted a design for a ship having ten domed turrets each housing two large guns, the design was rejected as impractical, although the Admiralty remained interested in turret ships and instructed its own designers to create better designs. Coles enlisted the support of Prince Albert, who wrote to the first Lord of the Admiralty, in January 1862, the Admiralty agreed to construct a ship, the HMS Prince Albert which had four turrets and a low freeboard, intended only for coastal defence. While Coles designed the turrets the ship was the responsibility of the chief Constructor Isaac Watts, another ship using Coles turret designs, HMS Royal Sovereign, was completed in August 1864. Its existing broadside guns were replaced with four turrets on a flat deck, early ships like the Royal Sovereign had little sea-keeping qualities being limited to coastal waters. Sir Edward James Reed, went on to design and build HMS Monarch, laid down in 1866 and completed in June 1869, it carried two turrets, although the inclusion of a forecastle and poop prevented the turret guns firing fore and aft. The gun turret was independently invented by the Swedish inventor John Ericsson in America, Ericsson designed the USS Monitor in 1861, its most prominent feature being a large cylindrical gun turret mounted amidships above the low-freeboard upper hull, also called the raft. This extended well past the sides of the lower, more traditionally shaped hull, a small armoured pilot house was fitted on the upper deck towards the bow, however, its position prevented Monitor from firing her guns straight forward
14.
Imperial Russian Navy
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It was expanded in the second half of the 18th century and by the early part of the 19th century had reached its peak strength, only behind the British and French fleets in terms of size. The First World War was mixed for the navy, with the Germans generally gaining the upper hand in the Baltic but the Black Sea falling under Russian control. The Russian Revolution marked the end of the Imperial Navy with its sailors fighting on both sides and its surviving ships forming the core of the Soviet Navy upon its creation in 1918. Under Tsar Mikhail I, construction of the first three-masted ship actually built within Russia was completed in 1636 and it was built in Balakhna by Danish shipbuilders from Holstein according to European design and was christened Frederick. During its maiden voyage on the Caspian Sea, Frederick sailed into a storm and was lost at sea. A boyar named Afanasy Ordin-Nashchokin founded a shipyard at Tsarevich-Dmitriev fortress, in 1661, however, Russia was once again forced to abide by the harsh terms of a treaty, this time the Peace of Cardis. Russia agreed to surrender to Sweden all captured territories, and all constructed at Tsarevich-Dmitriev were ordered destroyed. Boyar Ordin-Nashchyokin, not grieving long over defeat, turned his attention to the Volga River, with the Tsars approval, the boyar brought Dutch shipbuilding experts to the town of Dedinovo near the confluence of the Oka and Volga Rivers. Shipbuilding commenced in the winter of 1667, within two years, four vessels had been completed, one 22-gun galley, christened Орёл, and three smaller ships. The ill-fated Frederick had been a Holstein vessel, Орёл became Russias first own three-masted, European-designed sailing ship, the ship was captured in Astrakhan by rebellious Cossacks led by Stepan Razin. The Cossacks ransacked Орёл and abandoned it, half-submerged, in an estuary of the Volga, unquestionably, the most celebrated Russian explorer was Semyon Dezhnev, who, in 1648, sailed the entire length of present-day Russia by way of the Arctic Ocean. Rounding the Chukotsk Peninsula, Dezhnev passed through the Bering Sea, the creation of the regular Russian Navy took place during the reign of Peter the Great. During the Second Azov campaign of 1696 against Turkey, the Russians employed for the first time 2 warships,4 fireships,23 galleys and 1300 strugs, built on the Voronezh River. After the occupation of the Azov fortress, the Boyar Duma looked into Peters report of military campaign. This date is considered the birthday of the regular Russian Navy. During the Great Northern War of 1700-1721, the Russians built the Baltic Fleet, the construction of the oared fleet took place in 1702-1704 at several shipyards. From 1703-1723, the base of the Baltic Fleet was located in Saint Petersburg. The bases were created in Reval and in Vyborg after it was ceded from Sweden after the war of 1741-43
15.
Admiral Nakhimov-class cruiser
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The Admiral Nakhimov-class cruisers were a group of four light cruisers built for the Imperial Russian Navy just before World War I began in 1914. Construction was interrupted by the Russian Revolution and only two of the ships were completed well after the end of the Russian Civil War by the Soviets. Chervona Ukraina was the first ship completed and was built to essentially the original design, Krasnyi Kavkaz was much modified and completed five years after Chervona Ukraina. Both ships participated in the Sieges of Odessa and Sevastopol after the Germans invaded Russia in June 1941 and they ferried troops into the cities, evacuated wounded and bombarded the besieging German troops. Chervona Ukraina was bombed and sunk by bombers in November during one of these missions. After her lengthy repairs were completed, the ship transported reinforcements to cities on the Black Sea coast during the Battle of the Caucasus and she was reclassified as a training ship in 1947 before she was sunk as a target in 1956. Chervona Ukraina was salvaged in 1947 and then became a hulked and she became a target ship in 1950. The ships were enlarged versions of the Svetlana-class cruisers, modified after consultations with the Scottish firm of John Brown & Company. As designed, the ships displaced 7,600 long tons and they had an length at the waterline of 535 ft 6 in, a beam of 51 ft 6 in and a mean draft of about 18 ft 3 in. They were powered by four Brown-Curtis steam turbines, each driving one shaft, the engines were powered by 14 Yarrow water-tube boilers. Four were coal-fired while the rest were mixed-firing, the ship carried a maximum of 540 long tons of coal and an additional 690 long tons of fuel oil that was sprayed on the coal to increase its burn rate in the mixed-firing boilers. At full capacity, she could steam for 1,200 nautical miles at a speed of 14 knots, the ships crew numbered 630 officers and men. The ships main armament consisted of fifteen 55-caliber 130 mm/55 B7 Pattern 1913 guns in single mounts, six of these were mounted in casemates. Her anti-aircraft armament consisted of four 63-millimeter guns and they also mounted two submerged 457-millimeter torpedo tubes. The ships were intended to carry one seaplane, the cruisers waterline belt consisted of 3 inches of Krupp cemented armor and above it was an upper belt 1 inch thick. The gun shields were protected by 1 inch of armour, each of the armored decks was.75 inches thick. The armor of the tower was 3 inches thick. In 1917, the Naval General Staff decided to add another seaplane and it also decided to upgrade Admiral Nakhimovs anti-aircraft guns to 75-millimeter weapons and the other ships of the class would receive 4-inch AA guns
16.
October Revolution
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It took place with an armed insurrection in Petrograd on 25 October 1917. During this time, urban workers began to organize into councils wherein revolutionaries criticized the provisional government and this immediately initiated the establishment of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the worlds first self-proclaimed socialist state. The revolution was led by the Bolsheviks, who used their influence in the Petrograd Soviet to organize the armed forces, Bolshevik Red Guards forces under the Military Revolutionary Committee began the takeover of government buildings on 24 October 1917. The following day, the Winter Palace, was captured, the long-awaited Constituent Assembly elections were held on 12 November 1917. The Bolsheviks only won 175 seats in the 715-seat legislative body, coming in second behind the Socialist Revolutionary party, the Constituent Assembly was to first meet on 28 November 1917, but its convocation was delayed until 5 January 1918 by the Bolsheviks. On its first and only day in session, the body rejected Soviet decrees on peace and land, as the revolution was not universally recognized, there followed the struggles of the Russian Civil War and the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922. At first, the event was referred to as the October coup or the Uprising of 25th, in Russian, however, переворот has a similar meaning to revolution and also means upheaval or overturn, so coup is not necessarily the correct translation. With time, the term October Revolution came into use and it is also known as the November Revolution having occurred in November according to the Gregorian Calendar. The Great October Socialist Revolution was the name for the October Revolution in the Soviet Union after the 10th anniversary of the Revolution in 1927. The February Revolution had toppled Tsar Nicolas II of Russia, however, the provisional government was weak and riven by internal dissension. It continued to wage World War I, which became increasingly unpopular, a nationwide crisis developed in Russia, affecting social, economic, and political relations. Disorder in industry and transport had intensified, and difficulties in obtaining provisions had increased, gross industrial production in 1917 had decreased by over 36% from what it had been in 1914. In the autumn, as much as 50% of all enterprises were closed down in the Urals, the Donbas, at the same time, the cost of living increased sharply. Real wages fell about 50% from what they had been in 1913, russias national debt in October 1917 had risen to 50 billion rubles. Of this, debts to foreign governments constituted more than 11 billion rubles, the country faced the threat of financial bankruptcy. In these months alone, more than a million took part in strikes. Workers established control over production and distribution in many factories and plants in a social revolution, by October 1917, there had been over 4,000 peasant uprisings against landowners. When the Provisional Government sent punitive detachments, it only enraged the peasants
17.
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
18.
Hitachi Rail Italy
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Hitachi Rail Italy S. p. A. is a rail transport engineering company based in Italy whose main products are designing and manufacturing of railway and mass transit vehicles. A subsidiary of Finmeccanica, the company was sold to Hitachi in February 2015, after the deal was finalized, the current name was adapted in November 2015 to reflect the new ownership. Ansaldo & C. was registered in Genoa as a manufacturer of locomotives, rail rolling stock. The company was supported by the Minister of Finance, Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, in 1886, Ernesto Breda founded Ing. Ernesto Breda and C. the company which became Società Italiana Ernesto Breda in 1899, in 1989 both Ansaldo and Breda participated in a consortium for the design and manufacturing of the ETR500 high speed train. AnsaldoBreda was formed in 2001 by the merger of Ansaldo Trasporti and Breda Costruzioni Ferroviarie and it has production sites at four locations in Italy, Naples, Reggio Calabria, Palermo, and Pistoia. The company employs about 2,400 people, salvatore Bianconi was the Chief Executive Officer of AnsaldoBreda from 2008 to 2011, when he was succeeded by Maurizio Manfellotto. On 2 November 2015 AnsaldoBreda was sold and changed its name to Hitachi Rail Italy, Ansaldo entered the age of the steam locomotive in 1854 with its model FS113, also known as Sampierdarena. In 1908 SIEBs thousandth locomotive was built, a model FS685 with serial number 600 now preserved in the Leonardo da Vinci Museum of Science, in 1936 Breda entered the electric locomotive era with the production of the FS Class ETR200 series electric multiple unit. In 1939 this type set the speed record for rail vehicles at 203 km/h. Although only 18 trains of type were constructed they remained in service for a long time until they were finally withdrawn from service in 1993. In 1976 the FS ETR400 entered service, fiat Ferroviaria manufactured the body and bogies, whilst Ansaldo produced the power unit. It was the first train in the world featuring active body tilting to enter service and was capable of speeds of up to 250 km/h. The TREVI Consortium, of which Ansaldo and Breda Costruzioni Ferroviarie were members, during the tests, ETR500 Y2 achieved the current rail speed record in Turkey, reaching 303 km/h. The train was capable of exceeding 300 km/h and it reached 362 km/h in the Monte Bibele tunnel between Florence and Bologna in 2009, setting a speed record for trains in a tunnel. Another high speed train Frecciarossa 1000 high speed train was developed in a consortium with Bombardier Transportation, the first ETR1000 was christened Mennea in honour of the Italian athlete Pietro Mennea who had died five days earlier. Besides the construction of locomotives, AnsaldoBreda manufactures railway cars, trams, and trains for rail, high-speed rail. AnsaldoBreda has also developed a driverless multiple unit train, since acquired by Hitachi, production of some British Rail Class 802 has been shifted to Hitachi Rail Italys Pistoia plant due to Hitachi Rails Newton Aycliffe, England plant being at capacity
19.
Condottieri-class cruiser
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The Condottieri class was a sequence of five, different, light cruiser classes of the Regia Marina, although these classes show a clear line of evolution. They were built before World War II to gain predominance in the Mediterranean Sea, the ships were named after military commanders of Italian history. The two Cadornas retained the characteristics, with minor improvements to stability and hull strength. Major changes were introduced for the pair, the Montecuccolis. About 2000 tons heavier, they had better protection. The two Duca dAostas continued the trend, thickening the armour and improving the plant again. The final pair, the Duca degli Abruzzis completed the transition, sacrificing a little speed for good protection, all ships served in the Mediterranean during World War II. The ships of the first two subclasses were all lost by 1942, primarily to enemy torpedoes, which led to authors to question their real value as fighting ships. However, the subsequent vessels fared considerably better with all, except Muzio Attendolo, cruisers of World War Two, an international encyclopedia
20.
Kirov-class cruiser
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The Kirov-class cruisers were a class of six cruisers built in the late 1930s for the Soviet Navy. After the first two ships, armor protection was increased and subsequent ships are called the Maxim Gorky class. Two ships each were deployed in the Black and Baltic Seas during World War II, while the last pair was still under construction in the Russian Far East, the first four ships bombarded Axis troops and facilities after the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. All six ships survived the war and lingered until the 1970s in training, following the October Revolution and the subsequent Russian Civil War, Soviet industry was not capable of designing large, complex warships by itself and sought foreign assistance. The Italians guaranteed that the cruiser could make 37 knots on trials if the size was kept under the 7200-tonne limit, the Kirovs were built in pairs, each pair incorporating some improvements over the earlier pair. These pairs were designated as the Project 26, Project 26bis, the differences between pairs usually related to size, armor, armament and aircraft. The Project 26 class ships were 191.3 m long overall and they had a beam of 17.66 m and at full load a draft of 6.15 m. They displaced 7,890 tonnes at load, and 9,436 tonnes at full load. Their single rudder meant that they were not very maneuverable and it was reduced to a simple pole mast in the later ships and the superstructure enlarged to accommodate the fire control facilities formerly housed in the foremast. Shortly after Kirov was launched in 1936, the two Project 26bis ships were laid down and they incorporated a number of changes from the first batch, not least of which was that they were larger. They displaced 8,177 tonnes at load and 9,728 tonnes at full load. They were only slightly longer at 191.4 m overall and had a draft of 6.30 m at full load. On trials they proved to be the fastest ships of the class with a speed of 36.72 knots, the Project 26bis2 pair were still larger and displaced 8,400 tonnes at standard load, and 10,400 tonnes at full load. They were a tenth of a shorter than the Project 26 ships. Their turbines proved to be more powerful than those of the Project 26bis ships. Production delays with the 100 mm B-34 dual-purpose guns forced them to use 85 mm 90-K guns instead, the mines changed yet again as they could carry 100 KB or 106 Model 1926 mines. The main armament consisted of three electrically powered MK-3-180 triple turrets with three 57-calibre 180 mm B-1-P guns, the turrets were very small to fit them into the hull space available and were so cramped that their rate of fire was much lower than designed. The guns were mounted in a cradle to minimize space and were so close together that their dispersion was very high because the muzzle blast from adjacent guns affected each gun
21.
Soviet cruiser Voroshilov
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Voroshilov was a Project 26 Kirov-class cruiser of the Soviet Navy that served during World War II and into the Cold War. She bombarded German troops during the Siege of Odessa before being damaged in November 1941 by German bombers. Her active participation in the war ended in October 1943 when three destroyers were lost to air attack and Joseph Stalin forbid missions using large ships without his permission, postwar she was converted to a missile test ship before being sold for scrap in 1973. Voroshilov was 191.3 meters long, had a beam of 17.66 meters and had a draft of 6.15 meters and she displaced 7,890 metric tons at standard load and 9,436 metric tons at full load. Her two steam turbines proved to be powerful than anticipated, producing a total of 122,500 shaft horsepower. This was almost enough to achieve the ships designed speed of 37 knots during her sea trials, Voroshilov carried nine 180-millimeter 57-caliber B-1-P guns in three electrically powered MK-3-180 triple turrets. Her secondary armament consisted of six single 100-millimeter 56-caliber B-34 anti-aircraft guns fitted on each side of the rear funnel, the ships light AA guns consisted of six semi-automatic 45-millimeter 21-K AA guns and four DK12. 7-millimeter machine guns. Six 533-millimeter 39-Yu torpedo tubes were fitted in two triple mountings, when war broke out in 1941, Voroshilov was not equipped with any radars, but she received a number of British Lend-Lease radars by 1944. One Type 284 and two Type 285 radars were used for main battery fire control, one Type 291 was used for air search, while anti-aircraft fire control was provided by two Type 282 radars. Voroshilov was laid down at the Marti South shipyard in Nikolayev on 15 October 1935 and she was launched on 28 June 1937, but she had to wait for her Soviet-built machinery to be delivered before she was completed on 20 June 1940. She bombarded Axis troops near Odessa on 19 September with 148180 mm shells and was transferred to Novorossiysk shortly afterwards, on 2 November the ship was bombed in harbor by Junkers Ju 88 bombers of Kampfgeschwader 51. She was hit twice, one hit started a fire in #3 magazine that was extinguished by flooding in from the second hit. Voroshilov had to be towed to Poti for repairs, which lasted until February 1942. She shelled Axis positions near Feodosiya on 19 March and 3 April 1942, on 8 and 11 May she provided fire support for Soviet troops around Kerch and the Taman Peninsula. On 27 May one of her turbines broke down, while helping to transfer the 9th Naval Infantry Brigade from Batumi to Sevastopol, and required repairs lasting until 24 July 1942. On 29 November 1942 she was damaged by mine explosions while bombarding Feodonisi with 46180 mm and 57100 mm shells. Just after her repairs were completed she assisted Soviet forces landing behind German lines at Malaya Zemlya with 240180 mm shells at the end of January 1943, on 17 February the ship transferred from Poti to Batumi. This loss caused Stalin to forbid the deployment of naval units without his express permission which was not granted during the rest of the war
22.
Krasnaya Gorka fort
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Krasnaya Gorka is a coastal artillery fortress west of Lomonosov, Russia on the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland, opposite Kotlin Island and the Baltic Fleets base at Kronstadt. The fort was established in the 18th Century and substantially modernised in the late 19th – early 20th century with the installation of 12 inch guns in concrete casemates, there is an outlying fort called Seraya Loshad containing smaller guns. The fort was armed with,811 inch howitzers 810 inch guns 66 inch canet type guns 412 inch guns in concrete casemates 412 inch guns in armoured turrets The work was completed in 1914. During the Russian Civil War the fort helped defend the city of Petrograd, in June 1919 the garrison mutinied against the Bolshevik regime but this revolt was suppressed, and the survivors machine gunned by order of Leon Trotsky, who had promised the garrison their lives. Though the Estonian Army and the British Royal Navy actively supported the White Russian Northern Corps in the area their attacks were not able to aid the mutineers. Later in autumn 1919 the forts were attacked by the 1st Division of the Estonian Army. In 1921 the guns of the fort bombarded Kronstadt during the rebellion, during World War II the fort played a vital part in defending the Siege of Leningrad and maintaining the Oranienbaum Bridgehead. The fort was decommissioned in 1960 and partially demolished, the local authorities of the St Petersburg region are discussing whether to convert the site into a military museum. Fort Ino Site in English Language History, map, photos and description of the abandoned Russian fort
23.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
24.
OCLC
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The Online Computer Library Center is a US-based nonprofit cooperative organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the worlds information and reducing information costs. It was founded in 1967 as the Ohio College Library Center, OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the largest online public access catalog in the world. OCLC is funded mainly by the fees that libraries have to pay for its services, the group first met on July 5,1967 on the campus of the Ohio State University to sign the articles of incorporation for the nonprofit organization. The group hired Frederick G. Kilgour, a former Yale University medical school librarian, Kilgour wished to merge the latest information storage and retrieval system of the time, the computer, with the oldest, the library. The goal of network and database was to bring libraries together to cooperatively keep track of the worlds information in order to best serve researchers and scholars. The first library to do online cataloging through OCLC was the Alden Library at Ohio University on August 26,1971 and this was the first occurrence of online cataloging by any library worldwide. Membership in OCLC is based on use of services and contribution of data, between 1967 and 1977, OCLC membership was limited to institutions in Ohio, but in 1978, a new governance structure was established that allowed institutions from other states to join. In 2002, the structure was again modified to accommodate participation from outside the United States. As OCLC expanded services in the United States outside of Ohio, it relied on establishing strategic partnerships with networks, organizations that provided training, support, by 2008, there were 15 independent United States regional service providers. OCLC networks played a key role in OCLC governance, with networks electing delegates to serve on OCLC Members Council, in early 2009, OCLC negotiated new contracts with the former networks and opened a centralized support center. OCLC provides bibliographic, abstract and full-text information to anyone, OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat—the OCLC Online Union Catalog, the largest online public access catalog in the world. WorldCat has holding records from public and private libraries worldwide. org, in October 2005, the OCLC technical staff began a wiki project, WikiD, allowing readers to add commentary and structured-field information associated with any WorldCat record. The Online Computer Library Center acquired the trademark and copyrights associated with the Dewey Decimal Classification System when it bought Forest Press in 1988, a browser for books with their Dewey Decimal Classifications was available until July 2013, it was replaced by the Classify Service. S. The reference management service QuestionPoint provides libraries with tools to communicate with users and this around-the-clock reference service is provided by a cooperative of participating global libraries. OCLC has produced cards for members since 1971 with its shared online catalog. OCLC commercially sells software, e. g. CONTENTdm for managing digital collections, OCLC has been conducting research for the library community for more than 30 years. In accordance with its mission, OCLC makes its research outcomes known through various publications and these publications, including journal articles, reports, newsletters, and presentations, are available through the organizations website. The most recent publications are displayed first, and all archived resources, membership Reports – A number of significant reports on topics ranging from virtual reference in libraries to perceptions about library funding
