1.
The Artillery Museum of Finland
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The Artillery Museum of Finland is a special military museum dedicated to the history of the artillery from the 15th century to the present day. It was located in Niinisalo from 1977 to 1997, in 1997 it was relocated to Hämeenlinna. A museum dedicated to the artillery was discussed in Finland already in the 1930s. The idea was revived again in the beginning of the 1970s, a possibility of establishing the museum seemed feasible but the location was problematic. Proximity of some large artillery garrison was considered best for the museum, in the heart of Satakunta, in Niinisalo, a suitable building was found. An empty school of Saloharju was rented to Tykkimiehet Association by the borough of Kankaanpää, the large artillery garrison of Niinisalo was placed quite near. The museum was founded on 2 July 1977 in Niinisalo under the name Artillery Museum, the great public did not, however, quite find its way to the museum, probably because of its remoteness. A campaign for finding a new location was launched, Linnankasarmi at Hämeenlinna, with its vacant barracks, begun to feel attractive. The new Artillery Museum was opened to the public on 12 May 1997, the name of the museum was changed 1.1.2004 to The Artillery Museum of Finland. The Artillery Museum of Finland is located at Hämeenlinna in the Linnakasarmi area, the buildings of Linnankasarmi date back to the Russian regime, to the Autonomy 1809–1917. The construction of the started in 1850 and was completed in 1913. Moreover, Häme Castle is right next door and its centurys long tradition includes also artillery, the permanent exhibition displays in three floors the history of artillery in Finland and the military history on the nation. On the ground floor of the building the birth of our artillery centuries ago is on display. The story proceeds from the War of Finland 1808-1809 through the period of Autonomy to the Finnish Civil War, a muzzleloader called Helvig, a cannon dating back to the War of Finland 1808-1809 is one of the guns worth mentioning. On the center passage of each there are projectiles from different periods. The second floor brings the visitor to the times of the winter, the firing methods of the field artillery and of the subjects connected, demonstrate the high technical know-how of the Finnish artillery. The study of the Artillery General Vilho Nenonen is also in this floor, the proto type of the Nenon – camera is on display in this room. The floor of the artillery veterans ends with the present time, special branches, such as artillery intelligence, communications and survey activities are placed on this floor
2.
Kingdom of Italy
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The state was founded as a result of the unification of Italy under the influence of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which can be considered its legal predecessor state. Italy declared war on Austria in alliance with Prussia in 1866, Italian troops entered Rome in 1870, ending more than one thousand years of Papal temporal power. Italy entered into a Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1882, victory in the war gave Italy a permanent seat in the Council of the League of Nations. Fascist Italy is the era of National Fascist Party rule from 1922 to 1943 with Benito Mussolini as head of government, according to Payne, Fascist regime passed through several relatively distinct phases. The first phase was nominally a continuation of the parliamentary system, then came the second phase, the construction of the Fascist dictatorship proper from 1925 to 1929. The third phase, with activism, was 1929–34. The war itself was the phase with its disasters and defeats. Italy was allied with Nazi Germany in World War II until 1943 and it switched sides to the Allies after ousting Mussolini and shutting down the Fascist party in areas controlled by the Allied invaders. Shortly after the war, civil discontent led to the referendum of 1946 on whether Italy would remain a monarchy or become a republic. Italians decided to abandon the monarchy and form the Italian Republic, the Kingdom of Italy claimed all of the territory which is modern-day Italy. The development of the Kingdoms territory progressed under Italian re-unification until 1870, the state for a long period of time did not include Trieste or Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, which are in Italy today, and only annexed them in 1919. After the Second World War, the borders of present-day Italy were founded, the Kingdom of Italy was theoretically a constitutional monarchy. Executive power belonged to the monarch, as executed through appointed ministers, two chambers of parliament restricted the monarchs power—an appointive Senate and an elective Chamber of Deputies. The kingdoms constitution was the Statuto Albertino, the governing document of the Kingdom of Sardinia. In theory, ministers were responsible to the king. However, in practice, it was impossible for an Italian government to stay in office without the support of Parliament, members of the Chamber of Deputies were elected by plurality voting system elections in uninominal districts. A candidate needed the support of 50% of those voting, and of 25% of all enrolled voters, if not all seats were filled on the first ballot, a runoff was held shortly afterwards for the remaining vacancies. After a brief multinominal experimentation in 1882, proportional representation into large, regional, Socialists became the major party, but they were unable to form a government in a parliament split into three different factions, with Christian Populists and classical liberals
3.
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
4.
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
5.
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
6.
Explosive material
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An explosive charge is a measured quantity of explosive material, which may be composed of a single ingredient or a combination of two or more. Materials that detonate are said to be high explosives and materials that deflagrate are said to be low explosives, Explosives may also be categorized by their sensitivity. Sensitive materials that can be initiated by a small amount of heat or pressure are primary explosives. A wide variety of chemicals can explode, a number are manufactured specifically for the purpose of being used as explosives. The remainder are too dangerous, sensitive, toxic, expensive, unstable, in contrast, some materials are merely combustible or flammable if they burn without exploding. The distinction, however, is not razor-sharp, though early thermal weapons, such as Greek fire, have existed since ancient times, the first widely used explosive in warfare and mining was black powder, invented in 9th century China. This material was sensitive to water, and it produced copious amounts of dark smoke, the first useful explosive stronger than black powder was nitroglycerin, developed in 1847. Since nitroglycerin is a liquid and highly unstable, it was replaced by nitrocellulose, TNT in 1863, smokeless powder, dynamite in 1867, World War I saw the adoption of TNT trinitrotoluene in artillery shells. World War II saw a use of new explosives. In turn, these have largely replaced by more powerful explosives such as C-4. However, C-4 and PETN react with metal and catch fire easily, yet unlike TNT, C-4 and PETN are waterproof, the largest commercial application of explosives is mining. In Materials Science and Engineering, explosives are used in cladding, a thin plate of some material is placed atop a thick layer of a different material, both layers typically of metal. Atop the thin layer is placed an explosive, at one end of the layer of explosive, the explosion is initiated. The two metallic layers are forced together at high speed and with great force, the explosion spreads from the initiation site throughout the explosive. Ideally, this produces a metallurgical bond between the two layers and it is possible that some fraction of the surface material from either layer eventually gets ejected when the end of material is reached. Hence, the mass of the now welded bilayer, may be less than the sum of the masses of the two initial layers, there are applications where a shock wave, and electrostatics, can result in high velocity projectiles. Thus, explosives are substances that contain an amount of energy stored in chemical bonds. Consequently, most commercial explosives are compounds containing -NO2, -ONO2 and -NHNO2 groups that
7.
High-explosive anti-tank warhead
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High-explosive anti-tank warhead is a type of shaped charge explosive that uses the Munroe effect to penetrate armor. The warhead functions by having the explosive charge melt a metal liner to form a high-velocity superplastic jet and this concentrated metal jet is capable of penetrating armor steel to a depth of seven or more times the diameter of the charge. Contrary to a misconception, the jet does not melt its way through armor. The HEAT warhead has become less effective against tanks and other armored vehicles due to the use of composite armour, HEAT warheads were developed during World War II, from extensive research and development into shaped charge warheads. Shaped charge warheads were promoted internationally by the Swiss inventor Henry Mohaupt, before 1939, Mohaupt demonstrated his invention to British and French ordnance authorities. Claims for priority of invention are difficult to due to subsequent historic interpretations, secrecy, espionage. This has some claim to have been the first HEAT warhead, the design of the warhead was simple and was capable of penetrating 52 millimetres of armour. The fuze of the grenade was armed by removing a pin in the tail which prevented the firing pin from flying forward. Simple fins gave it stability in the air and, provided the hit the target at the proper angle of 90 degrees. Detonation occurred on impact, when a striker in the tail of the grenade overcame the resistance of a spring and was thrown forward into a stab detonator. By mid-1940, Germany introduced the first HEAT round to be fired by a gun, the 7.5 centimetres fired by the Kw. K.37 L/24 of the Panzer IV tank and the Stug III self-propelled gun. The Panzerfaust and Panzerschreck gave the German infantryman the ability to any tank on the battlefield from 50–150 metres with relative ease of use. The Germans made use of quantities of HEAT ammunition in converted 7.5 cm Pak 97/38 guns from 1942. These so-called Schwere Hohlladung warheads were intended for use against heavily armoured battleships, operational versions weighed nearly two tons and were perhaps the largest HEAT warheads ever deployed. A five-ton version code-named Beethoven was also developed, meanwhile, the British No.68 AT rifle grenade was proving to be too light to deal significant damage, resulting in it rarely being used in action. Due to these limits, a new infantry weapon was needed. By 1942, the PIAT had been developed by Major Millis Jefferis and it was a combination of a HEAT warhead with a spigot mortar delivery system. While cumbersome, the weapon allowed British infantry to armour at range for the first time
8.
Shrapnel shell
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They relied almost entirely on the shells velocity for their lethality. The munition has been obsolete since the end of World War I for anti-personnel use, the functioning and principles behind Shrapnel shells are fundamentally different from high-explosive shell fragmentation. In 1784, Lieutenant Shrapnel of the Royal Artillery began developing an anti-personnel weapon, when fired, the container burst open during passage through the bore or at the muzzle, giving the effect of an oversized shotgun shell. At ranges of up to 300 m canister shot was still highly lethal, though at this range the shots’ density was much lower and his shell was a hollow cast-iron sphere filled with a mixture of balls and powder, with a crude time fuze. If the fuze was set correctly then the shell would break open, either in front or above the intended target, the shrapnel balls would carry on with the remaining velocity of the shell. The explosive charge in the shell was to be just enough to break the casing rather than scatter the shot in all directions, as such his invention increased the effective range of canister shot from 300 to about 1100 m. He called his device spherical case shot, but in time it came to be called after him, Various solutions were tried, with limited if any success. However, in 1852 Colonel Boxer proposed using a diaphragm to separate the bullets from the bursting charge, as a buffer to prevent lead shot deforming, a resin was used as a packing material between the shot. A useful side effect of using the resin was that the combustion also gave a visual reference upon the shell bursting and it took until 1803 for the British artillery to adopt the shrapnel shell, albeit with great enthusiasm when it did. Henry Shrapnel was promoted to major in the same year, the first recorded use of shrapnel by the British was in 1804 against the Dutch at Fort Nieuw-Amsterdam in Surinam. The Duke of Wellingtons armies used it from 1808 in the Peninsular War and at the Battle of Waterloo, the design was improved by Captain E. M. Boxer of the Royal Arsenal around 1852 and crossed over when cylindrical shells for rifled guns were introduced. The powder charge both shattered the cast iron wall and liberated the bullets. The broken shell wall continued mainly forward but had little destructive effect, in the 1870s William Armstrong provided a design with the bursting charge in the head and the shell wall made of steel and hence much thinner than previous cast-iron shrapnel shell walls. Britain adopted this solution for several smaller calibres but by World War I few if any such shells remained, the final shrapnel shell design, adopted in the 1880s, bore little similarity to Henry Shrapnels original design other than its spherical bullets and time fuze. It used a much thinner forged steel shell case with a fuze in the nose. The use of steel allowed the wall to be made much thinner. It also withstood the force of the charge without shattering, so that the bullets were fired forward out of the shell case with increased velocity. This is the design came to be adopted by all countries and was in standard use when World War I began in 1914
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.
Breech-loading weapon
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A breech-loading gun is a firearm in which the cartridge or shell is inserted or loaded into a chamber integral to the rear portion of a barrel. Modern mass production firearms are breech-loading, early firearms, on the other hand, were almost entirely muzzle-loading. In field artillery, breech loading allows the crew to reload the gun without exposing themselves to fire or repositioning the piece. The main challenge for developers of breech-loading firearms was sealing the breech and this was eventually solved for smaller firearms by the development of the self-contained metallic cartridge. For firearms too large to use cartridges, the problem was solved by the development of the interrupted screw, breech-loading swivel guns were invented in the 14th century. The breech-loading swivel gun had a rate of fire, and was especially effective in anti-personnel roles. Breech-loading firearms are known from the 16th century, Henry VIII possessed one, which he apparently used as a hunting gun to shoot birds. More breech-loading firearms were made in the early 18th century, one such gun known to have belonged to Philip V of Spain, and was manufactured circa 1715, probably in Madrid. It came with a ready-to load reusable cartridge, patrick Ferguson, a British Army officer, developed in 1772 the Ferguson rifle, a breech-loading flintlock firearm. Later on into the century there were attempts in Europe at an effective breech-loader. There were concentrated attempts at improved cartridges and methods of ignition, the cartridge was loaded through the breech and fired with a needle. The needle-activated central-fire breech-loading gun would become a feature of firearms thereafter. The corresponding firearm was also developed by Pauly, Pauly made an improved version, which was protected by a patent on 29 September 1812. In 1846 another Paris Frenchman, Benjamin Houllier, patented the first fully metallic cartridge containing powder in a metallic shell, Houllier commercialised his weapons in association with the gunsmiths Blanchard or Charles Robert. In English-speaking countries the Flobert cartridge corresponds to the.22 BB, the first centrefire cartridge was introduced in 1855 by Pottet, with both Berdan and Boxer priming. The Dreyse Zündnadelgewehr or Dreyse needle gun, was a single-shot breech-loading rifle using a rotating bolt to seal the breech and it was so called because of its. 5-inch needle-like firing pin, which passed through a paper cartridge case to impact a percussion cap at the bullet base. It began development in the 1830s under von Dreyse and eventually a version of it was adopted by Prussia in the late 1840s. The paper cartridge and the gun had numerous deficiencies, specifically, however, the rifle was used to great success in the Prussian army in the Austro-Prussian war of 1866
11.
Thorsten Nordenfelt
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Thorsten Nordenfelt, was a Swedish inventor and industrialist. Nordenfelt was born in Örby outside Kinna, Sweden, the son of a colonel, the surname was and is often spelt Nordenfeldt, though Thorsten and his brothers always spelt it Nordenfelt, and the 1881 Census shows it as Nordenfelt. The family home in that year was Leinster Lodge on the Uxbridge Road, Thorsten worked for a Swedish company in London from 1862 to 1866 and migrated to England in 1867 when he married Emma Stansfeld Grundy. Thorsten Nordenfelt and his brother-in-law started a business to trade Swedish steel for British rails in 1887. Later on he founded Nordenfelt Guns and Ammunition Company, ltd to develop a machine-gun designed by Helge Palmcrantz that would be referred to as the Nordenfelt gun. His company also designed a range of guns in calibres from 37 to 57 mm. Under pressure from Rothschild and Vickers his company merged with Maxims in 1888 to form The Maxim Nordenfelt Guns, legal action followed over a non-compete clause Nordenfelt had signed. In 1903 he returned to Sweden and retired, in 1902 a public house named after Thorsten Nordenfelt was built at 181 Erith Road, Erith just along from the Gun and Carriage works of Vickers, Sons and Maxim. The first was the Nordenfelt I, a 56 tonne,19.5 metre long vessel similar to Garrets ill-fated Resurgam, with a range of 240 kilometres and armed with a single torpedo and it was manufactured by Bolinders in Stockholm in 1884-1885. Like the Resurgam, it operated on the using a 100 HP steam engine with a maximum speed of 9 kn. She was purchased by the Greek Government and was delivered to Salamis Naval Base in 1886, following the acceptance tests, she was never used again by the Hellenic Navy and was scrapped in 1901. Nordenfelt then built the Nordenfelt II in 1886 and Nordenfelt III in 1887, abdülhamid became the first submarine in history to fire a torpedo while submerged under water. Nordenfelts efforts culminated in 1887 with the Nordenfelt IV which had twin motors and it was sold to the Russians, but proved unstable and ran aground off Jutland, when the Russians refused to pay for it, it was scrapped. Abdülhamid and Abdülmecid were in Istanbul in 1914, the submarines were briefly considered for use in harbour defence but it was found that their hulls were too badly corroded
12.
Interrupted screw
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An interrupted screw or interrupted thread is a mechanical device typically used in the breech of artillery guns. It is believed to have invented in 1845. It is a screw that has a section of thread along its axis removed, the screw is mated with a partially threaded hole at the rear of the weapons chamber, where the screw has threads the hole has none, and vice versa. The screw can thus be smoothly inserted all the way into the gun, an earlier method was the use of a wedge to block the rear of the gun. Sealing was further improved with the de Bange obturator in 1872, the major weakness of the original designs was that only half of the circumference of the breechblock could be threaded, hence a fairly long breechblock was still required to achieve a secure lock. Axel Welin solved this problem with his stepped interrupted screw design and this design has threads of the block and breech cut in steps of successively larger radius. This is the design still in use with bagged charge artillery. Rifled breech loader Welin breech block Interrupted screw breech mechanisms Navweaps. com Interrupted threads used on naval guns
13.
Recoil
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Recoil is the backward movement of a gun when it is discharged. To apply this counter-recoiling force, modern mounted guns may employ recoil buffering comprising springs and hydraulic recoil mechanisms, early cannons used systems of ropes along with rolling or sliding friction to provide forces to slow the recoiling cannon to a stop. Recoil buffering allows the maximum counter-recoil force to be lowered so that strength limitations of the gun mount are not exceeded, however, the same pressures acting on the base of the projectile are acting on the rear face of the gun chamber, accelerating the gun rearward during firing. This results in the required counter-recoiling force being proportionally lower, modern cannons also employ muzzle brakes very effectively to redirect some of the propellant gasses rearward after projectile exit. This provides a force to the barrel, allowing the buffering system. The same physics affecting recoil in mounted guns and cannons applies to hand-held guns, hands, arms and shoulders have considerable strength and elasticity for this purpose, up to certain practical limits. For this reason, establishing recoil safety standards for small arms remains challenging, a change in momentum of a mass requires a force, according to Newtons first law, known as the law of inertia, inertia simply being another term for mass. That force, applied to a mass, creates an acceleration, according to Newtons second law, the law of momentum -- changing the velocity of the mass changes its momentum. It is important to understand at this point that velocity is not simply speed, velocity is the speed of a mass in a particular direction. In a very technical sense, speed is a scalar, a magnitude, in summation, the total momentum of the system equals zero, surprisingly just as it did before the trigger was pulled. There are two conservation laws at work when a gun is fired, conservation of momentum and conservation of energy, recoil is explained by the law of conservation of momentum, and so it is easier to discuss it separately from energy. The nature of the process is determined by the force of the expanding gases in the barrel upon the gun. It is also determined by the force applied to the gun. The recoil force only acts during the time that the ejecta are still in the barrel of the gun, except for the case of zero-recoil, the counter-recoil force is smaller than the recoil force but lasts for a longer time. Since the recoil force and the force are not matched. In the zero-recoil case, the two forces are matched and the gun will not move when fired. In most cases, a gun is very close to a free-recoil condition, an example of near zero-recoil would be a gun securely clamped to a massive or well-anchored table, or supported from behind by a massive wall. For example, placing the butt of a large caliber gun directly against a wall, the recoil of a firearm, whether large or small, is a result of the law of conservation of momentum
14.
Gun carriage
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A gun carriage is a frame and mount that supports the gun barrel of an artillery piece, allowing it to be manoeuvred and fired. The earliest guns were laid directly onto the ground, with earth being piled up under the end of the barrel to increase the elevation. As the size of guns increased, they began to be attached to wooden frames or beds that were held down by stakes. These began to be replaced by wheeled carriages in the early 16th century, from the 16th to the mid-19th century, the main form of artillery remained the smoothbore cannon. By this time, the trunnion had been developed, with the result that the barrel could be held in two recesses in the carriage and secured with an iron band. This simplified elevation, which was achieved by raising or lowering the breech of the gun by means of a wedge called a quoin or later by a steel screw. During this time, the design of gun carriages evolved only slowly, the trunnions of the gun barrel sat on the top of the cheeks, the rearward part of each cheek was stepped so that the breech could be lifted by iron levers called handspikes. Traversing the gun was achieved by levering the rear of the carriage sideways with handspikes and these were designed to allow guns to be deployed on the battlefield and were provided with a pair of large wheels similar to those used on carts or wagons. The cheeks of field carriages were much narrower than those on the naval carriage, when the gun needed to be moved any distance, the trail could be lifted onto a second separate axle called a limber, which could then be towed by a team of horses or oxen. Limbers had been invented in France in about 1550, in recent times, most heavy guns in military service, that were not themselves mounted into a vehicles, have been mounted either with a field carriage or a split trail carriage. The field carriage is simpler - having two legs extend backwards, joining at a tail, being a hardpoint to hook on to a prime mover or set of horses, the split trail carriage, however, is more complicated, but offers distinct advantages. It consists of two legs, able to be spread independently to the sides, or brought together to allow towing or movement, in both cases, the tail of the carriage often serves to balance the gun, and protect it from rolling to any large extent. The split trail, however, allows the gun not only to be fired near the horizontal, as the field carriage does and this is less important for heavier artillery, as the guns already involve a long time to prepare a firing position. While this still limits the ability to track, it allows the guns to fire in any direction with minimal preparation. Furthermore, it part of each of the benefits of the field carriage, being weight, space. The practice has its origins in war and appears in the century in the Queens regulations of the British Army. In the United Kingdom, the visual distinction usually referred to is that in a state funeral and this distinguishing feature is not invariable, however, as shown by the use of naval ratings rather than horses at the ceremonial funeral for Lord Mountbatten in 1979
15.
Gun laying
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Gun laying is the process of aiming an artillery piece, such as a gun, howitzer or mortar on land, or at sea, against surface or air targets. It may be laying for direct fire, where the gun is aimed similarly to a rifle, or indirect fire, the term includes automated aiming using, for example, radar-derived target data and computer-controlled guns. Gun laying means moving the axis of the bore of the barrel in two planes, horizontal and vertical. A gun is traversed – rotated in a horizontal plane – to align it with the target, Gun laying is a set of actions to align the axis of a gun barrel so that it points in the required direction. This alignment is in the horizontal and vertical planes, Gun laying may be for direct fire, where the layer sees the target, or indirect fire, where the target may not be visible from the gun. Gun laying has sometimes called training the gun. Laying in the vertical plane uses data derived from trials or empirical experience, for any given gun and projectile types, it reflects the distance to the target and the size of the propellant charge. It also incorporates any differences in height between gun and target, with indirect fire, it may allow for other variables as well. With indirect fire the horizontal angle is relative to something, typically the guns aiming point, depending on the gun mount, there is usually a choice of two trajectories. The dividing angle between the trajectories is about 45 degrees, it varies due to gun dependent factors. Below 45 degrees the trajectory is called low angle, above is high angle, the differences are that low angle fire has a shorter time of flight, a lower vertex and flatter angle of descent. All guns have carriages or mountings that support the barrel assembly, early guns could only be traversed by moving their entire carriage or mounting, and this lasted with heavy artillery into World War II. Mountings could be fitted into traversing turrets on ships, coast defences or tanks, from circa 1900 field artillery carriages provided traverse without moving the wheels and trail. The carriage, or mounting, also enabled the barrel to be set at the elevation angle. With some gun mounts it is possible to depress the gun, some guns require a near-horizontal elevation for loading. An essential capability for any elevation mechanism is to prevent the weight of the barrel forcing its heavier end downward and this is greatly helped by having trunnions at the centre of gravity, although a counterbalance mechanism can be used. It also means the elevation gear has to be enough to resist considerable downward pressure. However, mortars, where the forces were transferred directly into the ground
16.
Nazi Germany
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Nazi Germany is the common English name for the period in German history from 1933 to 1945, when Germany was governed by a dictatorship under the control of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Under Hitlers rule, Germany was transformed into a fascist state in which the Nazi Party took totalitarian control over all aspects of life. The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich from 1933 to 1943, the period is also known under the names the Third Reich and the National Socialist Period. The Nazi regime came to an end after the Allied Powers defeated Germany in May 1945, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by the President of the Weimar Republic Paul von Hindenburg on 30 January 1933. The Nazi Party then began to eliminate all opposition and consolidate its power. Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934, and Hitler became dictator of Germany by merging the powers and offices of the Chancellery, a national referendum held 19 August 1934 confirmed Hitler as sole Führer of Germany. All power was centralised in Hitlers person, and his word became above all laws, the government was not a coordinated, co-operating body, but a collection of factions struggling for power and Hitlers favour. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazis restored economic stability and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending, extensive public works were undertaken, including the construction of Autobahnen. The return to economic stability boosted the regimes popularity, racism, especially antisemitism, was a central feature of the regime. The Germanic peoples were considered by the Nazis to be the purest branch of the Aryan race, millions of Jews and other peoples deemed undesirable by the state were murdered in the Holocaust. Opposition to Hitlers rule was ruthlessly suppressed, members of the liberal, socialist, and communist opposition were killed, imprisoned, or exiled. The Christian churches were also oppressed, with many leaders imprisoned, education focused on racial biology, population policy, and fitness for military service. Career and educational opportunities for women were curtailed, recreation and tourism were organised via the Strength Through Joy program, and the 1936 Summer Olympics showcased the Third Reich on the international stage. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels made effective use of film, mass rallies, the government controlled artistic expression, promoting specific art forms and banning or discouraging others. Beginning in the late 1930s, Nazi Germany made increasingly aggressive territorial demands and it seized Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939. Hitler made a pact with Joseph Stalin and invaded Poland in September 1939. In alliance with Italy and smaller Axis powers, Germany conquered most of Europe by 1940, reichskommissariats took control of conquered areas, and a German administration was established in what was left of Poland. Jews and others deemed undesirable were imprisoned, murdered in Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the tide gradually turned against the Nazis, who suffered major military defeats in 1943
17.
Wehrmacht
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The Wehrmacht was the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1946. It consisted of the Heer, the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe, after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, one of Adolf Hitler’s most overt and audacious moves was to establish the Wehrmacht, a modern armed forces fully capable of offensive use. In December 1941, Hitler designated himself as commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht, the Wehrmacht formed the heart of Germany’s politico-military power. In the early part of World War II, Hitlers generals employed the Wehrmacht through innovative combined arms tactics to devastating effect in what was called a Blitzkrieg, the Wehrmachts new military structure, unique combat techniques, newly developed weapons, and unprecedented speed and brutality crushed their opponents. Closely cooperating with the SS, the German armed forces committed war crimes and atrocities. By the time the war ended in Europe in May 1945, only a few of the Wehrmacht’s upper leadership were tried for war crimes, despite evidence suggesting that more were involved in illegal actions. The German term Wehrmacht generically describes any nations armed forces, for example, the Frankfurt Constitution of 1848 designated all German military forces as the German Wehrmacht, consisting of the Seemacht and the Landmacht. In 1919, the term Wehrmacht also appears in Article 47 of the Weimar Constitution, establishing that, from 1919, Germanys national defense force was known as the Reichswehr, a name that was dropped in favor of Wehrmacht on 21 May 1935. In January 1919, after World War I ended with the signing of the armistice of 11 November 1918, in March 1919, the national assembly passed a law founding a 420, 000-strong preliminary army, the Vorläufige Reichswehr. The terms of the Treaty of Versailles were announced in May, the army was limited to one hundred thousand men with an additional fifteen thousand in the navy. The fleet was to consist of at most six battleships, six cruisers, submarines, tanks and heavy artillery were forbidden and the air-force was dissolved. A new post-war military, the Reichswehr, was established on 23 March 1921, General conscription was abolished under another mandate of the Versailles treaty. The Reichswehr was limited to 115,000 men, and thus the armed forces, under the leadership of Hans von Seeckt, though Seeckt retired in 1926, the army that went to war in 1939 was largely his creation. Germany was forbidden to have an air-force by the Versailles treaty, nonetheless and these officers saw the role of an air-force as winning air-superiority, tactical and strategic bombing and providing ground support. That the Luftwaffe did not develop a strategic bombing force in the 1930s was not due to a lack of interest, but because of economic limitations. The leadership of the Navy led by Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, officers who believed in submarine warfare led by Admiral Karl Dönitz were in a minority before 1939. By 1922, Germany had begun covertly circumventing the conditions of the Versailles Treaty, a secret collaboration with the Soviet Union began after the treaty of Rapallo. Major-General Otto Hasse traveled to Moscow in 1923 to further negotiate the terms, Germany helped the Soviet Union with industrialization and Soviet officers were to be trained in Germany
18.
Muzzle brake
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A muzzle brake or recoil compensator is a device connected to the muzzle of a firearm or cannon that redirects propellant gases to counter recoil and unwanted rising of the barrel during rapid fire. They have been used in forms for rifles and pistols to help control recoil. They are used on pistols for practical pistol competitions, and are usually called compensators in this context, the interchangeable terms muzzle rise, muzzle flip, or muzzle climb refer to the tendency of a handheld firearms front end to rise after firing. Firearms with less height from the line to the barrel centerline tend to experience less muzzle rise. The muzzle rises primarily because, for most firearms, the centerline of the barrel is above the center of contact between the shooter and the grip and stock. The reactive forces from the bullet and propellant gases exiting the muzzle act directly down the centerline of the barrel. If that line of force is above the center of the points, this creates a moment or torque rotational force that makes the firearm rotate. The M1946 Sieg automatic rifle had a muzzle brake that made the rifle climb downward. Muzzle brakes are simple in concept, such as the one employed on the 90 mm M3 gun used on the M47 Patton tank and this consists of a small length of tubing mounted at right angles to the end of the barrel. Brakes most often utilize slots, vents, holes, baffles, the strategy of a muzzle brake is to redirect and control the burst of combustion gases that follows the departure of a projectile. All muzzle brake designs share a basic principle, they partially divert combustion gases at a sideways angle. The momentum of the diverted gases thus does not add to the recoil, the angle toward which the gases are directed will fundamentally affect how the brake behaves. If gases are directed upward, they exert a downward force. Construction of a brake or compensator can be as simple as a diagonal cut at the muzzle end of the barrel to direct some of the escaping gas upward. On the AKM assault rifle, the brake also angles slightly to the right to counteract the movement of the rifle under recoil. Another simple method is porting, where holes or slots are machined into the barrel near the muzzle to allow the gas to escape, more advanced designs use baffles and expansion chambers to slow escaping gases. This is the principle behind a linear compensator. Ports are often added to the chambers, producing the long
19.
5 cm Pak 38
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The 5 cm Pak 38 was a German anti-tank gun of 50 mm calibre. It was developed in 1938 by Rheinmetall-Borsig AG as a successor to the 37 mm Pak 36, and was in turn followed by the 75 mm Pak 40. After the Spanish Civil War, the German authorities started to think that a new gun would be needed. They asked Rheinmetall-Borsig to produce a new and more capable AT-gun and they first designed the Pak 37 in 1935, but the German authorities didnt approve it because of its low capabilities. Rheinmetall-Borsig were forced to create a new gun under the designation Pak 38, the Pak 38 was first used by the German forces during the Second World War in April 1941. When the Germans faced Soviet tanks in 1941 during Operation Barbarossa, the gun was also equipped with Panzergranate 40 APCR shots with a hard tungsten core, in an attempt to penetrate the armor of the heavier KV-1 tank. Although it was replaced by powerful weapons, it remained a potent and useful weapon. The Pak 38 carriage was used for the 7.5 cm Pak 97/38. Romania imported 110 Pak 38s in March 1943, the guns remained in service with the Romanian Armed Forces until 1954, when the 57 mm anti-tank gun M1943 replaced them. Weapons of the Third Reich, An Encyclopedic Survey of All Small Arms, Artillery, hogg, Ian V. German Artillery of World War Two. Intelligence report on Pak 38 at Lonesentry. com Armor penetration table at Panzerworld
20.
Invasion of Poland
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The campaign ended on 6 October with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland under the terms of the German-Soviet Frontier Treaty. German forces invaded Poland from the north, south, and west the morning after the Gleiwitz incident, as the Wehrmacht advanced, Polish forces withdrew from their forward bases of operation close to the Polish–German border to more established lines of defence to the east. After the mid-September Polish defeat in the Battle of the Bzura, Polish forces then withdrew to the southeast where they prepared for a long defence of the Romanian Bridgehead and awaited expected support and relief from France and the United Kingdom. While those two countries had pacts with Poland and had declared war on Germany on 3 September, in the end their aid to Poland was very limited. The Soviet Red Armys invasion of Eastern Poland on 17 September, in accordance with a protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Facing a second front, the Polish government concluded the defence of the Romanian Bridgehead was no longer feasible, on 6 October, following the Polish defeat at the Battle of Kock, German and Soviet forces gained full control over Poland. The success of the invasion marked the end of the Second Polish Republic, the Soviet Union incorporated its newly acquired areas into its constituent Belarusian and Ukrainian republics, and immediately started a campaign of sovietization. In the aftermath of the invasion, a collective of underground resistance formed the Polish Underground State within the territory of the former Polish state. Many of the exiles that managed to escape Poland subsequently joined the Polish Armed Forces in the West. On 30 January 1933, the Nazi Party, under its leader Adolf Hitler, as part of this long-term policy, Hitler at first pursued a policy of rapprochement with Poland, trying to improve opinion in Germany, culminating in the German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact of 1934. Earlier, Hitlers foreign policy worked to weaken ties between Poland and France, and attempted to manoeuvre Poland into the Anti-Comintern Pact, forming a front against the Soviet Union. The Poles feared that their independence would eventually be threatened altogether, the so-called Polish Corridor constituted land long disputed by Poland and Germany, and inhabited by a Polish majority. The Corridor had become a part of Poland after the Treaty of Versailles, many Germans also wanted the city of Danzig and its environs to be reincorporated into Germany. Danzig was a city with a German majority. It had been separated from Germany after Versailles and made into the nominally independent Free City of Danzig, the series of border violations, which are unbearable to a great power, prove that the Poles no longer are willing to respect the German frontier. Poland participated with Germany in the partition of Czechoslovakia that followed the Munich Agreement and it coerced Czechoslovakia to surrender the region of Český Těšín by issuing an ultimatum to that effect on 30 September 1938, which was accepted by Czechoslovakia on 1 October. This region had a Polish majority and had been disputed between Czechoslovakia and Poland in the aftermath of World War I, the Polish annexation of Slovak territory later served as the justification for the Slovak state to join the German invasion. Poland rejected this proposal, fearing that after accepting these demands, it would become subject to the will of Germany
21.
Battle of France
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The Battle of France, also known as the Fall of France, was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries in 1940 during the Second World War. Italy entered the war on 10 June 1940 and attempted an invasion of France, the German plan for the invasion of France consisted of two main operations. After the withdrawal of the BEF, the German forces began Fall Rot on 5 June, the sixty remaining French divisions made a determined resistance but were unable to overcome the German air superiority and armoured mobility. German tanks outflanked the Maginot Line and pushed deep into France, German forces occupied Paris unopposed on 14 June after a chaotic period of flight of the French government that led to a collapse of the French army. German commanders met with French officials on 18 June with the goal of forcing the new French government to accept an armistice that amounted to surrender and this led to the end of the French Third Republic. France was not liberated until the summer of 1944, in 1939, Britain and France offered military support to Poland in the likely case of a German invasion. In the dawn of 1 September 1939, the German Invasion of Poland began, France and the United Kingdom declared war on 3 September, after an ultimatum for German forces to immediately withdraw their forces from Poland was met without reply. Following this, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada, on 7 September, in accordance with their alliance with Poland, France began the Saar Offensive with an advance from the Maginot Line 5 km into the Saar. France had mobilised 98 divisions and 2,500 tanks against a German force consisting of 43 divisions, the French advanced until they met the then thin and undermanned Siegfried Line. On 17 September, the French supreme commander, Maurice Gamelin gave the order to withdraw French troops to their starting positions, following the Saar Offensive, a period of inaction called the Phoney War set in between the belligerents. Adolf Hitler had hoped that France and Britain would acquiesce in the conquest of Poland, on 6 October, he made a peace offer to both Western powers. On 9 October, Hitler issued a new Führer-Directive Number 6, the plan was based on the seemingly more realistic assumption that German military strength would have to be built up for several years. For the moment only limited objectives could be envisaged and were aimed at improving Germanys ability to survive a long war in the west. Hitler ordered a conquest of the Low Countries to be executed at the shortest possible notice to forestall the French and it would also provide the basis for a long-term air and sea campaign against Britain. On 10 October 1939, Britain refused Hitlers offer of peace and on 12 October, colonel-General Franz Halder, presented the first plan for Fall Gelb on 19 October. This was the codename of plans for a campaign in the Low Countries. Halders plan has been compared to the Schlieffen Plan, the given to the German strategy of 1914 in the First World War. It was similar in both plans entailed an advance through the middle of Belgium
22.
Schneider Electric
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Schneider Electric SE is a French multinational corporation that specialises in energy management and automation solutions, spanning hardware, software, and services. Native of France, the company is headquartered in Rueil-Malmaison and is based at the World Trade Center of Grenoble with offices throughout the world. A Fortune Global 500 company, Schneider Electric is publicly traded on the Euronext Exchange and is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index, in FY2016, the company posted revenues of about €25 billion. Schneider Electric is the parent company of Square D, Pelco, APC, as of 2016, the company has 20,000 patents either active or in application worldwide, the company has over 160,000 employees in approximately 100 countries worldwide. Schneider Electric has had its office in the Trianon site in Rueil-Malmaison. The roots of this company are in the iron, steel,1975, The Schneider Group acquires an interest in Merlin Gerin, one of the top manufacturers of electrical distribution equipment in France. 1999, Schneider Group acquires Lexel, one of Europes largest suppliers of installation systems, in May 1999, the Schneider Group is renamed Schneider Electric to clearly identify its expertise in, and focus on, the electrical field. This strategy led Schneider Electric to conduct a number of acquisitions both in mature countries and in new economies, targeting companies offering complementary products and solutions. MAVERICK Technologies, strategic alliance company Creusot steam hammer Official website
23.
Operation Barbarossa
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Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Nazi Germanys invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II, which was launched on Sunday 22 June 1941. In the two leading up to the invasion, the two countries signed political and economic pacts for strategic purposes. Nevertheless, the German High Command began planning an invasion of the Soviet Union in July 1940, over the course of the operation, about four million Axis personnel invaded the western Soviet Union along a 2, 900-kilometer front, the largest invasion force in the history of warfare. In addition to troops, the Wehrmacht employed some 600,000 motor vehicles, the offensive marked an escalation of the war, both geographically and in the formation of the Allied coalition. Despite their successes, the German offensive stalled in the Battle of Moscow and was pushed back by the Soviet winter counteroffensive. The Red Army repelled the Wehrmachts strongest blows and forced the unprepared Germans into a war of attrition, the Wehrmacht would never again mount a simultaneous offensive along the entire strategic Soviet–Axis front. The failure of the operation drove Hitler to demand further operations of limited scope inside the Soviet Union, such as Case Blue. The failure of Operation Barbarossa proved a point in the fortunes of the Third Reich. Most importantly, the operation opened up the Eastern Front, in more forces were committed than in any other theater of war in world history. The German armies captured 5,000,000 Soviet prisoners of war who were not granted protections stipulated in the Geneva Conventions, a majority of them never returned alive. The Nazis deliberately starved 3.1 million of the prisoners to death as part of a Hunger Plan that aimed to reduce the population of Eastern Europe, over a million Soviet Jews were murdered by Einsatzgruppen death squads and gassing as part of the Holocaust. On 10 February 1939, Hitler told his commanders that the next war would be purely a war of Weltanschauungen. Totally a peoples war, a racial war, on 23 November, once World War II had already started, Hitler declared that racial war has broken out and this war shall determine who shall govern Europe, and with it, the world. The racial policy of Nazi Germany viewed the Soviet Union as populated by non-Aryan Untermenschen, Hitler claimed in Mein Kampf that Germanys destiny was to turn to the East as it did six hundred years ago. Accordingly, it was stated Nazi policy to kill, deport, or enslave the majority of Russian and other Slavic populations and repopulate the land with Germanic peoples, under the Generalplan Ost. Likening the Soviets to the forces of Genghis Khan, Hitler told Croatian military leader Slavko Kvaternik that the Mongolian race threatened Europe. Following the invasion, Wehrmacht officers told their soldiers to target people who were described as Jewish Bolshevik subhumans, the Mongol hordes, the Asiatic flood, German army commanders cast the Jews as the major cause behind the partisan struggle. The main guideline policy for German troops was Where theres a partisan, theres a Jew, many German troops viewed the war in Nazi terms and regarded their Soviet enemies as sub-human
24.
T-34
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The T-34 was a Soviet medium tank that had a profound and lasting effect on the field of tank design. Although its armour and armament were surpassed later in the war, it has often credited as the most effective, efficient. At its introduction, the T-34 possessed a combination of firepower, mobility, protection. The T-34 was the mainstay of Soviet armoured forces throughout the Second World War and its design allowed it to be continuously refined to meet the constantly evolving needs of the Eastern Front, as the war went on it became more capable, but also quicker and cheaper to produce. Replacing many light and medium tanks in Red Army service, it was the tank of the war. Its development led directly to the T-54 and T-55 series of tanks, which in turn evolved into the later T-62, T-72, T-34 variants were widely exported after World War II and as late as 1996 were still in service in at least 27 countries. In 1939, the most numerous Soviet tank models were the T-26 infantry tank, the T-26 was slow-moving, designed to keep pace with infantry on the ground. The BT tanks were tanks, fast-moving and light, designed for manoeuvre warfare. In 1937, the Red Army had assigned engineer Mikhail Koshkin to lead a new team to design a replacement for the BT tanks at the Kharkiv Komintern Locomotive Plant. It also had an 8×6-wheel convertible drive similar to the BT tanks 8×2, by 1937-38, track design had improved and the designers considered it a waste of space, weight, and maintenance resources, despite the road speed advantage. The A-20 also incorporated previous research into sloped armour, its all-round sloped armour plates were likely to deflect rounds than perpendicular armour. The Soviet tanks were easily destroyed by the Japanese Type 95 tanks 37 mm gunfire, despite the low velocity of that gun. Koshkin named the second prototype A-32, after its 32 mm of frontal armour and it had an L-1076.2 mm gun, and the same Model V-2-34 diesel. Both were tested in trials at Kubinka in 1939, with the heavier A-32 proving to be as mobile as the A-20. A still heavier version of the A-32, with 45 mm of front armour, wider tracks, koshkins team completed two prototype T-34s in January 1940. Some drivetrain shortcomings were identified and corrected and this pressure was brought to bear by the developer of the KV-1 tank which was in competition with the T-34. The first production T-34s were completed in September 1940, completely replacing the production of the T-26, the BT series, Koshkin died of pneumonia at the end of that month, and the T-34s drivetrain developer, Alexander Morozov, was appointed Chief Designer. The T-34 posed new challenges for Soviet industry and it had heavier armour than any medium tank produced to date, and there were problems with defective armour plates
25.
Kliment Voroshilov tank
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The Kliment Voroshilov tanks were a series of Soviet heavy tanks named after the Soviet defense commissar and politician Kliment Voroshilov and used by the Red Army during World War II. The KV series were known for their armour protection during the early part of the war. In certain situations, even a single KV-1 or KV-2 supported by infantry was capable of halting the enemys onslaught, German tanks at that time were rarely used in KV encounters as their armament was too poor to deal with the Russischer Koloss - Russian Colossus. Until more effective guns were developed by the Germans, the KV-1 was invulnerable to almost any German weapon except the 8.8 cm Flak gun. Even then, in a speech to the Panzerkommission on 18 November 1941, prior to Operation Barbarossa, about 500 of the over 22,000 tanks then in Soviet service were of the KV-1 type. When the KV-1 appeared, it outclassed the French Char B1, yet, in the end, it turned out that there was little sense in producing the expensive KV tanks, as the T-34 medium tank performed better in all practical respects. In fact the only advantage it had over the T-34-76 was its larger and roomier three-man turret, later in the war, the KV series became a base for the development of the IS series of tanks. After disappointing results with the multi-turreted T-35 heavy tank, Soviet tank designers started drawing up replacements, the T-35 conformed to the 1920s notion of a breakthrough tank with very heavy firepower and armour protection, but suffered from poor mobility. The Spanish Civil War demonstrated the need for heavier armour on tanks. The doctrine of Soviet deep battle called for the existence of relatively slow, thus, the requirements for KV-1 were heavily skewed toward a less agile but heavy tank. Several competing designs were offered, and even more were drawn up prior to reaching prototype stage, all had heavy armour, torsion-bar suspension, wide tracks, and were of welded and cast construction. One of the competing designs was the SMK, which in its final form had two turrets, mounting the same combination of 76.2 mm and 45 mm weapons as the T-35. The designers of the SMK independently drew up a single-turreted variant, Two of these, named after the Peoples Defence Commissioner, were ordered alongside a single SMK. The smaller hull and single turret enabled the designer to install heavy frontal, when the Soviets entered the Winter War, the SMK, KV and a third design, the T-100, were sent to be tested in combat conditions. The KV outperformed the SMK and T-100 designs, the KVs heavy armour proved highly resistant to Finnish anti-tank weapons, making it more difficult to stop. In 1939, the production of 50 KVs was ordered, during the war, the Soviets found it difficult to deal with the concrete bunkers used by the Finns and a request was made for a tank with a large howitzer. One of the projects to meet the request put the howitzer in a new turret on one of the KV tanks. Initially known as Little Turret and Big turret, the 76-mm-armed tank was designated as the KV-1 Heavy Tank, furthermore, at 45 tons, it was simply too heavy
26.
3.7 cm Pak 36
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The Pak 36 was a 3.7 cm calibre German anti-tank gun used during the Second World War. It was the main weapon of Wehrmacht infantry units until mid-1941. It was followed in this role by the 5 cm Pak 38 anti-tank gun, design of a horse-drawn,3.7 cm anti-tank gun by Rheinmetall commenced in 1924 and the first guns were issued in 1928. Re-designated the 3.7 cm Pak 35/36, it began to replace the 3.7 cm Pak L/45 in 1934 and it formed the basis for many other nations anti-tank guns during the first years of World War II. The KwK36 L/45 was the gun, but used as the main armament on several tanks. The Soviets used the Pak 36 carriage design for their 45 mm M1937 AT gun. In June 1941, Soviet tank forces consisted of 10,661 T-26,2,987 T-37/T-38/T-40/T-50s,59 T-35,442 T-28,7,659 BT,957 T-34, and 530 KVs for a combined total of approximately 23,295 tanks. By late 1941, the introduction of the T-34 on the Eastern Front made the Pak 36 obsolete. However, despite its continued impotence against the T-34, it remained the standard weapon for many units until 1942. The advantages of the Pak 36 were its, relative ease of handling and mobility, good quality optics/aiming devices, ease of concealment due to its small size, the Pak 36 began to be replaced by the new 5 cm Pak 38 in mid-1941. As it was replaced, many were removed from their carriages. The guns were passed off to the forces of Germanys allies fighting on the Eastern Front, such as the 3rd. The Pak 36 also served with the armies of Italy, Finland, Hungary, although the Pak 36 quickly became ineffectual in the European and Russian theatres, in China the gun was still viable as an effective anti-tank gun. It could destroy the Japanese Type 95 Ha-Go and Type 97 Chi-Ha tanks, for example, during the Battle of Taierzhuang, Chinese Pak 36s destroyed a good number of Japanese tanks. Pzgr Projectile weight,0.685 kg Muzzle velocity,745 m/s Pzgr 40 This was a type of ammunition, being lighter and with a higher muzzle velocity. Projectile weight,0.368 kg Muzzle velocity,1,020 m/s Penetration figures given for Pzgr 40 and an armoured plate 30 degrees from the horizontal. In 1943, the introduction of the Stielgranate 41 shaped charge meant that the Pak 36 could now penetrate most armour, the Pak 36s, together with the new shaped charges, were issued to Fallschirmjäger units and other lightly equipped troops. The guns low weight meant that it could be moved by hand
27.
7.5 cm Pak 40
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The 7.5 cm Pak 40 was a German 75 millimetre anti-tank gun developed in 1939-1941 by Rheinmetall and used during the Second World War. The Pak 40 formed the backbone of German anti-tank guns for the part of World War II, mostly in towed form. Approximately 20,000 Pak 40s were produced, the KwK40 armed many of the German mid-war tank and destroyer designs, replacing the Pak 40 in the later role. Depending on the source, the Pak 40 may be referred to as the 7. 5/L46, there were two versions of the KwK40, which would be referred to as the 7. 5/L43 or 7. 5/L48. Development of the Pak 40 began after reports of new Soviet tank designs began to reach Berlin in 1939, the 5 cm Pak 38 was still in testing at this point, but it appeared it would not be powerful enough to deal with these newer designs. Contracts were placed with Krupp and Rheinmetall to develop what was essentially a 7.5 cm version of the Pak 38, however, while the Pak 38 made extensive use of light alloys to reduce overall gun weight, these were now earmarked for Luftwaffe. As a result, the Pak 40 used steel throughout its construction and was heavier than the 5 cm model. To simplify production, the Pak 38s curved gun shield was replaced by one using three flat plates, the first pre-production guns were delivered in November 1941. In April 1942, the Wehrmacht had 44 guns in service, by 1943, the Pak 40 was the standard German anti-tank gun until the end of the war, and was supplied by Germany to its allies. Some captured guns were used by the Red Army, after the war, the Pak 40 remained in service in several European armies, including Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Norway, Hungary and Romania. About 20,000 Pak 40s were produced, and about 3,500 more were used to arm tank destroyers, the unit manufacturing cost amounted to 2,200 man-hours at 12,000 RM. The weapon was effective against almost every Allied tank until the end of the war, the Pak 40 was much heavier than the Pak 38, its decreased mobility meant that it was difficult or even impossible to move without an artillery tractor on boggy ground. The Pak 40 was first used in the USSR where it was needed to combat the newest Soviet tanks, in addition, there was an APCR shot for the Pak 40, a munition which - reliant on supplies of tungsten - eventually became very scarce. According to the German Panzertruppen News Journal,5,000 APCR rounds were expected in Dec.1942 as replenishment for the Winter offensive. The main differences amongst the rounds fired by 75 mm German guns were in the length, the Pak 40 used a percussion primer, while the vehicle mounted 75 mm guns used electrical primers. Other than minor differences with the driving bands, all German 75 mm guns used the same 75mm projectiles. The longer cartridge case of the Pak 40 allowed a larger charge to be used, the muzzle velocity was about 790 m/s as opposed to 740 m/s for the KwK40 L/43 and 750 m/s for the L/48. For unknown reasons, some 75 mm APCBC cartridges appear to have produced with a charge that gave a muzzle velocity of about 770 m/s
28.
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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Reichsmark
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The Reichsmark was subdivided into 100 Reichspfennig. The Mark is an ancient Germanic weight measure, traditionally a half pound, from 1871 to 1918 Germany was called the Kaiserreich, or the Deutsches Reich. Although Germany became a republic in 1919, the term Reich remained part of the official name. The Reichsmark was introduced in 1924 as a permanent replacement for the Papiermark and this was necessary due to the 1920s German inflation which had reached its peak in 1923. The exchange rate between the old Papiermark and the Reichsmark was 1 ℛℳ =1012 Papiermark, the Reichsmark was put on the gold standard at the rate previously used by the Goldmark, with the U. S. dollar worth 4.2 ℛℳ. As the market crash of 1929 expanded into the Great Depression and it retained a gold peg at that time. Hyper inflation ensued to the point it was cheaper to burn reichsmark paper notes than to buy fire wood, a number of companies were created with inadequate capital for their operations and authorized to issue bonds exchangeable at a 1,1 rate for Reichsmarks and sold at a discount. The Reichsbank rediscounted the bills of these companies creating a monetary expansion without formally renouncing the link to gold, Deutsche Gesellschaft für öffentliche Arbeiten AG, founded 1 August 1930, ended up issuing 1.26 billion Reichsmarks of Öffa bills to finance public construction. It formed the model for further fraudulent issues of bills. MEFO was a company that was formed with relatively small amounts of capital that was used to finance German rearmament off the books. It issued bills without backing by its own resources but which were guaranteed redeemable at 1,1 for Reichsmarks for five years by the government, the MEFO bills amounts were considered a state secret and were an important element in the impression that Hitlerian economics was a success. This company essentially created an amount of Reichsmarks off the books. With the unification of Germany and Austria in 1938, the Reichsmark replaced the Schilling in Austria. The rates were as follows, After the Second World War, the Reichsmark continued to circulate in Germany, in practice, massive inflation dating back to the latter stages of the war had rendered the Reichsmark nearly worthless. For all intents and purposes, it was supplanted by a barter economy, the Reichsmark was replaced in June 1948 by the Deutsche Mark in the Trizone and later in the same year by the East German Mark in East Germany. Tenenbaum of the US military government, and was executed abruptly on 21 June 1948, three days later, the new currency also replaced the Reichsmark in the three Western sectors of Berlin. In November 1945, the Reichsmark was superseded by the Allied Military Schilling in Austria, in 1947 a local currency was introduced in the Saar. In 1924, coins were introduced in denominations of 1,2,5,10, and 50 Reichspfennig, the 1 and 2 Reichspfennig were struck in bronze, and depicting a wheat sheaf
30.
T-26
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The T-26 tank was a Soviet light infantry tank used during many conflicts of the 1930s and in World War II. It was a development of the British Vickers 6-Ton tank and was one of the most successful designs of the 1930s until its light armour became vulnerable to newer anti-tank guns. It was produced in numbers than any other tank of the period. Twenty-three of these were series-produced, others were experimental models, the T-26 and BT were the main tanks of the Red Armys armoured forces during the interwar period. The T-26 was the most important tank of the Spanish Civil War and played a significant role during the Battle of Lake Khasan in 1938, as well as in the Winter War in 1939–40. Though nearly obsolete by the beginning of World War II, the T-26 was the most numerous tank in the Red Armys armoured force during the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Soviet T-26 light tanks last saw use in August 1945, during the defeat of the Japanese Kwantung Army in Manchuria, the T-26 was exported and used extensively by Spain, China and Turkey. Captured T-26s were used by the Finnish, German, Romanian and Hungarian armies, the tank was reliable and simple to maintain, and its design was continually modernised between 1931 and 1941. No new models of the T-26 were developed after 1940, the T-26 was a Soviet development of the British Vickers 6-Ton tank, which was designed by the Vickers-Armstrongs company in 1928–29. The simple and easy-to-maintain Vickers 6-Ton was intended for export to less technically advanced countries, the Soviet Union, Poland, Brazil, Argentina, Japan, Thailand, China, and many others. Vickers advertised the tank in military publications, and both the Soviet Union and Poland expressed interest in the Vickers design. In early 1930, the Soviet buying committee, under the direction of Semyon Ginzburg, arrived in Great Britain to select tanks, tractors, the Vickers 6-Ton was among four models of tanks selected by Soviet representatives during their visit to Vickers-Armstrongs. Several Soviet engineers participated in assembly of the tanks at the Vickers Factory in 1930, the first four Vickers 6-Ton tanks arrived in the USSR at the end of 1930. The last tanks arrived in 1932, when production of the T-26 was already in progress. The British tanks were sent to Soviet factories for study in preparation for production and to military educational institutions. Later, some tanks were given to military depots and proving grounds. The Vickers-built 6-Ton tanks had the designator V-26 in the USSR, three British tanks were successfully tested for cross-country ability at the small proving ground near Moscow on Poklonnaya Hill in January 1931. Kliment Voroshilov ordered the creation of the Special Commission for the Red Army new tanks under the direction of S. Ginzburg to define the type suitable for the Red Army
31.
Company (military unit)
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A company is a military unit, typically consisting of 80–250 soldiers and usually commanded by a major or a captain. Most companies are formed of three to six platoons, although the number may vary by country, unit type. Usually several companies are grouped as a battalion or regiment, the latter of which is formed by several battalions. Occasionally, independent or separate companies are organized for special purposes and these companies are not organic to a battalion or regiment, but rather report directly to a higher level organization such as a Marine Expeditionary Force headquarters. The modern military company became popularized during the reorganization of the Swedish Army in 1631 under King Gustav II Adolph, for administrative purposes, the infantry was divided into companies consisting of 150 men, grouped into regiments of eight companies. Tactically, the companies were organized into battalions and grouped with cavalry troops. From ancient times, some armies have used a base administrative. Furthermore, recent studies have indicated that humans are best able to maintain stable relationships in a group numbering between 100-250 members, with 150 members being the common number. The advent of accurate, long-range rifle fire, repeating rifles and this, coupled with the advent of radio communication, permitted relatively small numbers of men to have much greater firepower and combat effectiveness than previously possible. Companies, however, continue to remain within the range of 100-250 members, perhaps validating the premise that men fight best in organizations of around 150 members. These companies were not organic to any intermediate headquarters, but rather reported directly to the division headquarters, rifle companies consist of three platoons and a company headquarters. Until after the Second World War, the Royal Engineers and Royal Signals had both squadrons and companies depending on whether the units were supporting mounted or foot formations. The British Army infantry normally identifies its rifle companies by letter within a battalion, usually with the addition of a headquarters company and a support/heavy weapons company. Some units name their companies after regimental battle honours, this is commonly the case for composite units, for example the London Regiment with its Somme, Messines and Cambrai companies. The foot guards regiments use traditional names for some of their companies, for example Queens Company, Left Flank, Royal Marines companies are designated by a letter that is unique across the corps, not just within their command. The Intelligence Corps, Royal Army Medical Corps, Royal Military Police, the defunct Royal Army Service Corps, Royal Pioneer Corps and Royal Army Ordnance Corps had companies, the Royal Corps of Transport had squadrons. British companies are commanded by a major, the officer commanding. The Honourable Artillery Company is in fact a regiment, not a company, in terms of organisation, canadian Army organisation is modelled after the British
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Battalion
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A battalion is a military unit. The use of the term varies by nationality and branch of service. Typically a battalion consists of 300 to 800 soldiers and is divided into a number of companies, a battalion is typically commanded by a lieutenant colonel. In some countries the word battalion is associated with the infantry, the term was first used in Italian as battaglione no later than the 16th century. It derived from the Italian word for battle, battaglia, the first use of battalion in English was in the 1580s, and the first use to mean part of a regiment is from 1708. The battalion must, of course, have a source of re-supply to enable it to sustain operations for more than a few days, the battalion is usually part of a regiment, brigade, or group, depending on the organizational model used by that service. The bulk of a battalions companies are often homogeneous with respect to type, a battalion includes a headquarters company and some sort of combat service support, typically organized within a combat support company. The term battalion is used in the British Army Infantry and some including the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. It was formerly used in the Royal Engineers, and was used in the now defunct Royal Army Ordnance Corps. Other corps usually use the term regiment instead, an infantry battalion is numbered ordinarily within its regiment. It normally has a company, support company, and three rifle companies. Each company is commanded by a major, the officer commanding, the HQ company contains signals, quartermaster, catering, intelligence, administration, pay, training, operations and medical elements. The support company usually contains anti-tank, machine gun, mortar, pioneer, mechanised units usually have an attached light aid detachment of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers to perform field repairs on vehicles and equipment. A British battalion in theatre during World War II had around 845 men in it, and, as of 2012, with successive rounds of cutbacks after the war, many infantry regiments were reduced to a single battalion. A battalion group or battlegroup consists of a battalion or armoured regiment with sub-units detached from other military units acting under the command of the battalion commander. In the Canadian Forces, most battalions are reserve units of between 100–200 soldiers that include an operationally ready, field-deployable component of approximately a half-company apiece, the nine regular force infantry battalions each contain three or four rifle companies and one or two support companies. Canadian battalions are generally commanded by lieutenant-colonels, though smaller reserve battalions may be commanded by majors, with the Dutch artillery units, the equivalent of a battalion is called an afdeling. Combat companies consist of infantry, combat engineers, or tanks, in the latter case, the unit is called an eskadron, which translates roughly to squadron
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Marder III
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Marder III was the name for a series of World War II German tank destroyers. They mounted either Soviet 76. 2mm F-22 Model 1936 divisional field guns, or German 7.5 cm PaK40 and they offered little protection to the crew, but added significant firepower compared to contemporary German tanks. They were in production from 1942 to 1944 and served on all fronts until the end of the war, the German word Marder means marten in English. This need became urgent in 1942, when shells failed to penetrate the armor of new Soviet tanks such as the T-34. The result was the Marder series, which were armed with either captured Soviet 76. 2mm F-22 Model 1936 divisional field guns, due to weight and space constraints of these small chassis, the Marder series were not fully armored. Thin upper armor protection against just shrapnel and small fire was provided only for the front. All Marder series had open tops, some were issued with canvas tops to protect the crew from the elements. In this regard, the Marder was more of a gun carriage than a proper Panzerjäger that could exchange shells with enemy tanks. While the Panzer 38 had largely become obsolete as a tank in early 1942, it was still an excellent platform for adaptation into a tank destroyer, among other roles. Since the Soviet 76.2 mm field gun was captured in large quantities, to do so, the production of the Panzer 38 Ausf. G was stopped and a superstructure was bolted onto the standard tank chassis. The upper structure mounted the gun and a gun shield, giving very limited protection for the commander, gunner. Armor protection overall ranged from 10 to 50 mm with no armor at all above, the gun, commander, gunner and loader were located on top of the engine deck. It had a higher silhouette than the original Panzer 38, which made it vulnerable to enemy fire. The now-called 7.62 cm PaK36 was rechambered to be able to use standard German 75 mm ammunition, apart from the main gun, there was a 7.92 mm machine gun mounted in the hull. This tank destroyer was put into production as the Panzerjäger 38 für 7.62 cm PaK36, a total of 344 vehicles were built in three series from April to November 1942. Chassis numbers were 1360-1479, 1527-1600 and 1601-1750, the next variant of the Marder III fielded the standard 7.5 cm PaK40 German anti-tank gun on a slightly modified Panzer 38 Ausf. This chassis still had the engine in the rear of the vehicle but, unlike the previous model and this allowed the crew to stay low in the center of the vehicle, lowering their exposure to small arms fire and shell fragments
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Finnish Army
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The Finnish Army is the land forces branch of the Finnish Defence Forces. Todays Army is divided into six branches, the infantry, field artillery, anti-aircraft artillery, engineers, signals, Finnish Army commander since 1 August 2014 is Lieutenant General Seppo Toivonen. The duties of the Finnish Army are three-fold, because Finland is not under direct military threat, the current Army is, as it has been since the end of Second World War, in peace-time training formation. This means that its brigades are not meant to be operational combat units, according to the troop production doctrine, peace-time units will train each batch of conscripts they receive for a specific war-time unit. After the end of training, the conscripts are demobilised into reserve, during regular refresher exercises and in case of a crisis, the reserve unit will be activated and deployed in the formation it trained in during conscription. Thus, the structure of the Army does not give any meaningful information about the mobilised structure or about the areas where the units would be used. Between 1809 and 1917 Finland was a part of the Russian Empire as the Grand Duchy of Finland. Between 1881 and 1901 the Grand Duchy had its own army, before that several other military units had also been formed while Finland belonged to Sweden. The Grand Duchy inherited its allotment system from the Swedish military organization, however, for several decades, Russian rulers did not require military service from Finland—operations and defence were mostly taken care by Russian troops based in the Grand Duchy. As a result, officer benefits of the allotment system became practically pensions, as payment was based on passive availability, during the Napoleonic Wars three 1200 men regiments were formed in Finland and Topographic corps in Hamina. In 1821 the Topographic corps was transformed into cadet officers school, in 1829 one of the training battalions was transformed into Young Guard Battalion, the Finnish Guard. During the Crimean War,1854, Finland set up nine sharpshooter battalions based on rote system, conscription was introduced in Finland in 1878. The Finnish army was broken up during the oppression years just after the turn of the century. As Finnish conscripts refused to serve in Russian Army, conscription ended in Finland, at the turn of the 20th century, the Russian empire was weakening, and this was reflected in a reduced capacity of the Russian troops to keep public order. Voluntary defence organizations disguised as fire brigades were formed by the Finnish people, especially during the strikes during, there were socialist Red Guards and conservative, anti-socialist Protection Guards. Also, during the First World War activists secretly travelled to Germany to receive military training, after the war in 1919, the Protection Guards became a separate organization. Therefore, strictly speaking, there is no continuity between the White Guards, which became an organization, and the Finnish army, which was a cadre army based on conscription. However, Jägers gained important positions in the army, and German tactics, the Finnish Army consisted of 9 field divisions,4 brigades and a number of small independent battalions and companies at the beginning of the Winter War in 1939
35.
Continuation War
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The Continuation War consisted of hostilities between Finland and the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1944. The Continuation War began shortly after the end of the Winter War, in the Soviet Union, the war was considered part of the Great Patriotic War. Germany regarded its operations in the region as part of its war efforts on the Eastern Front. Acts of war between the Soviet Union and Finland recommenced on 22 June 1941, the day Germany launched its invasion of the Soviet Union, open warfare began with a Soviet air offensive on 25 June. Subsequent Finnish operations undid its post-Winter War concessions to the Soviet Union on the Karelian Isthmus and Ladoga Karelia, on the Karelian Isthmus, the Finns halted their offensive 30 km from Leningrad, at the pre-World War II border between the Soviet Union and Finland. Finnish forces did not participate in the siege of Leningrad directly, in 1944, Soviet air forces conducted air raids on Helsinki and other major Finnish cities. A ceasefire ended hostilities on 5 September and was followed by the Moscow Armistice on 19 September, the 1947 Paris peace treaty concluded the war formally. Finland ceded Pechengsky District to the Soviets, leased Porkkala peninsula to them, shortly afterward, Germany invaded Poland and as a result the United Kingdom and France declared war against Germany. The Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland on 17 September, next, Moscow demanded that the Baltic states allow the establishment of Soviet military bases and the stationing of troops on their soil. The Baltic governments accepted these ultimatums, signing corresponding agreements in September and October 1939, the Finnish government refused, and the Red Army attacked Finland on 30 November 1939. Condemnation of the Soviets by the League of Nations and by all over the world had no effect on Soviet policy. International help for Finland was planned, but very little actual help materialized, the Moscow Peace Treaty, which was signed on 12 March 1940, ended the Winter War. By the terms of the treaty, Finland lost one eleventh of its national territory, however, Finland had avoided having the Soviet Union annex the whole country. Finlands foreign policy had been based on multilateral guarantees for support from the League of Nations, Finnish public opinion favored the reconquest of Finnish Karelia. Finlands government declared the countrys defense to be its first priority, Finland purchased and received donations of war material during and immediately after the Winter War. On Finlands southern frontier the Soviet Union had acquired a base in Hanko near the capital Helsinki. Finland also had to resettle some 420,000 evacuees from the lost territories, to ensure the supply of food, it was necessary to clear new land for the evacuees to cultivate. This was facilitated by the Rapid Settlement Act, the Finnish leadership wanted to preserve the spirit of unanimity that was commonly felt throughout the country during the Winter War
36.
Third Army (Romania)
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The 3rd Army was a field army of the Romanian Land Forces active from the 19th century to the 1990s. It fought as part of the German Army Group B during World War II, in Ukraine, the Crimea, General Petre Dumitrescu commanded 3rd Army for a period. In World War I, the Third Army defended the border with Bulgaria when the rest of the Romanian Army attacked Transylvania, after the fall of Bucharest, the Third Army was disbanded. For Operation München, in the north, the 3rd Army was reduced only to the Mountain Corps, in fact the 3rd Army command did not have any operative attributes until 2 July 1941, when the ground offensive started also in the Romanian sector. In 1942 in the Caucasus, the 3rd Army initially consisted of the Cavalry Corps, 3rd Army was subordinated to the German 17th Army. It also had 3 observation squadrons assigned to it, however, after reorganization, on 7 August, only the Cavalry Corps remained with it. Along with the Romanian Fourth Army, the Third Army bore the brunt of the Soviet Operation Uranus, the Long Range Recon and the 112th Liaison Squadrons were also at its disposal. In November came the German XLVIII Panzer Corps, composed of the 22nd German Panzer Division and the 1st Romanian Armored Division and it also had the 2nd, 4th, 5th and 8th Motorized Heavy Artillery Regiments and the 41st Independent Motorized Heavy Artillery Battalion. Opposite the 3rd Army was the Southwestern Front, comprising the Soviet 1st Guards Army, 5th Tank Army and 21st Army, on 19 November at 0530, in the sector of the Third Romanian Army, a violent artillery barrage battered the entire front line. The weather conditions were harsh, blizzards, snow, -20 degrees Celsius, the 37mm and 47mm AT guns were useless against Soviet T-34 tanks, so the Romanian troops had to use grenades, anti-tank mines and Molotov cocktails. In the first hours, they managed to delay the advance and destroy some tanks, the Soviets also attacked west of Sarisa Valley and at Raspopinskaya, but were repulsed. By evening, the 1st Romanian Armored Division reached Sirkovsky, making preparations to attack Bolsoy the next day, on 20 November, the Soviet armored and motorized forces advanced towards Kalach, with the intention of encircling the 6th Army embroiled in ferocious fighting at Stalingrad. The 22nd Panzer Division, overwhelmed at Petshany by the number of Soviet tanks. In the 4th Corps sector,40 Soviet tanks attacked the 15th Infantry Division but were repulsed by evening with heavy losses, also, the 1st Cavalry Division had to retreat towards Stalingrad and was subordinated to the 6th Army. At the end of the day, the position of the Third Romanian Army had a 70 km wide gap in the centre. In this pocket were encircled the 1st Armored Division, three divisions and remains of other two infantry divisions. The former commander of the 6th Infantry Division, Major General Mihail Lascăr, took command of the troops from the infantry divisions, at this point, the command point of the Third Army began moving to Morozovskaya. The 1st Romanian Armored Division advanced towards Bol, donschynka, where it was hoping to find the German division, but the village was under Soviet control and then headed south and, after grim fighting, crossed the Chir River on the 25 November
37.
Italian participation in the Eastern Front
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The Italian participation in the Eastern Front during World War II began after the launch of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, on 22 June 1941. Mussolini did this despite the lack of enthusiasm shown by German dictator Adolf Hitler, from 1941 to 1943, the Italians maintained two units on the Eastern Front. The first Italian fighting force was a unit called the Italian Expeditionary Corps in Russia. The second force was a unit which subsumed the CSIR. The second force was called the Italian Army in Russia and was known as the Italian 8th Army. The Italian Army in Russia suffered heavy losses during the Battle of Stalingrad and was withdrawn to Italy in 1943, only minor Italian units participated on the Eastern Front past that point. Constituted on 10 July 1941, the Italian Expeditionary Corps in Russia arrived in the southern Soviet Union between July and August 1941, the CSIR was initially subordinated to German General Eugen Ritter von Schobert’s 11th Army. On 14 August 1941, the CSIR was transferred to the control of German General Ewald von Kleists Panzer Group 1, on 25 October 1941, Panzer Group 1 was redesignated as the 1st Panzer Army. The CSIR remained under von Kleist’s command until 3 June 1942 when it was subordinated to German General Richard Ruoff’s 17th Army, the CSIRs original commander, Italian General Francesco Zingales, fell ill in Vienna during the early stages of transport to the Soviet Union. On 14 July 1941, Zingales was replaced by Italian General Giovanni Messe, the CSIR had three divisions, the 52 Motorised Division Torino, the 9 Motorised Division Pasubio and the 3 Cavalry Division Amedeo Duca dAosta. The CSIR was sent to the sector of the German advance in the Ukraine in July 1941. In August 1941, as part of the German 11th Army, the CSIR pursued retreating Soviet troops between the Bug River and Dniestr River. While the 11th Army besieged Odessa, the CSIR was attached to First Panzer Group under General von Kleist, in its early encounters it was successful, taking a number of towns and cities and creating a favourable impression on its German allies. This cost them only 291 casualties of their own,87 killed,190 wounded, on October 20, the CSIR together with the German XXXXIX Mountain Corps captured the major industrial center of Stalino after heavy resistance from the Soviet defenders. Units from the Pasubio Motorized Division captured the city of Gorlovka on November 2. While the CSIR did not participate in the siege of Odessa, with the onset of winter, the CSIR units began consolidating their occupation zone and preparing defensive works. In the last week of December, the 3rd Mobile Division was hit with a counterattack by Soviet forces. They managed to back the attacks long enough for the German 1st Panzer Army to provide back-up to their sector
38.
Second Army (Hungary)
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The Hungarian Second Army was one of three field armies raised by the Kingdom of Hungary which saw action during World War II. All three armies were formed on March 1,1940, Hungarys head of state was Regent Admiral Miklós Horthy and the government was led by Prime Minister Pál Teleki. On April 3,1941, Teleki committed suicide when it became clear that Hungary was to part in the invasion of Yugoslavia. The comparatively small Hungarian Army had a strength of only 80,000 men. Militarily, the nation was divided into seven corps commands, each army corps consisted of three infantry divisions, each of which comprised three infantry regiments and an artillery regiment. Each corps also included two brigades, two motorized infantry brigades, an anti-aircraft battery, a signals company, and a cavalry reconnaissance troop. On March 11,1940, the Hungarian Army was expanded to three armies, each with three corps. All three of these armies were to see action against the Red Army before the end of the war. Hungary did not immediately participate in Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, adolf Hitler did not directly ask for, nor necessarily want, Hungarian assistance at that time. Most of the Hungarian forces, including the three armies, were initially relegated to duties within the reenlarged Hungarian state. Hungary regained substantial portions of its territories that had been ceded following the loss of World War I, at the end of June,1941, Germany summoned Hungary to join in the attack on the Soviet Union. Hungary continued to resist joining in the war, the matter was settled on June 26,1941, when the Soviet air force bombed Košice. The Kingdom of Hungary declared war on the Soviet Union the next day, at first, only Hungarys Karpat Group with its integral Rapid Corps was sent to the Eastern Front, in support of the German 17th Army. Towards the end of 1941, only the exhausted and battle weary Rapid Corps was left, but, before Horthy would gain Hitlers consent to withdraw the Rapid Corps, he had to agree to deploy an even larger Hungarian force. Of the 3 Hungarian field armies, high command decided to send the 2nd Army, however the Armed Forces in general were so poorly equipped that practically all modern equipment was provided to the 2nd Army. Even after these measures the 2nd Army still lacked adequate motorized transport. Germany has promised to provide the equipment, but failed to deliver any meaningful quantities. Practically all the armoured units Hungary had were re-organized into the 1st Hungarian Armored Division, similarly, almost all combat-worthy aircraft and supporting units were organized into the 1st Flight Group, also attached to the 2nd Army
Romanian Pak 97/38 battery in Crimea in December 1943.
