India
India known as the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh largest country by area and with more than 1.3 billion people, it is the second most populous country as well as the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives, while its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand and Indonesia; the Indian subcontinent was home to the urban Indus Valley Civilisation of the 3rd millennium BCE. In the following millennium, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism began to be composed. Social stratification, based on caste, emerged in the first millennium BCE, Buddhism and Jainism arose. Early political consolidations took place under the Gupta empires. In the medieval era, Zoroastrianism and Islam arrived, Sikhism emerged, all adding to the region's diverse culture.
Much of the north fell to the Delhi Sultanate. The economy expanded in the 17th century in the Mughal Empire. In the mid-18th century, the subcontinent came under British East India Company rule, in the mid-19th under British Crown rule. A nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century, which under Mahatma Gandhi, was noted for nonviolent resistance and led to India's independence in 1947. In 2017, the Indian economy was the world's sixth largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity. Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the fastest-growing major economies and is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption and inadequate public healthcare. A nuclear weapons state and regional power, it has the second largest standing army in the world and ranks fifth in military expenditure among nations. India is a federal republic governed under a parliamentary system and consists of 29 states and 7 union territories.
A pluralistic and multi-ethnic society, it is home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats. The name India is derived from Indus, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindush, equivalent to the Sanskrit word Sindhu, the historical local appellation for the Indus River; the ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi, which translates as "The people of the Indus". The geographical term Bharat, recognised by the Constitution of India as an official name for the country, is used by many Indian languages in its variations, it is a modernisation of the historical name Bharatavarsha, which traditionally referred to the Indian subcontinent and gained increasing currency from the mid-19th century as a native name for India. Hindustan is a Middle Persian name for India, it was introduced into India by the Mughals and used since then. Its meaning varied, referring to a region that encompassed northern India and Pakistan or India in its entirety; the name may refer to either the northern part of India or the entire country.
The earliest known human remains in South Asia date to about 30,000 years ago. Nearly contemporaneous human rock art sites have been found in many parts of the Indian subcontinent, including at the Bhimbetka rock shelters in Madhya Pradesh. After 6500 BCE, evidence for domestication of food crops and animals, construction of permanent structures, storage of agricultural surplus, appeared in Mehrgarh and other sites in what is now Balochistan; these developed into the Indus Valley Civilisation, the first urban culture in South Asia, which flourished during 2500–1900 BCE in what is now Pakistan and western India. Centred around cities such as Mohenjo-daro, Harappa and Kalibangan, relying on varied forms of subsistence, the civilization engaged robustly in crafts production and wide-ranging trade. During the period 2000–500 BCE, many regions of the subcontinent transitioned from the Chalcolithic cultures to the Iron Age ones; the Vedas, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism, were composed during this period, historians have analysed these to posit a Vedic culture in the Punjab region and the upper Gangetic Plain.
Most historians consider this period to have encompassed several waves of Indo-Aryan migration into the subcontinent from the north-west. The caste system, which created a hierarchy of priests and free peasants, but which excluded indigenous peoples by labeling their occupations impure, arose during this period. On the Deccan Plateau, archaeological evidence from this period suggests the existence of a chiefdom stage of political organisation. In South India, a progression to sedentary life is indicated by the large number of megalithic monuments dating from this period, as well as by nearby traces of agriculture, irrigation tanks, craft traditions. In the late Vedic period, around the 6th century BCE, the small states and chiefdoms of the Ganges Plain and the north-western regions had consolidated into 16 major oligarchies and monarchies that were known as the mahajanapadas; the emerging urbanisation gave rise to non-Vedic religious movements, two of which became independent religions. Jainism came into prominence during the life of Mahavira.
Buddhism, based on the teachings of Gautama Buddha, attracted followers from all social classes excepting the middle
Woodham Brothers
Woodham Brothers Ltd is a trading business, based around activities and premises located within Barry Docks, in Barry, South Wales. It is noted globally for its 1960s activity as a scrapyard, where 297 withdrawn British Railways steam locomotives were sent, from which 213 were rescued for the developing railway preservation movement. Established in 1892 as Woodham & Sons by Albert Woodham, the company was based at Thomson Street, Barry; the company bought old rope, dunnage wood and scrap metal from the ships and marine businesses which used the newly created Barry Docks, which it resold or scrapped. Albert retired in 1947, when his youngest son, was demobbed from the British Army after World War II. Dai renamed the business Woodham Brothers Ltd in 1953, creating four lines of business under four separate companies, which between them employed 200 people: Woodham Brothers, Woodham Transport, Woodham Marine and Woodham Metals; as a result of the 1955 Modernisation Plan the decision was made by the British Railways Board in the late 1950s to: accelerate the move to diesel- and electric-powered trains leading to the scrapping of 16,000 steam locomotives reduce the wagon fleet from 1¼ million to 600,000The strategy chosen to replace the steam locomotive fleet involved the replacement of steam shunting and branch line locomotives with diesel-electric traction, the movement of the replaced small steam locomotives to the major railway works for scrapping.
In 1958 the British Transport Commission reappraised the speed of the programme, the decision was taken to accelerate the disposal of the steam fleet. Although the capacity of the locomotive works was considerable, as a result of the 1958 acceleration the amount of storage and technical scrapping capability of the works became stretched; the British Railways Board decided to out-source via tender to selected scrap merchants the work of scrapping the steam locomotives. By the mid-1950s, Woodham Brothers was trading as a scrap metal merchants, producing high quality scrap metal for the newly nationalised steel industry. Dai Woodham, as a result of the British Rail decision, negotiated a contract in 1957 to scrap metal from the Western Region, covering like other scrap merchants the handled railway line and rolling stock; as none of the many South Wales-based scrap merchants knew how long the work from scrapping the short-wheelbase coal wagons from the former South Wales coalfield would last, they all chose to scrap these first.
Each lot of metal was bought at an auction as a piece of rolling stock or infrastructure, with each lot having a priority for scrapping as detailed by British Railways. Woodham's premises which were based at Barry Docks, agreed an extended lease with the British Transport Docks Board, over the former marshalling yards of the redundant Barry Docks, close to what were the locomotives works of the former Barry Railway Company close to Barry Island; this allowed them to store large quantities of rolling stock that they had bought from British Railways, before they were scrapped. The 1958 decision resulted in Woodham Brothers winning a tender to scrap locomotives, in 1959 Dai Woodham went to Swindon Works for a week to learn how to scrap steam locomotives: "It was a different job from what we were used to." On 25 March 1959, the first batch of engines was despatched from Swindon to Barry: GWR 2-6-0's numbers 5312/60/92/97 and a single 2-6-2T Prairie tank, 3170 a week later. However, on delivery of both scrap rail and rolling stock, Woodham's found that commercially it was easier to both comply with the contract terms and conditions and turn a profit if they concentrated on the easier to scrap rail profile and rolling stock.
There was at least ten times the volume of wagons, which took up more space and reduced Woodham's capacity to bid on more contracts. Hence it was agreed internally to leave the more difficult locomotives until perhaps picking up the work when the volume of rolling stock and railway line abated. From mid-1964, Woodham Brothers won additional contracts to scrap Southern Region stock, as a result expanded their Barry Docks yard leases to cover more of the former marshalling yards. In 1965, 65 locomotives had arrived at the scrapyard, of which 28 were scrapped, but the additional volume of Southern rail and brake vans meant that the autumn of 1965 was the last year that mass-scrapping of steam locomotives occurred at Woodham Brothers. Dai Woodham continued to purchase steam locomotives until the end of steam, bringing total purchases by August 1968 to 297 locomotives, of which 217 remained at the Barry scrapyard; the rows of redundant steam locomotives were a picturesque sight for holidaymakers travelling to Barry Island, became a centre for pilgrimage for steam enthusiasts from the emerging steam railway preservation movement.
While there was still a significant number of steam locomotives in the yard, railway preservationists began buying the better examples from the late 1960s in order to restore them to working order. The first locomotive to be the subject of a rescue appeal was GWR 4300 Class 5322, but the first to be bought and moved from the yard was Midland Railway Midland Railway 3835 Class No. 43924 in September 1968. The engine was taken on by the 4F Locomotive Society, the engine now resides at the Worth Valley Railway. However, this did not stop engines from being scrapped, as in 1972, 4MT Mogul No. 76080 was scrapped and the following year, 2884 class No. 3817 was scrapped. Under the terms of the contract from British Rail, Woodhams could not sell complete locomotives onwards, sold to them for scrap, unless payment of
Military Cross
The Military Cross is the third-level military decoration awarded to officers and other ranks of the British Armed Forces, awarded to officers of other Commonwealth countries. The MC is granted in recognition of "an act or acts of exemplary gallantry during active operations against the enemy on land" to all members of the British Armed Forces of any rank. In 1979, the Queen approved a proposal that a number of awards, including the Military Cross, could be recommended posthumously; the award was created on 28 December 1914 for commissioned officers of the substantive rank of Captain or below and for Warrant Officers. The first 98 awards were gazetted on 1 January 1915, to 71 officers including one jamadar and three subadars, 27 warrant officers. Although posthumous recommendations for the Military Cross would be unavailable until 1979, the first awards included seven posthumous awards, with the word ‘deceased’ after the name of the recipient, from recommendations, raised before the recipients died of wounds or lost their lives from other causes.
Awards are announced in the London Gazette, apart from most honorary awards to allied forces in keeping with the usual practice not to gazette awards to foreigners. From August 1916, recipients of the Cross were entitled to use the post-nominal letters MC, bars could be awarded for further acts of gallantry meriting the award, with a silver rosette worn on the ribbon when worn alone to denote the award of each bar. From September 1916, members of the Royal Naval Division, who served alongside the army on the Western Front, were made eligible for military decorations, including the Military Cross, for the war's duration. Naval officers serving with the division received eight second award bars. In June 1917, eligibility was extended to temporary majors, not above the substantive rank of captain. Substantive majors were made eligible in 1953. In 1931, the award was extended to equivalent ranks in the Royal Air Force for actions on the ground. After the Second World War, most Commonwealth countries created their own honours system and no longer recommended British awards.
The last Military Cross awards for the Canadian Army were for Korea. The last four Australian Army Military Cross awards were promulgated in the London Gazette on 1 September 1972 for Vietnam as was the last New Zealand Army Military Cross award, promulgated on 25 September 1970. Canada and New Zealand have now created their own gallantry awards under their own honours systems. Since the 1993 review of the honours system, as part of the drive to remove distinctions of rank in awards for bravery, the Military Medal the third-level decoration for other ranks, has been discontinued; the MC now serves as the third-level award for all ranks of the British Armed Forces for gallantry on land, not to the standard required to receive the Victoria Cross or the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross. The Military Cross has the following design: 44 mm maximum width. Ornamental silver cross with straight arms terminating in broad finials, suspended from a plain suspension bar. Obverse decorated with the Royal Cypher in centre.
Reverse is plain. From 1938 until 1957 the year of award was engraved on lower limb of cross, since 1984 it has been awarded named to the recipient; the ribbon width is 32 mm and consists of three equal vertical moire stripes of white and white. Ribbon bar denoting a further award is plain silver, with a crown in the centre. Since 1914 over 52,000 Military Crosses and 3,717 bars have been awarded; the dates below reflect the relevant London Gazette entries: In addition 375 MCs have been awarded since 1979, including awards for Northern Ireland, the Falklands and the wars in the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan. The above table includes awards to the Dominions:In all, 3,727 Military Crosses have been awarded to those serving with Canadian forces, including 324 first bars and 18 second bars. A total of 2,930 were awarded to Australians, in addition to four second bars. Of these, 2,403 MCs, 170 first Bars and four second Bars were for World War I. Over 500 MCs were awarded to New Zealanders during World War I and over 250 in World War II.
The most recent awards were for service in Vietnam. The honorary MC awards were made to servicemen from fifteen Allied countries in World War I, nine in World War II. During World War I, Acting Captain Francis Wallington of the Royal Field Artillery was the first person to be awarded the MC and three bars when he was invested with his third bar on 10 July 1918. Three other officers were subsequently awarded a third bar, Percy Bentley, Humphrey Arthur Gilkes and Charles Gordon Timms, all of whose awards appeared in a supplement to the London Gazette on 31 January 1919. For their key roles during World War I, the cities of Verdun and Ypres were awarded the Military Cross, in September 1916 and February 1920 respectively. In May 1920, Field Marshall French presented the decoration to Ypres in a special ceremony in the city. During World War II Captain Sam Manekshaw, Indian Army, was leading a counter-offensive operation against the invading Japanese Army in Burma. During the course of the offensive, he was hit by a burst of machine-gun fire and wounded in the stomach.
Major General D. T. Cowan spotted Manekshaw holding on to life and was aware of his valour in face of stiff resistance from the Japanese. Fearing the worst, Major General Cowan pinned his own Military Cross ribbon on to Manekshaw saying, "A dead person cannot be awarded a Military Cross." The first posthumous Military Cross was that awarded to Captain H
V-2 rocket
The V-2, technical name Aggregat 4, was the world's first long-range guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed during the Second World War in Germany as a "vengeance weapon", assigned to attack Allied cities as retaliation for the Allied bombings against German cities; the V-2 rocket became the first man-made object to travel into space by crossing the Kármán line with the vertical launch of MW 18014 on 20 June 1944. Research into military use of long range rockets began when the studies of graduate student Wernher von Braun attracted the attention of the German Army. A series of prototypes culminated in the A-4, which went to war as the V-2. Beginning in September 1944, over 3,000 V-2s were launched by the German Wehrmacht against Allied targets, first London and Antwerp and Liège. According to a 2011 BBC documentary, the attacks from V-2s resulted in the deaths of an estimated 9,000 civilians and military personnel, a further 12,000 forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners died as a result of their forced participation in the production of the weapons.
As Germany collapsed, teams from the Allied forces—the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union—raced to capture key German manufacturing sites and technology. Wernher von Braun and over 100 key V-2 personnel surrendered to the Americans. Many of the original V-2 team ended up working at the Redstone Arsenal; the US captured enough V-2 hardware to build 80 of the missiles. The Soviets gained possession of the V-2 manufacturing facilities after the war, re-established V-2 production, moved it to the Soviet Union. In the late 1920s, a young Wernher von Braun bought a copy of Hermann Oberth's book, Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen. Starting in 1930, he attended the Technical University of Berlin, where he assisted Oberth in liquid-fueled rocket motor tests. Von Braun was working on his doctorate. An artillery captain, Walter Dornberger, arranged an Ordnance Department research grant for von Braun, who from on worked next to Dornberger's existing solid-fuel rocket test site at Kummersdorf.
Von Braun's thesis, Construction and Experimental Solution to the Problem of the Liquid Propellant Rocket, was kept classified by the German Army and was not published until 1960. By the end of 1934, his group had launched two rockets that reached heights of 2.2 and 3.5 km. At the time, Germany was interested in American physicist Robert H. Goddard's research. Before 1939, German engineers and scientists contacted Goddard directly with technical questions. Von Braun used Goddard's plans from various journals and incorporated them into the building of the Aggregat series of rockets, named for the German word for mechanism or mechanical system. Following successes at Kummersdorf with the first two Aggregate series rockets, Wernher von Braun and Walter Riedel began thinking of a much larger rocket in the summer of 1936, based on a projected 25,000 kg thrust engine. After the A-4 project was postponed due to unfavourable aerodynamic stability testing of the A-3 in July 1936, von Braun specified the A-4 performance in 1937, after an "extensive series of test firings of the A-5" scale test model, using a motor redesigned from the troublesome A-3 by Walter Thiel, A-4 design and construction was ordered c.
1938/39. During 28–30 September 1939, Der Tag der Weisheit conference met at Peenemünde to initiate the funding of university research to solve rocket problems. By late 1941, the Army Research Center at Peenemünde possessed the technologies essential to the success of the A-4; the four key technologies for the A-4 were large liquid-fuel rocket engines, supersonic aerodynamics, gyroscopic guidance and rudders in jet control. At the time, Adolf Hitler was not impressed by the V-2. In early September 1943, von Braun promised the Long-Range Bombardment Commission that the A-4 development was "practically complete/concluded," but by the middle of 1944, a complete A-4 parts list was still unavailable. Hitler was sufficiently impressed by the enthusiasm of its developers, needed a "wonder weapon" to maintain German morale, so he authorized its deployment in large numbers; the V-2s were constructed at the Mittelwerk site by prisoners from Mittelbau-Dora, a concentration camp where 12,000-20,000 prisoners died during the war.
The A-4 used a 74 % ethanol/water mixture for liquid oxygen for oxidizer. At launch the A-4 propelled itself for up to 65 seconds on its own power, a program motor controlled the pitch to the specified angle at engine shutdown, after which the rocket continued on a ballistic free-fall trajectory; the rocket reached a height of 80 km after shutting off the engine. The fuel and oxidizer pumps were driven by a steam turbine, the steam was produced by concentrated hydrogen peroxide with sodium permanganate catalyst. Both the alcohol and oxygen tanks were an aluminium-magnesium alloy; the combustion burner reached a temperature of 2,500 to 2,700 °C. The alcohol-water fuel was pumped along the double wall of the main combustion burner; this cooled the combustion chamber. The fuel was pumped into the main burner chamber through 1,224 nozzles, which assured the correct mixture of alcohol and oxygen at all times. Small holes permitted some alcohol to escape directly into the combustion chamber, forming a cooled boundary layer tha
Southern Railway (UK)
The Southern Railway, sometimes shortened to'Southern', was a British railway company established in the 1923 Grouping. It linked London with South West England, South coast resorts and Kent; the railway was formed by the amalgamation of several smaller railway companies, the largest of which were the London & South Western Railway, the London and South Coast Railway and the South Eastern and Chatham Railway. The construction of what was to become the Southern Railway began in 1838 with the opening of the London and Southampton Railway, renamed the London & South Western Railway; the railway was noted for its astute use of public relations and a coherent management structure headed by Sir Herbert Walker. At 2,186 miles, the Southern Railway was the smallest of the Big Four railway companies and, unlike the others, the majority of its revenue came from passenger traffic rather than freight, it created what was at that time the world's largest electrified main line railway system and the first electrified InterCity route.
There were two Chief Mechanical Engineers. The Southern Railway played a vital role in the Second World War, embarking the British Expeditionary Force, during the Dunkirk operations, supplying Operation Overlord in 1944; the Southern Railway operated a number of famous named trains, including the Brighton Belle, the Bournemouth Belle, the Golden Arrow and the Night Ferry. The West Country services were dominated by lucrative summer holiday traffic and included named trains such as the Atlantic Coast Express and the Devon Belle; the company's best-known livery was distinctive: locomotives and carriages were painted in a bright Malachite green above plain black frames, with bold, bright yellow lettering. The Southern Railway was nationalised in 1948. Four important railway companies operated along the south coast of England prior to 1923 – the London & South Western Railway, the London and South Coast Railway, the South Eastern Railway and the London Chatham and Dover Railway; these companies were amalgamated, together with several small independently operated lines and non-working companies, to form the Southern Railway in 1923, which operated 2186 route miles of railway.
The new railway partly owned several joint lines: notably the East London Railway, the West London Extension Joint Railway, the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway and the Weymouth and Portland Railway. The first main line railway in southern England was the London and Southampton Railway, which completed its line in May 1840, it was followed by the London and Brighton Railway, the South Eastern Railway in February 1844. The LSWR branched out to destinations including Portsmouth and Exeter and Plymouth, it grew to be the largest of the four constituent companies. The LBSCR was a smaller railway than its LSWR neighbour, serving the port of Newhaven and several popular holiday resorts on the south coast and operating much of the south London suburban network, it had been bankrupt in 1867, but during the last twenty-five years of its existence it had been well-managed and profitable. It had begun to electrify routes around London from 1909 to compete with the new electric trams that were taking away some of its traffic.
The SECR had been created after years of wasteful and damaging competition between the two companies involved, with duplication of routes and services. Both companies had been unpopular with the travelling public and operated poorly maintained vehicles and infrastructure. Real progress had been made in rectifying this during the period 1899–1922; the formation of the Southern Railway was rooted in the outbreak of the First World War, when all British railway companies were taken into government control. Many members of staff joined the armed forces and it was not possible to build and maintain equipment at peacetime levels. After the war the government considered permanent nationalisation but instead decided on a compulsory amalgamation of the railways into four large groups through the 1921 Railways Act, known as the Grouping; the resultant amalgamation of the four south coast railways to form the Southern Railway meant that several duplicate routes and management structures were inherited.
The LSWR had most influence on the new company, although genuine attempts were made to integrate the services and staff after 1923. The rationalisation of the system led to the downgrading of some routes in favour of more direct lines to the channel ports, the creation of a coordinated, but not centralised form of management based at the former LSWR headquarters in Waterloo station. In addition to its railway operations, the Southern Railway inherited several important port and harbour facilities along the south coast, including Southampton and Folkestone, it ran services to the harbours at Portsmouth and Plymouth. These had come into being for handling ocean-going and cross-channel passenger traffic and the size of the railway-owned installations reflected the prosperity that the industry generated; this source of traffic, together with the density of population served in the
War Office
The War Office was a Department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the Ministry of Defence. It was equivalent to the Admiralty, responsible for the Royal Navy, the Air Ministry, which oversaw the Royal Air Force; the name "War Office" is given to the former home of the department, the War Office building, located at the junction of Horse Guards Avenue and Whitehall in central London. Prior to 1855'War Office' signified the office of the Secretary at War. In the 17th and 18th centuries a number of independent offices and individuals were responsible for various aspects of Army administration; the most important were the Commander-in-Chief of the Forces, the Secretary at War and the twin Secretaries of State. Others who performed specialist functions were the controller of army accounts, the Army Medical Board, the Commissariat Department, the Board of General Officers, the Judge Advocate General of the Armed Forces, the Commissary General of Muster, the Paymaster General of the forces and the Home Office.
The term War Department was used for the separate office of the Secretary of State for War. The War Office developed from the Council of War, an ad hoc grouping of the King and his senior military commanders which managed the Kingdom of England's frequent wars and campaigns; the management of the War Office was directed by the Secretary at War, whose role had originated during the reign of King Charles II as the secretary to the Commander-in-Chief of the Army. In the latter part of the 17th century the office of Commander-in-Chief was vacant for several lengths of time, which left the Secretary at War answering directly to the Sovereign; the department of the Secretary at War was referred to as the'Warr Office' from as early as 1694. After Blathwayt's retirement in 1704 Secretary at War became a political office. In political terms it was a minor government job which dealt with the minutiae of administration rather than grand strategy; the Secretary, a member of the House of Commons presented the House with the Army Estimates and spoke on other military matters as required.
In symbolic terms he was seen as signifying parliamentary control over the Army. Issues of strategic policy during wartime were managed by the Southern Departments. From 1704 to 1855, the job of Secretary remained occupied by a minister of the second rank. Many of his responsibilities were transferred to the Secretary of State for War after the creation of that more senior post during 1794. In February 1855 the new Secretary of State for War was additionally commissioned as Secretary at War, thus giving the Secretary of State oversight of the War Office in addition to his own Department; the same procedure was followed for each of his successors, until the office of Secretary at War was abolished altogether in 1863). During 1855 the Board of Ordnance was abolished as a result of its perceived poor performance during the Crimean War; this powerful independent body, dating from the 15th century, had been directed by the Master-General of the Ordnance a senior military officer, a member of the Cabinet.
The disastrous campaigns of the Crimean War resulted in the consolidation of all administrative duties during 1855 as subordinate to the Secretary of State for War, a Cabinet job. He was not, however responsible for the Army; this was reduced in theory by the reforms introduced by Edward Cardwell during 1870, which subordinated the Commander-in-Chief to the Secretary for War. In practice, however, a huge amount of influence was retained by the exceedingly conservative Commander-in-Chief Field Marshal Prince George, 2nd Duke of Cambridge, who had the job between 1856 and 1895, his resistance to reform caused military efficiency to lag well behind that of Britain's rivals, a problem which became obvious during the Second Boer War. The situation was only remedied during 1904 when the job of Commander-in-Chief was abolished and replaced with that of the Chief of the General Staff, replaced by the job of Chief of the Imperial General Staff during 1908. An Army Council was created with a format similar to that of the Board of Admiralty, directed by the Secretary of State for War, an Imperial General Staff was established to coordinate Army administration.
The creation of the Army Council was recommended by the War Office Committee, formally appointed by Letters Patent dated 8 February 1904 and by Royal Warrant dated
Anti-Aircraft Command
Anti-Aircraft Command was a British Army command of the Second World War that controlled the Territorial Army anti-aircraft artillery and searchlight formations and units defending the United Kingdom. The formation of a Command-level body of anti-aircraft defences had been announced in 1938, but Anti-Aircraft Command was not formed until 1 April 1939 under General Sir Alan Brooke, commander of Anti-Aircraft Corps, he passed control to Sir Frederick Pile, who would remain in command until the end of the war. AA Command was under the operational direction of RAF Fighter Command as part of Air Defence of Great Britain, occupied a headquarters known as Glenthorn in the grounds of Bentley Priory, home of Fighter Command; the majority of AA Command's guns and searchlights were operated by Territorial Army units. Some Regular Army units joined; as the war progressed, Regulars and TA were freed up for overseas service by the use of men of the Home Guard and women of the Auxiliary Territorial Service.
Divisions under the command were: 1st Anti-Aircraft Division - Existing division at start of the war, headquartered in Uxbridge. 2nd Anti-Aircraft Division - Existing division at the start of the war, headquartered at RAF Hucknall, Nottinghamshire. 3rd Anti-Aircraft Division - Existing division at the start of the war, headquartered in Edinburgh. 4th Anti-Aircraft Division - Existing division at the start of the war, headquartered in Chester. 5th Anti-Aircraft Division - Existing division at the start of the war, headquartered in Reading. 6th Anti-Aircraft Division - Existing division at the start of the war, headquartered in Uxbridge. 7th Anti-Aircraft Division - Existing division at the start of the war, headquartered in Newcastle upon Tyne. 8th Anti-Aircraft Division - Formed November 1940 covering South West England, headquartered in Bristol. 9th Anti-Aircraft Division - Formed November 1940 covering South Wales, headquartered in Cardiff. 10th Anti-Aircraft Division - Formed November 1940 covering Yorkshire and the Humber Estuary.
11th Anti-Aircraft Division - Formed November 1940 covering the West and Central Midlands. 12th Anti-Aircraft Division - Formed November 1940 covering southwestern Scotland. AA Command was responsible for the Orkney and Shetland Defences. At the end of 1940, the Command created three Corps to supervise this expanding organisation: 1 AA Corps in the South corresponding with 10 and 11 Groups RAF 2 AA Corps in the Midlands corresponding with 9 and 12 Groups RAF 3 AA Corps in the North corresponding with 13 and 14 Groups RAF In October 1942, the corps and divisions were abolished and replaced by seven flexible AA Groups more aligned with the operational structure of Fighter Command: 1st Anti-Aircraft Group covering London 2nd Anti-Aircraft Group covering the Solent, South-East England and southern East Anglia 3rd Anti-Aircraft Group covering South-West England and South Wales 4th Anti-Aircraft Group covering North Wales and North-West England 5th Anti-Aircraft Group covering northern East Anglia and the East Coast as far as Scarborough, North Yorkshire 6th Anti-Aircraft Group covering North-East England and Scotland 7th Anti-Aircraft Group covering Northern Ireland OSDEF remained separate Later, the 6th AA Group took over the Solent area to cover the preparations for Operation Overlord and was replaced in NE England by a new 8th Anti-Aircraft Group.
A new 9th Anti-Aircraft Group was formed to cover southern East Anglia during the flying bomb offensive. On 1 April 1943, AA Command took over control of smoke screens from the Ministry of Home Security; these installations were manned by the Pioneer Corps. When the TA was reformed after World War II in 1947, AA Command was generously provided for, with a large number of units, some of them including members of the Women's Royal Army Corps, it was structured in five regional AA Groups, each commanding a number of TA and Regular AA Brigades: 1st AA Group – London 2nd AA Group – Aldershot 3rd AA Group – Edinburgh 4th AA Group – Warrington 5th AA Group – NottinghamOn 1 December 1954, it was announced that AA Command would be disbanded with effect from 10 March 1955. The following officers held senior posts in AA Command: Lieutenant-General Alan Brooke Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Pile Lieutenant-General Sir William Green Lieutenant-General Otto Lund Lieutenant-General Sir Ivor Thomas Lieutenant-General Charles Loewen Lieutenant-General Sir Maurice Chilton Major-General Thomas Newton Major-General Robert Whittaker (1 January 1942–21 February 1944 Major-General Frank Lejeune Major-General Stephen Lamplugh Brigadier B. P. Hughes Brigadier Stephen Lamplugh Brigadier Geoffrey Thompson Brigadier Geoffrey Thompson Controller V. P. Farrow Controller The Hon.
Lady M. Lawrence Senior Controller Christian Fraser-Tytler Balloon Command Bomber Command Fighte
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