1.
Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed
2.
Bath Iron Works
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Bath Iron Works is a major American shipyard located on the Kennebec River in Bath, Maine. Since its founding in 1884, BIW has built private, commercial and military vessels, the shipyard has built and sometimes designed battleships, frigates, cruisers and destroyers, including the Arleigh Burke class, which are currently among the worlds most advanced surface warships. Since 1995, Bath Iron Works has been a subsidiary of General Dynamics, during World War II, ships built at BIW were considered by sailors and Navy officials to be of superior toughness, giving rise to the phrase Bath-built is best-built. Bath Iron Works was incorporated in 1884 by General Thomas W. Hyde, after the war, Hyde bought a local shop that helped make windlasses and other iron hardware for the wooden ships built in Baths many shipyards. He expanded the business by improving its practices, entering new markets, by 1882, Hyde Windlass was eyeing the new and growing business of iron shipbuilding, two years later, it incorporated as Bath Iron Works. On February 28,1890, BIW won its first contract for complete vessels, the Machias, one of these 190-foot gunboats, was the first ship launched by the company. In 1892, the yard won its first commercial contract for a steel vessel, in the 1890s, the company built several yachts for wealthy sailors. In 1899, General Hyde, suffering from the Brights Disease that would kill him later that year, resigned from management of the shipyard, leaving his sons Edward and that year the shipyard began construction of the Georgia, the only battleship to be built in Bath. The ship dominated the yard for five years until its launching in 1904, the yard faced numerous challenges because of the weight of armor and weapons. In sea trials, the Georgia averaged 19.26 knots for four hours, making her the fastest ship in her class, the company continued to rely on Navy contracts, which provided 86% of the value of new contracts between 1905 and 1917. The yard also produced fishing trawlers, freighters, and yachts throughout the first half of the century, at peak production during World War II, the shipyard launched a destroyer every 17 days. Bath Iron Works ranked 50th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts, in 1981, Falcon Transport ordered two tankers, the last commercial vessels built by BIW. In 1988, the USS Samuel B, Roberts, commissioned two years earlier at Bath, survived a mine explosion that tore a hole in its engine room and flooded two compartments. Over the next two years, BIW repaired the Roberts in unique fashion, the guided missile frigate was towed to the companys dry dock in Portland, Maine, and put up on blocks, where its damaged engine room was cut out of the ship. Meanwhile, workers in Bath built a 315-ton replacement, when it was ready, the module was floated south to Portland, placed on the dry dock, slid into place under the Roberts, jacked up, and welded into place. In 2001, BIW wrapped up an effort to build an enormous concrete platform. Instead of being built on a way so that they could slide into the Kennebec at launch. This greatly reduced the work involved in building and launching the ships, the 750-foot,28, 000-ton dry dock was built by Chinas Jiangdu Yuchai Shipbuilding Company for $27 million
3.
Bath, Maine
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Bath is a city in Sagadahoc County, Maine, in the United States. The population was 8,514 at the 2010 census, and 8,357 as of 2013 and it is the county seat of Sagadahoc County, Which includes one city and 10 towns. The city is popular with tourists, many drawn by its 19th-century architecture and it is home to the Bath Iron Works and Heritage Days Festival, held annually on the Fourth of July weekend. It is commonly known as The City of Ships, Bath is part of the metropolitan statistical area of Greater Portland. Abenaki Indians called the area Sagadahoc, meaning mouth of big river and it was a reference to the Kennebec River, which Samuel de Champlain explored in 1605. Popham Colony was established in 1607 downstream, together with Fort St George, the settlement failed due to harsh weather and lack of leadership, but the colonists built the New Worlds first oceangoing vessel constructed by English shipwrights, the Virginia of Sagadahoc. It provided passage back to England, most of Bath, Maine, was settled by travelers from Bath, England. The next settlement at Sagadahoc was about 1660, when the land was taken from an Indian sagamore known as Robinhood, incorporated as part of Georgetown in 1753, Bath was set off and incorporated as a town on February 17,1781. It was named by the postmaster, Dummer Sewell, after Bath in Somerset, in 1844, a portion of the town was set off to create West Bath. On June 14,1847, Bath was incorporated as a city, Land was annexed from West Bath in 1855. Several industries developed in the city, including lumber, iron and brass, with trade in ice, but Bath is renowned for shipbuilding, which began here in 1743 when Jonathan Philbrook and his sons built 2 vessels. Since then, roughly 5,000 vessels have been launched in the area, Bath became the nations fifth largest seaport by the mid-19th century, producing clipper ships that sailed to ports around the world. The last commercial enterprise to build ships in the city was the Percy & Small Shipyard. But the most famous shipyard is the Bath Iron Works, founded in 1884 by Thomas W. Hyde who also became the manager of it in 1888. It has built hundreds of wooden and steel vessels, mostly warships for the U. S. Navy, during World War II, Bath Iron Works launched a new ship an average of every 17 days. The shipyard is a regional employer, and operates today as a division of the General Dynamics Corporation. The city is noted for its Federal, Greek Revival, and Italianate architecture, including the 1858 Custom House, Bath is sister city to Shariki in Japan, where the locally-built full rigged ship Cheseborough was wrecked in 1889. Scenes from the movies Message in a Bottle and The Man Without a Face were filmed in the city, Bath is located at 43°54′59″N 69°49′21″W
4.
Museum ship
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A museum ship, also called a memorial ship, is a ship that has been preserved and converted into a museum open to the public for educational or memorial purposes. Some are also used for training and recruitment purposes, mostly for the number of museum ships that are still operational. Many, if not most, museum ships are also associated with a maritime museum, only a few survive, sometimes because of historical significance, but more often due to luck and circumstance. The restoration and maintenance of museum ships presents problems for historians who are asked for advice, for instance, the rigging of sailing ships has almost never survived, and so the rigging plan must be reconstructed from various sources. Studying the ships also allows historians to analyze how life on and operation of the ships took place, numerous scientific papers have been written on ship restoration and maintenance, and international conferences are held discussing the latest developments. Another consideration is the distinction between a museum ship, and a ship replica. As repairs accumulate over time, less and less of the ship is of the materials. Visitors without historical background are often unable to distinguish between a historical museum ship and a ship replica, which may serve solely as a tourist attraction. Typically the visitor enters via gangplank, wanders around on the deck, then goes below, usually using the original stairways, giving a sense of how the crew got around. The interior features restored but inactivated equipment, enhanced with mementos including old photographs, explanatory displays, pages from the logs, menus. Some add recorded sound effects, audio tours or video displays to enhance the experience, in some cases, the ships radio room has been brought back into use, with volunteers operating amateur radio equipment. Often, the callsign assigned is a variation on the identification of the ship. For example, the submarine USS Cobia, which had the call NBQV, is now on the air as NB9QV. The World War II submarine USS Pampanito, berthed at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, had the wartime call NJVT and is now on the air as NJ6VT, in other cases, such as the USS Missouri, a distinctive call is used. This radio work not only helps restore part of the vessel, a number of the larger museum ships have begun to offer hosting for weddings, meetings, other events, and sleepovers, and on a few ships still seaworthy, cruises. In the United States, this includes the USS Constitutions annual turnaround, a place on the deck is by invitation or lottery only, and highly prized. Many consider the appeal of an interesting old vessel on the city waterfront strong enough that any port city should showcase one or more museum ships. This may even include building a ship at great expense
5.
Wilhelmshaven
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Wilhelmshaven is a coastal town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated on the side of the Jade Bight. Wilhelmshaven is the centre of the JadeBay business region, the adjacent Lower Saxony Wadden Sea National Park provides the basis for the major tourism industry in the region. The Siebethsburg castle, built before 1383, operated as a pirate stronghold, four centuries later, the Kingdom of Prussia planned a fleet and a harbour on the North Sea.13 square kilometres of its territory at the Jade Bight to Prussia. In 1869 King William I of Prussia founded the town as an exclave of the Province of Hanover, all the hinterland of the city remained as part of the Duchy of Oldenburg. A shipbuilding yard developed at Wilhelmshaven, the Kaiserliche Werft Wilhelmshaven, on 30 June 1934 the pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee was launched at Wilhelmshaven. In 1937 Wilhelmshaven and Rüstringen merged and the city, named Wilhelmshaven. In World War II, Allied bombing destroyed two thirds of the towns buildings, on 28 April 1945, the Canadian First Army captured Emden and Wilhelmshaven, Germany, and took the surrender of the entire garrison, including some 200 ships of the Kriegsmarine. The Poles remained as part of the occupation forces until 1947. During World War II Alter Banter Weg functioned as a subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp, in 1947 the city council decided to seek a new emblem for the city. Between 1947 and 1972 Wilhelmshaven was the home of PRINCE RUPERT SCHOOL, the school relocated to Rinteln in 1972. There is an association of former Wilhelmshaven pupils called The Wilhelmshaven Association. Wilhelmshaven is Germanys only deep-water port, and its largest naval base, the benefits of the deep shipping channel were already recognised at the end of the 1950s with the construction of the first oil tanker jetty. Wilhelmshaven has been the most important German import terminal for crude oil ever since, pipelines from here supply refineries in the Rhine-Ruhr region and Hamburg. Other major business operations followed, and constructed jetties for crude oil and oil products, coal, the JadeWeserPort – Container Terminal Wilhelmshaven and the development of the neighbouring Freight Village provide prospects for employment in areas such as logistics and distribution. Another element of the Wilhelmshaven energy hub programme is the chemical industry, the German defence forces together with the public sector, are the main pillars of the local employment market. The Jadestadion, the stadium of Regionalliga Nord club SV Wilhelmshaven Aquarium Wilhelmshaven, located on the Helgolandkai – a view of the oceans, the Botanischer Garten der Stadt Wilhelmshaven, a municipal botanical garden. UNESCO World Heritage Site Wadden Sea Visitor center, the large permanent interactive exhibition provides insight into the wadden sea environment
6.
Destroyer
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Before World War II, destroyers were light vessels with little endurance for unattended ocean operations, typically a number of destroyers and a single destroyer tender operated together. After the war, the advent of the missile allowed destroyers to take on the surface combatant roles previously filled by battleships. This resulted in larger and more powerful guided missile destroyers more capable of independent operation, the emergence and development of the destroyer was related to the invention of the self-propelled torpedo in the 1860s. A navy now had the potential to destroy an enemy battle fleet using steam launches to launch torpedoes. Fast boats armed with torpedoes were built and called torpedo boats, the first seagoing vessel designed to fire the self-propelled Whitehead torpedo was the 33-ton HMS Lightning in 1876. She was armed with two drop collars to launch these weapons, these were replaced in 1879 by a torpedo tube in the bow. By the 1880s, the type had evolved into small ships of 50–100 tons, in response to this new threat, more heavily gunned picket boats called catchers were built which were used to escort the battle fleet at sea. The anti-torpedo boat origin of this type of ship is retained in its name in other languages, including French, Italian, Portuguese, Czech, Greek, Dutch and, up until the Second World War, Polish. At that time, and even into World War I, the function of destroyers was to protect their own battle fleet from enemy torpedo attacks. The task of escorting merchant convoys was still in the future, an important development came with the construction of HMS Swift in 1884, later redesignated TB81. This was a torpedo boat with four 47 mm quick-firing guns. At 23.75 knots, while still not fast enough to engage torpedo boats reliably. Another forerunner of the torpedo boat destroyer was the Japanese torpedo boat Kotaka, designed to Japanese specifications and ordered from the London Yarrow shipyards in 1885, she was transported in parts to Japan, where she was assembled and launched in 1887. The 165-foot long vessel was armed with four 1-pounder quick-firing guns and six torpedo tubes, reached 19 knots, in her trials in 1889, Kotaka demonstrated that she could exceed the role of coastal defense, and was capable of accompanying larger warships on the high seas. The Yarrow shipyards, builder of the parts for the Kotaka, the first vessel designed for the explicit purpose of hunting and destroying torpedo boats was the torpedo gunboat. Essentially very small cruisers, torpedo gunboats were equipped with torpedo tubes, by the end of the 1890s torpedo gunboats were made obsolete by their more successful contemporaries, the torpedo boat destroyers, which were much faster. The first example of this was HMS Rattlesnake, designed by Nathaniel Barnaby in 1885, the gunboat was armed with torpedoes and designed for hunting and destroying smaller torpedo boats. Exactly 200 feet long and 23 feet in beam, she displaced 550 tons, built of steel, Rattlesnake was un-armoured with the exception of a 3⁄4-inch protective deck
7.
Surface-to-air missile
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A surface-to-air missile, or ground-to-air missile, is a missile designed to be launched from the ground to destroy aircraft or other missiles. It is one type of system, in modern armed forces, missiles have replaced most other forms of dedicated antiaircraft weapons. The first serious attempts at SAM development took place during World War II, further development in the 1940s and 1950s led to the first operational systems being introduced by most major forces during the second half of the 1950s. Smaller systems, suitable for work, evolved through the 1960s and 1970s. The American Nike Ajax was the first operational guided missile SAM system, widely used modern examples include the Patriot and S-300 wide-area systems, SM-6 naval missiles, and short-range man-portable systems like the Stinger and Strela-3. The first known idea for a guided missile was in 1925. A selenium cell was mounted on the tip of each of the rockets four tail fins, when one selenium cell was no longer in the light beam, it would be steered in the opposite direction back into the beam. During World War II, efforts were started to develop surface-to-air missiles as it was considered that flak was of little use against bombers of ever-increasing performance. The lethal radius of a shell is fairly small. Against the Boeing B-17, which operated just within the range of the numerous German eighty-eights flak guns, bombers flying at higher altitudes require larger guns and shells to reach them. This greatly increases the cost of the system, and slows the rate of fire, faster aircraft fly out of range more quickly, reducing the number of rounds fired against them. Against late-war designs like the Boeing B-29 Superfortress or jet-powered designs like the Arado Ar 234, the first serious consideration of a SAM development project was a series of conversations that took place in Germany during 1941. Von Braun became convinced a better solution was a manned rocket interceptor, the directors of the Luftwaffe flak arm were not interested in manned aircraft, and the resulting disagreements between the teams delayed serious consideration of a SAM for two years. None of these saw any real development until 1943, when the first large-scale raids by the Allied air forces started. As the urgency of the problem grew, new designs were added, including Enzian and Rheintochter, in general, these designs could be split into two groups. One set of designs would be boosted to altitude in front of the bombers and these designs included the Feuerlilie, Schmetterling and Enzian. The second group were high-speed missiles, typically supersonic, that flew directly towards their targets from below, both types used radio control for guidance, either by eye, or by comparing the returns of the missile and target on a single radar screen. Development of all systems was carried out at the same time
8.
RUR-5 ASROC
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The RUR-5 ASROC is an all-weather, all sea-conditions anti-submarine missile system. The ASROC has been deployed on scores of warships of other navies, including Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan. In addition, the goal was to take advantage of modern sonars with a larger detection range. An extended range torpedo delivered by parachute from the air would allow warships the stand-off capability to attack submarines with very little advance notice to the hostile submarine. The RAT program came in three phases, RAT-A, RAT-B and RAT-C, RAT-A were efforts to develop a compact and economical stand-off ASW for smaller warships, but were found to be either unreliable or had too short a range. RAT-C was a program to develop a stand-off ASW weapon that used a depth charge. This would require a range of at least 8,000 yards to escape potential damage from the underwater blast, unlike the original RAT program rockets, the RAT-C was considerably larger to accomplish the extended range needed and was to be fitted to larger warships. With the failure of both the RAT-A and RAT-B programs, RAT-C was redesigned from a stand-off nuclear ASW weapon to one that could use not only a depth charge. To obtain the accuracy needed, the RAT-C rocket launcher had to be redesigned with larger side fins and this program finally combined reliability and accuracy, along with the necessary stand-off range. However, before RAT-C reached initial operational status in 1960 aboard the large US Navy destroyer leader USS Norfolk, the first ASROC system using the MK-112 Matchbox launcher, was developed in the 1950s and installed in the 1960s. This system was phased out in the 1990s and replaced with the RUM-139 Vertical Launch ASROC, after a surface ship, patrol plane or anti-submarine helicopter detects an enemy submarine by using sonar or other sensors, it could relay the subs position to an ASROC-equipped ship for attack. The attacking ship would fire an ASROC missile carrying an acoustic homing torpedo or a W44 Nuclear Depth Bomb onto an unguided ballistic trajectory toward the target. Water entry activates the torpedo, which is guided by its own sonar system, the W44 nuclear depth charge entered service in 1961, but was never used beyond one or two tests before the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty banning underwater nuclear tests went into effect. A total of 575 weapons were produced, the W44 weighed 170 pounds with a diameter of 13.75 inches and length of 25.3 inches. Following payload separation, the unguided W44 sank quickly to a depth where the 10-kiloton warhead detonated. The nuclear-armed ASROC was never used in combat, w44-armed ASROC missiles were retired by 1989, when all types of nuclear depth bombs were removed from deployment. The 31 U. S. Navy Spruance-class destroyers were all built with the Mark 16 Mod 7 ASROC Launching Group and these had one standard Mark 112 octuple ASROC launcher, located immediately above a reload system holding an additional 16 assembled rounds. Thus, each Spruance-class destroyer originally carried a total of 24 ASROC
9.
Torpedo tube
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A torpedo tube is a cylinder shaped device for launching torpedoes. There are two types of torpedo tube, underwater tubes fitted to submarines and some surface ships. Thus a submarine torpedo tube operates on the principle of an airlock, the diagram on the right illustrates the operation of a submarine torpedo tube. The diagram is somewhat simplified but does show the working of a torpedo launch. A torpedo tube has a number of interlocks for safety reasons. For example, an interlock prevents the door and muzzle door from opening at the same time. The submarine torpedo launch sequence is, in simplified form, Open the breech door in the torpedo room, load the torpedo into the tube. Hook up the connection and the torpedo power cable. Shut and lock the breech door, turn on power to the torpedo. A minimum amount of time is required for torpedo warmup, fire control programs are uploaded to the torpedo. This may be manually or automatically, from sea or from tanks. The tube must be vented during this process to allow for complete filling, Open the equalizing valve to equalize pressure in the tube with ambient sea pressure. If the tube is set up for Impulse Mode the slide valve will open with the muzzle door, if Swim Out Mode is selected, the slide valve remains closed. The slide valve allows water from the pump to enter the tube. Modern torpedoes have a safety mechanism that prevents activation of the torpedo unless the torpedo senses the required amount of G-force, the power cable is severed at launch. However, if a wire is used, it remains connected through a drum of wire in the tube. Torpedo propulsion systems vary but electric torpedoes swim out of the tube on their own and are of a smaller diameter,21 weapons with fuel-burning engines usually start outside of the tube. Once outside the tube the torpedo begins its run toward the target as programmed by the control system
Germany
United States Navy
Royal Australian Navy
German Navy
Hellenic Navy