1.
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
2.
Deutsche Werft
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Deutsche Werft was a shipbuilding company in Finkenwerder, Hamburg, Germany. It was founded in 1918 by Albert Ballin and with Gutehoffnungshütte, Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft, in peacetime, Deutsche Werft built merchant ships, such as the HAPAG turbo-electric cargo ships Antilla and Orizaba. In World War II Deutsche Werft built 113 Type IX and XXIII U-boats for the Kriegsmarine, in 1968 Deutsche Werft was merged and became part of Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft
3.
Hamburg
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Hamburg, officially Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg, is the second largest city in Germany and the eighth largest city in the European Union. It is the second smallest German state by area and its population is over 1.7 million people, and the wider Hamburg Metropolitan Region covers more than 5.1 million inhabitants. The city is situated on the river Elbe, the official long name reflects Hamburgs history as a member of the medieval Hanseatic League, a free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire, a city-state, and one of the 16 states of Germany. Before the 1871 Unification of Germany, it was a sovereign state. Prior to the changes in 1919, the civic republic was ruled by a class of hereditary grand burghers or Hanseaten. Though repeatedly destroyed by the Great Fire of Hamburg, the floods and military conflicts including WW2 bombing raids, the city managed to recover and emerge wealthier after each catastrophe. On the river Elbe, Hamburg is a port and a global service, media, logistics and industrial hub, with headquarters and facilities of Airbus, Blohm + Voss, Aurubis, Beiersdorf. The radio and television broadcaster NDR, Europes largest printing and publishing firm Gruner + Jahr, Hamburg has been an important financial centre for centuries, and is the seat of Germanys oldest stock exchange and the worlds second oldest bank, Berenberg Bank. The city is a fast expanding tourist destination for domestic and international visitors. It ranked 16th in the world for livability in 2015, the ensemble Speicherstadt and Kontorhausviertel was declared a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO in 2015. Hamburg is a major European science, research and education hub with several universities and institutes and its creative industries and major cultural venues include the renowned Elbphilharmonie and Laeisz concert halls, various art venues, music producers and artists. It is regarded as a haven for artists, gave birth to movements like Hamburger Schule. Hamburg is also known for theatres and a variety of musical shows. St. Paulis Reeperbahn is among the best known European entertainment districts, Hamburg is on the southern point of the Jutland Peninsula, between Continental Europe to the south and Scandinavia to the north, with the North Sea to the west and the Baltic Sea to the north-east. It is on the River Elbe at its confluence with the Alster, the city centre is around the Binnenalster and Außenalster, both formed by damming the River Alster to create lakes. The island of Neuwerk and two neighbouring islands Scharhörn and Nigehörn, in the Hamburg Wadden Sea National Park, are also part of Hamburg. The neighbourhoods of Neuenfelde, Cranz, Francop and Finkenwerder are part of the Altes Land region, neugraben-Fischbek has Hamburgs highest elevation, the Hasselbrack at 116.2 metres AMSL. Hamburg has a climate, influenced by its proximity to the coast
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.
Submarine
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A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability, the term most commonly refers to a large, crewed vessel. It is also used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely operated vehicles and robots, as well as medium-sized or smaller vessels, such as the midget submarine. The noun submarine evolved as a form of submarine boat, by naval tradition, submarines are usually referred to as boats rather than as ships. Although experimental submarines had been built before, submarine design took off during the 19th century, Submarines were first widely used during World War I, and now figure in many navies large and small. Civilian uses for submarines include marine science, salvage, exploration and facility inspection, Submarines can also be modified to perform more specialized functions such as search-and-rescue missions or undersea cable repair. Submarines are also used in tourism, and for undersea archaeology, most large submarines consist of a cylindrical body with hemispherical ends and a vertical structure, usually located amidships, which houses communications and sensing devices as well as periscopes. In modern submarines, this structure is the sail in American usage, a conning tower was a feature of earlier designs, a separate pressure hull above the main body of the boat that allowed the use of shorter periscopes. There is a propeller at the rear, and various hydrodynamic control fins, smaller, deep-diving and specialty submarines may deviate significantly from this traditional layout. Submarines use diving planes and also change the amount of water, Submarines have one of the widest ranges of types and capabilities of any vessel. Submarines can work at greater depths than are survivable or practical for human divers, modern deep-diving submarines derive from the bathyscaphe, which in turn evolved from the diving bell. In 1578, the English mathematician William Bourne recorded in his book Inventions or Devises one of the first plans for an underwater navigation vehicle and its unclear whether he ever carried out his idea. The first submersible of whose construction there exists reliable information was designed and built in 1620 by Cornelis Drebbel and it was propelled by means of oars. By the mid-18th century, over a dozen patents for submarines/submersible boats had been granted in England, in 1747, Nathaniel Symons patented and built the first known working example of the use of a ballast tank for submersion. His design used leather bags that could fill with water to submerge the craft, a mechanism was used to twist the water out of the bags and cause the boat to resurface. In 1749, the Gentlemens Magazine reported that a design had initially been proposed by Giovanni Borelli in 1680. By this point of development, further improvement in design stagnated for over a century, until new industrial technologies for propulsion. The first military submarine was the Turtle, a hand-powered acorn-shaped device designed by the American David Bushnell to accommodate a single person and it was the first verified submarine capable of independent underwater operation and movement, and the first to use screws for propulsion
6.
Diesel engine
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Diesel engines work by compressing only the air. This increases the air temperature inside the cylinder to such a degree that it ignites atomised diesel fuel that is injected into the combustion chamber. This contrasts with spark-ignition engines such as an engine or gas engine. In diesel engines, glow plugs may be used to aid starting in cold weather, or when the engine uses a lower compression-ratio, the original diesel engine operates on the constant pressure cycle of gradual combustion and produces no audible knock. Low-speed diesel engines can have an efficiency that exceeds 50%. Diesel engines may be designed as either two-stroke or four-stroke cycles and they were originally used as a more efficient replacement for stationary steam engines. Since the 1910s they have used in submarines and ships. Use in locomotives, trucks, heavy equipment and electricity generation plants followed later, in the 1930s, they slowly began to be used in a few automobiles. Since the 1970s, the use of engines in larger on-road and off-road vehicles in the US increased. According to the British Society of Motor Manufacturing and Traders, the EU average for diesel cars accounts for 50% of the total sold, including 70% in France and 38% in the UK. The worlds largest diesel engine is currently a Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C Common Rail marine diesel, the definition of a Diesel engine to many has become an engine that uses compression ignition. To some it may be an engine that uses heavy fuel oil, to others an engine that does not use spark ignition. However the original cycle proposed by Rudolf Diesel in 1892 was a constant temperature cycle which would require higher compression than what is needed for compression ignition. Diesels idea was to compress the air so tightly that the temperature of the air would exceed that of combustion, to make this more clear, let it be assumed that the subsequent combustion shall take place at a temperature of 700°. Then in that case the pressure must be sixty-four atmospheres, or for 800° centigrade the pressure must be ninety atmospheres. In later years Diesel realized his original cycle would not work, Diesel describes the cycle in his 1895 patent application. Notice that there is no longer a mention of compression temperatures exceeding the temperature of combustion, now all that is mentioned is the compression must be high enough for ignition. In 1806 Claude and Nicéphore Niépce developed the first known internal combustion engine, the Pyréolophore fuel system used a blast of air provided by a bellows to atomize Lycopodium
7.
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
8.
Torpedo
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Historically, it was called an automotive, automobile, locomotive or fish torpedo, colloquially called a fish. The term torpedo was originally employed for a variety of devices, from about 1900, torpedo has been used strictly to designate an underwater self-propelled weapon. Todays torpedoes can be divided into lightweight and heavyweight classes, and into straight-running, autonomous homers and they can be launched from a variety of platforms. The word torpedo comes from the name of a genus of rays in the order Torpediniformes. In naval usage, the American Robert Fulton introduced the name to refer to a gunpowder charge used by his French submarine Nautilus to demonstrate that it could sink warships. The concept of a torpedo existed many centuries before it was successfully developed. In 1275, Hasan al-Rammah described. an egg which moves itself, in modern language, a torpedo is an underwater self-propelled explosive, —but historically, the term also applied to primitive naval mines. These were used on an ad hoc basis during the modern period up to the late 19th century. An early submarine, the Turtle, attempted to lay a bomb with a fuse on the hull of HMS Eagle during the American Revolutionary War. In the early 1800s, the American inventor Robert Fulton, while in France and he coined the term torpedo in reference to the explosive charges he outfitted his submarine Nautilus. However, both the French and the Dutch governments were uninterested in the submarine, Fulton then concentrated on developing the torpedo independent of a submarine deployment. However, the British government refused to purchase the invention, stating they did not wish to introduce into naval warfare a system that would give advantage to weaker maritime nations. Fulton carried out a demonstration for the US government on 20 July 1807. Further development languished as Fulton focused on his steam-boat matters, during the War of 1812, torpedoes were employed in attempts to destroy British vessels and protect American harbors. In fact a submarine deployed torpedo was used in an attempt to destroy HMS Ramillies while in New Londons harbor. Hardy to warn the Americans to cease efforts with the use of any boat in this cruel and unheard-of warfare. Torpedoes were used by the Russian Empire during the Crimean War in 1855 against British warships in the Gulf of Finland and they used an early form of chemical detonator. During the American Civil War, the torpedo was used for what is today called a contact mine
9.
2 cm Flak 30/38/Flakvierling
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The Flak 30 and improved Flak 38 were 20 mm anti-aircraft guns used by various German forces throughout World War II. It was not only the primary German light anti-aircraft gun, and it was produced in a variety of models, notably the Flakvierling 38 which combined four Flak 38 autocannons onto a single carriage. The Germans fielded the unrelated early 2 cm Flak 28 just after World War I, the original Flak 30 design was developed from the Solothurn ST-5 as a project for the Kriegsmarine, which produced the 20 mm C/30. The gun fired the Long Solothurn, a 20 ×138 mm belted cartridge that had developed for the ST-5 and was one of the most powerful 20 mm rounds in existence. The C/30, featuring a length of 65 calibres, had a rate of about 120 rounds per minute. Disappointingly, it proved to have feeding problems and would often jam, nevertheless, the C/30 became the primary shipborne light AA weapon and equipped a large variety of German ships. Rheinmetall then started an adaptation of the C/30 for Army use, generally similar to the C/30, the main areas of development were the mount, which was fairly compact. Set-up could be accomplished by dropping the gun to the ground off its two-wheeled carriage, the result was a triangular base that allowed fire in all directions. But the main problem with the design remained unsolved, the rate of fire of 120 RPM was not particularly fast for a weapon of this calibre. Rheinmetall responded with the 2 cm Flak 38, which was similar but increased the rate of fire to 220 RPM. The Flak 38 was accepted as the standard Army gun in 1939, in order to provide airborne and mountain troops with AA capabilities, Mauser was contracted to produce a lighter version of the Flak 38, which they introduced as the 2 cm Gebirgsflak 38. It featured a dramatically simplified mount using a tripod that raised the gun off the ground. These changes reduced the weight of the gun to a mere 276.0 kg. Production started in 1941 and entered service in 1942, a wide variety of 20x138B ammunition was manufactured to be used in 2 cm Flak weapons, some of the more commonly used types are listed on the following table. Other kinds than in existence included numerous practice rounds and a number of different AP types, a high-velocity PzGr 40 round with a tungsten carbide core in an aluminium body existed in 20x138B caliber. This meant it could keep enemy aircraft under fire over longer time spans, the 20 mm weapons had always had weak development perspectives, often being reconfigured or redesigned just enough to allow the weapons to find use. Indeed, it came as a surprise when Rheinmetall introduced the 2 cm Flakvierling 38, the term Vierling literally translates to quadruplet and refers to the four 20 mm gun constituting the design. The Flakvierling weapon consisted of quad-mounted 2 cm Flak 38 AA guns with collapsing seats, folding handles, the mount had a triangular base with a jack at each leg for levelling the gun
10.
U-boat
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U-boat is the anglicised version of the German word U-Boot, a shortening of Unterseeboot, literally undersea boat. While the German term refers to any submarine, the English one refers specifically to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in the First and Second World Wars. Although at times they were efficient fleet weapons against enemy warships, they were most effectively used in an economic warfare role. Austro-Hungarian navy submarines were known as U-boats. The first submarine built in Germany, the three-man Brandtaucher, sank to the bottom of Kiel harbor on 1 February 1851 during a test dive, the inventor and engineer Wilhelm Bauer had designed this vessel in 1850, and Schweffel & Howaldt constructed it in Kiel. Dredging operations in 1887 rediscovered Brandtaucher, it was raised and put on display in Germany, there followed in 1890 the boats WW1 and WW2, built to a Nordenfelt design. The SM U-1 was a completely redesigned Karp-class submarine and only one was built, the Imperial German Navy commissioned it on 14 December 1906. It had a hull, a Körting kerosene engine. The 50%-larger SM U-2 had two torpedo tubes, the U-19 class of 1912–13 saw the first diesel engine installed in a German navy boat. At the start of World War I in 1914, Germany had 48 submarines of 13 classes in service or under construction, during that war the Imperial German Navy used SM U-1 for training. Retired in 1919, it remains on display at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, on 5 September 1914, HMS Pathfinder was sunk by SM U-21, the first ship to have been sunk by a submarine using a self-propelled torpedo. On 22 September, U-9 sank the obsolete British warships HMS Aboukir, HMS Cressy, for the first few months of the war, U-boat anticommerce actions observed the prize rules of the time, which governed the treatment of enemy civilian ships and their occupants. On 20 October 1914, SM U-17 sank the first merchant ship, surface commerce raiders were proving to be ineffective, and on 4 February 1915, the Kaiser assented to the declaration of a war zone in the waters around the British Isles. This was cited as a retaliation for British minefields and shipping blockades, under the instructions given to U-boat captains, they could sink merchant ships, even potentially neutral ones, without warning. In February 1915, a submarine U-6 was rammed and both periscopes were destroyed off Beachy Head by the collier SS Thordis commanded by Captain John Bell RNR after firing a torpedo, on 7 May 1915, SM U-20 sank the liner RMS Lusitania. The sinking claimed 1,198 lives,128 of them American civilians, munitions that it carried were thousands of crates full of ammunition for rifles, 3-inch artillery shells, and also various other standard ammunition used by infantry. The sinking of the Lusitania was widely used as propaganda against the German Empire, a widespread reaction in the U. S was not seen until the sinking of the ferry SS Sussex. The sinking occurred in 1915 and the United States entered the war in 1917, the initial U. S. response was to threaten to sever diplomatic ties, which persuaded the Germans to issue the Sussex pledge that reimposed restrictions on U-boat activity
Nazi Germany
