1.
Royal Air Force
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The Royal Air Force is the United Kingdoms aerial warfare force. Formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, following victory over the Central Powers in 1918 the RAF emerged as, at the time, the largest air force in the world. The RAF describe its mission statement as, an agile, adaptable and capable Air Force that, person for person, is second to none, and that makes a decisive air power contribution in support of the UK Defence Mission. The mission statement is supported by the RAFs definition of air power, Air power is defined as the ability to project power from the air and space to influence the behaviour of people or the course of events. Today the Royal Air Force maintains a fleet of various types of aircraft. The majority of the RAFs rotary-wing aircraft form part of the tri-service Joint Helicopter Command in support of ground forces, most of the RAFs aircraft and personnel are based in the UK, with many others serving on operations or at long-established overseas bases. It was founded on 1 April 1918, with headquarters located in the former Hotel Cecil, during the First World War, by the amalgamation of the Royal Flying Corps, at that time it was the largest air force in the world. The RAFs naval aviation branch, the Fleet Air Arm, was founded in 1924, the RAF developed the doctrine of strategic bombing which led to the construction of long-range bombers and became its main bombing strategy in the Second World War. The RAF underwent rapid expansion prior to and during the Second World War, under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan of December 1939, the air forces of British Commonwealth countries trained and formed Article XV squadrons for service with RAF formations. Many individual personnel from countries, and exiles from occupied Europe. By the end of the war the Royal Canadian Air Force had contributed more than 30 squadrons to serve in RAF formations, additionally, the Royal Australian Air Force represented around nine percent of all RAF personnel who served in the European and Mediterranean theatres. In the Battle of Britain in 1940, the RAF defended the skies over Britain against the numerically superior German Luftwaffe, the largest RAF effort during the war was the strategic bombing campaign against Germany by Bomber Command. Following victory in the Second World War, the RAF underwent significant re-organisation, during the early stages of the Cold War, one of the first major operations undertaken by the Royal Air Force was in 1948 and the Berlin Airlift, codenamed Operation Plainfire. Before Britain developed its own nuclear weapons the RAF was provided with American nuclear weapons under Project E and these were initially armed with nuclear gravity bombs, later being equipped with the Blue Steel missile. Following the development of the Royal Navys Polaris submarines, the nuclear deterrent passed to the navys submarines on 30 June 1969. With the introduction of Polaris, the RAFs strategic nuclear role was reduced to a tactical one and this tactical role was continued by the V bombers into the 1980s and until 1998 by Tornado GR1s. For much of the Cold War the primary role of the RAF was the defence of Western Europe against potential attack by the Soviet Union, with many squadrons based in West Germany. With the decline of the British Empire, global operations were scaled back, despite this, the RAF fought in many battles in the Cold War period
2.
Air force infantry and special forces
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Air force infantry and special forces units are infantry and special forces units that are part of a nations air force. Airmen assigned to such units are trained, armed and equipped for ground combat, the main rationale for such units is for force protection. Aircraft are most vulnerable when on the ground, to counter air operations, and most cannot operate without fixed infrastructure, consumables. An adversary may hope to achieve air supremacy or protect itself from air attack first by attacking airbases, aircraft, such attacks can be made by, for example, aircraft, cruise missiles and short range ballistic missiles. However, when dispersed in such a way, aircraft and personnel are more vulnerable to surprise ground attacks. To defend against ground attacks, most air forces train airmen in basic skills and. These include units and individual personnel who operate independently or, with military units. In most forces a layered approach is used to deliver a defence in depth, peacetime doctrine is to maintain the integrity of the perimeter through the use of watch posts and/or remote sensors, and if deemed necessary patrols within the perimeter. If attackers manage to gain entry into the areas of the airbase, by subterfuge or other means. The area around the airbase is mapped and prearranged fire plans are put in place to allow patrols to call down rapid and accurate fire from attached mortars. Air force infantry units are, for the most part, well-equipped light infantry deployed in company-sized units, in addition to personal weapons, their heaviest weapons are usually heavy machine guns, mortars, rockets and anti-tank guided missiles. They lack organic artillery and support arms, relying on their base or units they are deployed with. However, they are not normally expected to engage in sustained combat operations, the Royal Naval Air Service, one of the two British air arms that was amalgamated to create the RAF, operated an armoured car wing that grew in size to some 20 squadrons. During World War II, Luftwaffe doctrine was to operate as an air force in support of the army providing air defence. Due to political considerations all German air defences were placed in the hands of the Luftwaffe, also because of political considerations German paratroopers, the Fallschirmjäger, were part of the air force. To guard against British airfields falling to German paratroops as Maleme had, amongst the measures implemented were improvised armoured cars and pillboxes facing inwards towards the runways. However, rather than training all airmen as infantry on the German model, the RAF Commandos were created to service aircraft from newly built or captured airfields. First formed as part of the United States Army Air Corps during World War II, post war the newly established United States Air Force saw its primary role as a strategic one, and its base defense doctrine reflected this being one of security policing
3.
No. 2 Group RAF
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The group is currently referred to as the Air Combat Support Group, as it controls the aircraft used to support the Royal Navy and RAFs front line combat force. Assets under command includes the Strategic and Tactical Air Transport aircraft, the RAF Police, field squadrons of the RAF Regiment, as from 1 April 2006, with the disbandment of No. The group is based alongside Air Command at RAF High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, as of 1 April 2006, the following stations and squadrons are under the command of 2 Group. Squadrons and Flights at various stations, Defence NBC Centre Winterbourne Gunner RAF Wittering and RAF Scampton based Air Combat Service Support Units. Joint Ground-Based Air Defence Command RAF Bentley Priory RAF Fylingdales RAF Neatishead No.2 Group was originally formed as No.2 Group on 1 April 1918 at Oxford. The unit was disbanded at RAF Uxbridge on 31 March 1920 as the need for training had lessened following the armistice, the Group was reformed as No.2 Group on 20 March 1936, with it headquarters base at Abingdon. The force consisted of Bristol Blenheim Mk, IVs and the Blenheim Mk. I. On 3 September 1939, the day war broke out, a Blenheim from 2 Group made the first British operational sortie to cross the German frontier in the Second World War, the following day saw the Groups Blenheims make the first British bombing attack of the war. In April 1940, Norway was invaded by the Germans, the Group carried out intensive operations against the advancing Germans following their breakthrough of 10 May 1940, suffering heavy losses. On 17 May, twelve crews of No.82 Squadron left Watton to attack enemy columns near Gembloux, a severe flak barrage split the formation up, allowing Messerschmitt Bf 109s to attack. Only one Blenheim, managed to return to Watton, the rest shot down, No.82 Squadron was again operational just three days later. During June, Blenheims began a new phase by bombing Luftwaffe airfields in France, in July the twelve Blenheim squadrons of 2 Group lost 31 aircraft, along with three Wing Commanders. During the summer the light bomber force also supported operations during the Battle of Britain. By mid 1941 the Group was engaged in raids on coastal shipping. At that stage of the war the Group’s Blenheims were near obsolete, even Churchill was greatly disturbed by the loss rates on the attacks Stevenson was ordering his crews to fly. Upon his removal as AOC in December 1941 his crews were greatly relieved, No.2 Group carried out a low-level attack on Bremen on 2 July 1941 in which the leader, Wing Commander Hughie Edwards of No.105 Squadron, won the Victoria Cross. RAF losses were 14 aircraft brought down by flak and fighters, substantial damage was inflicted on the factory, but with few casualties suffered by the Dutch workers and civilian population. 2 group supported the ill-fated Commando raid on Dieppe in August 1942, Mosquitoes Mk IVs also made the first daylight attack on Berlin
4.
RAF Air Command
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Headquarters Air Command is the only Command currently active in the Royal Air Force. It was formed by the merger of Royal Air Force Strike and Personnel and Training Commands on 1 April 2007, the equivalent in the Royal Navy is Navy Command Headquarters at Portsmouth and the equivalent in the British Army is Army Headquarters at Andover. Air Command is commanded by the Chief of the Air Staff, formerly, it was under a four-star Air Chief Marshal, Commander-in-Chief, Air Command, but this structure was discontinued due to the 2011 Levine Report. There are two Deputy Commanders of Air Marshal rank, there is also No.38 Group, which brings together the RAF’s Engineering, Logistics, Communications and Medical Operations units
5.
RAF Honington
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Royal Air Force Honington or more simply RAF Honington is a Royal Air Force station located 6 mi south of Thetford near Ixworth in Suffolk, England. Although used as a station during the Second World War. Construction of Honington airfield, which was undertaken by John Laing & Son, began in 1935, and the facility was opened on 3 May 1937. Squadrons of RAF Bomber Command using the prior to the Second World War were. No.215 Squadron RAF - Moved to RAF Bassingbourn, IX Squadron flew the first RAF bombing raid of the Second World War on 4 September 1939 flying a mission against the Kriegsmarine in the Baltic resulting in the loss of two Wellingtons. The squadron lost 79 Wellingtons flying from Honington before moving to RAF Waddington, in July 1940, No.311 Squadron RAF formed at Honington with Wellingtons, later moving to RAF East Wretham in November 1940. The Luftwaffe made several attacks on the one of which killed about twenty airmen who were crossing the old parade ground on their way to tea. Another bomb demolished part of Barrack Block 76, which was rebuilt between 1993 and 1996, in 1941, a Junkers Ju 88 was shot down by ground fire from Honington. The aircraft crashed at the east end of E Hangar, then, in May of that year, a Wellington returning from a night trip attempted to land at Honington with its wheels retracted. It skidded to one side and crashed into the bomb dump where it burst into flames. Group Captain J. A. Gray and Squadron Leader J. A. McCarthy, both entered the burning aircraft in an attempt to rescue the crew who were trapped and, between them, two crew-members were saved. For this gallantry, both officers were awarded the George Medal, in June 1942, the airfield was transferred to the USAAF and was upgraded to a Class A Bomber base. Honington was assigned USAAF designation Station 375, the group was under the command of the 67th Fighter Wing of the VIII Fighter Command. Aircraft of the 364th were identified by a stripe pattern around their cowlings. At first the group operated primarily as escort for B-17/Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bombers, the 364th also flew air-sea rescue missions, engaged in patrol activities, and continued to support ground forces as the battle line moved through France and into Germany. Took part in the effort to invade the Netherlands by air, September 1944, the Battle of the Bulge, December 1944-January 1945, and the assault across the Rhine, March 1945. Although the last mission by the 364th took place on 25 April 1945, even then, Honington remained the lone Eighth Air Force outpost in the UK becoming Fighter Command HQ on 5 October. Honington was the last USAAF station to be returned to the RAF, on 26 February, Brigadier General Emil Kiel - the Eighth Fighter Command commander - was present to hand over the keys of the station to Air Marshal Sir James Robb, AOC RAF Fighter Command
6.
Air commodore-in-chief
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Air Commodore-in-Chief is a senior honorary air force appointment which originated in the Royal Air Force and now exists in the air forces of various Commonwealth realms. Appointees are made Air Commodore-in-Chief of an air force organisation or formation. Initially only the British monarch held air commodore-in-chief appointments, Air commodore-in-chief appointments do not confer a rank, be it air commodore or otherwise. Air commodore-in-chief appointments are more senior than honorary air commodore appointments, the equivalent naval title of Commodore-in-Chief was introduced in 2006
7.
Elizabeth II
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Elizabeth II has been Queen of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand since 6 February 1952. Elizabeth was born in London as the eldest child of the Duke and Duchess of York, later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth and her father acceded to the throne on the abdication of his brother Edward VIII in 1936, from which time she was the heir presumptive. She began to undertake duties during the Second World War. Elizabeths many historic visits and meetings include a visit to the Republic of Ireland. She has seen major changes, such as devolution in the United Kingdom, Canadian patriation. She has reigned through various wars and conflicts involving many of her realms and she is the worlds oldest reigning monarch as well as Britains longest-lived. In October 2016, she became the longest currently reigning monarch, in 2017 she became the first British monarch to commemorate a Sapphire Jubilee. Elizabeth has occasionally faced republican sentiments and press criticism of the family, however, support for the monarchy remains high. Elizabeth was born at 02,40 on 21 April 1926, during the reign of her paternal grandfather and her father, Prince Albert, Duke of York, was the second son of the King. Her mother, Elizabeth, Duchess of York, was the youngest daughter of Scottish aristocrat Claude Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and she was delivered by Caesarean section at her maternal grandfathers London house,17 Bruton Street, Mayfair. Elizabeths only sibling, Princess Margaret, was born in 1930, the two princesses were educated at home under the supervision of their mother and their governess, Marion Crawford, who was casually known as Crawfie. Lessons concentrated on history, language, literature and music, Crawford published a biography of Elizabeth and Margarets childhood years entitled The Little Princesses in 1950, much to the dismay of the royal family. The book describes Elizabeths love of horses and dogs, her orderliness, others echoed such observations, Winston Churchill described Elizabeth when she was two as a character. She has an air of authority and reflectiveness astonishing in an infant and her cousin Margaret Rhodes described her as a jolly little girl, but fundamentally sensible and well-behaved. During her grandfathers reign, Elizabeth was third in the line of succession to the throne, behind her uncle Edward, Prince of Wales, and her father, the Duke of York. Although her birth generated public interest, she was not expected to become queen, many people believed that he would marry and have children of his own. When her grandfather died in 1936 and her uncle succeeded as Edward VIII, she became second-in-line to the throne, later that year, Edward abdicated, after his proposed marriage to divorced socialite Wallis Simpson provoked a constitutional crisis. Consequently, Elizabeths father became king, and she became heir presumptive, if her parents had had a later son, she would have lost her position as first-in-line, as her brother would have been heir apparent and above her in the line of succession
8.
Corps
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A corps is a military unit usually consisting of several divisions. Some military service branches are also called corps, such as the Military Police Corps, Royal Logistic Corps, Quartermaster Corps, a few civilian organizations use the name corps to imply a similar service level, such as the Peace Corps. In many armies, a corps is a formation composed of two or more divisions, and typically commanded by a lieutenant general. During World War I and World War II, due to the scale of combat. In Western armies with numbered corps, the number is indicated in Roman numerals. II Corps was also formed, with Militia units, to defend south-eastern Australia, sub-corps formations controlled Allied land forces in the remainder of Australia. I Corps headquarters was assigned control of the New Guinea campaign. In early 1945, when I Corps was assigned the task of re-taking Borneo, the Canadian Corps consisted of four Canadian divisions. After the Armistice, the peacetime Canadian militia was organized into corps and divisions. Early in the Second World War, Canadas contribution to the British-French forces fighting the Germans was limited to a single division, after the fall of France in June 1940, a second division moved to England, coming under command of a Canadian corps headquarters. This corps was renamed I Canadian Corps as a corps headquarters was established in the UK. I Canadian Corps eventually fought in Italy, II Canadian Corps in NW Europe, after the formations were disbanded after VE Day, Canada has never subsequently organized a Corps headquarters. The Chinese Republic had 133 Corps during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Corps became the basic tactical unit of the NRA having strength nearly equivalent to an allied Division. The French Army under Napoleon used corps-sized formations as the first formal combined-arms groupings of divisions with reasonably stable manning, Napoleon first used the Corps dArmée in 1805. The use of the Corps dArmée was an innovation that provided Napoleon with a significant battlefield advantage in the early phases of the Napoleonic Wars. The Corps was designed to be an independent military group containing cavalry, artillery and infantry and this allowed Napoleon to mass the bulk of his forces to effect a penetration into a weak section of enemy lines without risking his own communications or flank. This innovation stimulated other European powers to adopt similar military structures, the Corps has remained an echelon of French Army organization to the modern day. As fixed military formation already in peace-time it was used almost in all European armies after Battle of Ulm in 1805, in Prussia it was introduced by Order of His Majesty from November 5,1816, in order to strengthen the readiness to war
9.
CBRN defense
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Chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense is protective measures taken in situations in which chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear warfare hazards may be present. CBRN defense consists of CBRN passive protection, contamination avoidance and CBRN mitigation, a CBRN incident differs from a hazardous material incident in both scope and intent. CBRN incidents are responded to under the assumption that they are intentional and malicious, evidence preservation, a 2011 forecast concluded that worldwide government spending on CBRN defence products and services would reach US$8. 38bn that year. In English the term CBRN is a replacement for the cold war term NBC, the addition of the R is a consequence of the new threat of a radiological weapon. In the new millennium, the term CBRNe was introduced as an extension of CBRN - the e in this term representing the enhanced explosives threat, in Spanish the term NRBQ has replaced NBQ. The Argentine Armed Forces has several CRBN response teams, the Batallón de Ingenieros QBN601 of the Argentine Army, was the first CRBN response team created, in the 1990s, as a part of the countrys Rapid Deployment Force. Civil defense, and firemen from Policía Federal Argentina teams also have CRBN training, Brazilian firefighters are trained for NBC situations. Due to the 2016 Summer Olympics, police forces, like the GATE from Minas Gerais, the Federal Police, in the military area, there is CBRN equipment and personnel by all the Armed Forces. The Brazilian Presidential Guard and Army Police also have CBRN units, the Air Force is making special teams for transporting victims from CBRN attacks/accidents. The term CBRN is in use in disaster and emergency services organizations across the country. Since July 2005, the Canadian Armed Forces also started using the term CBRN Defence, instead of NBC Defence, CBRNE is a new term that is being used in both civilian and military organisations. All members of the Canadian Armed Forces are trained in CBRN defense, at the provincial level, cities are provided opportunities for their emergency services with CBRN training. In Ontario, emergency services in Windsor, Peterborough, Toronto, in mid-July 2016, the European Parliament negotiated a new draft counterterrorism directive aimed at protecting Europes people from biological, chemical and other attacks. Hong Kong has had CBRN response capabilities since the early 1990s, the Standing CBRN Planning Group plans for all CBRN incidents in Hong Kong. The SRPG was set up with the support of the Secretary for Security by the Senior Bomb Disposal Officer in Hong Kong and it consists of representatives from 9 government departments who plan the response to CBRN threats. RIAG consists of five experts who assist with the response to the incident by providing real time advice. The Hong Kong capability is well rehearsed, with regular departmental exercises conducted, the Indian Army ordered 16 CBRN monitoring vehicles, of which the first 8 were inducted in December 2010. It was developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation and manufactured by Ordnance Factories Board, indonesia army has a CBRN Defense unit, Kompi Zeni Nubika Ditzi TNI-AD
10.
History of the Royal Air Force
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The history of the Royal Air Force, the air force of the United Kingdom, spans nearly a century of British military aviation. The RAF was founded in 1918, toward the end of World War I by merging the Royal Flying Corps, after the war, the RAF was greatly reduced in size and during the inter-war years it was used to police the British Empire. The RAF underwent rapid expansion prior to and during the Second World War, during the war it was responsible for the aerial defence of Great Britain, the strategic bombing campaign against Germany and tactical support to the British Army around the world. After the Cold War, the RAF was involved in large scale operations, including the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan. The Royal Flying Corps had been out of the Air Battalion of the Royal Engineers and was under the control of the British Army. The Royal Naval Air Service was its equivalent and was controlled by the Admiralty. The decision to merge the two services and create an independent air force was a response to the events of World War I, the creation of the new force was based on the Smuts Report prepared by Field Marshal Jan Smuts for the Imperial War Cabinet on which he served. The newly created RAF was the most powerful air force in the world on its creation, with over 20,000 aircraft, the squadrons of the RFC kept their numerals while those of the RNAS were renumbered from 201 onwards. At the time of the merger, the Navys air service had 55,066 officers, the remaining personnel and aircraft came from the RFC. A memorial to the RAF was commissioned after the war in central London, the RAFs last known surviving founder member was the World War I veteran Henry Allingham who died in 2009 aged 113. Following the end of World War I and the accompanying British defence cuts,6,500 officers, all holding temporary commissions or seconded from the Army and Navy, applied for permanent commissions. The Cabinet sanctioned a maximum of 1,500 and the Air Ministry offered 1,065 to the applicants, publishing the first list on 1 August 1919, the service as a whole had been reduced in strength to 35,000. The RAF took up the task of policing the British Empire from the air and it was argued that the use of air power would prove to be a more cost-effective way of controlling large areas than by using conventional land forces. The following year, in 1921, the RAF was given responsibility for all British forces in Iraq with the task of policing the tribal unrest, the operation to rescue them, the Kabul Airlift, was the first evacuation of civilians by air. It was during the years that the RAF had to fight for its survival - some questioned the need for a separate air force. In 1936, a reorganisation of RAF command saw the creation of Fighter Command, Bomber Command, the creation of the RAF removed all aircraft and flying personnel from the Navy, although the Admiralty remained in control of aircraft carriers. On 1 April 1924, the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Air Force was formed under Air Ministry control and it consisted of those RAF units that were normally embarked on aircraft carriers and fighting ships. The Chief of the Air Staff, Lord Trenchard, his air staff and his successors argued that air is one and indivisible, the Admiralty took the opposite view and, during the first half of the 1920s, pressed hard for the return of naval aviation to their control
11.
No. 1 Armoured Car Company RAF
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The No.1 Armoured Car Company RAF was a military unit of Britains Royal Air Force based in Iraq and which played a role in the defence of RAF Habbaniya during World War II. During the 1920s further RAF Armoured Car Companies were formed in Iraq but by 1930 they were consolidated into No.1 Company with its base at RAF Hinaidi and sections at Mosul and RAF Shaibah. During the Anglo-Iraqi War, the No.1 Armoured Car Company RAF was composed of eighteen Rolls-Royce armoured cars and these vehicles were among the last of a consignment of ex-Royal Naval Armoured Car Division armoured cars that had been serving in the Middle East since 1915. In addition to the Rolls-Royce armoured cars, the company had two ancient tanks, named Walrus and Seal, the Company was organised into a Headquarters and three sections. Each section had six armoured cars and two wireless tenders, the make-up of the Company did however vary from time to time. Various sections would be detached to other RAF bases in Iraq, the Company was based at RAF Hinaidi Cantonment until it moved to RAF Habbaniya in 1936. RAF Habbaniya had purpose built, modern facilities for men and machines in the Armoured Car Lines. On 3 October 1946 The Company was incorporated into the RAF Regiment and named No.2701 Armoured Squadron On 25 February 1947, this unit was renamed No.1 Squadron RAF Regiment. Royal Naval Air Service RAF Iraq Command RAF Habbaniya RAF Regiment No.1 Squadron RAF Regiment 1941 Iraqi coup détat Iraqforce Number 2 Armoured Car Company RAF Warwick, IN EVERY PLACE, The RAF Armoured Cars in the Middle East 1921-1953. Rushden, Northamptonshire, England, Forces & Corporate Publishing Ltd. p.664, Iraq 1941, The Battles for Basra, Habbaniya, Fallujah and Baghdad. RAF Regiment Official Site RAF Web RAF Habbaniya Association website
12.
No. 2 Armoured Car Company RAF
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The Number 2 Armoured Car Company RAF was a military unit of the British Royal Air Force which was based at Amman in what was the called the Transjordan. It was the counterpart of No.1 Armoured Car Company RAF, on 7 April 1922, Number 2 Armoured Car Company RAF was formed at Heliopolis in the Kingdom of Egypt. The company was placed under the command of Squadron Leader M. Copeman, in the pre-war period, the Company served in Palestine, on Internal Security duties, during the unrest from 1936 to 1939. During the Second World War it was engaged in service operations in six separate periods of action. At the end of the war, it returned to Syria, Western Desert, The Company served in the Western Desert in the Ground Defence role, protecting the forward Landing Grounds of the Desert Air Force, on three occasions. On this occasion, both RAF Companies were involved, after rest and refit, it was back in the Ground Defence role when Rommel initiated his offensive, defending the airstrips. The final offensive in Africa began in November 1942, again with both RAF Companies involved, and continued across Libya and into Tunisia. Armoured Reconnaissance unit, The wartime baptism of fire for the unit, however, was as a unit of the Western Desert Force, two sections of the Company joined the similarly-equipped, and very hard-pressed, armoured cavalry regiment, the 11th Hussars. On arrival, in September 1940, the Sections were combined to form a Squadron, the RAF cars stayed in this role over the winter of 1940-1941, and took part in the halting of the Italian advance, and the subsequent British counter-attack. The RAF cars were involved in the Battle of Bardia and of Beda Fomm and they provided the screen on the great chase to cut the corner and trap the enemy in Cyrenaica. When the Squadron was finally recalled, in February 1942, it had been active for 5 months. Iraq, When RAF Habbaniya was besieged during the Anglo-Iraqi War, at Habbaniya, the defenders included the comrades of No.1 Armoured Car Company, RAF. They were in advance of Kingcol, half of the Company, led by the unit commander, Sqn. Michael Casano, proceeded into Iraq and captured Rutbah Fort, for his actions during the Revolt, Casano was awarded the Military Cross. The Company was composed of eight Fordson armoured cars, Fordson armoured cars were Rolls Royce armoured cars which received new chassis from a Fordson truck in Egypt. Photographs show some of these vehicles with turrets fitted with what appear to be a Boys anti-tank rifle, a machine gun, and twin light machine guns for anti-aircraft defense. Syria, Immediately following the Relief of Habbaniya, the battle-hardened Company was kept on, by a desperately over-stretched Middle East Command, on 3 October 1946, Number 2 Armoured Car Company RAF was incorporated into the RAF Regiment and was renumbered 2702 Armoured Car Squadron. On 25 Feb 1947, after pressure by Squadron members and veterans, seven years later, the armoured cars were gone and the unit was named Number 2 Squadron RAF Regiment
13.
No. 3 Squadron RAF Regiment
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No.3 Squadron RAF Regiment was a field squadron of the RAF Regiment in the Royal Air Force. Its mission was protection of RAF bases from ground attack, the history of No.3 Squadron Royal Air Force Regiment dates back to the inter-war years, before the formation of the Royal Air Force Regiment itself. No.3 Armoured Car Company was formed on 3 November 1922 at Basra, the Company conducted operations both on its own and in co-operation with aircraft against disaffected Kurdish tribes over a wide area of southern and eastern Iraq. On 1 April 1925 the Company was disbanded and its personnel, the Second World War was the first war in which air power was to play a decisive role. The rear, which historically had always protected by the front, would be wide open to the enemys air. This threat to Royal Air Force stations was initially countered by the formation of Defence Squadrons, No.757 Defence Squadron was formed at RAF Nutts Corner in Northern Ireland in late 1940 and on 19 December 1941 was re-numbered to No.2757 Squadron. The Chiefs of Staff accepted the recommendations of the resultant report that the Royal Air Force should form its own Aerodrome Defence Corps, thus on 2 February 1942 the Royal Air Force Regiment, a Corps formed as an integral part of the Royal Air Force, came into being. No.2757 Squadron was absorbed into the new Corps and acquired a mobile defence role and by the time it reached Europe on 20 August 1944, it was organised as an Armoured Car Squadron. During the Campaign in North Western Europe the Squadron was continually on the move seeing active service in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. At the end of the world war, the Squadron was in Germany as part of the 2nd Tactical Air Force. In August 1947, the Squadron was re-numbered as No.3 Squadron and continued to serve in Germany at RAF Fassberg, the Squadron was briefly resurrected on 1 January 1956 as No.3 Squadron Royal Air Force Regiment, before being disbanded again on 30 September 1957. The present Squadron was re-formed on 27 July 1987 at RAF Hullavington on and on 1 February 1988 it moved to RAF Aldergrove, while in Northern Ireland it was tasked primarily with the protection of the military airhead at RAF Aldergrove, the home of the Joint Helicopter Force. Additionally, the Squadron regularly provided support to the Police Service of Northern Ireland and it has since relocated at RAF Wittering. The squadron was disbanded on 14 April 2015,3 Sqn History at the official RAF website
14.
Rolls-Royce Armoured Car
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The Rolls-Royce Armoured Car was a British armoured car developed in 1914 and used during the First World War, and in the early stages of the Second World War. The Royal Naval Air Service raised the first British armoured car squadron during the First World War, in September 1914 all available Rolls Royce Silver Ghost chassis were requisitioned to form the basis for the new armoured car. The following month a special committee of the Admiralty Air Department, hetherington, designed the superstructure which consisted of armoured bodywork and a single fully rotating turret holding a regular water cooled Vickers machine gun. Later in the war they served on several fronts of the Middle Eastern theatre, chassis production was suspended in 1917 to enable Rolls-Royce to concentrate on aero engines. The vehicle was modernized in 1920 and in 1924, resulting in the Rolls-Royce 1920 Pattern, some vehicles in Egypt and Iraq received new chassis from a Fordson truck and became known as Fordson Armoured Cars. Pictures show them as equipped with what appear to be fitted with a Boys ATR. Six RNAS Rolls-Royce squadrons were formed of 12 vehicles each, one went to France, one to Africa to fight in the German colonies and in April 1915 two went to Gallipoli. From August 1915 onwards these were all disbanded and the handed over to the Army which used them in the Light Armoured Motor Batteries of the Machine Gun Corps. The armoured cars were poorly suited to the trench filled battlefields of the Western Front. Lawrence of Arabia used a squadron in his operations against the Turkish forces and he called the unit of nine armoured Rolls-Royces more valuable than rubies in helping win his Revolt in the Desert. In the Irish Civil War,13 Rolls-Royce armoured cars were given to the Irish Free State government by the British government to fight the Irish Republican Army. They were an advantage to the Free State in street fighting and in protecting convoys against guerrilla attacks and played a vital role part in the retaking of Cork. Incredibly, despite continued maintenance problems and poor reaction to Irish weather, they continued in service until 1944, twelve of the Irish Army examples were stripped and sold in 1954. At the outbreak of the Second World War,76 vehicles were in service and they were used in operations in the Western Desert, in Iraq, and in Syria. By the end of 1941, they were withdrawn from service as modern designs became available. Some Indian Pattern cars saw use in the Indian subcontinent and Burma,1920 Pattern Mk I - thicker radiator armour and new wheels. 1920 Pattern Mk IA - commanders cupola,1924 Pattern Mk I - turret with commanders cupola. 1921 Indian Pattern - based on the 1920 Pattern, had extended hull armour to provide extra space and a domed turret with four ball mounts for machine guns
15.
Middle East
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The Middle East is a transcontinental region centered on Western Asia and Egypt. The corresponding adjective is Middle-Eastern and the noun is Middle-Easterner. The term has come into usage as a replacement of the term Near East beginning in the early 20th century. Arabs, Turks, Persians, Kurds, and Azeris constitute the largest ethnic groups in the region by population. Indigenous minorities of the Middle East include Jews, Assyrians and other Arameans, Baloch, Berbers, Copts, Druze, Lurs, Mandaeans, Samaritans, Shabaks, Tats, in the Middle East, there is also a Romani community. European ethnic groups form a diaspora in the region include Albanians, Bosniaks, Circassians, Crimean Tatars, Franco-Levantines. Among other migrant populations are Bengalis as well as other Indians, Chinese, Filipinos, Indonesians, Pakistanis, the history of the Middle East dates back to ancient times, with the importance of the region being recognized for millennia. Most of the countries border the Persian Gulf have vast reserves of crude oil. The term Middle East may have originated in the 1850s in the British India Office, however, it became more widely known when American naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan used the term in 1902 to designate the area between Arabia and India. During this time the British and Russian Empires were vying for influence in Central Asia, Mahan realized not only the strategic importance of the region, but also of its center, the Persian Gulf. Mahan first used the term in his article The Persian Gulf and International Relations, published in September 1902 in the National Review, a British journal. The Middle East, if I may adopt a term which I have not seen, will some day need its Malta, as well as its Gibraltar, it does not follow that either will be in the Persian Gulf. The British Navy should have the facility to concentrate in force if occasion arise, about Aden, India, mahans article was reprinted in The Times and followed in October by a 20-article series entitled The Middle Eastern Question, written by Sir Ignatius Valentine Chirol. During this series, Sir Ignatius expanded the definition of Middle East to include regions of Asia which extend to the borders of India or command the approaches to India. After the series ended in 1903, The Times removed quotation marks from subsequent uses of the term, in the late 1930s, the British established the Middle East Command, which was based in Cairo, for its military forces in the region. After that time, the term Middle East gained broader usage in Europe, the description Middle has also led to some confusion over changing definitions. Before the First World War, Near East was used in English to refer to the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire, while Middle East referred to Iran, the Caucasus, Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Turkestan. The first official use of the term Middle East by the United States government was in the 1957 Eisenhower Doctrine, the Associated Press Stylebook says that Near East formerly referred to the farther west countries while Middle East referred to the eastern ones, but that now they are synonymous
16.
Humber Light Reconnaissance Car
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The Humber Light Reconnaissance Car, also known as Humberette or Ironside, was a British armoured car produced during the Second World War. Produced by the Rootes Group, the Humber Light Reconnaissance Car was a car based on the Humber Super Snipe chassis. It was equipped with a No.19 radio set, from 1940 to 1943 over 3600 units were built. The vehicle was used by Infantry Reconnaissance Regiments and the RAF Regiment in Tunisia, Italy, after the war, some vehicles remained in service with the British units in India and in the Far East. The LRC was used widely by the Reconnaissance Corps and was used by the Reconnaissance squadron of the 1st Czechoslovak Independent Armoured Brigade Group. Three Mk I vehicles were modified for use by the British Royal Family, Mk I The original version with open-topped hull and 4×2 drive. Armoured to a maximum of 10 mm on the front and 7–9 mm on the sides, armament was a Boys anti-tank rifle and a Bren light machine gun. Only a limited number were built before the Mk I was replaced by the Mk II, Mk II The Mk II had an enclosed roof with a turret for the machine gun and retained the 4×2 drive of the Mk I. The Boys faced forward in the front of the hull, otherwise armoured as the Mark I, the roof was 7 mm and the turret 6 mm. Mk III The Mk III was externally similar to the Mk II but had 4×4 drive. Mk IIIA The only difference from the Mk III was additional vision ports at the front angles of the hull, armour was 12 mm to the front,8 mm to the sides,7 on the roof and rear, and 6 mm on the turret. Ironside Special Saloon Built for VIP use, the body by Thrupp & Maberly included a relatively luxurious interior which was split by a Perspex screen to separate driver and passengers. Two Ironside specials of this kind were used by ministers and members of the royal family. Moschanskiy - Armored vehicles of the Great Britain 1939-1945 part 2, Modelist-Konstruktor, doherty, R Morshead, H Humber Light Reconnaissance Car 1941–45 New Vanguard 177 Osprey Publishing 9781849083102 Warwheels. net wwiivehicles. com
17.
Middelburg
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Middelburg is a municipality and a city in the south-western Netherlands and the capital of the province of Zeeland. Situated on the peninsula of the Zeeland province, Midden-Zeeland. The city of Middelburg dates back possibly to the late 8th century or early 9th century, the first mention of Middelburg was as one of three fortified towns erected on Walcheren to guard against Viking raids. In 844 a monastery was built on the site, which remained an active Catholic foundation until the Reformation, foundations for Middelburgs stately and picturesque cathedral were first laid in the 10th century, additional construction continued through the Middle Ages. Middelburg was granted city rights in 1217, during the Middle Ages, it became an important trading centre in the commerce between England and the rising cities of Flanders. The town continued to gain in power and prestige during the 13th and 14th centuries, from 1559.05.12 to 1603, Middelburg was the episcopal see of a Catholic bishopric covering all Zeeland. In the Eighty Years War, Middelburg was captured from the Spanish forces during a long siege, the northern provinces of the original Low Countries won their independence from their former Spanish Habsburg rulers and formed The Netherlands, a Protestant state. Middelburg played an important role in the 17th century slave trade, samuel Ben Israel, son of Menasseh Ben Israel, is buried in Middelburg at the Sephardic burial site located at the Jodengang outside the citywall. Menasseh Ben Israel negotiated with Cromwell the opening of England, and their colonies, Middelburg also has an Ashkenazic burial site, which is located at the Walensingel inside the city wall. In 1994 the synagogue was restored, as it was destroyed during the Second World War. This synagogue was the one to be built in the Netherlands during the Golden Age. In the hall of the station there is a plaque of remembrance for the Jews of Zeeland who started their journey to the death camps from the Middelburg train station. About a third of the old city centre was devastated by bombs and fire in the phases of World War II, on May 17,1940. The town was captured and liberated by British troops during Operation Infatuate on 5 November 1944, after the War, as much of the destroyed part of the old town center was rebuilt and restored along pre-War lines as possible. The citys archives, however, had been incinerated during the German bombardment, modern Middelburg has preserved and regained much of its historic and picturesque character. There are lavish 17th and 18th century merchant houses and storehouses standing along canals, the old city moats are still there, as are two of the city gates, the Koepoort Gate and the varkenspoort Gate. Part of the 18th century moat and defence works, however, were demolished in the 19th century to make way for a canal that crosses Walcheren from Vlissingen to Veere. The medieval abbey is still in use today, as a museum, the painter Pieter Gaal, was born and, after traveling over Europe to paint, settled and died here
18.
Netherlands
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The Netherlands, also informally known as Holland is the main constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a densely populated country located in Western Europe with three territories in the Caribbean. The European part of the Netherlands borders Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, sharing borders with Belgium, the United Kingdom. The three largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, Amsterdam is the countrys capital, while The Hague holds the Dutch seat of parliament and government. The port of Rotterdam is the worlds largest port outside East-Asia, the name Holland is used informally to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands. Netherlands literally means lower countries, influenced by its low land and flat geography, most of the areas below sea level are artificial. Since the late 16th century, large areas have been reclaimed from the sea and lakes, with a population density of 412 people per km2 –507 if water is excluded – the Netherlands is classified as a very densely populated country. Only Bangladesh, South Korea, and Taiwan have both a population and higher population density. Nevertheless, the Netherlands is the worlds second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products and this is partly due to the fertility of the soil and the mild climate. In 2001, it became the worlds first country to legalise same-sex marriage, the Netherlands is a founding member of the EU, Eurozone, G-10, NATO, OECD and WTO, as well as being a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union. The first four are situated in The Hague, as is the EUs criminal intelligence agency Europol and this has led to the city being dubbed the worlds legal capital. The country also ranks second highest in the worlds 2016 Press Freedom Index, the Netherlands has a market-based mixed economy, ranking 17th of 177 countries according to the Index of Economic Freedom. It had the thirteenth-highest per capita income in the world in 2013 according to the International Monetary Fund, in 2013, the United Nations World Happiness Report ranked the Netherlands as the seventh-happiest country in the world, reflecting its high quality of life. The Netherlands also ranks joint second highest in the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, the region called Low Countries and the country of the Netherlands have the same toponymy. Place names with Neder, Nieder, Nether and Nedre and Bas or Inferior are in use in all over Europe. They are sometimes used in a relation to a higher ground that consecutively is indicated as Upper, Boven, Oben. In the case of the Low Countries / the Netherlands the geographical location of the region has been more or less downstream. The geographical location of the region, however, changed over time tremendously
19.
Operation Infatuate
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Operation Infatuate was the code name given to an Anglo-Canadian operation during the Second World War to open the port of Antwerp to shipping and relieve logistical constraints. The operation was part of the wider Battle of the Scheldt, at the same time the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division would force a crossing of the Walcheren causeway. The city of Antwerp and its port was captured by British 2nd Army in early September 1944, while 21st Army Groups priority at the time was Operation Market-Garden, no sense of urgency was placed in securing the approaches to the port facilities there. German tenacity in the channel meant that the Allied supply lines would continue to extend the further away the front line advanced. The channel ports were eventually masked when the Canadian army failed to take the ports, on 9 October 1944 Field Marshal Montgomery issued a directive directing the Canadian Army to give absolute priority to the clearing of the Scheldt over any other offensive operations. And ten days later the Canadians began their approach to Walcheren Island along the isthmus, to the south of the Scheldt, the Germans had been cornered in Zeebrugge, surrendering the Breskens Pocket on November 2. Both South and North-Beveland had been cleared and the time was right for the assault of Walcheren itself. For the Allies, failure to take Middelburg after the Battle of Walcheren Causeway was a prelude to Operation Infatuate. A three-pronged assault was planned with British Commandos and part of the 52nd Division landing at Westkapelle in the west of the island, the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division was to cross by a water channel close to the causeway in the east. The Canadians established a bridgehead on the island through which the British 52nd Lowland Division attempted to pass, against much scepticism and opposition, the plan of Lieut. -Gen. Guy Simonds to breach the islands dykes, and flood the interior, was adopted, the bombing of Walcheren in October by RAF Bomber Command had deliberately breached the dykes around the island and had turned it into a massive lagoon, rimmed by broken dykes. The Germans had installed defences on the dykes to virtually turn them into a continuous fortification bristling with guns of every calibre, the British Marines placed great reliance on Weasel and Buffalo amphibious landing craft. After some debate over the sea conditions the operation was planned for 1 November, on the day of the assault a heavy mist over Dutch and Belgian airfields limited RAF support for the actual landings, although the skies over Walcheren itself were clear. No.4 Commando landed at 05,45 hours just east of the Oranjemolen, No.4 Commando, under Lt-Colonel Robert W. P. Dawson DSO, had problems finding a place to get ashore. Dawson sent a reconnaissance party ashore in two Landing Craft Personnel. They were followed by Nos.1 and 2 Troop, who secured the beachhead with minimal casualties, the main body came in at 06,30 hours, but by this time the Germans were totally alert and opened heavy fire with machine guns and 20 mm anti-aircraft cannon. The Commandos now fought their way through the German strongpoints and they were somewhat encumbered by the need to leave rearguards against infiltration
20.
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
21.
RAF Belton Park
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RAF Belton Park was established in 1942 as the Royal Air Force Regiment Depot, for training RAF Regiment personnel in airfield defence. Belton Park is located 2 miles ) north of the centre of Grantham, Lincolnshire, the site of the Depot was on farmland on the opposite side of Londonthorpe Lane from the Park. As early as the 1920s the RAF had formed small airfield defence units, in January 1942 King George VI signed a Royal Warrant for “a Corps formed as an integral part of the RAF”, and the RAF Regiment was born. The first Depot was opened in Filey with instructional staff seconded from the Brigade of Guards, the Depot moved to Belton Park in 1942. During World War I Belton Park had been a centre for the Machine Gun Corps and had housed and trained 18,000 men. In 1946 the site was converted into housing, and named Alma Park Estate. The former NAAFI block was converted into a primary school, the houses and school have been demolished, and the site is now an industrial estate. List of former Royal Air Force stations RAF Regiment Belton House
22.
Grantham
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Grantham is a market town within the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. It bestrides the London to Edinburgh East Coast Main Line railway and the River Witham, Grantham is about 26 miles south of the city and county town of Lincoln, and about 24 miles east of the city of Nottingham. The resident population in 2014 was estimated as 43,117, the town is best known as the birthplace of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, and the place where Isaac Newton went to school, at The Kings School. It is close to an ancient Roman road, and was the scene of Oliver Cromwells first advantage over Royalists during the English Civil War at Gonerby Moor, the origin of Grantham is uncertain, although the name is said probably to be Old English Granta+ham, meaning Grantas homestead. It appeared as early as 1086 in the Domesday Book in its present form of Grantham, the place name element grand could possibly mean gravel. The name of the town is the origin of the Scottish surname, now used as a given name. Late neolithic vessels from a burial were found at Little Gonerby, in the north of the town, a number of flint blades have been found, including from near Welham Street to the south-east of the town centre and from near Barrowby where a macehead has also been found. At Little Gonerby a neolithic settlement site was discovered with finds of pottery, Bronze Age flint scatters have also been found in several places, particularly on the higher ground near Barrowby. At Saltersford a Bronze Age ingot and a rapier were found, there are also several ring ditches on the higher ground above Saltersford. According to the Chronicles of Raphael Holinshed, Gorbonianus, a legendary King of the Britons built Grantham between 292 and 282 BC, the Domesday account notes Queen Edith having 12 carucates to the geld, with no arable land outside the village. She had a hall, two carucates and land for three ploughs without geld, and 111 burgesses, ivo had one church and four mills rendering 12 shillings, and eight acres of meadow without geld. The lands of Bishop Osmond were described, In Londonthorpe. is land for two ploughs and this land belongs to the church of Grantham. In Spittlegate, St Wulfram of Grantham has half a carucate of land to the geld, in Great Gonerby, St Wulfram of Grantham has 1 carucate of land. There is land for twelve oxen, on 4 December 1290, the funeral cortège of Eleanor of Castile, accompanied by her husband King Edward I, stopped at Grantham on its way from Lincoln to Westminster Abbey. An Eleanor Cross was later erected in the town, although its location has not been identified. In 1363 The Castles, Manors and towns of Stamford and Grantham were granted to Edmund of Langley, 1st Duke of York, the question has been raised as to whether Grantham House was the site of a castle, however, no such site has been reliably identified. The street name Castlegate cannot be traced further back than the 17th century, there are references to a Hospital in Grantham as early as the 1330s. Grantham received its Charter of Incorporation in 1463, the town developed when the railway came to the town
23.
Lincolnshire
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Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It also borders Northamptonshire in the south for just 20 yards, Englands shortest county boundary, the county town is Lincoln, where the county council has its headquarters. The ceremonial county of Lincolnshire is composed of the county of Lincolnshire. Therefore, part of the county is in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. The county is the second-largest of the English ceremonial counties and one that is predominantly agricultural in land use, the county is fifth largest of the two-tier counties, as the unitary authorities of North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire are not included. The county can be broken down into a number of geographical sub-regions including, Lincolnshire derived from the merging of the territory of the ancient Kingdom of Lindsey with that controlled by the Danelaw borough of Stamford. For some time the county was called Lindsey, and it is recorded as such in the 11th-century Domesday Book. In 1888 when county councils were set up, Lindsey, Holland and these survived until 1974, when Holland, Kesteven, and most of Lindsey were unified into Lincolnshire. A local government reform in 1996 abolished Humberside, and the south of the Humber was allocated to the unitary authorities of North Lincolnshire. These two areas became part of Lincolnshire for ceremonial such as the Lord-Lieutenancy, but are not covered by the Lincolnshire police and are in the Yorkshire. The remaining districts of Lincolnshire are Boston, East Lindsey, Lincoln, North Kesteven, South Holland, South Kesteven and they are part of the East Midlands region. Lincolnshire is home to Woolsthorpe Manor, birthplace and home of Sir Isaac Newton and he attended The Kings School, Grantham and its library has preserved his signature, applied to a window sill when he was a teenager. Lincolnshire is an area, growing large amounts of wheat, barley, sugar beet. In South Lincolnshire, where the soil is rich in nutrients, some of the most common crops include potatoes, cabbages, cauliflowers. Most such companies are long gone, and Lincolnshire is no longer an engineering centre, however, as a result of the current economic climate some food production facilities have closed down, this has caused some reduction in the levels of migrant workers. The large number of people from Portugal is still obvious in the town of Boston. A coalition of Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Independents currently controls Lincolnshire County Council, the Conservative Party comfortably controlled the County Council following the 2009 local elections, in which they increased their majority to 43 seats. The Labour Party lost a total of 15 seats including 7 in Lincoln, the Lincolnshire Independents gained a total of four seats, although one of their number moved to the Conservative group during 2010, increasing the number of Conservative seats to 61
24.
Hispano-Suiza HS.404
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The HS.404 was an autocannon originally designed and produced by Hispano-Suiza. It was widely used as both an aircraft, naval and land based weapon in the 20th century by French, British, American and numerous other military services, particularly during the Second World War. The cannon is also referred to as Birkigt type 404, after its designer Marc Birkigt, firing a 20 mm caliber projectile, it delivered a useful load of explosive from a relatively light weapon. The HS.404 was produced by the French subsidiary of Hispano-Suiza, in the 1930s, Hispano Suiza S. A. This made the relatively slow, with typical firing rates on the order of 500 rounds per minute. The Hispano-Suiza version was called the Hispano-Suiza Automatic Cannon Type HS.7, shortly after production began, the Hispano-Suiza and Oerlikon companies disagreed over patent rights and their business connection came to an end. The result was the Type 404, or HS.404, while the HS.404 resembled the parent Oerlikon FF S in many respects, its repeating mechanism was a gas-operated locking bolt. On firing the 404, when the projectile passes a hole cut into the barrel about half way along its length hot gas behind the projectile is siphoned off and enters a chamber. Inside the chamber is a piston that presses on a rod running along the top of the back to the bolt, unlocking it and allowing it. Since the bolt was locked during firing, it could be lighter than that of the Oerlikon, thus facilitating an increase in rate of fire to 700 rounds per minute, in 1938, Birkigt patented it and started production in their Geneva factory. The HS. 404s predecessor, the Oerlikon type S auto-cannon, was heavy and this. In contrast the lighter bolt of the HS.404 made it well suited to mounting on vehicles, the M16, an anti-aircraft version of the M3 Half-track, could be equipped with single or double American made copies of the Hispano-Suiza auto-cannon. This variant of the M3 Half-track was used by US and Commonwealth forces late in the Second World War, in 1938, an aircraft based version of the HS.404 was produced at the request of the French government. The HS.404 was fed by drum magazines that could accommodate 60 rounds at most, since in most installations the magazine could not be switched during flight, the small ammunition capacity was a weakness. In 1940, Hispano-Suiza was developing a system, as well as derivatives of the HS.404 in heavier calibres such as 23 mm. In the buildup to the Second World War, the United Kingdom had embarked on a programme to develop cannon-armed fighters and they acquired a licence to build the HS.404, which entered production as the Hispano Mk. I intended as aeroplane armament. Its first use was in the Westland Whirlwind of 1940, and later in the more powerful Bristol Beaufighter and this led to the Air Ministry for a brief period specifying 12-machine gun armament for new fighters. Subsequently a suitable belt-feeding system was developed by Martin-Baker, and the new design was adopted by the RAF, four cannons replaced the eight.303 Browning machine guns in the Hurricane and in some tropical versions of the Spitfire, becoming standard armament in later fighters
25.
Bofors 40 mm gun
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The Bofors 40 mm gun, often referred to simply as the Bofors gun, is an anti-aircraft/multi-purpose autocannon designed in the 1930s by the Swedish arms manufacturer AB Bofors. It was one of the most popular medium-weight anti-aircraft systems during World War II, a small number of these weapons remain in service to this day, and saw action as late as the Gulf War. In the post-war era the original design was not suitable for action against jet powered aircraft, so Bofors introduced a new model of more power. In spite of sharing almost nothing with the design other than the calibre and the distinctive conical flash hider. Although not as popular as the original L/60 model, the L/70 remains in service to this day, especially as a weapon for light armored vehicles. Bofors itself has been part of BAE Systems AB since March 2005, the Swedish Navy purchased a number of 2 pounder Pom-Poms from Vickers as anti-aircraft guns in 1922. The Navy approached Bofors about the development of a capable replacement. Bofors signed a contract in late 1928, Bofors produced a gun that was a smaller version of a 57 mm semi-automatic gun developed as an anti-torpedo boat weapon in the late 19th century by Finspong. Their first test gun was a re-barreled Nordenfelt version of the Finspong gun, testing of this gun in 1929 demonstrated that a problem existed feeding the weapon in order to maintain a reasonable rate of fire. A mechanism that was enough to handle the stresses of moving the large round was too heavy to move quickly enough to fire rapidly. One attempt to solve this problem used zinc shell cases that burned up when fired and this proved to leave heavy zinc deposits in the barrel, and had to be abandoned. This seemed to be the solution they needed, improving firing rates to a level. During this period Krupp purchased a share of Bofors. Krupp engineers started the process of updating the Bofors factories to use equipment and metallurgy. The prototype was completed and fired in November 1931, and by the middle of the month it was firing strings of two and three rounds. Changes to the mechanism were all that remained, and by the end of the year it was operating at 130 rounds per minute. Continued development was needed to turn it into a suitable for production. Since acceptance trials had been passed the year before, this known as the 40 mm akan M/32
26.
Parachute
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A parachute is a device used to slow the motion of an object through an atmosphere by creating drag. Parachutes are usually out of light, strong cloth, originally silk. Parachutes often take the shape of a dome, but shapes may vary including some taking the shape of an inverted dome, depending on the situation, parachutes are used with a variety of loads, including people, food, equipment, space capsules, and bombs. Drogue chutes are used to aid horizontal deceleration of a vehicle, the earliest evidence for the parachute dates back to the Renaissance period. The oldest parachute design appears in a manuscript from 1470s Renaissance Italy. As a safety measure, four straps run from the ends of the rods to a waist belt, shortly after, a more sophisticated parachute was sketched by the polymath Leonardo da Vinci in his Codex Atlanticus dated to ca. Here, the scale of the parachute is in a more favorable proportion to the weight of the jumper, Leonardos canopy was held open by a square wooden frame, which alters the shape of the parachute from conical to pyramidal. It is not known whether the Italian inventor was influenced by the earlier design, the feasibility of Leonardos pyramidal design was successfully tested in 2000 by Briton Adrian Nicholas and again in 2008 by the Swiss skydiver Olivier Vietti-Teppa. The Croatian polymath and inventor Faust Vrančić examined da Vincis parachute sketch and he kept the square frame, but replaced the canopy with a bulging sail-like piece of cloth that he came to realize decelerates the fall more effectively. However, in book, John Wilkins wrote about flying. The modern parachute was invented in the late 18th century by Louis-Sébastien Lenormand in France, Lenormand also sketched his device beforehand. Two years later, in 1785, Lenormand coined the word parachute by hybridizing a Latin prefix para, and chute, also in 1785, Jean-Pierre Blanchard demonstrated it as a means of safely disembarking from a hot-air balloon. Subsequent development of the focused on it becoming more compact. In 1797, André Garnerin made the first descent using such a parachute, Garnerin also invented the vented parachute, which improved the stability of the fall. In 1907 Charles Broadwick demonstrated two key advances in the parachute he used to jump from hot air balloons at fairs and he folded his parachute into a pack he wore on his back. And the parachute was pulled from the pack by a line attached to the balloon. When Broadwick jumped from the balloon, the line became taut, pulled the parachute from the pack. In 1911 a successful test took place with a dummy at the Eiffel tower in Paris, the puppets weight was 75 kg, the parachutes weight was 21 kg
27.
Queen's Guard
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The Queens Guard and Queens Life Guard are the names given to contingents of infantry and cavalry soldiers charged with guarding the official royal residences in the United Kingdom. They are not purely ceremonial, despite tourist perceptions to the contrary, the Queens Guard are fully operational soldiers. This covers Buckingham Palace, St Jamess Palace and the Tower of London, the Queens Guard is also mounted at the sovereigns other official residence, the Palace of Holyroodhouse, but not as often as in London. In Edinburgh, the guard is the responsibility of the resident infantry battalion at Redford Barracks and it is not mounted at the Queens private residences at Sandringham or Balmoral. The Queens Guard is the given to the contingent of infantry responsible for guarding Buckingham Palace. The guard is made up of a company of soldiers from a single regiment, because the Sovereigns official residence is still St Jamess, the guard commander is based there, as are the regiments colours. When the Sovereign is in residence, the Queens Guard numbers three officers and 40 other ranks, with four sentries each posted at Buckingham Palace and St Jamess Palace and this reduces to three officers and 31 ORs, with two sentries each when the Sovereign is not in residence. The Queens Guard is not purely ceremonial in nature and they provide sentries during the day and night, and during the latter hours they patrol the grounds of the Palace. Until 1959, the sentries at Buckingham Palace were stationed outside the fence, the tourist made a complaint to the police and, despite sympathy, the sentry was confined to barracks for ten days. Not long after, the sentries were moved inside the fence, at any one time, three infantry battalions are posted for public duties, two of these are Guards battalions, while the third is a line infantry unit. In addition, there are three companies based at Royal Artillery Barracks, Woolwich and Wellington Barracks. On many occasions, the Gurkhas, RAF Regiment and Royal Marines have provided the guard, only one unit has come from a Commonwealth country of which the Queen is not head of state, namely the 1st Battalion Royal Malay Regiment in 2008. Prior to Options for Change, because there were a total of eight battalions, it was rare for battalions of line infantry to mount the Queens Guard and. Before 1996, only two battalions had served on public duties as part of a tour in London District. In 1938 the Honourable Artillery Company, a Territorial Army unit, in June 2015 soldiers from the 3rd Battalion The Royal Welsh provided the Tower of London detachment of the Queens Guard. On 14 May 1941, the Home Guard provided the Kings Guard and this was repeated in May 1943. There are two detachments of the Queens Guard in London, one each for Buckingham Palace and St Jamess Palace, because St Jamess Palace is still the official residence of the Court, it is here that the Colour is lodged and the Captain of the Guard establishes his headquarters. The Queens Guard in London changes in the Forecourt of Buckingham Palace at 11, 30am every day in the summer and these two detachments are the Old Guard
28.
Buckingham Palace
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Buckingham Palace is the London residence and administrative headquarters of the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom. Located in the City of Westminster, the palace is often at the centre of state occasions and it has been a focal point for the British people at times of national rejoicing and mourning. It was acquired by King George III in 1761 as a residence for Queen Charlotte. During the 19th century it was enlarged, principally by architects John Nash and Edward Blore, Buckingham Palace became the London residence of the British monarch on the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837. The palace chapel was destroyed by a German bomb during World War II, the original early 19th-century interior designs, many of which survive, include widespread use of brightly coloured scagliola and blue and pink lapis, on the advice of Sir Charles Long. King Edward VII oversaw a partial redecoration in a Belle Époque cream, many smaller reception rooms are furnished in the Chinese regency style with furniture and fittings brought from the Royal Pavilion at Brighton and from Carlton House. The palace has 775 rooms, and the garden is the largest private garden in London, the state rooms, used for official and state entertaining, are open to the public each year for most of August and September and on some days in winter and spring. In the Middle Ages, the site of the palace formed part of the Manor of Ebury. The marshy ground was watered by the river Tyburn, which flows below the courtyard. Where the river was fordable, the village of Eye Cross grew, ownership of the site changed hands many times, owners included Edward the Confessor and his queen consort Edith of Wessex in late Saxon times, and, after the Norman Conquest, William the Conqueror. William gave the site to Geoffrey de Mandeville, who bequeathed it to the monks of Westminster Abbey, in 1531, King Henry VIII acquired the Hospital of St James from Eton College, and in 1536 he took the Manor of Ebury from Westminster Abbey. These transfers brought the site of Buckingham Palace back into royal hands for the first time since William the Conqueror had given it away almost 500 years earlier, various owners leased it from royal landlords and the freehold was the subject of frenzied speculation during the 17th century. By then, the old village of Eye Cross had long fallen into decay. Needing money, James I sold off part of the Crown freehold, clement Walker in Anarchia Anglicana refers to new-erected sodoms and spintries at the Mulberry Garden at S. Jamess, this suggests it may have been a place of debauchery. Eventually, in the late 17th century, the freehold was inherited from the property tycoon Sir Hugh Audley by the great heiress Mary Davies, possibly the first house erected within the site was that of a Sir William Blake, around 1624. The next owner was Lord Goring, who from 1633 extended Blakes house and he did not, however, obtain the freehold interest in the mulberry garden. Unbeknown to Goring, in 1640 the document failed to pass the Great Seal before King Charles I fled London and it was this critical omission that helped the British royal family regain the freehold under King George III. The improvident Goring defaulted on his rents, Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington obtained the mansion and was occupying it, now known as Goring House, Arlington House rose on the site—the location of the southern wing of todays palace—the next year
29.
British Army during the Second World War
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This article is about the British Army during the Second World War. The British Army was, in 1939, a army, that introduced limited conscription in early 1939. During the early years of the Second World War, the British Army suffered defeat in almost every theatre of war in which it was deployed, with mass conscription, the expansion of the British Army was reflected in the formation of larger armies and army groups. From 1943, the larger and better-equipped British Army never suffered a strategic defeat, the pre-war British Army was trained and equipped to be a small, mechanised, professional army. Its main function was to garrison the British Empire and it became evident early in the war that its initial structure and manpower was woefully unprepared and ill-equipped for a war with multiple enemies on multiple fronts. The British Army, a force until 1939, was small in comparison to its enemies at the start of the Second World War in 1939. By the end of the Second World War, however, over 3.5 million men had served in the British Army, the British Army was called on to fight around the world, starting with campaigns in Europe in 1940. After the Dunkirk evacuation, the army fought on in the Mediterranean and Middle East theatre, after a series of setbacks, retreats and evacuations, the British Army eventually, with its Allies, gained the upper hand. This started with victory in the Tunisian Campaign, and then Italy was forced to surrender after the invasions of Sicily and mainland Italy itself in 1943. In 1944, the returned to France, driving the German Army back into Germany. Both the Germans and Japanese were defeated by 1945 and surrendered within months of each other, with the expansion of the British Army to fight a world war, new armies were formed and eventually army groups were created to control even larger formations. In command of new armies, eight men would be promoted to the rank of Field Marshal. The army commanders not only had to manage the new armies, but also a new type of soldier in formations like the Special Air Service, Special Boat Service, Commandos and the Parachute Regiment. Prior to the war, the British Army was a professional army, designed to be able to win quick victories by utilising superior mobility. Nevertheless, its effectiveness was hampered by the doctrine of casualty avoidance, the army knew that British society, and the soldiers themselves, would never again allow them to recklessly throw away lives. There was also a tendency to consolidate gains made on the battlefield instead of aggressively exploiting successes. Developments were constrained by the Treasury, in the 1920s, and much of the 1930s, the General Staff tried to establish a small mechanized professional army, using the Experimental Mechanized Force as a prototype. However, with the lack of any identified threat, the Armys main function was to garrison the British Empire, during this time, the army suffered from a lack of funding
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Operation Overlord
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Operation Overlord was the code name for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 with the Normandy landings, a 1, 200-plane airborne assault preceded an amphibious assault involving more than 5,000 vessels. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on 6 June, the decision to undertake a cross-channel invasion in 1944 was taken at the Trident Conference in Washington in May 1943. The coast of Normandy was chosen as the site of the invasion, with the Americans assigned to land at sectors codenamed Utah and Omaha, the British at Sword and Gold, and the Canadians at Juno. In the months leading up to the invasion, the Allies conducted a military deception, Operation Bodyguard. This misled the Germans as to the date and location of the main Allied landings, Adolf Hitler placed German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in charge of developing fortifications all along the Atlantic Wall in anticipation of an invasion. A failed counterattack by German forces on 8 August left 50,000 soldiers of the 7th Army trapped in the Falaise pocket, the Allies launched an invasion of southern France on 15 August, and the Liberation of Paris followed on 25 August. German forces retreated across the Seine on 30 August 1944, marking the close of Operation Overlord, in June 1940, Germanys leader Adolf Hitler had triumphed in what he called the most famous victory in history—the fall of France. The defending British Expeditionary Force, trapped along the northern coast of France, was able to evacuate over 338,000 troops to England in the Dunkirk evacuation. After the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin began pressing for the creation of a front in Western Europe. Two tentative plans code-named Operation Roundup and Operation Sledgehammer were put forward for 1942–43, instead, the Allies launched the invasion of French North Africa in November 1942, the invasion of Sicily in July 1943, and invaded Italy in September. These operations provided the troops with valuable experience in amphibious warfare, the decision to undertake a cross-channel invasion within the next year was taken at the Trident Conference in Washington in May 1943. Churchill favoured making the main Allied thrust into Germany from the Mediterranean theatre, but was over-ruled by his American allies, British Lieutenant-General Frederick E. Morgan was appointed Chief of Staff, Supreme Allied Commander, to begin detailed planning. The initial plans were constrained by the number of landing craft, most of which were already committed in the Mediterranean. In part because of lessons learned in the Dieppe Raid of 19 August 1942, the failure at Dieppe also highlighted the need for adequate artillery and air support, particularly close air support, and specialised ships able to travel extremely close to shore. Morgan considered four sites for the landings, Brittany, the Cotentin Peninsula, Normandy, as Brittany and Cotentin are peninsulas, it would have been possible for the Germans to cut off the Allied advance at a relatively narrow isthmus, so these sites were rejected. The Pas de Calais is the closest point in continental Europe to Britain and was the location of sites for V-1 and V-2 rockets. The Germans considered it to be the most likely initial landing zone, Normandy was hence chosen as the landing site
31.
Officer (armed forces)
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An officer is a member of an armed force or uniformed service who holds a position of authority. In this sense, officers are not enlisted, but hold appointments from their government that typically remain in force indefinitely unless resigned, the proportion of officers varies greatly. Officers typically make up between an eighth and a fifth of modern armed forces personnel, in 2013, officers were the senior 17% of the British armed forces, and the senior 13. 7% of the French armed forces. In 2012, officers made up about 18% of the German armed forces, historically, however, armed forces have generally had much lower proportions of officers. During the First World War, fewer than 5% of British soldiers were officers, in the early twentieth century, the Spanish army had the highest proportion of officers of any European army, at 12. 5%. Within a nations armed forces, armies tend to have a proportion of officers. For example,13. 9% of British army personnel and 22. 2% of the RAF personnel were officers in 2013, having officers is one requirement for combatant status under the laws of war, though these officers need not have obtained an official commission or warrant. Commissioned officers are typically the only persons, in an armed forces environment, a superior officer is an officer with a higher rank than another officer, who is a subordinate officer relative to the superior. Non-commissioned officers in positions of authority can be said to have control or charge rather than command per se, many advanced militaries require university degrees as a prerequisite for commissioning, even from the enlisted ranks. In the Israel Defense Forces, a university degree is a requirement for an officer to advance to the rank of lieutenant colonel, the IDF often sponsors the studies for its majors, while aircrew and naval officers obtain academic degrees as a part of their training programmes. In the United Kingdom, there are three routes of entry for British Armed Forces officers, the first, and primary route are those who receive their commission directly into the officer grades following completion at their relevant military academy. The third route is similar to the second, in that they convert from an enlisted to a commission, but these are taken from the highest ranks of SNCOs. LE officers, whilst holding the same Queens Commission, generally work in different roles from the DE officers, in the infantry, a number of Warrant Officer Class 1s are commissioned as LE officers. For Royal Navy and Royal Air Force officer candidates, a 30-week period at Britannia Royal Naval College or a 30-week period at RAF College Cranwell, Royal Marines officers receive their training in the Command Wing of the Commando Training Centre Royal Marines during a grueling 15-month course. The courses consist of not only tactical and combat training, but also leadership, management, etiquette, until the Cardwell Reforms of 1871, commissions in the British Army were purchased by officers. The Royal Navy, however, operated on a more meritocratic, or at least socially mobile, AOCS also also included the embedded Aviation Reserve Officer Candidate and Naval Aviation Cadet programs. NAVCADs were personnel who held associates degrees, but lacked bachelors degrees, nAVCADs would complete the entire AOCS program, but would not be commissioned until completion of flight training and receiving their wings. After their initial tour, they would be assigned to a college or university full-time for no more than two years in order to complete their bachelors degree
32.
Other ranks (UK)
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In the Royal Navy, these personnel are called ratings. Non-commissioned member is the equivalent term for the Canadian Armed Forces, colloquially, members of the other ranks are known as rankers. The term is considered to exclude warrant officers, and occasionally also excludes NCOs. In the standard rank scale maintained by NATO, other ranks are coded from OR1 to OR9, in British India, a distinction was made between British other ranks and Indian other ranks
33.
Foot Guards
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In some militaries, foot guards are senior infantry regiments. The Federation Guard is a tri-service Australian ceremonial unit that performs similar functions to the five British, the Foot Guards are the Regular Infantry regiments of the Household Division of the British Army. There have been six active regiments of guards and one reserve regiment. The Royal Guards Reserve Regiment was a formation of the Household Brigade in existence from 1900 to 1901. There are various other distinguishing features of the uniforms of the regiments, such as the colour of the plume, which side it is worn on the bearskin, the collar badge and the shoulder badge. When all five regiments parade together, they are in the order of Grenadier Guards on the flank, then Scots Guards, Welsh Guards, Irish Guards. This is because although the Coldstream are ranked second in seniority and these companies perform ceremonial and security duties in London. The Foot Guards have a role as the garrison for the capital, for the military security of the Sovereign. Two battalions are appointed for public duties, with a third from an infantry regiment since 1996. These provide the Queens Guard, the Tower of London Guard, the Guards Battalions on Public Duties are located in barracks close to Buckingham Palace for them to be able to reach the Palace very quickly in an emergency. In central London, a battalion is based at Wellington Barracks, Westminster, however, as of 2010, the independent incremental companies of the Grenadier and Coldstream Guards have been moved from Chelsea Barracks to the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich. While F Company, Scots Guards, are now based at Wellington Barracks alongside the resident infantry battalion. The Guards Battalion stationed at Windsor generally provides the Windsor Castle Guard, the Windsor battalion is at Victoria Barracks, a quarter of a mile south of the Castle. The Guards Division received a new following the restructuring of the army in 2004. The Royal Guards Reserve Regiment was in existence during the Second Boer War from 1900 to 1901, the Guards Machine Gun Regiment was raised for service during the First World War. Initially, each brigade of the Guards Division had a gun company attached. In 1917, these companies were regimented to form a battalion, further battalions were formed by conversion of the Household Cavalry regiments, and King George V ordered that the regiment be classified as the Sixth Regiment of Foot Guards, or Machine Gun Guards. However, it was disbanded in 1920 and they trained at the Guards Depot in Caterham, Surrey
34.
Secunderabad
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Secunderabad, popularly known as the twin city of Hyderabad is located in the Indian state of Telangana. Named after Sikandar Jah, the third Nizam of the Asaf Jahi dynasty, geographically divided from Hyderabad by the Hussain Sagar lake, Secunderabad is no longer a separate municipal unit and has become part of Hyderabads GHMC municipality. Both cities are known as Hyderabad and together form the sixth largest metropolis in India. Being one of the largest cantonments in India, Secunderabad has a presence of army. The present area around Secunderabad was ruled by the Chalukya dynasty from 624 CE to 1075 CE, area around Secunderbad changed hands between various rulers and by the 18th century, the area was part of Nizams Hyderabad. Modern Secunderabad was founded as a British cantonment after the Nizam Asaf Jah II was defeated at the hands of the British East India Company, later, in 1803, Nizam Sikandar Jah, the third Nizam of Hyderabad, renamed Ulwul as Secunderabad after himself. The city was formed in 1806, after the order was signed by the Nizam allotting the land north of Hussain Sagar to set up the British Cantonment. The twin cities are separated by the man-made Hussain Sagar lake, unlike Hyderabad, the official language of Secunderabad was English. Secunderabad was exempted from duty on imported goods thus making trade very profitable. Various new markets such as Regimental Bazaar and General Bazaar were created, after the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, the construction of a seven metre high wall was started at Trimulgherry and completed in 1867. Secunderabad Railway Station one of the largest in India which is also the headquarters of South Central Railway was established in 1874. The King Edward Memorial Hospital, now known as Gandhi Hospital was established in 1851, a Civil Jail was also established. Originally constructed in 1860 as the house of the British Resident at Hyderabad, the Residency House is now known as the Rashtrapati Nilayam. Sir Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during World War II, was posted in Secunderabad during the 1890s as a subaltern in the British Army, Sir Ronald Ross conducted his initial research on the cause of malaria in the city of Secunderabad. The original building is called the Sir Ronald Ross Institute and is located on Minister Road. Secunderabad Municipality was first formed in 1945, later in 1950, along with Hyderabad Municipality, it was upgraded to Secunderabad Municipal Corporation under the Hyderabad Corporation Act,1950. In 1960 by the Hyderabad Municipal Corporation Act 1955, Secunderabad Municipal Corporation was merged with Hyderabad Corporation to form a single Municipal Corporation, today Secunderabad is part of the Hyderabad district. Secunderabad celebrated two hundred years of its formation in 2006, post-Independence, the Secunderabad Cantonment Board came under the jurisdiction of the Indian Armed forces
35.
Rakhine State
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Rakhine State is a state in Myanmar. It is located approximately between latitudes 17°30 north and 21°30 north and east longitudes 92°10 east and 94°50 east, the Arakan Mountains, rising to 3,063 metres at Victoria Peak, separate Rakhine State from central Burma. Off the coast of Rakhine State there are fairly large islands such as Cheduba. Rakhine State has an area of 36,762 square kilometres, the term Rakhine is believed to have been derived from the Pali word Rakkhapura, meaning Land of Ogres, possibly a pejorative referring to the original Negrito inhabitants. In Hindu religious Text, Austric Race was called Rakshas, the Pali word Rakkhapura means land of the people of Rakhasa. They were given name in honour of their preservation of their national heritage. The word Rakhine means, one who maintains his own race, in the Rakhine language, the land is called Rakhinepray, the ethnic Rakhine are called Rakhinetha. Arakan, used in British colonial times, is believed to be a Portuguese corruption of the word Rakhine that is popularly used in English. Many English language users eschew the name changes promulgated by the military government, the history of the region of Arakan State can be roughly divided into seven parts. Thus, the history is divided into the Dhanyawadi, Waithali, Laymro, Mrauk U was conquered by the Konbaung dynasty of Burma in 1784–85, after which Rakhine became part of the Konbaung kingdom of Burma. In 1824, the first Anglo-Burmese war erupted and in 1826, Rakhine thus became part of the province of Burma of British India. In 1948, Burma was given independence and Rakhine became part of the new federal republic, based on Rakhine oral histories and inscriptions in certain temples, the history of the Rakhine region dates back nearly five thousand years. The Rakhine people trace their history back to as far as 3325 BCE and have given a lineal succession of 227 native monarchs. They also describe their territory of including, in varying points of time, the regions of Ava, the Irrawaddy Delta, however, the expanse of the successive Rakhine kingdoms does not exactly corroborate with certain known historical documentation. According to Rakhine legend, the first recorded kingdom arose, centred around the town of Dhanyawadi in the 34th century BCE. Rakhine documents and inscriptions state that the famed Mahamuni Buddha image was cast in Dhanyawady in around 554 BCE when the Buddha visited the kingdom. After the fall of Dhanyawadi in the 4th century CE, the centre of power shifted to a new dynasty based in the town of Waithali, the Waithali kingdom ruled the regions of Rakhine from the middle of the 4th century to 818 CE. The period is seen as the period of Rakhine culture, architecture and Buddhism
36.
Burma Campaign
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The Burmese Independence Army was trained by the Japanese and spearheaded the initial attacks against British Empire forces. The campaign had a number of notable features, the geographical characteristics of the region meant that factors like weather, disease and terrain had a major effect on operations. The lack of transport infrastructure placed an emphasis on engineering and air transport to move and supply troops. The campaign was politically complex, with the British, the United States. It was also the land campaign by the Western Allies in the Pacific Theatre which proceeded continuously from the start of hostilities to the end of the war. This was due to its geographical location, the climate of the region is dominated by the seasonal monsoon rains, which allowed effective campaigning for only just over half of each year. Japanese objectives in Burma were initially limited to the capture of Rangoon and this would close the overland supply line to China and provide a strategic bulwark to defend Japanese gains in British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies. The Japanese successfully attacked over the Kawkareik Pass, and captured the port of Moulmein at the mouth of the Salween River after overcoming stiff resistance and they then advanced northwards, outflanking successive British defensive positions. Troops of the 17th Indian Infantry Division tried to retreat over the Sittaung River, on 22 February, the bridge was demolished to prevent its capture, a decision that has since been extremely contentious. The loss of two brigades of 17th Indian Division meant that Rangoon could not be defended, although some units arrived, counterattacks failed and the new commander of Burma Army, ordered the city to be evacuated on 7 March after its port and oil refinery had been destroyed. The remnants of Burma Army broke out to the north, narrowly escaping encirclement, with the effective collapse of the entire defensive line, there was little choice left other than an overland retreat to India or to Yunnan. After the fall of Rangoon in March 1942, the Allies attempted to make a stand in the north of the country, having been reinforced by a Chinese Expeditionary Force. The Japanese had also reinforced by two divisions made available by the capture of Singapore, and defeated both the newly organised Burma Corps and the Chinese force. The Allies were also faced with growing numbers of Burmese insurgents, with their forces cut off from almost all sources of supply, the Allied commanders finally decided to evacuate their forces from Burma. The retreat was conducted in very difficult circumstances, starving refugees, disorganised stragglers, and the sick and wounded clogged the primitive roads and tracks leading to India. Burma Corps managed to make it most of the way to Imphal, in Manipur in India just before the monsoon broke in May 1942, having lost most of their equipment, there, they found themselves living out in the open under torrential rains in extremely unhealthy circumstances. The army and civil authorities in India were very slow to respond to the needs of the troops, due to lack of communication, when the British retreated from Burma, almost none of the Chinese knew about the retreat. After recuperating they were re-equipped and retrained by American instructors, the rest of the Chinese troops tried to return to Yunnan through remote mountainous forests and out of these, at least half died
37.
Battle of Imphal
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The Battle of Imphal took place in the region around the city of Imphal, the capital of the state of Manipur in northeast India from March until July 1944. Japanese armies attempted to destroy the Allied forces at Imphal and invade India, the defeat at Kohima and Imphal was the largest defeat to that date in Japanese history. At the start of 1944, the war was going against the Japanese on several fronts and they were being driven back in the central and southwest Pacific, and their merchant ships were under attack by Allied submarines and aircraft. In southeast Asia, they had held their lines over the year, but the Allies were preparing several offensives from India. In particular, the town of Imphal in Manipur on the frontier with Burma was built up to be a substantial Allied logistic base, with airfields, encampments and supply dumps. Imphal was linked to a larger base at Dimapur in the Brahmaputra River valley by a road which wound for 100 miles through the steep. Imphal was held by the IV Corps, commanded by Lieutenant-General Geoffrey Scoones, the corps was in turn part of the British Fourteenth Army under Lieutenant General William Slim. 20th Indian Infantry Division under Major-General Douglas Gracey occupied Tamu,110 kilometres south-east of Imphal, the division was untried but well-trained. 17th Indian Infantry Division under Major-General Punch Cowan occupied Tiddim,243 kilometres south of Imphal, at the end of a long, the division, which had two brigades only, had been intermittently in action since December 1941. 23rd Indian Infantry Division under Major-General Ouvry Roberts was in reserve in and it had served on the Imphal front for two years and was severely understrength as a result of endemic diseases such as malaria and typhus. 50th Indian Parachute Brigade under Brigadier Maxwell Hope-Thompson was north of Imphal, 254th Indian Tank Brigade under Brigadier R. L. Scoones was stationed in and around Imphal. The Indian divisions were composed of both British and Indian personnel, in each brigade, there was generally one British, one Gurkha and one Indian battalion, although two brigades were composed entirely of Gurkha units. Each division was supported by two artillery regiments and one Indian mountain artillery regiment. In March 1943, the Japanese command in Burma had been reorganised, a new headquarters, Burma Area Army, was created under Lieutenant-General Masakazu Kawabe. One of its formations, responsible for the central part of the front facing Imphal. Lieutenant-General Renya Mutaguchi was appointed to command this army in July 1943, from the moment he took command, Mutaguchi forcefully advocated an invasion of India. His motives for doing so appear to be complex and he had played a major part in several Japanese victories, ever since the Marco Polo Bridge incident in 1937, and believed it was his destiny to win the decisive battle of the war for Japan. He may also have been goaded by the first Chindit expedition, Mutaguchi planned to exploit the capture of Imphal by advancing to the Brahmaputra Valley
38.
Operation U-Go
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The U Go offensive, or Operation C, was the Japanese offensive launched in March 1944 against forces of the British Empire in the northeast Indian regions of Manipur and the Naga Hills. The offensive culminated in the Battles of Imphal and Kohima, where the Japanese and their allies were first held, in 1942, the Japanese Army had driven the British, Indian and Chinese troops out of Burma. When heavy monsoon rains stopped campaigning, the British and Indian troops had occupied Imphal and this lay in a plain astride one of the few practicable routes over the jungle-covered mountains which separated India and Burma. The Japanese commander in Burma, Lieutenant General Shōjirō Iida, was asked for his opinion on whether an advance should be made into India after the rains ended. After conferring with his commanders, Iida reported that it would be unwise to do so, because of the difficult terrain. During the year and a half which followed, the Allies reconstructed the lines of communication to Assam, the United States Army created several airbases in Assam from which supplies were flown to the Nationalist Chinese government under Chiang Kai-shek and American airbases in China. This air route, which crossed several mountain ranges, was known as the hump, the Americans also began constructing the Ledo road, which they intended would form a land link from Assam to China. In mid-1943, the Japanese command in Burma had been reorganised, General Iida was posted back to Japan and a new headquarters, Burma Area Army, was created under Lieutenant-General Masakasu Kawabe. One of its formations, responsible for the central part of the front facing Imphal and Assam, was the Fifteenth Army. From the moment he took command, Mutaguchi forcefully advocated an invasion of India and his motives for doing so appear to be complex. He had thought at the time that this plan originated at a local level, by design or chance, Mutaguchi had played a major part in several Japanese victories, ever since the Marco Polo Bridge incident in 1937. He believed it was his destiny to win the battle of the war for Japan. Mutaguchi was also goaded by the first Chindit long-range penetration expedition launched by the British under Orde Wingate early in 1943, wingates troops had traversed terrain which Mutaguchi had earlier claimed would be impassable to the Japanese 18th Division which he commanded at the time. Between 24 June and 27 June 1943, a conference was held in Rangoon. Mutaguchis Chief of Staff, Major General Todai Kunomura, presented Mutaguchis plan, the staff of Burma Area Army objected to Kunomura pre-empting their own limited plans to push the Japanese forward defensive lines a short distance into the mountainous frontier with India. However, Lieutenant General Kawabe did not expressly forbid Mutaguchi to carry out his ideas, Lieutenant General Inada was still opposed, but put forward to Kunomura and Major Iwaichi Fujiwara the apparently frivolous idea of attacking into the Chinese province of Yunnan instead. After another map exercise in Singapore on 23 December 1943, Field Marshal Hisaichi Terauchi approved the plan, inadas replacement, Lieutenant General Kitsuju Ayabe, was despatched to Imperial Army HQ to gain approval. Prime Minister Hideki Tōjō gave final sanction after questioning a staff officer over aspects of the plan from his bath
39.
Monsoon
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Usually, the term monsoon is used to refer to the rainy phase of a seasonally changing pattern, although technically there is also a dry phase. The term is sometimes used for locally heavy but short-term rains. The major monsoon systems of the world consist of the West African and Asia-Australian monsoons, the inclusion of the North and South American monsoons with incomplete wind reversal has been debated. The south-west monsoon winds are called Nairutya Maarut in India, the English monsoon came from Portuguese monção, ultimately from Arabic mawsim and/or Hindi mausam, perhaps partly via early modern Dutch monsun. Strengthening of the Asian monsoon has been linked to the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau after the collision of the Indian sub-continent and Asia around 50 million years ago. Because of studies of records from the Arabian Sea and that of the wind-blown dust in the Loess Plateau of China, testing of this hypothesis awaits deep ocean sampling by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program. The monsoon has varied significantly in strength since this time, largely linked to climate change. A study of marine plankton suggested that the Indian Monsoon strengthened around 5 million years ago, then, during ice periods, the sea level fell and the Indonesian Seaway closed. When this happened, cold waters in the Pacific were impeded from flowing into the Indian Ocean and it is believed that the resulting increase in sea surface temperatures in the Indian Ocean increased the intensity of monsoons. Five episodes during the Quaternary at 2.22 Ma,1.83 Ma,0.68 Ma,0.45 Ma and 0.04 Ma were identified which showed a weakening of Leeuwin Current. The weakening of the LC would have an effect on the sea surface temperature field in the Indian Ocean, thus these five intervals could probably be those of considerable lowering of SST in the Indian Ocean and would have influenced Indian monsoon intensity. The impact of monsoon on the weather is different from place to place. In some places there is just a likelihood of having a more or less rain. In other places, quasi semi-deserts are turned into green grasslands where all sorts of plants. The Indian Monsoon turns large parts of India from a kind of semi-desert into green lands, see photos only taken 3 months apart in the Western Ghats. In places like this it is crucial for farmers to have the right timing for putting the seeds on the fields, Monsoons are large-scale sea breezes which occur when the temperature on land is significantly warmer or cooler than the temperature of the ocean. These temperature imbalances happen because oceans and land absorb heat in different ways, in contrast, dirt, sand, and rocks have lower heat capacities, and they can only transmit heat into the earth by conduction and not by convection. Therefore, bodies of water stay at an even temperature
40.
Battle of Meiktila and Mandalay
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The concurrent Battle of Meiktila and Battle of Mandalay were decisive engagements near the end of the Burma Campaign. Collectively, they are referred to as the Battle of Central Burma. Despite logistical difficulties, the Allies were able to large armoured and mechanised forces in Central Burma. Most of the Japanese forces in Burma were destroyed during the battles, allowing the Allies to later recapture the capital, Rangoon, in 1944, the Japanese had sustained several defeats in the mountainous frontier regions of Burma. In particular, at the Battle of Imphal and Battle of Kohima, the heavy Japanese defeat prompted them to make sweeping changes among their commanders and senior staff officers in Burma. On 1 September 1944, Lieutenant General Hyotaro Kimura was appointed commander of the Burma Area Army, at this stage of the war, the Japanese were in retreat on most fronts and were concentrating their resources for the defence of the homeland. Kimura had formerly been Vice-Minister for War, and had held posts with responsibility for mobilising Japanese industry for the war effort. It was hoped that he could use the fields, factories. Lieutenant General Shinichi Tanaka was appointed to be Kimuras Chief of Staff and he had formerly commanded the 18th Infantry Division in Northern Burma, and had a reputation for inflexible determination. Japanese losses in Burma and India in 1944 had been catastrophic and they were made up with drafts of conscripts, many of whom were not of the best physical categories. Kimuras staff decreed that their divisions in Burma should have a strength of 10,000, to face massed Allied armour, they would be forced to deploy their field artillery in the front line, which would affect their ability to give concentrated fire support to the infantry. Expedients such as mines, or suicide attacks by men wearing explosive charges, were not effective if the enemy tanks were closely supported by infantry. Their 5th Air Division, deployed in Burma, had reduced to only a few dozen aircraft to face 1,200 Allied aircraft. Their 14th Tank Regiment possessed only 20 tanks, Kimura accepted that his forces stood little chance against the numerically and materially superior Allies in open terrain. He hoped that the Allies would be overstretched trying to overcome this obstacle, the Allied South East Asia Command had begun making plans to reconquer Burma as early as June 1944. One was to reoccupy Northern Burma only, to allow the Ledo Road to be completed, thus linking India and this was rejected, as it could use only a fraction of the available forces and fulfilled only an out-of-date strategic aim. A second option was to capture Rangoon, the capital and main seaport and this was also impractical, as it would require landing craft and other resources which would not be available until the end of the War in Europe. By default, the plan adopted was for an offensive into Central Burma by the British Fourteenth Army under Lieutenant General William Slim, to reconquer Burma from the north
41.
Operation Diver
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Operation Diver was the British codename for countermeasures against the V-1 flying bomb campaign launched by the German Luftwaffe in 1944 against London and other parts of Britain. Diver was the codename for the V-1 itself, modes of defence used against V-1s included anti-aircraft guns, barrage balloons, and fighter aircraft, also double agents planted false information about the success of targeting. Anti-aircraft guns proved the most effective form of defence in the stages of the campaign, with the aid of radar-based technology. The bombing campaigns ended by the middle of 1944, the Diver Plan was prepared in early 1944 following the first reports of the weapon in April 1943 and the discovery of its planned launch sites in late 1943. The plan had to be enough to cover both the expected assault on Britain and the needs of the invasion of Europe. When the German attack began, on the day after the landings on the beaches of Normandy. Defences that had been guarding the embarkation ports for the invasion were redeployed against the V-1, in September 1944 a new linear defence line was formed on the coast of East Anglia, and finally in December there was a further layout along the Lincolnshire-Yorkshire coast. The deployments were prompted by the approach tracks of the missiles which were in turn influenced by the Allies advance through Europe. Anti-aircraft gunners found that small, fast-moving targets were difficult to hit. At first, it took, on average,2,500 shells to bring down a V-1. The average altitude of the V-1, between 2,000 and 3,000 feet, was in a band between the optimum engagement heights for light and heavy anti-aircraft weapons. These low heights defeated the rate of traverse of the standard British QF3.7 inch mobile gun, and static gun installations with faster traverses had to be built at great cost. The development of gun laying radars based on the cavity magnetron. In 1944 Bell Labs started delivery of an anti-aircraft predictor fire-control system based around a computer just in time for use in this campaign. Both of these had been requested by AA Command and arrived in numbers, starting in June 1944, seventeen per cent of all flying bombs entering the coastal gun belt were destroyed by guns in the first week on the coast. This rose to 60 per cent by 23 August and 74 per cent in the last week of the month, the rate increased from one V-1 for every 2,500 shells fired to one for every hundred. Part of the area which the Divers had to cover was given over for fighter operations, several squadrons were put onto anti-Diver operations. Most fighter aircraft were too slow to catch a V-1 unless they had a height advantage, even when intercepted, the V-1 was difficult to bring down
42.
Adolf Hitler
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Adolf Hitler was a German politician who was the leader of the Nazi Party, Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and Führer of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945. As dictator of the German Reich, he initiated World War II in Europe with the invasion of Poland in September 1939 and was central to the Holocaust, Hitler was born in Austria, then part of Austria-Hungary, and raised near Linz. He moved to Germany in 1913 and was decorated during his service in the German Army in World War I and he joined the German Workers Party, the precursor of the NSDAP, in 1919 and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923 he attempted a coup in Munich to seize power, the failed coup resulted in Hitlers imprisonment, during which he dictated the first volume of his autobiography and political manifesto Mein Kampf. Hitler frequently denounced international capitalism and communism as being part of a Jewish conspiracy, by 1933, the Nazi Party was the largest elected party in the German Reichstag, which led to Hitlers appointment as Chancellor on 30 January 1933. Hitler aimed to eliminate Jews from Germany and establish a New Order to counter what he saw as the injustice of the post-World War I international order dominated by Britain, Hitler sought Lebensraum for the German people in Eastern Europe. His aggressive foreign policy is considered to be the cause of the outbreak of World War II in Europe. He directed large-scale rearmament and on 1 September 1939 invaded Poland, resulting in British, in June 1941, Hitler ordered an invasion of the Soviet Union. By the end of 1941 German forces and the European Axis powers occupied most of Europe, failure to defeat the Soviets and the entry of the United States into the war forced Germany onto the defensive and it suffered a series of escalating defeats. In the final days of the war, during the Battle of Berlin in 1945, Hitler married his long-time lover, on 30 April 1945, less than two days later, the two killed themselves to avoid capture by the Red Army, and their corpses were burned. Hitler and the Nazi regime were also responsible for the killing of an estimated 19.3 million civilians, in addition,29 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of military action in the European Theatre of World War II. The number of civilians killed during the Second World War was unprecedented in warfare, Hitlers father Alois Hitler Sr. was the illegitimate child of Maria Anna Schicklgruber. The baptismal register did not show the name of his father, in 1842, Johann Georg Hiedler married Aloiss mother Maria Anna. Alois was brought up in the family of Hiedlers brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, in 1876, Alois was legitimated and the baptismal register changed by a priest to register Johann Georg Hiedler as Aloiss father. Alois then assumed the surname Hitler, also spelled Hiedler, Hüttler, the Hitler surname is probably based on one who lives in a hut. Nazi official Hans Frank suggested that Aloiss mother had been employed as a housekeeper by a Jewish family in Graz, and that the familys 19-year-old son Leopold Frankenberger had fathered Alois. No Frankenberger was registered in Graz during that period, and no record has been produced of Leopold Frankenbergers existence, Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, a town in Austria-Hungary, close to the border with the German Empire. He was one of six born to Alois Hitler and Klara Pölzl
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Flensburg
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Flensburg is an independent town in the north of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. Flensburg is the centre of the region of Southern Schleswig, after Kiel and Lübeck it is the third largest town in Schleswig-Holstein. The regime was officially dissolved on 23 May, the nearest larger towns are Kiel and Odense in Denmark. Flensburgs city centre lies about 7 km from the Danish border, after Westerland on the island of Sylt it is Germanys northernmost town. Flensburg lies at the innermost tip of the Flensburg Fjord, an inlet of the Baltic Sea, Flensburgs eastern shore is part of the Angeln peninsula. The town of Flensburg is divided into 13 communities, which themselves are divided into 38 statistical areas. Constituent communities have a number and the statistical areas a three-digit number. In 1284, its rights were confirmed and the town quickly rose to become one of the most important in the Duchy of Schleswig. Unlike Holstein, however, Schleswig did not belong to the German Holy Roman Empire, therefore, Flensburg was not a member of the Hanseatic League, but it did maintain contacts with this important trading network. They were sent inland and to almost every European country, on 28 October 1412, Queen Margaret I of Denmark died on board a ship in Flensburg Harbour of the Plague. From time to time such as bubonic plague, caused mainly by rat fleas, red dysentery. Lepers were strictly isolated, namely at the St. -Jürgen-Hospital, which lay far outside the towns gates, the church hospital Zum Heiligen Geist stood in Große Straße, now Flensburgs pedestrian precinct. A Flensburgers everyday life was hard, and the old roads. The main streets were neither paved nor lit at night, when they got really bad, the citizens had to make the dung-filled streets passable with wooden pathways. Only the few houses had windows. In 1485, a fire struck Flensburg. Even storm tides beset the town at times, every household in the town kept livestock in the house and the yard. Townsfolk furthermore had their own cowherds and a swineherd, after the Hanse fell in the 16th century, Flensburg was said to be one of the most important trading towns in the Scandinavian area
