1.
Warships
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A warship is a naval ship that is built and primarily intended for naval warfare. Usually they belong to the forces of a state. As well as being armed, warships are designed to damage and are usually faster. Unlike a merchant ship, which carries cargo, a warship typically carries weapons, ammunition. Warships usually belong to a navy, though they have also operated by individuals, cooperatives. In wartime, the distinction between warships and merchant ships is often blurred, in war, merchant ships are often armed and used as auxiliary warships, such as the Q-ships of the First World War and the armed merchant cruisers of the Second World War. Until the 17th century it was common for merchant ships to be pressed into naval service, until the threat of piracy subsided in the 19th century, it was normal practice to arm larger merchant ships such as galleons. Warships have also often used as troop carriers or supply ships. The development of catapults in the 4th century BC and the subsequent refinement of technology enabled the first fleets of artillery-equipped warships by the Hellenistic age. During late antiquity, ramming fell out of use and the galley tactics against other ships used during the Middle Ages until the late 16th century focused on boarding. Naval artillery was redeveloped in the 14th century, but cannon did not become common at sea until the guns were capable of being reloaded quickly enough to be reused in the same battle. The size of a required to carry a large number of cannons made oar-based propulsion impossible. The sailing man-of-war emerged during the 16th century, by the middle of the 17th century, warships were carrying increasing numbers of cannon on their broadsides and tactics evolved to bring each ships firepower to bear in a line of battle. The man-of-war now evolved into the ship of the line, in the 18th century, the frigate and sloop-of-war – too small to stand in the line of battle – evolved to convoy trade, scout for enemy ships and blockade enemy coasts. During the 19th century a revolution took place in the means of propulsion, naval armament. Marine steam engines were introduced, at first as an auxiliary force, the Crimean War gave a great stimulus to the development of guns. The introduction of explosive shells soon led to the introduction of iron, the first ironclad warships, the French Gloire and British Warrior, made wooden vessels obsolete. Metal soon entirely replaced wood as the material for warship construction
2.
USS Monitor
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USS Monitor was an iron-hulled steamship. Built during the American Civil War, she was the first ironclad warship commissioned by the Union Navy, the unique design of the ship, distinguished by its revolving turret which was designed by American inventor Theodore Timby, was quickly duplicated and established the monitor type of warship. The remainder of the ship was designed by the Swedish-born engineer and inventor John Ericsson, before Monitor could reach Hampton Roads, the Confederate ironclad had destroyed the sail frigates USS Cumberland and USS Congress and had run the steam frigate USS Minnesota aground. A four-hour battle ensued, both ships pounding the other with cannon fire, although neither ship could destroy or seriously damage the other. This was the battle fought between two armored warships and marked a turning point in naval warfare. After the Confederates were forced to destroy Virginia as they withdrew in early May, on her way there she foundered while under tow, during a storm off Cape Hatteras on the last day of the year. Monitors wreck was discovered in 1973 and has been partially salvaged and her guns, gun turret, engine and other relics are on display at the Mariners Museum in Newport News, Virginia. The use of iron plating on the sides of warships was not practical until steam propulsion matured enough to carry its great weight. Developments in gun technology had progressed by the 1840s so that no practical thickness of wood could withstand the power of a shell, since there was no pressing need for such a ship at the time, there was little demand to continue work on the unfinished vessel. It was France that introduced the first operational armored ships as well as the first shell guns, the French followed those ships with the first ocean-going ironclad, the armored frigate Gloire in 1859, and the British responded with HMS Warrior. Northern newspapers published accounts of the Confederates progress in converting the Merrimack to an ironclad. Concealed in her dress was a message from a Union sympathizer who worked in the Navy Yard warning that the former Merrimack, convinced by the papers Mary was carrying he had production of Monitor sped up. Welles later recorded in his memoirs that Mrs. Louveste encountered no small risk in bringing this information, after the United States received word of the construction of Virginia, Congress appropriated $1.5 million on 3 August 1861 to build one or more armored steamships. It also ordered the creation of a board to inquire into the various designs proposed for armored ships, the Union Navy advertised for proposals for iron-clad steam vessels of war on 7 August and Welles appointed three senior officers as the Ironclad Board the following day. Their task was to examine plans for the completion of iron-clad vessels, the two first met on 9 September and again on the following day, after Ericsson had time to evaluate Galenas design. During this second meeting Ericsson showed Bushnell a model of his own design, Bushnell got Ericssons permission to show the model to Welles, who told Bushnell to show it to the board. Upon review of Ericssons unusual design, the board was skeptical, concerned that such a vessel would not float, especially in rough seas, President Lincoln, who had also examined the design, overruled them. Ericsson assured the board his ship would float exclaiming, The sea shall ride over her, on 15 September, after further deliberations, the board accepted Ericssons proposal
3.
American Civil War
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The American Civil War was an internal conflict fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865. The Union faced secessionists in eleven Southern states grouped together as the Confederate States of America, the Union won the war, which remains the bloodiest in U. S. history. Among the 34 U. S. states in February 1861, War broke out in April 1861 when Confederates attacked the U. S. fortress of Fort Sumter. The Confederacy grew to eleven states, it claimed two more states, the Indian Territory, and the southern portions of the western territories of Arizona. The Confederacy was never recognized by the United States government nor by any foreign country. The states that remained loyal, including border states where slavery was legal, were known as the Union or the North, the war ended with the surrender of all the Confederate armies and the dissolution of the Confederate government in the spring of 1865. The war had its origin in the issue of slavery. The Confederacy collapsed and 4 million slaves were freed, but before his inauguration, seven slave states with cotton-based economies formed the Confederacy. The first six to declare secession had the highest proportions of slaves in their populations, the first seven with state legislatures to resolve for secession included split majorities for unionists Douglas and Bell in Georgia with 51% and Louisiana with 55%. Alabama had voted 46% for those unionists, Mississippi with 40%, Florida with 38%, Texas with 25%, of these, only Texas held a referendum on secession. Eight remaining slave states continued to reject calls for secession, outgoing Democratic President James Buchanan and the incoming Republicans rejected secession as illegal. Lincolns March 4,1861 inaugural address declared that his administration would not initiate a civil war, speaking directly to the Southern States, he reaffirmed, I have no purpose, directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the United States where it exists. I believe I have no right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. After Confederate forces seized numerous federal forts within territory claimed by the Confederacy, efforts at compromise failed, the Confederates assumed that European countries were so dependent on King Cotton that they would intervene, but none did, and none recognized the new Confederate States of America. Hostilities began on April 12,1861, when Confederate forces fired upon Fort Sumter, while in the Western Theater the Union made significant permanent gains, in the Eastern Theater, the battle was inconclusive in 1861–62. The autumn 1862 Confederate campaigns into Maryland and Kentucky failed, dissuading British intervention, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which made ending slavery a war goal. To the west, by summer 1862 the Union destroyed the Confederate river navy, then much of their western armies, the 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River. In 1863, Robert E. Lees Confederate incursion north ended at the Battle of Gettysburg, Western successes led to Ulysses S. Grants command of all Union armies in 1864
4.
Gun turret
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A gun turret is a location from which weapons can be fired that affords protection, visibility, and some cone of fire. Rotating gun turrets have the protection, the weapon, and its crew rotate, when this meaning of the word turret started being used at the beginning of the 1860s, turrets were normally cylindrical. Barbettes were an alternative to turrets, with a barbette the protection was fixed, in the 1890s, armoured hoods were added to barbettes, these rotated with the platform. By the early 20th Century, these hoods were known as turrets, modern warships have gun-mountings described as turrets, though the protection on them is limited to protection from the weather. They may be manned or remotely controlled and are most often protected to some degree, the protection provided by the turret may be against battle damage, the weather conditions, general environment in which the weapon or its crew will be operating. A small turret, or sub-turret set on top of a one, is called a cupola. The term cupola is used for a rotating turret that carries a sighting device rather than weaponry. Before the development of large-calibre, long-range guns in the mid-19th century, firepower was provided by a large number of guns, each of which could traverse only in a limited arc. Additionally casemate mounts had to be recessed into the side of a vessel to afford a wide arc of fire, designs for a rotating gun turret date back to the late 18th century. The Lady Nancy proved a success and Coles patenting his rotating turret design after the war. Coless aim was to create a ship with the greatest possible all round arc of fire, the Admiralty accepted the principle of the turret gun as a useful innovation, and incorporated it into other new designs. Coles submitted a design for a ship having ten domed turrets each housing two large guns, the design was rejected as impractical, although the Admiralty remained interested in turret ships and instructed its own designers to create better designs. Coles enlisted the support of Prince Albert, who wrote to the first Lord of the Admiralty, in January 1862, the Admiralty agreed to construct a ship, the HMS Prince Albert which had four turrets and a low freeboard, intended only for coastal defence. While Coles designed the turrets the ship was the responsibility of the chief Constructor Isaac Watts, another ship using Coles turret designs, HMS Royal Sovereign, was completed in August 1864. Its existing broadside guns were replaced with four turrets on a flat deck, early ships like the Royal Sovereign had little sea-keeping qualities being limited to coastal waters. Sir Edward James Reed, went on to design and build HMS Monarch, laid down in 1866 and completed in June 1869, it carried two turrets, although the inclusion of a forecastle and poop prevented the turret guns firing fore and aft. The gun turret was independently invented by the Swedish inventor John Ericsson in America, Ericsson designed the USS Monitor in 1861, its most prominent feature being a large cylindrical gun turret mounted amidships above the low-freeboard upper hull, also called the raft. This extended well past the sides of the lower, more traditionally shaped hull, a small armoured pilot house was fitted on the upper deck towards the bow, however, its position prevented Monitor from firing her guns straight forward
5.
Brown-water navy
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These mother ships include converted World War II-era LCMs and LSTs, among other vessels. Brown-water navies are contrasted with seaworthy blue-water navies, which can conduct operations in open ocean. After losing its blue-water fleet in the Battle of Copenhagen, the kingdom of Denmark-Norway quickly built a brown-water navy, the partial successes of the resulting Gunboat War were undone by land invasion. The term brown-water navy originated in the American Civil War, of 1861–1865, in the early days of the war, U. S. Army built and crewed these boats, with the naval officers commanding them being the only direct connection to the U. S. Navy. By the autumn of 1862, the boats and their mission were transferred to the Department of the Navy. Because of the rivers murky brown water, the ships participated in these Mississippi campaigns were quickly referred to as the brown-water navy. After the end of the American civil war the next major conflict in the world was the Paraguayan War. In this the Brazilian brown-water navy, which comprised large ironclads as well as monitors, had a crucial role. The natural highway to the Republic of Paraguay was the River Paraguay and it comprised a 6,000 feet line of artillery batteries overlooking a sharp concave bend in the river, at a point where the channel was only 200 yards wide. A chain boom could be raised to block the navigation, the fortress was exceedingly hard to take from the landward side for it was protected by impassible swamp, marsh or lagoons and, where not, by 8 miles of trenches with a garrison of 18,000 men. The river was shallow, uncharted and capable of trapping large vessels if the water level should fall, in that environment the greatest threat to shipping was torpedoes. Six vessels of the Brazilian ironclad squadron eventually succeeded in dashing past Humaitá in an incident known as the Passage of Humaitá, even after Humaitá was captured − which took more than two years – the Paraguayans improvised further strongpoints along the river, further delaying the Allies. Save for a river patrol boat, the United States river ironclad navy was all. Yet the concept of a defense force lived on in countries and regions where rivers enabled the U. S. to project its military presence. The U. S. Navy of that era used the term for protecting U. S. foreign policy, the U. S. Navy, China gunboat, USS Asheville, was sunk, by the Japanese, in March 1942. They have succeeded the river created in 1945, by the request of General Leclerc. The Dinassaut served until the end of the conflict in 1955, ten Dinassauts were created, with five based in Cochinchina and the others in Tonkin. Each one was made of ten vessels and one Commandos Marine unit
6.
Mobile Riverine Force
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It was modeled after lessons learned by the French experience in the First Indochina War and had the task of both transport and combat. The primary base was at Đồng Tâm Base Camp, with a base at the base of the Mekong River. It played a key role in the Tet Offensive, the Mekong Delta Mobile Afloat Force was originally conceived as providing an all weather strike capability in the Mekong Delta, to actively prosecute contact with Viet Cong units in the Vietnam War. A strike force was inherently and essentially different from the existing Navy interdiction, the Delta presented a classic venue appropriate to riverine operations such as had not been seen since the Union Navy in the Mississippi Delta, and Sino-American operations in World War II. A wide range of craft were used by the allies. Foremost were the surplus World War II US naval crafts, LCMs, LCVPs, LSMs, PGMs, LSSLs, etc. as well as post-war Nasty class Fast Patrol Craft. The French took the LCVP design and created an all new, and as it turned out, the original or entirely new boat built for riverine warfare during the French Indochina war. The French STCAN was built of steel, approximately 40 feet long, V hulled, with a bow, was armed with one.50 cal machine gun. The Mekong Delta Mobile Afloat Force concept paired newly created assault boat units with a brigade of Army infantry, the force contained a U. S. Army reinforced brigade consisting of three infantry battalions, an artillery battalion, and other combat and combat service support. The force would be based aboard U. S. Navy ships that would include 5 self-propelled barracks ships,2 LSTs,2 large harbor tugs, in addition, two U. S. Navy river assault groups would provide tactical water mobility. Each assault group would be capable of lifting the combat elements of one reinforced infantry battalion, a small salvage craft would be necessary to recover damaged ships or craft. The reinforced brigade would be organized under the current standard ROAD tables of organization and equipment, the number of 90mm recoilless rifles in each rifle company was to be reduced from six to three to improve the mobility of the weapons squads. The 4. 2-inch mortars would accompany the force and be moved by water or air to field positions as necessary, radios would be either ship-mounted or man-portable. Coxswains of plastic assault boats were to be designated in the proposed tables, enough troops from each of the units afloat would be left at a land base to maintain equipment left in storage. The plan provided for an augmentation of three counter-mortar radar sections, each manned by nine men, to operate and maintain ship-mounted counter-mortar radars, a mobile Army surgical hospital team, U. S. A salvage force would include,22, 000-ton heavy lift craft,2 YTBs for salvage,2 LCUs, and 3 100-ton floating dry docks. It was the French STCAN which, in 1965 inspired the construction of the only US Navy riverine boat which was built for the Vietnam War. Unlike the US Navy 50-foot PCF Patrol Craft Fast and 31-foot PBR Patrol Boat River and they were already baptized in blood on September 30,1967, despite having arrived in Vietnam only 10 days earlier, on September 20,1967
7.
Draft (hull)
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Draft determines the minimum depth of water a ship or boat can safely navigate. The draft can also be used to determine the weight of the cargo on board by calculating the displacement of water. A table made by the shows the water displacement for each draft. The density of the water and the content of the bunkers has to be taken into account. The closely related term trim is defined as the difference between the forward and aft drafts, the draft aft is measured in the perpendicular of the stern. The draft forward is measured in the perpendicular of the bow, the scale may use traditional English units or metric units. If the English system is used, the bottom of each marking is the draft in feet, in metric marking schemes, the bottom of each draft mark is the draft in decimeters and each mark is one decimeter high. Larger ships try to maintain a water draft when they are light, in order to make a better sea crossing. In order to achieve this they use sailing ballasts to stabilize the ship, the water draft of a large ship has little direct link with its stability because stability depends solely on the respective positions of the metacenter of the hull and the center of gravity. It is also however, that a light ship has quite high stability which can lead to implying too much rolling of the ship. A fully laden ship can have either a strong or weak stability, the draft of ships can be increased when the ship is in motion in shallow water, a phenomenon known as squat. Draft is a significant factor limiting navigable waterways, especially for large vessels, of course this includes many shallow coastal waters and reefs, but also some major shipping lanes. Panamax class ships—the largest ships able to transit the Panama Canal—do have a limit but are usually limited by beam, or sometimes length overall. However, in the much wider Suez Canal, the factor for Suezmax ships is draft. Some supertankers are able to transit the Suez Canal when unladen or partially laden, canals are not the only draft-limited shipping lanes. A Malaccamax ship has the deepest draft able to transit the very busy, there are only a few ships of this size. A small draft allows pleasure boats to navigate through shallower water and this makes it possible for these boats to access smaller ports, to travel along rivers and even to beach the boat. A large draft ensures a level of stability in strong wind
8.
Royal Navy
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The Royal Navy is the United Kingdoms naval warfare force. Although warships were used by the English kings from the medieval period. The modern Royal Navy traces its origins to the early 16th century, from the middle decades of the 17th century and through the 18th century, the Royal Navy vied with the Dutch Navy and later with the French Navy for maritime supremacy. From the mid 18th century it was the worlds most powerful navy until surpassed by the United States Navy during the Second World War. The Royal Navy played a key part in establishing the British Empire as the world power during the 19th. Due to this historical prominence, it is common, even among non-Britons, following World War I, the Royal Navy was significantly reduced in size, although at the onset of the Second World War it was still the worlds largest. By the end of the war, however, the United States Navy had emerged as the worlds largest, during the Cold War, the Royal Navy transformed into a primarily anti-submarine force, hunting for Soviet submarines, mostly active in the GIUK gap. The Royal Navy is part of Her Majestys Naval Service, which includes the Royal Marines. The professional head of the Naval Service is the First Sea Lord, the Defence Council delegates management of the Naval Service to the Admiralty Board, chaired by the Secretary of State for Defence. The strength of the fleet of the Kingdom of England was an important element in the power in the 10th century. English naval power declined as a result of the Norman conquest. Medieval fleets, in England as elsewhere, were almost entirely composed of merchant ships enlisted into service in time of war. Englands naval organisation was haphazard and the mobilisation of fleets when war broke out was slow, early in the war French plans for an invasion of England failed when Edward III of England destroyed the French fleet in the Battle of Sluys in 1340. Major fighting was confined to French soil and Englands naval capabilities sufficed to transport armies and supplies safely to their continental destinations. Such raids halted finally only with the occupation of northern France by Henry V. Henry VII deserves a large share of credit in the establishment of a standing navy and he embarked on a program of building ships larger than heretofore. He also invested in dockyards, and commissioned the oldest surviving dry dock in 1495 at Portsmouth, a standing Navy Royal, with its own secretariat, dockyards and a permanent core of purpose-built warships, emerged during the reign of Henry VIII. Under Elizabeth I England became involved in a war with Spain, the new regimes introduction of Navigation Acts, providing that all merchant shipping to and from England or her colonies should be carried out by English ships, led to war with the Dutch Republic. In the early stages of this First Anglo-Dutch War, the superiority of the large, heavily armed English ships was offset by superior Dutch tactical organisation and the fighting was inconclusive
9.
Lord Clive-class monitor
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The Lord Clive-class, sometimes referred to as the General Wolfe class, of monitors were ships designed for shore bombardment and were constructed for the Royal Navy during the First World War. The slow progress of the war led to the need for shore bombardment ships. The ships were ordered after the Abercrombie class had begun building, extra quick-firing artillery for protection from destroyers and torpedo boats was also fitted in most ships and consisted of up to four six-inch guns. The Lord Clives, all named after army rather than naval leaders, the class consisted of, Three of the ships, HMS General Wolfe, Lord Clive and Prince Eugene, were to be converted to take the BL 18-inch guns that had originally been allocated to HMS Furious. The guns were mounted aft, permanently arranged to fire over the starboard beam, the mounting consisted of two massive side girders parallel to the barrel, between which the gun was slung. At the forward end was a support about which the gun could train in a limited arc, the mounting was covered by a large non-traversing half-inch steel plate shield fixed to the deck. The enormous rounds and charges were transported to the gunhouse on a light railway fixed to the main deck, work was completed on two of the ships but the end of World War I intervened before Prince Eugene was finished. Both of the ships saw action. The original 12-inch turret was left in place on them to maintain stability, General Wolfe fired on a railway bridge at Snaeskerke, four miles south of Ostend, Belgium, on 28 September 1918. The range of 36,000 yards made this the greatest range at which a Royal Navy vessel has ever engaged an enemy target using guns, Lord Clive fired a mere four rounds with the replacement gun at enemy targets. Conways All the Worlds Fighting Ships 1906-1922 Buxton, Ian,2008 Seaforth Publishing British 18/40 Mark I at NavWeaps website
10.
Monitor (warship)
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A monitor was a relatively small warship which was neither fast nor strongly armoured but carried disproportionately large guns. They were used by some navies from the 1860s, during the First World War, during the Vietnam War they were used by the United States Navy. The Brazilian Navys Parnaíba is the last monitor in service, the original monitor was designed by John Ericsson in 1861 who named it USS Monitor. They were designed for waters and served as coastal ships. The term monitor also encompassed more flexible breastwork monitors, and was used as a generic term for any turreted ship. The term monitor also encompasses the strongest of riverine warcraft, known as river monitors, the Lord Clive vessels were scrapped in the 1920s. In Latin, a monitor is someone who admonishes—that is, reminds others of their duties—which is how USS Monitor was given its name. She was designed by John Ericsson for emergency service in the Federal navy during the American Civil War to blockade the Confederate States from supply at sea. Ericsson designed her to operate in water and to present as small a target as possible. Nathaniel Hawthorne described Monitor thus, At no great distance from the Minnesota lay the strangest-looking craft I ever saw, going on board, we were surprised at the extent and convenience of her interior accommodations. Forward, or aft, the crew are relatively quite as well provided for as the officers and it was like finding a palace, with all its conveniences, under the sea. A storm of cannon-shot damages them no more than a handful of dried peas, nothing, however, can exceed the confidence of the officers in this new craft. Yet even this will not long be the last and most terrible improvement in the science of war, the Battle of Hampton Roads, between Monitor and CSS Virginia, was the first engagement between ironclad vessels. Several such battles took place during the course of the American Civil War, however, fortification bombardment was another critical role that the early monitors played, though one that these early designs were much less capable in performing. She was followed by 14 more monitors, one of them, Kanonbåten Sölve, served until 1922 and is today preserved at the Maritiman marine museum in Gothenburg. Ericsson and others experimented greatly during the years of the American Civil War, vessels constructed included a triple-turreted monitor, a class of paddlewheel-propelled monitors, a class of semi-submersible monitors, and a class of monitors armed with spar torpedoes. In the 1860s and 1870s several nations built monitors that were used for coastal defense and those that were directly modelled on Monitor were low-freeboard, mastless, steam-powered vessels with one or two rotating, armoured turrets. The low freeboard meant that ships were unsuitable for ocean-going duties and were always at risk of swamping, flooding
11.
Machine gun
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A machine gun is a fully automatic mounted or portable firearm designed to fire bullets in quick succession from an ammunition belt or magazine, typically at a rate of 300 to 1800 rounds per minute. Note that not all fully automatic firearms are machine guns, submachine guns, rifles, assault rifles, shotguns, pistols or cannons may be capable of fully automatic fire, but are not designed for sustained fire. Many machine guns also use belt feeding and open bolt operation, unlike semi-automatic firearms, which require one trigger pull per round fired, a machine gun is designed to fire for as long as the trigger is held down. Nowadays the term is restricted to heavy weapons, able to provide continuous or frequent bursts of automatic fire for as long as ammunition lasts. Machine guns are used against personnel, aircraft and light vehicles, or to provide suppressive fire. Some machine guns have in practice sustained fire almost continuously for hours, because they become very hot, practically all machine guns fire from an open bolt, to permit air cooling from the breech between bursts. They also usually have either a barrel cooling system, slow-heating heavyweight barrel, although subdivided into light, medium, heavy or general-purpose, even the lightest machine guns tend to be substantially larger and heavier than standard infantry arms. Medium and heavy guns are either mounted on a tripod or on a vehicle, when carried on foot. Medium machine guns use full-sized rifle rounds and are designed to be used from fixed positions mounted on a tripod. 50in, the M249 automatic rifle is operated by an automatic rifleman, but its ammunition may be carried by other Soldiers within the squad or unit. The M249 machine gun is a crew-served weapon, Machine guns usually have simple iron sights, though the use of optics is becoming more common. Many heavy machine guns, such as the Browning M2.50 caliber machine gun, are enough to engage targets at great distances. During the Vietnam War, Carlos Hathcock set the record for a shot at 7382 ft with a.50 caliber heavy machine gun he had equipped with a telescopic sight. This led to the introduction of.50 caliber anti-materiel sniper rifles, selective fire rifles firing a full-power rifle cartridge from a closed bolt are called automatic rifles or battle rifles, while rifles that fire an intermediate cartridge are called assault rifles. Unlocking and removing the spent case from the chamber and ejecting it out of the weapon as bolt is moving rearward Loading the next round into the firing chamber. Usually the recoil spring tension pushes bolt back into battery and a cam strips the new round from a feeding device, cycle is repeated as long as the trigger is activated by operator. Releasing the trigger resets the trigger mechanism by engaging a sear so the weapon stops firing with bolt carrier fully at the rear, the operation is basically the same for all autoloading firearms, regardless of the means of activating these mechanisms. Most modern machine guns use gas-operated reloading, a recoil actuated machine gun uses the recoil to first unlock and then operate the action. Machine guns such as the M2 Browning and MG42, are of this type, a cam, lever or actuator demultiplicates the energy of the recoil to operate the bolt
12.
River gunboat
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A river gunboat is a type of gunboat adapted for river operations. River gunboats required shallow draft for river navigation and they would be armed with relatively small caliber cannons, or a mix of cannons and machine guns. If they carried more than one cannon, one might be a howitzer, the USS San Pablo described in Richard McKennas The Sand Pebbles is an example of this class of vessel, serving on the US Navys Yangtze Patrol. Stronger river warships were river monitors, various European powers, the USA, and Japan, maintained flotillas of these shallow draft gunboats patrolling Chinese rivers. These gunboats were enforcing those nations treaty rights under the treaties that China had started to sign following her defeat during the first Opium War with Britain, the advantages of steam power and shallow drafts meant that the new European vessels initially vastly outclassed anything available to the Chinese. Foreign powers had coerced concessions from China, like extraterritoriality for their citizens in China, royal Navy gunboats, numbering on average 15 a year in Chinese waters, served as station ships, assigned to specific ports, and were designed for river functions. The RN maintained patrols and escorts up and down the Yangtze based in Shanghai until the end of the International Concessions in 1941 and these boats were part of the Navys China Station and vessels of various classes were deployed and often moved to and from other major world rivers. The Navy had built a number of gunboats for the Crimean war in the 1850s. As these boats were scrapped they were replaced by purpose built for inshore and river service around the world, Beacon-. Ladybird and Bee were involved in the USS Panay incident, the Insects were supplemented in 1937 by the Dragonfly-class boats, three of which, Dragonfly, Grasshopper and Scorpion were involved in the fighting down the Malay Peninsula and Singapore. U. S. Navy craft were of varying age, design, size, the earliest craft made brief excursions upriver between 1861 and 1901, but were rarely assigned on permanent patrol. In 1903 converted gunboats of the Spanish Navy captured in 1898, USS Elcano, a 620-ton craft with a crew of 103, and USS Villalobos, a 350-ton ship with 50 men, served until 1928, when they were decommissioned and sunk. USS Callao and Quiros served until 1916 and 1923, in 1914 two 204-ton, 50-man patrol craft of British design and built at Mare Island Naval Shipyard were disassembled, shipped to China, and reassembled in Shanghai. USS Palos patrolled until 1934, when she became the station boat at Chungking, the Yangtze Patrol was formally established in 1922 as a component of the Asiatic Fleet. Six new craft were designed and built in 1928 in Shanghai, USS Guam and Tutuilla,380 tons and a crew of 60, were able to ply the entire river year round. USS Panay and Oahu,450 tons and a complement of 65, except for Panay, sunk by Japanese aircraft in December 1937, the newer ships served in China until late 1941. Brazilian Navy official website, Roraima Class gunboats
13.
USS Neosho (1863)
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USS Neosho, the lead ship of her class, was an ironclad river monitor laid down for the Union Navy in the summer of 1862 during the American Civil War. After completion in mid-1863, the spent time patrolling the Mississippi River against Confederate raids. She participated in the Red River Campaign in March–May 1864, Neosho resumed her patrols on the Mississippi after the end of the campaign. She supported the Union Armys operations on the Cumberland River and provided support during the Battle of Nashville in December 1864. Neosho was decommissioned after the war and remained in reserve until sold in 1873, the steam-powered gun turret of the Neosho was at the bow. She had a deckhouse between the funnel and the sternwheel, although another was later added between the turret and the funnel. Her pilothouse was positioned above the rear deckhouse, next to the face of the sternwheel. The ship was 180 feet long overall and had a beam of 45 feet, when launched she proved to have a draft 1 foot deeper than planned and she measured 523 tons burthen. Neosho had four steam boilers powering a two-cylinder, western steamboat-type engine that drove the sternwheel, the ship had a maximum speed of 12 miles per hour in service and she carried 50 long tons of coal. Her crew numbered 100 officers and enlisted men, after commissioning, the ship was modified with a small breakwater at her bow. Neoshos main armament consisted of two smoothbore 11-inch Dahlgren guns mounted in a turret that had an arc of fire of 300°. Firing the guns tended to jam the turret until modifications were made to the recoil system. Each gun weighed approximately 16,000 pounds and they could fire a 136-pound shell up to a range of 3,650 yards at an elevation of 15°. The turret were protected by 6 inches of iron while the hull had 2.5 inches of armor. The armor plates of the deck and paddle housing were 1.25 inches thick. Neosho, named after the Neosho River that flowed through Kansas and Oklahoma, and she was launched on 18 February 1863 and commissioned at Cairo, Illinois on 13 May 1863, with Commander John C. Febiger in command, but was not completed until 1 July and she left Cairo on 14 July 1863 and reached Vicksburg on 6 August, just over a month after it had surrendered after a lengthy siege. Neosho and other warships patrolled the Mississippi and its tributaries to prevent Confederate raiders, from 12 March to 22 May 1864, Neosho participated in the unsuccessful Red River Campaign under the command of Rear Admiral David Porter
14.
Battle of Mobile Bay
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This was followed by a reduction of the Confederate fleet to a single vessel, ironclad CSS Tennessee. Tennessee did not then retire, but engaged the entire Northern fleet, Tennessees armor enabled her to inflict more injury than she received, but she could not overcome the imbalance in numbers. She was eventually reduced to a hulk and surrendered, ending the battle. With no Navy to support them, the three forts also surrendered within days, complete control of lower Mobile Bay thus passed to the Union forces. Mobile is situated near the head of Mobile Bay, a natural harbor formed where the Mobile, the bay is about 33 mi long, the lower bay is about 23 mi at its greatest width. It is deep enough to accommodate ocean-going vessels in the lower half without dredging, above the mouth of Dog River the water becomes shoal, so deep-draft vessels could not approach the city. The mouth of the bay is marked on the east by a narrow peninsula of sand, Mobile Point, that separates Bon Secour Bay. The point ends at the channel into Mobile Bay. Across the entrance, the line of the peninsula is continued in a series of barrier islands, northwest of Dauphin Island is Little Dauphin Island, then a series of minor islands that are interrupted by a secondary entrance to the bay, Grants Pass. A few other islands and shoals lie to the south of Dauphin Island. Rather early in the war, the Confederate government decided not to defend its entire coast, following the loss of New Orleans in April 1862, Mobile was the only major port on the eastern gulf that would be defended. The city subsequently became the center for blockade running on the gulf, most of the trade between the Confederacy and Havana and other Caribbean ports passed through Mobile. A few attempts were mounted to break the blockade, but they were not large enough to have lasting impact, although the orders given to Flag Officer David G. Given respite by the Union strategy, the Confederate Army improved the defenses of Mobile Bay by strengthening Fort Morgan, in addition, they set up Fort Powell, a smaller work that guarded the Grants Pass channel. Grants Pass was also obstructed by a set of piles and other impediments, Mobile and Mobile Bay were within the Department of Alabama, Mississippi and East Louisiana, led by Major General Dabney H. Maury. Local command was entrusted to Brigadier General Richard L. Page, the primary contribution of the Confederate Army to the defense of Mobile Bay was the three forts. Fort Morgan was a structure dating from 1834. The fort mounted 46 guns, of which 11 were rifled, across the main channel from Fort Morgan on Dauphin Island was Fort Gaines, containing 26 guns, and with a garrison of about 600
15.
Vietnam War
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It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and the government of South Vietnam. The war is considered a Cold War-era proxy war. As the war continued, the actions of the Viet Cong decreased as the role. U. S. and South Vietnamese forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations, involving ground forces, artillery, in the course of the war, the U. S. conducted a large-scale strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam. The North Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong were fighting to reunify Vietnam and they viewed the conflict as a colonial war and a continuation of the First Indochina War against forces from France and later on the United States. The U. S. government viewed its involvement in the war as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam and this was part the domino theory of a wider containment policy, with the stated aim of stopping the spread of communism. Beginning in 1950, American military advisors arrived in what was then French Indochina, U. S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with troop levels tripling in 1961 and again in 1962. Regular U. S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965, despite the Paris Peace Accord, which was signed by all parties in January 1973, the fighting continued. In the U. S. and the Western world, a large anti-Vietnam War movement developed as part of a larger counterculture, the war changed the dynamics between the Eastern and Western Blocs, and altered North–South relations. Direct U. S. military involvement ended on 15 August 1973, the capture of Saigon by the North Vietnamese Army in April 1975 marked the end of the war, and North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year. The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities, estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from 966,000 to 3.8 million. Some 240, 000–300,000 Cambodians,20, 000–62,000 Laotians, and 58,220 U. S. service members died in the conflict. Various names have applied to the conflict. Vietnam War is the most commonly used name in English and it has also been called the Second Indochina War and the Vietnam Conflict. As there have been several conflicts in Indochina, this conflict is known by the names of its primary protagonists to distinguish it from others. In Vietnamese, the war is known as Kháng chiến chống Mỹ. It is also called Chiến tranh Việt Nam, France began its conquest of Indochina in the late 1850s, and completed pacification by 1893. The 1884 Treaty of Huế formed the basis for French colonial rule in Vietnam for the seven decades
16.
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
17.
Landing Craft Mechanized
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The landing craft mechanized also landing craft mechanical is a landing craft designed for carrying vehicles. They came to prominence during the Second World War when they were used to land troops or tanks during Allied amphibious assaults. There was no design of LCM used, unlike the landing craft, vehicle, personnel or landing craft assault landing craft made by the US. There were several different designs built by the UK and US, the British motor landing craft was conceived and tested in the 1920s and was used from 1924 in exercises. It was the first purpose built landing craft. It was the progenitor of all subsequent LCM designs, the landing craft, mechanised Mark I was an early British model. It was able to be slung under the davits of a liner or on a cargo ship boom with the result that it was limited to a 16-ton tank, the LCM Mark I was used during the Allied landings in Norway, and at Dieppe and some 600 were built. Displacement,35 tonnes Length,13.6 m Width,4.27 m Draught,1.22 m Machinery, approximately 150 were built by American Car & Foundry and Higgins Industries. A Higgins LCM-3 is on display at the Battleship Cove maritime museum in Fall River, outwardly, the LCM was almost completely identical to a late model LCM - the difference lay inside the pontoon. Here special bilge pumps and special ballast tanks allowed the LCM to alter trim to increase stability when partially loaded, British model of LCM An LCM extended by 6 feet amidships. Many were later adapted as armoured troop carriers for the Mobile Riverine Force in the Vietnam War, power plant,2 Detroit 6-71 diesel engines,348 hp sustained, twin shaft, or 2 Detroit 8V-71 diesel engines,460 hp sustained, twin shaft Length,56
18.
Napalm
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Napalm is a flammable liquid used in warfare. It is a mixture of an agent and either gasoline or a similar fuel. It was initially used as an incendiary device against buildings and later primarily as a weapon, as it sticks to skin. Napalm was developed in 1942 in a laboratory at Harvard University. Its first recorded use was in the European theatre of war during World War II and it was used extensively by the US in incendiary attacks on Japanese cities in World War II as well as during the Korean War and Vietnam War. Napalm is a portmanteau of the names of two of the constituents of the agent, co-precipitated aluminium salts of naphthenic and palmitic acids. Napalm B is the modern version of napalm and, although distinctly different in its chemical composition, is often referred to simply as napalm. Napalm was used in flamethrowers, bombs and tanks in World War II and it is believed to have been formulated to burn at a specific rate and to adhere to surfaces to increase its stopping power. During combustion, napalm rapidly deoxygenates the available air and generates large amounts of carbon monoxide, alternative compositions exist for different uses, e. g. triethylaluminium, a pyrophoric compound that aids ignition. Use of fire in warfare has a long history, Greek fire, also described as sticky fire, is believed to have had a petroleum base. The development of napalm was precipitated by the use of jellied gasoline mixtures by the Allied forces during World War II, a team of chemists led by Louis Fieser at Harvard University was the first to develop synthetic napalm, during 1942. One of Fiesers colleagues suggested adding phosphorus to the mix which increased the ability to penetrate deeply. into the musculature, on 4 July 1942, the first test occurred on the football field near the Harvard Business School. This new mixture of chemicals was used in the Second World War in incendiary bombs. From 1965 to 1969, the Dow Chemical Company manufactured napalm B for the American armed forces, the management of the company decided that its first obligation was the government. Meanwhile, napalm B became a symbol for the Vietnam War, Napalm was first employed in incendiary bombs and went on to be used as fuel for flamethrowers. The first recorded use of napalm incendiary bombs occurred in an attack by the US Army Air Force on Berlin on 6 March 1944. The first known tactical operation was by De Havilland D. H.98 Mosquito FB Mk. VIs of No. Soldiers of this Waffen SS unit had captured and then killed a British SAS prisoner-of-war, Lt. Tomos Stephens, taking part in Operation Bulbasket, and seven local Resistance fighters
19.
Mk 18 Mod 0 grenade launcher
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The Mk 18 Mod 0 was a 40x46mm grenade launcher used by the US Navy during the Vietnam War and also the last known hand crank operated firearm since the Gatling gun. It has been replaced by the Mk 19 in service with the United States Armed Forces and this weapon is a manually operated, belt fed, rapid-fire 40mm grenade launcher designed to provide coverages of targets with high explosive fragmenting grenades. It will fire at variable rates up to 250 rounds per minute at ranges from approximately 328 yards to 2,200 yards. Between 1965 and 1968, approximately 1200 of the Mk18 Mod 0, 40mm multiple grenade launchers were produced by the Honeywell Corporation and Aeronautical Products Division, Hopkins, the first patent application was filed by Honeywell in 1964, however, the initial development work commenced in late 1962. The concept was proposed during a study on the behavior of fuzes for the M79 grenade launcher ammunition. The development of the 40mm cartridge grenade with its two stage propelling system made such a weapon possible, would fire 5,000 rounds without wearout failures. It was also recommended that the firing mechanism be modified to prevent inadvertent firing of the round during movement of the pin from the safe to fire position. Designed for use on a low tripod, the small lightweight weapon is capable of firing up to 375 meters at a rate of over 250 rounds a minute. For its navy role, the gun was expected to be mounted atop a.50 caliber machine gun on the stern of each PBR, two rounds are fired during each full crank revolution, thus, loading occurs at 3 and 9 oclock, firing at 6 and 12. A three position knob is located at the rear of the gun for fire, safe, for the navy, a 48-round ammo box weighing 35 lbs. is used. A 19-lb 24-round box also is available for use in the field, belts are hand-loaded were reused up to five times. The Mark 18 was used primarily on small boats or in fixed positions such as bunkers, their users were the so-called “river rats”. They could be mounted on M-2HB, M-60, or M-1919 tripods or pintle mounts, comparison of automatic grenade launchers Mk 18 Mod 0 at Securityarms
20.
M79 grenade launcher
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The M79 can fire a wide variety of 40 mm rounds, including explosive, anti-personnel, smoke, buckshot, flechette, and illumination. While largely replaced by the M203, the M79 has remained in service in many units worldwide in niche roles, project Niblick created the 40 x 46 mm grenade, but was unable to create a satisfactory launcher for it that could fire more than a single shot. The other design was a single-shot break-open, shoulder-fired weapon, the S-3 and this was refined into the S-5, which resembled an oversized single-barrel shotgun. Unable to solve the problems with the multi-shot T148 launcher, the Army adopted the S-5 as the XM79, with a new sight, the XM79 was officially adopted as the M79 on December 15,1960. In 1961, the first M79 grenade launchers were delivered to the US Army, owing to its ease of use, reliability, and firepower, the M79 became popular among American soldiers, who dubbed it the platoon leaders artillery. Some soldiers would cut down the stock and barrel to make the M79 even more portable, M79s were assigned to the specialist 4 grenadier in both 4-5-man fire teams organic to an Army rifle squad headed by a squad leader. The Marines assigned one grenadier to their three-fire team 14-man rifle squad, however, its single-shot nature was a serious drawback. Reloading after every shot meant a slow rate of fire and an inability to keep up a constant volume of fire during a firefight and this led the Navy to develop the China Lake Grenade Launcher, which a were produced for deployed SEAL Teams. For close-in situations, the minimum arming range and the blast radius meant a grenadier had to use his.45 cal. pistol, or fire and hope that the grenade acted as a giant slow bullet. Special grenades for close-in fighting were created to compensate, though a soldier was not always able to one in the heat of battle. Moreover, its meant that a soldier with an M79 could be only a grenadier. Some grenadiers opted to carry a slung M16 rifle in lieu of a pistol, the XM148 was plagued with problems and the project was dropped. The M203 was a success, and was standardized in 1969, it had replaced the M79 by the end of the war, though M79s were still used in Reserve and National Guard units. Some US Navy SEALs and Army Special Forces in Iraq have been using the M79 in recent years, due to its greater accuracy. The M79 has seen limited use during Operation Iraqi Freedom. The fore-end assembly beds the barrel to the receiver, the stock is made out of wood or fiberglass. A rubber pad affixed to the buttstock absorbs some recoil, the front sight is a fixed blade. The rear sight on the M79 is a folding ladder-style leaf-type sight, when folded, the leaf sight acts as a fixed sight for close range
21.
Amur River
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The Amur River or Heilong Jiang is the worlds tenth longest river, forming the border between the Russian Far East and Northeastern China. The largest fish species in the Amur is the kaluga, attaining a length as great as 5.6 metres, historically, it was common to refer to a river simply as water. The word for water is similar in a number of Asiatic languages, mul in Korean, muren in Mongolian, the name Amur may have evolved from a root word for water, coupled with a size modifier for Big Water. The Chinese name for the river, Heilong Jiang, means Black Dragon River in Chinese, and its Mongolian name, Khar mörön, means Black River. The river rises in the hills in the part of Northeast China at the confluence of its two major affluents, the Shilka River and the Ergune River, at an elevation of 303 metres. It flows east forming the border between China and Russia, and slowly makes an arc to the southeast for about 400 kilometres, receiving many tributaries. At Huma, it is joined by a tributary, the Huma River. Afterwards it continues to south until between the cities of Blagoveschensk and Heihe, it widens significantly as it is joined by the Zeya River. At the confluence with the Songhua the river turns northeast, now flowing towards Khabarovsk, now the river spreads out dramatically into a braided character, flowing north-northeast through a wide valley in eastern Russia, passing Amursk and Komsomolsk-on-Amur. The valley narrows after about 200 kilometres and the river flows north onto plains at the confluence with the Amgun River. Shortly after, the Amur turns sharply east and into an estuary at Nikolayevsk-on-Amur, in many historical references these two geopolitical entities are known as Outer Manchuria and Inner Manchuria, respectively. The Chinese province of Heilongjiang on the bank of the river is named after it. The name Black River was used by the Manchu and the Ta-tsing Empire who regarded this river as sacred, the Amur River is an important symbol of, and geopolitical factor in, Chinese–Russian relations. The Amur was especially important in the following the Sino–Soviet political split in the 1960s. For many centuries the Amur Valley was populated by the Tungusic and Mongol people, for many of them, fishing in the Amur and its tributaries was the main source of their livelihood. Until the 17th century, these people were not known to the Europeans, and little known to the Han Chinese, the term Yupi Dazi was used for the Nanais and related groups as well, owing to their traditional clothes made of fish skins. This Ming Dynasty Aigun was located on the bank to the later Aigun that was relocated during the Qing Dynasty. In any event, the Ming presence on the Amur was as short-lived as it was tenuous, soon after the end of the Yongle era, Russian Cossack expeditions led by Vassili Poyarkov and Yerofey Khabarov explored the Amur and its tributaries in 1643–44 and 1649–51, respectively
22.
Imperial Russian Navy
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It was expanded in the second half of the 18th century and by the early part of the 19th century had reached its peak strength, only behind the British and French fleets in terms of size. The First World War was mixed for the navy, with the Germans generally gaining the upper hand in the Baltic but the Black Sea falling under Russian control. The Russian Revolution marked the end of the Imperial Navy with its sailors fighting on both sides and its surviving ships forming the core of the Soviet Navy upon its creation in 1918. Under Tsar Mikhail I, construction of the first three-masted ship actually built within Russia was completed in 1636 and it was built in Balakhna by Danish shipbuilders from Holstein according to European design and was christened Frederick. During its maiden voyage on the Caspian Sea, Frederick sailed into a storm and was lost at sea. A boyar named Afanasy Ordin-Nashchokin founded a shipyard at Tsarevich-Dmitriev fortress, in 1661, however, Russia was once again forced to abide by the harsh terms of a treaty, this time the Peace of Cardis. Russia agreed to surrender to Sweden all captured territories, and all constructed at Tsarevich-Dmitriev were ordered destroyed. Boyar Ordin-Nashchyokin, not grieving long over defeat, turned his attention to the Volga River, with the Tsars approval, the boyar brought Dutch shipbuilding experts to the town of Dedinovo near the confluence of the Oka and Volga Rivers. Shipbuilding commenced in the winter of 1667, within two years, four vessels had been completed, one 22-gun galley, christened Орёл, and three smaller ships. The ill-fated Frederick had been a Holstein vessel, Орёл became Russias first own three-masted, European-designed sailing ship, the ship was captured in Astrakhan by rebellious Cossacks led by Stepan Razin. The Cossacks ransacked Орёл and abandoned it, half-submerged, in an estuary of the Volga, unquestionably, the most celebrated Russian explorer was Semyon Dezhnev, who, in 1648, sailed the entire length of present-day Russia by way of the Arctic Ocean. Rounding the Chukotsk Peninsula, Dezhnev passed through the Bering Sea, the creation of the regular Russian Navy took place during the reign of Peter the Great. During the Second Azov campaign of 1696 against Turkey, the Russians employed for the first time 2 warships,4 fireships,23 galleys and 1300 strugs, built on the Voronezh River. After the occupation of the Azov fortress, the Boyar Duma looked into Peters report of military campaign. This date is considered the birthday of the regular Russian Navy. During the Great Northern War of 1700-1721, the Russians built the Baltic Fleet, the construction of the oared fleet took place in 1702-1704 at several shipyards. From 1703-1723, the base of the Baltic Fleet was located in Saint Petersburg. The bases were created in Reval and in Vyborg after it was ceded from Sweden after the war of 1741-43
23.
Imperial Japanese Navy
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The Imperial Japanese Navy was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 until 1945, when it was dissolved following Japans defeat and surrender in World War II. The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force was formed after the dissolution of the IJN, the Japanese Navy was the third largest navy in the world by 1920, behind the Royal Navy and the United States Navy. It was supported by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service for aircraft and it was the primary opponent of the Western Allies in the Pacific War. This eventually led to the Meiji Restoration, accompanying the re-ascendance of the Emperor came a period of frantic modernization and industrialization. Following the attempts at Mongol invasions of Japan by Kubilai Khan in 1274 and 1281, Japan undertook major naval building efforts in the 16th century, during the Warring States period, when feudal rulers vying for supremacy built vast coastal navies of several hundred ships. Around that time Japan may have developed one of the first ironclad warships when Oda Nobunaga, in 1588 Toyotomi Hideyoshi issued a ban on Wakō piracy, the pirates then became vassals of Hideyoshi, and comprised the naval force used in the Japanese invasion of Korea. Japan built her first large ocean-going warships in the beginning of the 17th century, from 1604 the Bakufu also commissioned about 350 Red seal ships, usually armed and incorporating some Western technologies, mainly for Southeast Asian trade. For more than 200 years, beginning in the 1640s, the Japanese policy of seclusion forbade contacts with the outside world and prohibited the construction of ocean-going ships on pain of death. Contacts were maintained, however, with the Dutch through the port of Nagasaki, the Chinese also through Nagasaki and the Ryukyus and Korea through intermediaries with Tsushima. Apart from Dutch trade ships no other Western vessels were allowed to enter Japanese ports, an exception was during the Napoleonic wars. However frictions with foreign ships started from the beginning of the 19th century, the Nagasaki Harbour Incident involving the HMS Phaeton in 1808 and other subsequent incidents in the following decades led to the Shogunate to enact an edict to repel foreign vessels. Western ships which were increasing their presence around Japan due to whaling, the shogunate also began to strengthen the nations coastal defenses. Numerous attempts to open Japan ended in failure in part to Japanese resistance, during 1853 and 1854, American warships under the command of Commodore Matthew Perry entered Edo Bay and made demonstrations of force requesting trade negotiations. After two hundred years of seclusion the 1854 Convention of Kanagawa led to the opening of Japan to international trade and this was soon followed by the 1858 Treaty of Amity and Commerce and treaties with other powers. In 1855, with Dutch assistance, the Shogunate acquired its first steam warship, Kankō Maru, samurai such as the future Admiral Enomoto Takeaki were sent by the Shogunate to study in the Netherlands for several years. In 1859 the Naval Training Center relocated to Tsukiji in Tokyo, in 1857 the Shogunate acquired its first screw-driven steam warship Kanrin Maru and used it as an escort for the 1860 Japanese delegation to the United States. In 1865 the French naval engineer Léonce Verny was hired to build Japans first modern naval arsenals, at Yokosuka, in 1867–1868 a British Naval mission headed by Commander Richard Tracey went to Japan to assist the development of the Japanese Navy and to organize the naval school of Tsukiji. The Shogunate also allowed and then ordered various domains to purchase warships and to develop naval fleets, Satsuma, a naval center had been set up by the Satsuma domain in Kagoshima, students were sent abroad for training and a number of ships were acquired
24.
Soviet Navy
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The Soviet Navy was the naval arm of the Soviet Armed Forces. The influence of the Soviet Navy played a role in the Cold War. The Soviet Navy was divided into four major fleets, the Northern, Pacific, Black Sea, the Caspian Flotilla was a smaller force operating in the land-locked Caspian Sea. Main components of the Soviet Navy included Soviet Naval Aviation, Naval Infantry, most of the Soviet Navy was reformed into the Russian Navy after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, while some elements became the basis of the Ukrainian, Azerbaijani and Georgian navies. During the revolution, sailors deserted their ships at will and generally neglected their duties, the officers were dispersed and most of the sailors left their ships. Work stopped in the shipyards, where uncompleted ships deteriorated rapidly, the Black Sea Fleet fared no better than the Baltic. The Bolshevik revolution entirely disrupted its personnel, with murders of officers. At the end of April 1918, German troops entered Crimea, the more effective ships were moved from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk where, after an ultimatum from Germany, they were scuttled by Vladimir Lenins order. The ships remaining in Sevastopol were captured by the Germans and then, after November 1918, on 1 April 1919, when Red Army forces captured Crimea, the British squadron had to withdraw, but before leaving they damaged all the remaining battleships and sank thirteen new submarines. When the White Army captured Crimea in 1919, it rescued and reconditioned a few units, at the end of the civil war, Wrangels fleet, a White fleet, moved to Bizerta in French Tunisia, where it was interned. The first ship of the navy could be considered the rebellious Imperial Russian cruiser Aurora. Sailors of the Baltic fleet supplied the fighting force of the Bolsheviks during the October Revolution, some imperial vessels continued to serve after the revolution, albeit with different names. The Soviet Navy, established as the Workers and Peasants Red Fleet by a 1918 decree of the Soviet government, was less than service-ready during the interwar years, as the countrys attentions were largely directed internally, the Navy did not have much funding or training. The greater part of the old fleet was sold by the Soviet government to Germany for scrap, in the Baltic Sea there remained only three much-neglected battleships, two cruisers, some ten destroyers, and a few submarines. Despite this state of affairs, the Baltic Fleet remained a significant naval formation, there also existed some thirty minor-waterways combat flotillas. During the 1930s, as the industrialization of the Soviet Union proceeded, approved by the Labour and Defence Council in 1926, the Naval Shipbuilding Program included plans to construct twelve submarines, the first six were to become known as the Dekabrist class. Beginning 4 November 1926, Technical Bureau Nº4, under the leadership of B. M, malinin, managed the submarine construction works at the Baltic Shipyard. In subsequent years,133 submarines were built to designs developed during Malinins management, additional developments included the formation of the Pacific Fleet in 1932 and the Northern Fleet in 1933
25.
Soviet invasion of Manchuria
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Soviet gains on the continent were Manchukuo, Mengjiang and northern Korea. Since 1983, the operation has sometimes been called Operation August Storm, the invasion began on 9 August 1945, exactly three months after the German surrender on May 8. It has also referred to as the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation. This was to be performed by the Transbaikal Front from the west and by the 1st Far Eastern Front from the east, the only Soviet equivalent of a theater command that operated during the war, Far East Command, consisted of three Red Army fronts. The Transbaikal Front was to form the western half of the Soviet pincer movement, attacking across the Inner Mongolian desert, the 36th Army was also attacking from the west, but with the objective of meeting forces of the 2nd Far Eastern Front at Harbin and Tsitsihar. The 1st Far Eastern Front, under Marshal Kirill Meretskov, included, the 1st Far Eastern Front was to form the eastern half of the pincer movement. This attack involved the 1st Red Banner Army, the 5th Army, once that city was captured, this force was to advance towards the cities of Jilin, Changchun and Harbin. Its final objective was to link up with the forces of the Transbaikal Front at Changchun and this secondary objective was to be carried out by the 25th Army. Meanwhile, the 35th Army was tasked with capturing the cities of Boli, Linkou, the 2nd Far Eastern Front, under General Maksim Purkayev, included, 2nd Red Banner Army 15th Army 16th Army 5th Separate Rifle Corps Chuguevsk Operational Group Amur Military Flotilla 10th Air Army. The 2nd Far Eastern Front was deployed in an attack role. Its objectives were the cities of Harbin and Tsitsihar, and to prevent an orderly withdrawal to the south by the Japanese forces. Once troops from the 1st Far Eastern Front and Transbaikal Front captured the city of Changchun, each front had front units attached directly to the front instead of an army. The forces totaled 89 divisions with 1.5 million men,3,704 tanks,1,852 self propelled guns,85,819 vehicles and 3,721 aircraft, approximately one-third of its strength was in combat support and services. The Soviet plan incorporated all the experience in warfare that they had acquired in fighting the Germans. In addition, the Japanese were assisted by the forces of their states of Manchukuo. The former had an army of about 170,000 to 220,000 troops, while the latter had around 10,000, Korea, the next target for the Soviet Far East Command, was garrisoned by the Japanese Seventeenth Area Army. The Kwantung Army had over 700,000 men in twenty-five divisions and these contained over 1,215 armored vehicles,6,700 artillery pieces, and 1,800 aircraft. They were also deployed against the Nationalist Chinese in Operation Ichigo, by 1945, the Kwantung Army contained a large number of raw recruits and conscripts, with generally obsolete, light, or otherwise limited equipment
26.
United States Navy
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The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U. S. Navy is the largest, most capable navy in the world, the U. S. Navy has the worlds largest aircraft carrier fleet, with ten in service, two in the reserve fleet, and three new carriers under construction. The service has 323,792 personnel on duty and 108,515 in the Navy Reserve. It has 274 deployable combat vessels and more than 3,700 operational aircraft as of October 2016, the U. S. Navy traces its origins to the Continental Navy, which was established during the American Revolutionary War and was effectively disbanded as a separate entity shortly thereafter. It played a role in the American Civil War by blockading the Confederacy. It played the role in the World War II defeat of Imperial Japan. The 21st century U. S. Navy maintains a global presence, deploying in strength in such areas as the Western Pacific, the Mediterranean. The Navy is administratively managed by the Department of the Navy, the Department of the Navy is itself a division of the Department of Defense, which is headed by the Secretary of Defense. The Chief of Naval Operations is an admiral and the senior naval officer of the Department of the Navy. The CNO may not be the highest ranking officer in the armed forces if the Chairman or the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The mission of the Navy is to maintain, train and equip combat-ready Naval forces capable of winning wars, deterring aggression, the United States Navy is a seaborne branch of the military of the United States. The Navys three primary areas of responsibility, The preparation of naval forces necessary for the prosecution of war. The development of aircraft, weapons, tactics, technique, organization, U. S. Navy training manuals state that the mission of the U. S. Armed Forces is to prepare and conduct prompt and sustained combat operations in support of the national interest, as part of that establishment, the U. S. Navys functions comprise sea control, power projection and nuclear deterrence, in addition to sealift duties. It follows then as certain as that night succeeds the day, that without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive, the Navy was rooted in the colonial seafaring tradition, which produced a large community of sailors, captains, and shipbuilders. In the early stages of the American Revolutionary War, Massachusetts had its own Massachusetts Naval Militia, the establishment of a national navy was an issue of debate among the members of the Second Continental Congress. Supporters argued that a navy would protect shipping, defend the coast, detractors countered that challenging the British Royal Navy, then the worlds preeminent naval power, was a foolish undertaking. Commander in Chief George Washington resolved the debate when he commissioned the ocean-going schooner USS Hannah to interdict British merchant ships, and reported the captures to the Congress
27.
40 mm grenade
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The 40 mm grenade is a military grenade caliber for grenade launchers in service with many armed forces. There are two types in service, the 40×46mm, which is a low-velocity round used in hand-held grenade launchers. Both 40 mm cartridges use the High-Low Propulsion System, the less powerful 40×46mm is used in hand-held weapons such as the M79, M203, and the multi-shot M32 MGL. The more powerful 40×53mm is used in automatic grenade launchers mounted on tripods, vehicles or helicopters, in these roles, the rounds are linked together with a metallic disintegrating link. A medium velocity 40×51mm cartridge recently developed in South Africa provides a powerful alternative for hand-held weapons without increased recoil. A new version of the Milkor MGL chambered for the new round remains backward compatible with existing 40×46mm rounds. U. S. military rounds designated specifically for the M79 launcher includes, High Explosive, M381, M386 Airburst, M397, M397A1 MP-APERS, M576 CS gas, M651 Practice, M781 U. S. S. Army ARDEC began development of a 40 mm airburst fuse in 2011 to improve the ability of grenade launchers like the M203, SAGM enables soldiers to accurately incapacitate personnel targets in defilade at ranges between 50 to 500 meters. The round is engineered with three firing modes, airburst, point detonation, and self-destruct, a successful demonstration occurred in November 2013. The SAGM was to undergo evaluation in July 2015 and, if successful, not only does the fuse burst over walls, but it can detonate when passing cover like trees, bursting just as it senses and passes the trunk. The sort of sensor SAGM uses to differentiate clutter from triggering obstacles is highly classified and it is a grenade caliber designed in Poland, and used in Pallad wz.74 underbarrel grenade launchers and Pallad-D wz.83 Grenade launcher. The construction is similar to one used in 40×46mm but grenades are not fully interchangeable, extended Range Low Pressure 40×51mm cartridges extend the range of 40 mm grenades from 400 m to 800 m and are manufactured by companies such as Rheinmetall Denel Munitions. The fuze is programmed through the control of the gun. The fuze is armed at approximately 23 meters. The round is programmed to airburst over the target and the fuze counts down the time via its built in electronics. If an unprogrammed round is fired, it will detonate on impact, the projectile has a built in self-destruct and can be fired by any automatic grenade launcher. There is also the CIS40 AGL and 40LWAGL from Singapores ST Kinetics, the Daewoo K4 Grenade Machine Gun is in service with the South Korean Armed Services. The Soviet GP-25 Kostyor and GP-30 Obuvka and Russian GP-34, BG-15 Mukha and these grenades are caseless, holding their own propellant within the body of the grenade
28.
Cannon
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A cannon is any piece of artillery that uses gunpowder or other usually explosive-based propellants to launch a projectile, which may or may not be explosive. The word cannon is derived from languages, in which the original definition can usually be translated as tube, cane. The Greeks invented the first type—a steam cannon—designed by Archimedes during the Siege of Syracuse, ctesibius built a steam cannon in Alexandria and in the fifteenth century Leonardo da Vinci designed another, the Architonnerre, based on Archimedes work. The earliest form of artillery was developed in Song China, over time replacing siege engines. In the Middle East, the first use of the cannon is argued to be during the 1260 Battle of Ain Jalut between the Mamluk Sultanate and Mongol Empire. The first cannon in Europe were in use in the Iberian Peninsula by the mid-13th century and it was during this period, the Middle Ages, that cannon became standardised, and more effective in both the anti-infantry and siege roles. After the Middle Ages most large cannon were abandoned in favour of greater numbers of lighter, Cannon also transformed naval warfare in the early modern period, as European navies took advantage of their firepower. In World War I, the majority of fatalities were caused by artillery. Most modern cannon are similar to those used in the Second World War, Cannon was widely known as the earliest form of a gun and artillery, before early firearms were invented. The word has been used to refer to a gun since 1326 in Italy, both Cannons and Cannon are correct and in common usage, with one or the other having preference in different parts of the English-speaking world. Cannons is more common in North America and Australia, while cannon as plural is more common in the United Kingdom, Cannon in general have the form of a truncated cone with an internal cylindrical bore for holding an explosive charge and a projectile. The thickest, strongest, and closed part of the cone is located near the explosive charge, as any explosive charge will dissipate in all directions equally, the thickest portion of the cannon is useful for containing and directing this force. Field artillery cannon in Europe and the Americas were initially made most often of bronze, though later forms were constructed of cast iron and eventually steel. However, cast iron cannon have a tendency to burst without having any previous weakness or wear. The following terms refer to the components or aspects of a classical western cannon as illustrated here. In what follows, the words near, close, and behind will refer to those parts towards the thick, closed end of the piece, and far, front, in front of, and before to the thinner, open end. Bore, The hollow cylinder bored down the centre of the cannon, including the base of the bore or bottom of the bore, the diameter of the bore represents the cannons calibre. Chamber, The cylindrical, conical, or spherical recess at the nearest end of the bottom of the bore into which the gunpowder is packed
29.
Howitzer
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In the taxonomies of artillery pieces used by European armies in the 17th to 20th centuries, the howitzer stood between the gun and the mortar. Howitzers, like other artillery equipment, are organized in groups called batteries. The English word howitzer comes from the Czech word houfnice, from houf, crowd, haufen, sometimes in the compound Gewalthaufen, also designated a pike square formation in German. This is particularly true in the forces of the United States. Because of this practice, the howitzer is used in some armies as a generic term for any kind of artillery piece that is designed to attack targets using indirect fire. Thus, artillery pieces that bear resemblance to howitzers of earlier eras are now described as howitzers. Most other armies in the reserve the word howitzer for guns with barrel lengths 15 to 25 times their caliber. The British had a method of nomenclature. In the 18th century, they adopted projectile weight for guns replacing the old naming system of culverin, saker, mortars had been categorized by calibre in inches in the 17th century and this was inherited by howitzers. The modern howitzers were invented in Sweden towards the end of the 17th century, originally intended for use in siege warfare, they were particularly useful for delivering cast-iron shells filled with gunpowder or incendiary materials into the interior of fortifications. In the middle of the 18th century, a number of European armies began to introduce howitzers that were enough to accompany armies in the field. Though usually fired at the high angles of fire used by contemporary siege howitzers. Rather, as the guns of the day were usually restricted to inert projectiles. Many, for the sake of simplicity and rapidity of fire, the Abus gun was an early form of howitzer in the Ottoman Empire. In 1758 the Russian Empire introduced a type of howitzer, with a conical chamber, called a licorne. The most famous of these gun-howitzers was the Napoleon 12-pounder, a weapon of French design that saw service in the American Civil War. The longest-serving artillery piece of the 19th century was the mountain howitzer, in 1859, the armies of Europe began to rearm field batteries with rifled field guns. These new field pieces used cylindrical projectiles that, while smaller in caliber than the spherical shells of smoothbore field howitzers, moreover, their greater range let them create many of the same effects that previously required the sharply curved trajectories of smoothbore field howitzers
30.
Danube
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The Danube is Europes second-longest river, after the Volga River, and also the longest river in the European Union region. It is located in Central and Eastern Europe, the Danube was once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire, and today flows through 10 countries, more than any other river in the world. Its drainage basin extends into nine more countries, the Latin name Dānuvius is one of a number of Old European river names derived from a Proto-Indo-European *dānu. Other river names from the root include the Dunajec, Dzvina/Daugava, Don, Donets, Dnieper, Dniestr. In Rigvedic Sanskrit, dānu means fluid, drop, in Avestan, in the Rigveda, Dānu once appears as the mother of Vrtra. Known to the ancient Greeks as the Istros a borrowing from a Daco-Thracian name meaning strong, in Latin, the Danube was variously known as Danubius, Danuvius or as Ister. The Dacian/Thracian name was Donaris for the upper Danube and Istros for the lower Danube, the Thraco-Phrygian name was Matoas, the bringer of luck. The Latin name is masculine, as are all its Slavic names, the German Donau is feminine, as it has been re-interpreted as containing the suffix -ouwe wetland. Classified as a waterway, it originates in the town of Donaueschingen, in the Black Forest of Germany, at the confluence of the rivers Brigach. The Danube then flows southeast for about 2,800 km, passing through four capital cities before emptying into the Black Sea via the Danube Delta in Romania and its drainage basin extends into nine more. The highest point of the basin is the summit of Piz Bernina at the Italy–Switzerland border. The land drained by the Danube extends into other countries. Many Danubian tributaries are important rivers in their own right, navigable by barges, from its source to its outlet into the Black Sea, its main tributaries are, The Danube flows through many cities, including four national capitals, more than any other river in the world. Danube remains a mountain river until Passau, with average bottom gradient 0. 0012%. Middle Section, From Devín Gate to Iron Gate, at the border of Serbia and Romania, the riverbed widens and the average bottom gradient becomes only 0. 00006%. Lower Section, From Iron Gate to Sulina, with average gradient as little as 0. 00003%, about 60 of its tributaries are also navigable. In 1994 the Danube was declared one of ten Pan-European transport corridors, routes in Central, the amount of goods transported on the Danube increased to about 100 million tons in 1987. In 1999, transport on the river was difficult by the NATO bombing of three bridges in Serbia during the Kosovo War
31.
World War I
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World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the worlds great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances, the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war, Italy, Japan, the trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia. Within weeks, the powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. On 25 July Russia began mobilisation and on 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, Germany presented an ultimatum to Russia to demobilise, and when this was refused, declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany then invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, after the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that changed little until 1917. On the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai. In 1915, Italy joined the Allies and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Romania joined the Allies in 1916, after a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. By the end of the war or soon after, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, national borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germanys colonies were parceled out among the victors. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This effort failed, and economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation eventually contributed to World War II. From the time of its start until the approach of World War II, at the time, it was also sometimes called the war to end war or the war to end all wars due to its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. In Canada, Macleans magazine in October 1914 wrote, Some wars name themselves, during the interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries. Will become the first world war in the sense of the word. These began in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, when Germany was united in 1871, Prussia became part of the new German nation. Soon after, in October 1873, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors between the monarchs of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany
32.
Austria-Hungary
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The union was a result of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 and came into existence on 30 March 1867. Austria-Hungary consisted of two monarchies, and one region, the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia under the Hungarian crown. It was ruled by the House of Habsburg, and constituted the last phase in the evolution of the Habsburg Monarchy. Following the 1867 reforms, the Austrian and the Hungarian states were co-equal, Foreign affairs and the military came under joint oversight, but all other governmental faculties were divided between respective states. Austria-Hungary was a state and one of the worlds great powers at the time. Austria-Hungary was geographically the second-largest country in Europe after the Russian Empire, at 621,538 km2, the Empire built up the fourth-largest machine building industry of the world, after the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. After 1878, Bosnia and Herzegovina was under Austro-Hungarian military and civilian rule until it was annexed in 1908. The annexation of Bosnia also led to Islam being recognized as a state religion due to Bosnias Muslim population. Austria-Hungary was one of the Central Powers in World War I and it was already effectively dissolved by the time the military authorities signed the armistice of Villa Giusti on 3 November 1918. The realms full, official name was The Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council, each enjoyed considerable sovereignty with only a few joint affairs. Certain regions, such as Polish Galicia within Cisleithania and Croatia within Transleithania, enjoyed autonomous status, the division between Austria and Hungary was so marked that there was no common citizenship, one was either an Austrian citizen or a Hungarian citizen, never both. This also meant that there were always separate Austrian and Hungarian passports, however, neither Austrian nor Hungarian passports were used in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia-Dalmatia. Instead, the Kingdom issued its own passports which were written in Croatian and French and it is not known what kind of passports were used in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was under the control of both Austria and Hungary. The Kingdom of Hungary had always maintained a separate parliament, the Diet of Hungary, the administration and government of the Kingdom of Hungary remained largely untouched by the government structure of the overarching Austrian Empire. Hungarys central government structures remained well separated from the Austrian imperial government, the country was governed by the Council of Lieutenancy of Hungary – located in Pressburg and later in Pest – and by the Hungarian Royal Court Chancellery in Vienna. The Hungarian government and Hungarian parliament were suspended after the Hungarian revolution of 1848, despite Austria and Hungary sharing a common currency, they were fiscally sovereign and independent entities. Since the beginnings of the union, the government of the Kingdom of Hungary could preserve its separated. After the revolution of 1848–1849, the Hungarian budget was amalgamated with the Austrian, from 1527 to 1851, the Kingdom of Hungary maintained its own customs controls, which separated her from the other parts of the Habsburg-ruled territories
33.
Kingdom of Romania
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The Kingdom of Romania was a constitutional monarchy which existed between 13 March 1881 and 30 December 1947, specified by the first three Constitutions of Romania. As such, it is distinct from the Romanian Old Kingdom. From 1859 to 1877, Romania evolved from a union of two vassal principalities under a single prince to a full-fledged independent kingdom with a Hohenzollern monarchy. During 1918-20, at the end of World War I, Transylvania, Eastern Moldavia, in 1947 King Michael was compelled to abdicate and a socialist republic ruled by the Romanian Communist Party replaced the monarchy. The 1859 ascendancy of Alexandru Ioan Cuza as prince of both Moldavia and Wallachia under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire united an identifiably Romanian nation under a single ruler. On 5 February 1862 the two principalities were united to form the Principality of Romania, with Bucharest as its capital. On 23 February 1866 a so-called Monstrous coalition, composed of Conservatives and radical Liberals, the German prince Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was appointed as Prince of Romania, in a move to assure German backing to unity and future independence. He immediately adopted the Romanian spelling of his name, Carol, on 15 March 1881, as an assertion of full sovereignty, the Romanian parliament raised the country to the status of a kingdom, and Carol was crowned as king on 10 May. Abstaining from the Initial Balkan War against the Ottoman Empire, the Kingdom of Romania entered the Second Balkan War in June 1913 against the Tsardom of Bulgaria,330,000 Romanian troops moved across the Danube and into Bulgaria. One army occupied Southern Dobrudja and another moved into northern Bulgaria to threaten Sofia, Romania thus acquired the ethnically-mixed territory of Southern Dobrudja, which it had desired for years. In 1916 Romania entered World War I on the Entente side, the term came into use after World War I, when the Old Kingdom was opposed to Greater Romania, which included Transylvania, Banat, Bessarabia, and Bukovina. Nowadays, the term mainly has a historical relevance, and is used as a common term for all regions in Romania included in both the Old Kingdom and present-day borders. Romania delayed in entering World War I, but ultimately declared war on the Central Powers in 1916, War with the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919 resulted in the occupation of Budapest by Romanian troops and the end of Béla Kuns Bolshevik regime. At the Paris Peace Conference, Romania received territories of Transylvania, part of Banat, Bessarabia, thus, Romania in 1920 was more than twice the size it had been in 1914. Although the country was satisfied and had no territorial claims, it aroused the enmity of Bulgaria, and especially Hungary. Greater Romania now encompassed a significant minority population, especially of Hungarians, by contrast, the prewar Romanian state had only one real minority, Jews, but nonetheless anti-Semitism was widespread. Transylvania had significant Hungarian and German population, and with a contemptuous attitude towards Romanians. Both groups were excluded from politics as the postwar Romanian regime passed an edict stating that all personnel employed by the state had to speak Romanian
34.
Yugoslav monitor Sava
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The Yugoslav monitor Sava was a Temes-class river monitor built for the Austro-Hungarian Navy as SMS Bodrog. She fired the first shots of World War I on the night of 28 July 1914 and she was part of the Danube Flotilla, and fought the Serbian and Romanian armies from Belgrade to the mouth of the Danube. In the closing stages of the war, she was the last monitor to withdraw towards Budapest, after the war, she was transferred to the newly created Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and renamed Sava. She remained in service throughout the period, although budget restrictions meant she was not always in full commission. During the German-led Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Sava served with the 1st Monitor Division, along with her fellow monitor Vardar, she laid mines in the Danube near the Romanian border during the first few days of the invasion. The two monitors fought off attacks by the Luftwaffe, but were forced to withdraw to Belgrade. Due to high levels and low bridges, navigation was difficult. Some of her crew tried to escape cross-country towards the southern Adriatic coast, following World War II, Sava was raised once again, and was refurbished to serve in the Yugoslav Navy from 1952 to 1962. She was then transferred to a company that was eventually privatised. As of 2014, Sava was still in service as a gravel barge, in 2005, the government of Serbia granted her limited heritage protection after citizens demanded that she be preserved as a floating museum, but little else has been done to restore her. A Temes-class river monitor, the ship was built for the Austro-Hungarian Navy by H. Schönichen, originally named SMS Bodrog, she was laid down at Neupest on 14 February 1903. Like her sister ship SMS Temes, she had a length of 57.7 m, a beam of 9.5 m. Her standard displacement was 440 tonnes, and her crew consisted of 86 officers, Bodrog had two triple-expansion steam engines, each driving a single propeller shaft. Steam was provided by two Yarrow water-tube boilers, and her engines were rated at 1,400 indicated horsepower, as designed, she had a maximum speed of 13 knots, and carried 62 tonnes of coal. Bodrog was armed with two 120 mm L/35 guns in gun turrets, a single 120 mm L/10 howitzer in a central pivot mount. The maximum range of her Škoda 120 mm guns was 10 kilometres and her armour consisted of belt, bulkheads and gun turrets 40 mm thick, and deck armour 25 mm thick. The armour on her conning tower was 75 mm thick, Bodrog was launched on 12 April 1904, commissioned on 2 August 1904, and completed on 10 November 1904. Bodrog was part of the Danube Flotilla, and at the start of World War I she was based in Zemun, just upstream from Belgrade on the Danube and she shared the base with three other monitors and three patrol boats
35.
Belgrade
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Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers and its name translates to White city. The urban area of the City of Belgrade has a population of 1.34 million, one of the most important prehistoric cultures of Europe, the Vinča culture, evolved within the Belgrade area in the 6th millennium BC. In antiquity, Thraco-Dacians inhabited the region, and after 279 BC Celts conquered the city and it was conquered by the Romans during the reign of Augustus, and awarded city rights in the mid-2nd century. In 1521, Belgrade was conquered by the Ottoman Empire and became the seat of the Sanjak of Smederevo and it frequently passed from Ottoman to Habsburg rule, which saw the destruction of most of the city during the Austro-Ottoman wars. Belgrade was again named the capital of Serbia in 1841, northern Belgrade remained the southernmost Habsburg post until 1918, when the city was reunited. As a strategic location, the city was battled over in 115 wars, Belgrade was the capital of Yugoslavia from its creation in 1918, to its final dissolution in 2006. Belgrade has an administrative status within Serbia and it is one of five statistical regions of Serbia. Its metropolitan territory is divided into 17 municipalities, each with its own local council, City of Belgrade covers 3. 6% of Serbias territory, and 22. 5% of the countrys population lives within its administrative limits. It is classified as a Beta- global city, chipped stone tools found at Zemun show that the area around Belgrade was inhabited by nomadic foragers in the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic eras. Some of these belong to the Mousterian industry, which are associated with Neanderthals rather than modern humans. Aurignacian and Gravettian tools have also discovered there, indicating occupation between 50,000 and 20,000 years ago. The first farming people to settle in the region are associated with the Neolithic Starčevo culture, there are several Starčevo sites in and around Belgrade, including the eponymous site of Starčevo. The Starčevo culture was succeeded by the Vinča culture, a more sophisticated farming culture that grew out of the earlier Starčevo settlements which is named for a site in the Belgrade region. Evidence of early knowledge about Belgrades geographical location comes from ancient myths, the rock overlooking the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers has been identified as one of the place in the story of Jason and the Argonauts. The Paleo-Balkan tribes of Thracians and Dacians ruled this area prior to the Roman conquest, Belgrade was inhabited by a Thraco-Dacian tribe Singi, after the Celtic invasion in 279 BC, the Scordisci took the city, naming it Singidūn. In 34–33 BC the Roman army led by Silanus reached Belgrade, jovian reestablished Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, ending the brief revival of traditional Roman religions under his predecessor Julian the Apostate. In 395 AD, the passed to the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire
36.
Romania during World War I
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The Romanian campaign was part of the Balkan theatre of World War I, with Romania and Russia allied against the armies of the Central Powers. Romania entered the war in an attempt to seize Transylvania, a region with majority Romanian population, despite initial successes, the Romanian forces suffered several setbacks, and by the end of 1916 only Moldavia remained under Allied control. On 10 November 1918, just one day before the German armistice and after all the other Central Powers had already capitulated, by then, about 220,000 Romanian soldiers had been killed, about 6% of total Entente military deaths. The Kingdom of Romania was ruled by kings of the House of Hohenzollern from 1866, while Carol wanted to enter World War I as an ally of the Central Powers, the Romanian public and the political parties were in favor of joining the Triple Entente. Romania remained neutral when the war started, arguing that Austria-Hungary itself had started the war and, consequently, in the same time, Germany started encouraging Austro-Hungary to make territorial concessions to Romania and Italy in order to keep both states neutral. In return for entering the war on Allied side, the Romania demanded support for its claims to parts of Transylvania. The Romanians greatest concerns in negotiations were the avoidance of a conflict that would have to be fought on two fronts and written guarantees of Romanian territorial gains after the war, the Allies were to send 300 tons of provisions on a daily basis. According to the Romanian account, most of these clauses, with the exception of those imposed on Romania, according to British military historian John Keegan, before Romania entered the war, the Allies had secretly agreed not to honour the territorial expansion of Romania when the war ended. In 1915, Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Thomson, a fluent speaker of French, was sent to Bucharest as British military attaché on the initiative of Lord Kitchener to bring Romania into the war. Once there, he formed the view that an unprepared and ill-armed Romania facing a war on two fronts would be a liability, not an asset, to the Allies. This view was brushed aside by Whitehall, and Thomson signed a Military Convention with Romania on 13 August 1916, within a few months, he had to alleviate the consequences of Romania’s setbacks and supervise the destruction of the Romanian oil wells to deny them to Germany. The Romanian government signed a treaty with the Allies on 17 August 1916 that pledged to declare war on Austria-Hungary by 28 August, the Romanian ambassador in Vienna actually transmitted the declaration of war on 27 August. Germany, caught by surprise, responded with a declaration of war on Romania the next day, the dates of the Bulgarian and Ottoman declarations of war are disputed. Ian Beckett says that Bulgaria did not issue a declaration of war prior to its attack of 31 August, other sources place the declaration on 30 August or 1 September. The Ottoman declaration took place either on 29 August,30 August or 1 September, within two days of her own declaration, according to one source, Romania found herself at war with all the Central Powers. The Romanian army was large, with over 650,000 men in 23 divisions. Meanwhile, the German Chief of Staff, General Erich von Falkenhayn, had correctly reasoned that Romania would side with the Allies, thus everything seemed to depend on whether Rumania was ready to make any sort of use of her momentary advantage. The Romanians in Austria-Hungary entered the war from the very beginning, although most Transylvanian Romanians were loyal to the Empire, over time, reactionary sentiments emerged, especially after Romania joined the war
37.
Trieste
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Trieste is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a strip of Italian territory lying between the Adriatic Sea and Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south and east of the city. It is also located near Croatia some further 30 kilometres south, Trieste is located at the head of the Gulf of Trieste and throughout history it has been influenced by its location at the crossroads of Latin, Slavic, and Germanic cultures. In 2009, it had a population of about 205,000 and it is the capital of the autonomous region Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Trieste was one of the oldest parts of the Habsburg Monarchy. In the 19th century, it was the most important port of one of the Great Powers of Europe, as a prosperous seaport in the Mediterranean region, Trieste became the fourth largest city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the fin de siècle period at the end of the 19th century it emerged as an important hub for literature, Trieste underwent an economic revival during the 1930s, and Trieste was an important spot in the struggle between the Eastern and Western blocs after the Second World War. Today, the city is in one of the richest regions of Italy, Roman authors also transliterated the name as Tergestum. Modern names of the city include, Italian, Trieste, Slovene, Trst, German, Triest, Hungarian, Trieszt, Croatian, Trst, Serbian, Трст/Trst, Trieste lies in the northernmost part of the high Adriatic in northeastern Italy, near the border with Slovenia. The city lies on the Gulf of Trieste, built mostly on a hillside that becomes a mountain, Triestes urban territory lies at the foot of an imposing escarpment that comes down abruptly from the Karst Plateau towards the sea. The karst landforms close to the city reach an elevation of 458 metres above sea level and it lies on the borders of the Italian geographical region, the Balkan Peninsula, and the Mitteleuropa. The territory of Trieste is composed of different climate zones depending on the distance from the sea. The average temperatures are 5.4 °C in January and 23.3 °C in July, the climatic setting of the city is humid subtropical climate. On average, humidity levels are low, while only two months receive slightly less than 60 mm of precipitation. Trieste along with the Istrian peninsula has evenly distributed rainfall above 1,000 mm in total, snow occurs on average 0 –2 days per year. Temperatures are very mild - lows below zero are somewhat rare, winter maxima are lower than in typical Mediterranean zone with quite high minima. Summer is very warm with maxima about 28 °C and lows above 20 °C, the absolute maximum of the last fifty years is 37.2 °C in 2003, whereas the absolute minimum is −14.6 °C in 1956. Since the second millennium BC, the location was an inhabited site, originally an Illyrian settlement, the Veneti entered the region in the 10th-9th c. BC and seem to have given the town its name, Tergeste, still later, the town was later captured by the Carni, a tribe of the Eastern Alps, before becoming part of the Roman republic in 177 BC during the Istrian War
38.
Battle of Turtucaia
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The Battle of Turtucaia in Bulgaria, was the opening battle of the first Central Powers offensive during the Romanian Campaign of World War I. The battle lasted for five days and ended with the capture of the fortress of Tutrakan, three Romanian armies invaded Transylvania through the Carpathians, pushing back the much smaller Austro-Hungarian First Army. In a short time the Romanians occupied Orșova, Petroșani, and Brașov, and reached Sibiu on their way to the river Mureș, in response the German Empire declared war on Romania on 27 August, with Bulgaria following suit on 1 September. On the next day the Bulgarian Third Army initiated the Central Powers first major offensive of the campaign by invading Southern Dobruja, Tutrakan was originally a Roman fort. During the reign of Emperor Diocletian it developed one of the largest strongholds of the Danubian limes. In the 7th century it became part of the Bulgarian Empire, when the Ottomans entered their period of decline they relied on the Danube as their main defensive barrier in the Balkans. Tutrakan was situated on the side of the quadrilateral, on a stretch where the Danube was narrow. This made it an excellent spot for a crossing and prompted the Ottomans to fortify it with a large garrison, as a result of the Second Balkan War, Tutrakan and the entire Southern Dobruja region were ceded to Romania in 1913. The Romanian General Staff immediately took measures to strengthen the defences of the town, intensive construction work lasted for more than two years under the guidance of Belgian military engineers. The basic defense consisted of three lines of trenches anchored on the river. The most forward of these were small outposts designed for surveillance, to the west, around the village of Staro Selo, the outer fortifications were of a more extensive character. The main defensive line was constructed on the edge of the plateau in order to keep enemy artillery away from any bridge that could be built to Tutrakan. Each of these two shelters for 50 to 70 soldiers, with roofs supported by iron rails or wooden boards. Their profile was low, rising only about 60 centimeters, thus ensuring protection against field artillery shells. The intervening spaces were covered by rifle and machine gun positions in the flanks of the forts. A hundred meters in front of the line the Romanians had built three rows of pitfalls and barbed wire that ran continuously from fort 15 to fort 3. Some four kilometers from the defensive line and three kilometers from Tutrakan itself lay the secondary defensive line of the fortress. It consisted of a line of trenches with few prepared machine gun nests or obstacles
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First Battle of Cobadin
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The battle ended in Entente tactical victory and forced the Central Powers to hold their offensive and assume a defensive stance till the middle of October. The right flank of the Allied forces was supported by the Romanian Navys Danube Flotilla, second Battle of Cobadin Министерство на войната, Щаб на войската. Българската армия в Световната война1915 -1918, Vol. IX, istoria războiului pentru întregirea României, 1916-1919/История на войната за обединението на Румъния. Печатница на армейското военно издателство, София, Действията на III армия в Добруджа през1916 год. A Short History of the Great War
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Tatarbunary uprising
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It was led by a pro-Soviet revolutionary committee which called for the creation of a Moldavian Soviet Republic and an end to Romanian occupation. The uprising was instigated and led by communists from across the Dniester who were opposed to the establishment of Greater Romania, american professor and expert in Moldovan issues Charles King however considers the revolt, along with other similar rebellions in Romanian-administered Bessarabia, as modern jacqueries. After World War I relations between Romania and Soviet Russia were tense, since 1918 there were numerous bilateral meetings in Copenhagen, Warsaw, Genoa, and other locations but no consensus could be reached. The Soviets saw Bessarabia as a province and considered the decision of union with Romania as imposed by the occupying Romanian Army. The legitimacy of the Sfatul Ţării was also brought into question, in December 1923, the sixth Conference of the Balkan Communist Federation adopted a resolution condemning what was called Romanias expansionist nature. The Romanian state was accused that in 1918, taking advantage of Russias weakness and it also says that, because of this, “the nationalities in Bessarabia, Bukovina, Dobrudja and Transylvania undertook a fight for self-determination”. Between March 27 and April 2,1924 negotiations took place in Vienna in order to relieve Soviet-Romanian relations, Romania did not recognize the newly constituted USSR and the countries had no diplomatic relations. The Romanian delegation was led by C. Langa-Răşcanu and the Soviets were led by N. N. Krestinsky, the Soviet delegation immediately raised the question of Bessarabia and diplomat Maxim Litvinov presented a plan to conduct a plebiscite in Bessarabia. The Romanian government rejected the referendum, viewing it as a Soviet public relations campaign, Langa-Răşcanu claimed that in the entire Soviet Union there never was any kind of plebiscite, citing Leon Trotsky. On April 2,1924, the Romanian delegation rejected the Soviet proposal, the Soviet government assessed that, in 1924, all the conditions are met for major actions against Romania which would justify the intervention of Soviet Army. Similar actions were prepared for other countries from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, the Comintern approved the plan that was to divide Romania into 5 action zone as following, North Zone – representing Bukovina, had the center of operation at Kamianka. Bessarabia – had the action zone in the south and it would advance to Galaţi with the help of a Soviet detachment that would cross the border at Olăneşti – Budaki – Tuzly. This was set to be the action zone. South-East Zone – comprising Dobrudja with the centers at Călăraşi – Silistra – Mânăstirea. The plan was to destroy the bridge near Feteşti that connected the province with Romania, help would be provided by land troops from the Soviet Union. Banat and Eastern Hungary – here, the proceedings were supported by Hungarian irredentist. The centers were Lugoj, Simeria and Caransebeş, northern Zone, Eastern Hungary and Transylvania – only public manifestations of workers and peasants were planned. Centers were designated at Cluj, Dej and Oradea, the Soviet Union had asked not to be directly involved in the preparations
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