1.59 Inch Breech-Loading Vickers Q.F. Gun, Mk II
The 1.59-inch breech-loading Vickers Q.F. gun, Mk II was a British light artillery piece designed during World War I. Originally intended for use in trench warfare, it was instead tested for air-to-air and air-to-ground use by aircraft. Although it fired shells and had no capability to launch rockets, it was widely but misleadingly known as the "Vickers-Crayford rocket gun." Design Vickers designed the gun early in World War I, intending it as a piece of light artillery for use by infantry in trenches attacking machine gun positions and pillboxes. To make it portable for infantry use, it was very small and light for a gun of its calibre. Its light construction dictated a low muzzle velocity, which resulted in it having a short range. It was too light to withstand the detonation of standard British explosive propellants, so its ammunition used ballistite packed in cambric bags instead. The gun fired a 1.2-pound (0.54 kg) high-explosive shell at 800 feet (244 meters) per s ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fighting occurring throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific, and parts of Asia. An estimated 9 million soldiers were killed in combat, plus another 23 million wounded, while 5 million civilians died as a result of military action, hunger, and disease. Millions more died in genocides within the Ottoman Empire and in the 1918 influenza pandemic, which was exacerbated by the movement of combatants during the war. Prior to 1914, the European great powers were divided between the Triple Entente (comprising France, Russia, and Britain) and the Triple Alliance (containing Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy). Tensions in the Balkans came to a head on 28 June 1914, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdin ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Machine Gun
A machine gun is a fully automatic, rifled autoloading firearm designed for sustained direct fire with rifle cartridges. Other automatic firearms such as automatic shotguns and automatic rifles (including assault rifles and battle rifles) are typically designed more for firing short bursts rather than continuous firepower, and are not considered true machine guns. As a class of military kinetic projectile weapon, machine guns are designed to be mainly used as infantry support weapons and generally used when attached to a bipod or tripod, a fixed mount or a heavy weapons platform for stability against recoils. Many machine guns also use belt feeding and open bolt operation, features not normally found on other infantry firearms. Machine guns can be further categorized as light machine guns, medium machine guns, heavy machine guns, general purpose machine guns and squad automatic weapons. Similar automatic firearms of caliber or more are classified as autocannons, rat ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Trench Mortar
''Minenwerfer'' ("mine launcher" or "mine thrower") is the German name for a class of short range mine shell launching mortars used extensively during the First World War by the Imperial German Army. The weapons were intended to be used by engineers to clear obstacles including bunkers and barbed wire, that longer range artillery would not be able to target accurately. Background The Germans studied the Siege of Port Arthur, where heavy artillery had been unable to destroy defensive structures like barbed wire and bunkers. The German Military ''Ingenieurkomitee'' ("Engineer committee") began working with Rheinmetall to study the problem in 1907. The solution they developed was a short-barrelled rifled muzzle-loading mortar for mine shell ammunition, built in three sizes. In 1910, the largest of these was introduced as the ''25 cm schwerer Minenwerfer'' (abbreviated "sMW"; English: "25 cm heavy mine launcher"). Despite weighing only 955 kg (2,193 pounds), it had the s ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Crayford
Crayford is a town and electoral ward in South East London, England, within the London Borough of Bexley. It lies east of Bexleyheath and north west of Dartford. Crayford was in the historic county of Kent until 1965. The settlement developed by the river Cray, around a ford that is no longer used. History An Iron Age settlement existed in the vicinity of the present St Paulinus Church between the Julian and Claudian invasions of Britain, from roughly 30 BC to AD 40. Roman ruins have been discovered and Crayford is one of several places proposed as the site of Noviomagus, a place mentioned in the Antonine Itinerary as being on the Roman equivalent of the later Watling Street. Crayford is also plausible as the site of the bloody battle of Crecganford ("Creeksford") in 457 in which Hengist defeated Vortimer to become the supreme sovereign of Kent. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle written around 400 years later describes how Hengist and Æsc defeated the "Bret ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Recoil
Recoil (often called knockback, kickback or simply kick) is the rearward thrust generated when a gun is being discharged. In technical terms, the recoil is a result of conservation of momentum, as according to Newton's third law the force required to accelerate something will evoke an equal but opposite reactional force, which means the forward momentum gained by the projectile and exhaust gases (ejectae) will be mathematically balanced out by an equal and opposite momentum exerted back upon the gun. In hand-held small arms, the recoil momentum will be eventually transferred to the ground, but will do so through the body of the shooter hence resulting in a noticeable impulse commonly referred to as a "kick". In heavier mounted guns, such as heavy machine guns or artillery pieces, recoil momentum is transferred to the Earth's surface through the platform on which the weapon is mounted. In order to bring the rearward moving gun to a halt, the momentum acquired by the gun is di ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Muzzle Brake
A muzzle brake or recoil compensator is a device connected to, or a feature integral to the construction of, the muzzle or barrel of a firearm or cannon that is intended to redirect a portion of propellant gases to counter recoil and unwanted muzzle rise. Barrels with an integral muzzle brake are often said to be ported. The concept of a muzzle brake was first introduced for artillery. It was a common feature on many anti-tank guns, especially those mounted on tanks, in order to reduce the area needed to take up the strokes of recoil and kickback. They have been used in various forms for rifles and pistols to help control recoil and the rising of the barrel that normally occurs after firing. They are used on pistols for practical pistol competitions, and are usually called compensators in this context.STI article on Limcat Under ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Rifled Breech Loader
A rifled breech loader (RBL) is an artillery piece which, unlike the smoothbore cannon and rifled muzzle loader (RML) which preceded it, has rifling in the barrel and is loaded from the breech at the rear of the gun. The spin imparted by the gun's rifling gives projectiles directional stability and increased range. Loading from the rear of the gun leaves the crew less exposed to enemy fire, allows smaller gun emplacements or turrets, and allows a faster rate of fire. Overview The major problem to be solved with breechloading artillery was obturation: the sealing of the breech after firing to ensure that none of the gases generated by the burning of the propellant (initially gunpowder) escaped rearwards through the breech. This was both a safety issue and one of gun performance – all the propellant gas was needed to accelerate the projectile along the barrel. The second problem was speed of operation – how to close the breech before firing and open it after firing as quickly ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Single Shot
Single-shot firearms are firearms that hold only a single round of ammunition, and must be reloaded manually after every shot. The history of firearms began with single-shot designs, then multi-barreled designs appeared, and eventually many centuries passed before multi-shot repeater designs became commonplace. Compared to repeating firearms, single-shot designs have no moving parts (other than the trigger and hammer/firing pin or frizzen) and thus do not need a sizable receiver behind the barrel, and are much less complex than revolvers or magazine/belt-fed firearms. Although largely disappeared from military usage due to the slow rates of fire, single-shot designs are still produced by many manufacturers in both cartridge- and non-cartridge varieties, from zip guns to the highest-quality hunting and match guns. History Pre-cartridge era The vast majority of firearms before the introduction of metallic cartridges from the 1860s onwards, were single-shot muzzleloaders. Howe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Anti-aircraft
Anti-aircraft warfare, counter-air or air defence forces is the battlespace response to aerial warfare, defined by NATO as "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action".AAP-6 It includes surface based, subsurface ( submarine launched), and air-based weapon systems, associated sensor systems, command and control arrangements, and passive measures (e.g. barrage balloons). It may be used to protect naval, ground, and air forces in any location. However, for most countries, the main effort has tended to be homeland defence. NATO refers to airborne air defence as counter-air and naval air defence as anti-aircraft warfare. Missile defence is an extension of air defence, as are initiatives to adapt air defence to the task of intercepting any projectile in flight. In some countries, such as Britain and Germany during the Second World War, the Soviet Union, and modern NATO and the United States, ground-based air defence and air defence aircraft ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cartridge (firearm)
A cartridge or a round is a type of pre-assembled firearm ammunition packaging a projectile (bullet, shot, or slug), a propellant substance (usually either smokeless powder or black powder) and an ignition device (primer) within a metallic, paper, or plastic case that is precisely made to fit within the barrel chamber of a breechloading gun, for the practical purpose of convenient transportation and handling during shooting. Although in popular usage the term "bullet" is often informally used to refer to a complete cartridge, it is correctly used only to refer to the projectile. Cartridges can be categorized by the type of their primers – a small charge of an impact- or electric-sensitive chemical mixture that is located: at the center of the case head (centerfire); inside the rim ( rimfire); inside the walls on the fold of the case base that is shaped like a cup (cupfire, now obsolete); in a sideways projection that is shaped like a pin (pinfire, now obsolete); or a lip ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Shell (projectile)
A shell, in a military context, is a projectile whose payload contains an explosive, incendiary, or other chemical filling. Originally it was called a bombshell, but "shell" has come to be unambiguous in a military context. Modern usage sometimes includes large solid kinetic projectiles that is properly termed shot. Solid shot may contain a pyrotechnic compound if a tracer or spotting charge is used. All explosive- and incendiary-filled projectiles, particularly for mortars, were originally called ''grenades'', derived from the French word for pomegranate, so called because of the similarity of shape and that the multi-seeded fruit resembles the powder-filled, fragmentizing bomb. Words cognate with ''grenade'' are still used for an artillery or mortar projectile in some European languages. Shells are usually large-caliber projectiles fired by artillery, armored fighting vehicles (e.g. tanks, assault guns, and mortar carriers), warships, and autocannons. The shape ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cambric
Cambric or batiste, is a fine dense cloth. It is a lightweight plain-weave fabric, originally from the commune of Cambrai (in present-day northern France), woven greige (neither bleached nor dyed), then bleached, piece-dyed, and often glazed or calendered. Initially it was made of linen; from the 18th and 19th centuries the term came to apply to cotton fabrics as well. Chambray is the same type of fabric, with a coloured (often blue or grey) warp and white filling; the name "chambray" replaced "cambric" in the United States in the early 19th century. Cambric is used as fabric for linens, shirts, handkerchiefs, ruffs, lace, and in needlework. Description Cambric is a finely woven cloth with a plain weave and a smooth surface appearance, the result of the calendering process. It may be made of linen or cotton. The fabric may be dyed any of many colours. Batiste is a kind of cambric; it is "of similar texture, but differently finished, and made of cotton as well as ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |