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Buster Crabb
Lieutenant-Commander Lionel Kenneth Phillip Crabb, (28 January 1909 – presumed dead 19 April 1956), known as Buster Crabb, was a Royal Navy frogman and diver who vanished during a reconnaissance mission for MI6 around a Soviet cruiser berthed at Portsmouth Dockyard in 1956. Early life Lionel Crabb was born in 1909 to Hugh Alexander Crabb and Beatrice (née Goodall) of Streatham, south-west London. They were a poor family; Hugh Crabb was a commercial traveller for a firm of photographic merchants. In his youth Crabb held many jobs but after two years training for a career at sea in the school ship HMS ''Conway'' he joined the merchant navy and the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve before the Second World War. Second World War At the outbreak of the Second World War, Crabb was first an army gunner. Then, in 1941, he joined the Royal Navy. The next year he was sent to Gibraltar where he worked in a mine and bomb disposal unit to remove the Italian limpet mines that en ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major settlement for two millennia. The City of London, its ancient core and financial centre, was founded by the Romans as '' Londinium'' and retains its medieval boundaries.See also: Independent city § National capitals The City of Westminster, to the west of the City of London, has for centuries hosted the national government and parliament. Since the 19th century, the name "London" has also referred to the metropolis around this core, historically split between the counties of Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, Kent, and Hertfordshire, which largely comprises Greater London, governed by the Greater London Authority.The Greater London Authority consists of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly. The London Mayor is distinguished fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Artillery
The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery (RA) and colloquially known as "The Gunners", is one of two regiments that make up the artillery arm of the British Army. The Royal Regiment of Artillery comprises thirteen Regular Army regiments, the King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery and five Army Reserve regiments. History Formation to 1799 Artillery was used by the English army as early as the Battle of Crécy in 1346, while Henry VIII established it as a semi-permanent function in the 16th century. Until the early 18th century, the majority of British regiments were raised for specific campaigns and disbanded on completion. An exception were gunners based at the Tower of London, Portsmouth and other forts around Britain, who were controlled by the Ordnance Office and stored and maintained equipment and provided personnel for field artillery 'traynes' that were organised as needed. These personnel, responsible in peacetime for maintaining the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Northern Italy
Northern Italy ( it, Italia settentrionale, it, Nord Italia, label=none, it, Alta Italia, label=none or just it, Nord, label=none) is a geographical and cultural region in the northern part of Italy. It consists of eight administrative regions: Aosta Valley, Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Trentino-Alto Adige. As of 2014, its population was 27,801,460. Rhaeto-Romance and Gallo-Italic languages are spoken in the region, as opposed to the Italo-Dalmatian languages spoken in the rest of Italy. The Venetian language is sometimes considered to be part of the Italo-Dalmatian languages, but some major publications such as '' Ethnologue'' (to which UNESCO refers on its page about endangered languages) and '' Glottolog'' define it as Gallo-Italic. For statistic purposes, the Istituto Nazionale di Statistica (ISTAT) uses the terms Northwest Italy and Northeast Italy for two of Italy's five statistical regions in its reporting. These same su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lieutenant Commander
Lieutenant commander (also hyphenated lieutenant-commander and abbreviated Lt Cdr, LtCdr. or LCDR) is a commissioned officer rank in many navies. The rank is superior to a lieutenant and subordinate to a commander. The corresponding rank in most armies and air forces is major, and in the Royal Air Force and other Commonwealth air forces is squadron leader. The NATO rank code is mostly OF-3. A lieutenant commander is a department officer or the executive officer ( second-in-command) on many warships and smaller shore installations, or the commanding officer of a smaller ship/installation. They are also department officers in naval aviation squadrons. Etymology Most Commonwealth and other navies address lieutenant commanders by their full rank or the positions they occupy ("captain" if in command of a vessel). The United States Navy, however, addresses officers by their full rank or the higher grade of the rank. For example, oral communications in formal and informal s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sydney Knowles
Sydney Knowles, BEM, (3 September 1921 – 31 July 2012) was a British Royal Navy frogman during and after World War II. Biography Knowles was born in Preston, Lancashire, the son of a railwayman. He joined the Navy at the start of World War II and served as a stoker aboard the destroyers and , taking part in trans-Atlantic convoys and in Operation Pedestal, the relief of Malta. In 1942 Knowles joined the Underwater Working Party, under Lieutenant Commander Lionel Crabb, at Gibraltar. Knowles was one of a group of underwater guard divers who checked for limpet mines in Gibraltar Harbour during the period of Italian frogman and manned torpedo attacks. The group dived with Davis Escape Sets, which until then had not been used much if at all for swimming down from the surface. At first they swam by breaststroke without swimfins. On 17 December 1942, during one such attack, two of the Italian frogmen (Lt. Visintini and Petty Officer Magro) died, probably killed by small ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scuba Set
A scuba set, originally just scuba, is any breathing apparatus that is entirely carried by an underwater diver and provides the diver with breathing gas at the ambient pressure. ''Scuba'' is an anacronym for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. Although strictly speaking the scuba set is only the diving equipment that is required for providing breathing gas to the diver, general usage includes the harness by which it is carried, and those accessories which are integral parts of the harness and breathing apparatus assembly, such as a jacket or wing style buoyancy compensator and instruments mounted in a combined housing with the pressure gauge, and in the looser sense, it has been used to refer to all the diving equipment used by the scuba diver, though this would more commonly and accurately be termed scuba equipment or scuba gear. Scuba is overwhelmingly the most common underwater breathing system used by recreational divers and is also used in professional diving whe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Licio Visintini
Licio Visintini (12 February 1915 – 8 December 1942) was an Italian naval officer during World War II. Visintini was decorated for his operations against Allied shipping in Gibraltar during the Battle of the Mediterranean. His brother Mario Visintini was a famous flying ace; both were killed during the war. Biography Visintini joined the Italian Naval Academy in Livorno in 1933, and received his appointment as Ensign in 1937. Initially assigned on surface ships, he participated in missions during the Spanish Civil War; he then served on the submarines ''Narvalo'' and then on ''Atropo''. While on the latter, in April 1939, he participated in the operations for the Italian invasion of Albania. On 10 June 1940, when Italy entered World War II, Visintini was serving on the submarine ''Torelli'', and participated in its first mission in the Atlantic Ocean. On his return, he asked to be assigned to the Tenth MAS Flotilla in La Spezia, where he became assault craft operat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frogmen
A frogman is someone who is trained in scuba diving or swimming underwater in a tactical capacity that includes military, and in some European countries, police work. Such personnel are also known by the more formal names of combat diver, combatant diver, or combat swimmer. The word ''frogman'' first arose in the stage name ''The Fearless Frogman'' of Paul Boyton in the 1870s and later was claimed by John Spence, an enlisted member of the U.S. Navy and member of the OSS Maritime Unit, to have been applied to him while he was training in a green waterproof suit. The term ''frogman'' is occasionally used to refer to a civilian scuba diver. Some sport diving clubs include the word ''Frogmen'' in their names. The preferred term by scuba users is ''diver'', but the ''frogman'' epithet persists in informal usage by non-divers, especially in the media and often referring to professional scuba divers, such as in a police diving role. In the U.S. military and intelligence community, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swimfin
Swimfins, swim fins, diving fins, or flippers are finlike accessories worn on the feet, legs or hands and made from rubber, plastic, carbon fiber or combinations of these materials, to aid movement through the water in water sports activities such as swimming, bodyboarding, bodysurfing, float-tube fishing, kneeboarding, riverboarding, scuba diving, snorkeling, spearfishing, underwater hockey, underwater rugby and various other types of underwater diving. Swimfins help the wearer to move through water more efficiently, as human feet are too small and inappropriately shaped to provide much thrust, especially when the wearer is carrying equipment that increases hydrodynamic drag. Very long fins and monofins used by freedivers as a means of underwater propulsion do not require high-frequency leg movement. This improves efficiency and helps to minimize oxygen consumption. Short, stiff-bladed fins are effective for short bursts of acceleration and maneuvering, and are useful for bod ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Breaststroke
Breaststroke is a swimming style in which the swimmer is on their chest and the torso does not rotate. It is the most popular recreational style due to the swimmer's head being out of the water a large portion of the time, and that it can be swum comfortably at slow speeds. In most swimming classes, beginners learn either the breaststroke or the freestyle (front crawl) first. However, at the competitive level, swimming breaststroke at speed requires endurance and strength comparable to other strokes. Some people refer to breaststroke as the "frog" stroke, as the arms and legs move somewhat like a frog swimming in the water. The stroke itself is the slowest of any competitive strokes and is thought to be the oldest of all swimming strokes. Speed and ergonomics Breaststroke is the slowest of the four official styles in competitive swimming. The fastest breaststrokers can swim about 1.70 meters (~5.6 feet) per second. It is sometimes the hardest to teach to rising swimmers aft ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Davis Submerged Escape Apparatus
The Davis Submerged Escape Apparatus (also referred to as DSEA), was an early type of oxygen rebreather invented in 1910 by Sir Robert Davis, head of Siebe Gorman and Co. Ltd., inspired by the earlier Fleuss system, and adopted by the Royal Navy after further development by Davis in 1927. While intended primarily as an emergency escape apparatus for submarine crews, it was soon also used for diving, being a handy shallow water diving apparatus with a thirty-minute endurance, and as an industrial breathing set. Design The DSEA rig chiefly addressed the problem of anoxia threatening a person ascending through water, by providing oxygen; and the associated risk of lung over-pressure injury as underwater pressure reduces with reducing depth, which it addressed by managing oxygen pressures. It also provided assistance with buoyancy, both in the ascent and after reaching the surface. The risk of decompression illness due to ascending too fast could be addressed by associated equ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rebreather
A rebreather is a breathing apparatus that absorbs the carbon dioxide of a user's breathing, exhaled breath to permit the rebreathing (recycling) of the substantially unused oxygen content, and unused inert content when present, of each breath. Oxygen is added to replenish the amount metabolised by the user. This differs from open-circuit breathing apparatus, where the exhaled gas is discharged directly into the environment. The purpose is to extend the breathing endurance of a limited gas supply, and, for covert military use by frogmen or observation of underwater life, eliminating the bubbles produced by an open circuit system and in turn not scaring wildlife being filmed. A rebreather is generally understood to be a portable unit carried by the user. The same technology on a vehicle or non-mobile installation is more likely to be referred to as a life-support system. Rebreather technology may be used where breathing gas supply is limited, such as underwater or in space, where ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
