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HMS Wakeful (1943)
HMS ''Wakeful'' was a W-class destroyer of the Royal Navy launched in 1943. She saw service during the Second World War and was later converted into a Type 15 fast anti-submarine frigate. She was sold for scrap in 1971. Construction HMS ''Wakeful'' was a W-class destroyer ordered from Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, Govan, Glasgow on 3 December 1941 as part of the 9th Emergency Flotilla. She was laid down on 3 June 1942 under the provisional name of ''Zebra'', but was renamed ''Wakeful'' in January 1943, exchanging names with a destroyer also under construction, which was subsequently launched as . She became the second ship of the name, the first being an Admiralty W-class destroyer sunk by a German E-Boat off Dunkirk in 1940 during Operation ''Dynamo'', the evacuation from Dunkirk. Service history Second World War ''Wakeful'' joined the Home Fleet on 17 February 1944 for sea trials and working up, before entering active service in March and formi ...
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United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and many smaller islands within the British Isles. Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea and the Irish Sea. The total area of the United Kingdom is , with an estimated 2020 population of more than 67 million people. The United Kingdom has evolved from a series of annexations, unions and separations of constituent countries over several hundred years. The Treaty of Union between the Kingdom of England (which included Wales, annexed in 1542) and the Kingdom of Scotland in 170 ...
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QF 2 Pounder Naval Gun
The 2-pounder gun, officially the QF 2-pounder ( QF denoting "quick firing") and universally known as the pom-pom, was a British autocannon, used as an anti-aircraft gun by the Royal Navy.British military of the period traditionally denoted smaller guns in terms of the approximate weight of the standard projectile, rather than by its bore diameter, which in this case was 40 mm. References to 40-mm anti-aircraft guns invariably mean the Bofors gun, while references to 2-pounder anti-aircraft guns mean this gun. The name came from the sound that the original models make when firing. This QF 2-pounder was not the same gun as the Ordnance QF 2-pounder, used by the British Army as an anti-tank gun and a tank gun, although they both fired , projectiles. Predecessors - Boer War and the Great War QF 1 pounder The first gun to be called a pom-pom was the 37 mm Nordenfelt-Maxim or "QF 1-pounder" introduced during the Second Boer War, the smallest artillery piece of that war. It fire ...
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Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against France. The modern Royal Navy traces its origins to the early 16th century; the oldest of the UK's armed services, it is consequently known as the Senior Service. 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 world's most powerful navy until the Second World War. The Royal Navy played a key part in establishing and defending the British Empire, and four Imperial fortress colonies and a string of imperial bases and coaling stations secured the Royal Navy's ability to assert naval superiority globally. Owing to this historical prominence, it is common, even among non-Britons, to ref ...
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Limbo (weapon)
Limbo, or Anti Submarine Mortar Mark 10 (A/S Mk.10), was the final development of the forward-throwing anti-submarine weapon Squid, designed during the Second World War and was developed by the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment in the 1950s. Limbo was installed on the quarterdeck of Royal Navy escort ships from 1955 to the mid-1980s, Australian–built destroyer and s. Limbo was widely employed by the Royal Canadian Navy, being incorporated into all destroyer designs from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, including the , , , and classes and the Type 12 President Class frigates built for the South African Navy in the 1960s. Operation Limbo was loaded and fired automatically with the crew under-cover and was stabilised in pitch and roll. The firing distance of the mortars was controlled by opening gas vents; rounds could be fired from . The weapon was linked to the sonar system of the ship, firing on command when the target was in range. The rounds were projected so t ...
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Squid (weapon)
Squid was a British World War II ship-mounted anti-submarine weapon. It consisted of a three-barrelled mortar which launched depth charges. It replaced the Hedgehog system, and was in turn replaced by the Limbo system. Development Ordered directly from the drawing board in 1942, under the auspices of the Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Development, this weapon was rushed into service in May 1943 on board HMS ''Ambuscade''. The first production unit was installed on HMS ''Hadleigh Castle''; it went on to be installed on 70 frigates and corvettes during the Second World War. The first successful use was by HMS ''Loch Killin'' on 31 July 1944, when she sank . The system was credited with sinking 17 submarines in 50 attacks over the course of the war. By 1959, 195 Squid installations had been produced. This weapon was a three-barrel mortar with the mortars mounted in series but off-bore from each other in order to scatter the projectiles. The barrels were mounted in a f ...
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List Of World War II British Naval Radar
This page is a List of World War II British naval radar. Nomenclature These sets were initially numbered as wireless telegraph (w/t) sets, but a distinguishing prefix of "2" was soon added. Metric sets were numbered in the 28x and 29x series. When centimetric sets arrived with the advent of the cavity magnetron, they were numbered by subtracting 10 from the metric type number they were based on (e.g. the metric Type 284 was replaced by the centimetric Type 274). This was not always possible however, as Types 271 - 274 were already in use for original centimetric sets, thus some metric sets in the Type 28x range had 20 subtracted (e.g. the metric Type 282 was replaced by the centimetric Type 262). Aerial outfits were given a three letter identifier that began with "A". Suffixing letters indicated the following; * B - conversion of sets with separate transmitting (Tx) and receiving (Rx) antennas to single antenna operation. * M, P, Q - major set modifications * R - addition of ran ...
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Type 277 Radar
The Type 277 was a surface search and secondary aircraft early warning radar used by the Royal Navy and allies during World War II and the post-war era. It was a major update of the earlier Type 271 radar, offering much more power, better signal processing, new displays, and new antennas with greatly improved performance and much simpler mounting requirements. It allowed a radar with performance formerly found only on cruisers and battleships to be fitted even to the smallest corvettes. It began to replace the 271 in 1943 and was widespread by the end of the year. The Type 271 was one of the first microwave frequency radars to enter service, when microwave electronics design was in its infancy. While it was still being fitted to escort ships during 1941 and 1942, great strides in technique were being made in cavity magnetron, waveguide, antenna design and general electronics. Those upgrades that could be easily combined with the existing systems became the 271 Mark IV models, ...
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Type 293 Radar
The Type 293 radar was designed as a short-range aerial-search radar This is a list of different types of radar. Detection and search radars Search radars scan great volumes of space with pulses of short radio waves. They typically scan the volume two to four times a minute. The waves are usually less than a meter ... for surface ships in 1945. It used the same transmitter as the Type 277 surface-search radar, but used a new antenna design intended to cover the area above the ship to provide air warning instead of surface search. The stabilised "cheese" antenna, diameter in the AUR antenna, was upgraded to in Type 293P and to in the postwar Type 293Q.Friedman, p. 197 Specifications Notes Bibliography * *{{cite book, last=Watson, first=Raymond C. Jr., title=Radar Origins Worldwide: History of Its Evolution in 13 Nations Through World War II, publisher=Trafford, year=2009, isbn=978-1-4269-2111-7 External links The RN Radar and Communications Museum World War II British e ...
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Type 15 Frigate
The Type 15 frigate was a class of United Kingdom, British anti-submarine warfare, anti-submarine frigates of the Royal Navy. They were conversions based on the hulls of World War II-era destroyers built to the standard War Emergency Programme destroyers, War Emergency Programme "utility" design. History By 1945 the wartime "utility" vessels were obsolescent as destroyers due to their relatively small size and makeshift armament. Future construction would be based on ever larger vessels, such as the and . Rapid advances in Nazi Germany, German U-boat technology with the German Type XXI submarine, Type XXI and German Type XXVI submarine, Type XXVI rendered even some of the most modern Royal Navy escorts obsolete. This technology was being put into production by the Soviet Navy in the form of the . The Royal Navy began designing and constructing new fast anti-submarine frigates of the Whitby-class frigate, Type 12 and Blackwood-class frigate, Type 14 design to counter this threa ...
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Depth Charge
A depth charge is an anti-submarine warfare (ASW) weapon. It is intended to destroy a submarine by being dropped into the water nearby and detonating, subjecting the target to a powerful and destructive Shock factor, hydraulic shock. Most depth charges use explosive, high explosive charges and a fuze set to detonate the charge, typically at a specific depth. Depth charges can be dropped by ships, patrol aircraft, and helicopters. Depth charges were developed during World War I, and were one of the first viable methods of attacking a submarine underwater. They were widely used in World War I and World War II, and remained part of the anti-submarine arsenals of many navies during the Cold War, during which they were supplemented, and later largely replaced, by anti-submarine homing torpedoes. A depth charge fitted with a nuclear warhead is also known as a "nuclear depth bomb". These were designed to be dropped from a patrol plane or deployed by an anti-submarine missile from a s ...
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Torpedo
A modern torpedo is an underwater ranged weapon launched above or below the water surface, self-propelled towards a target, and with an explosive warhead designed to detonate either on contact with or in proximity to the target. Historically, such a device was called an automotive, automobile, locomotive, or fish torpedo; colloquially a ''fish''. The term ''torpedo'' originally applied to a variety of devices, most of which would today be called naval mine, mines. From about 1900, ''torpedo'' has been used strictly to designate a self-propelled underwater explosive device. While the 19th-century battleship had evolved primarily with a view to engagements between armored warships with naval artillery, large-caliber guns, the invention and refinement of torpedoes from the 1860s onwards allowed small torpedo boats and other lighter surface combatant , surface vessels, submarines/submersibles, even improvised fishing boats or frogmen, and later light aircraft, to destroy large shi ...
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British 21 Inch Torpedo
There have been several British 21-inch (533 mm) torpedoes used by the Royal Navy since their first development just before the First World War. Torpedoes of 21 inch calibre were the largest torpedoes in common use in the RN. They were used by surface ships and submarines rather than aircraft, which used smaller 18-inch torpedoes. Mark I The first British 21-inch torpedo came in two lengths, "Short" at , and "Long" at . The explosive charge was of gun cotton increased later to . Mark II The Mark II, chiefly used by destroyers, entered service in 1914. Apart from some older British ships, it was used with the old US (destroyers-for-bases deal) Town-class destroyers provided to the UK during the early part of the Second World War. The running speed was reduced from (over 3,000 yards) for better reliability. The Mark II*, an improved Mark II, was used by battleships and battlecruisers. A wet heater design, it could run for at . Mark IV From 1912, used by destro ...
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