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Iris Hut
The Iris hut is a prefabricated steel structure used by the British military predominantly during the early part of the Second World War. They served as barracks, workshops, and storage facilities in World War II Great Britain. Iris huts were also used as accommodation in the tunnels of Gibraltar, where they were situated in chambers excavated under the Rock of Gibraltar. Architecture An Iris hut is constructed of a clamped tubular steel frame with a central entrance. The hut's mode of construction and dimensions are similar to those of the Romney hut, as was its purpose. Both were used to accommodate facilities for which abnormal roof spans were required. On some airfields, two or more Romney or Iris huts would be erected to accommodate large stores and workshops. However, the Iris hut had a major design flaw: it was unable to resist the weight of snow lying on the roof and had a tendency to collapse after snowfalls. For this reason, it was superseded by the Romney hut by 1941. ...
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Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ...
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Barrack
Barracks are usually a group of long buildings built to house military personnel or laborers. The English word originates from the 17th century via French and Italian from an old Spanish word "barraca" ("soldier's tent"), but today barracks are usually permanent buildings for military accommodation. The word may apply to separate housing blocks or to complete complexes, and the plural form often refers to a single structure and may be English plurals#Plural in form but singular in construction, singular in construction. The main object of barracks is to separate soldiers from the civilian population and reinforce discipline, training, and ''esprit de corps''. They have been called "discipline factories for soldiers". Like industrial factories, some are considered to be shoddy or dull buildings, although others are known for their magnificent architecture such as Collins Barracks, Dublin, Collins Barracks in Dublin and others in Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Vienna, or London. From the ro ...
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Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is dominated by a maritime climate with narrow temperature differences between seasons. The 60% smaller island of Ireland is to the west—these islands, along with over 1,000 smaller surrounding islands and named substantial rocks, form the British Isles archipelago. Connected to mainland Europe until 9,000 years ago by a landbridge now known as Doggerland, Great Britain has been inhabited by modern humans for around 30,000 years. In 2011, it had a population of about , making it the world's third-most-populous island after Java in Indonesia and Honshu in Japan. The term "Great Britain" is often used to refer to England, Scotland and Wales, including their component adjoining islands. Great Britain and Northern Ireland now constitute the ...
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Tunnels Of Gibraltar
The tunnels of Gibraltar were constructed over the course of nearly 200 years, principally by the British Army. Within a land area of only , Gibraltar has around of tunnels, nearly twice the length of its entire road network. The first tunnels, excavated in the late 18th century, served as communication passages between artillery positions and housed guns within embrasures cut into the North Face of the Rock. More tunnels were constructed in the 19th century to allow easier access to remote areas of Gibraltar and accommodate stores and reservoirs to deliver the water supply of Gibraltar. The 20th century saw by far the greatest extent of tunnelling when the Rock was turned into a huge underground fortress capable of accommodating 16,000 men along with all the supplies, ammunition and equipment needed to withstand a prolonged siege. The tunnelling finally ceased in 1968 when the British Army's last specialist tunnelling unit was disbanded. Since then, the tunnels have progressive ...
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Rock Of Gibraltar
The Rock of Gibraltar (from the Arabic name Jabel-al-Tariq) is a monolithic limestone promontory located in the British territory of Gibraltar, near the southwestern tip of Europe on the Iberian Peninsula, and near the entrance to the Mediterranean. It is high. Most of the Rock's upper area is covered by a nature reserve, which is home to around 300 Barbary macaques. These macaques, as well as a labyrinthine network of tunnels, attract many tourists each year. The Rock of Gibraltar, one of the two traditional Pillars of Hercules, was known to the Romans as ''Mons Calpe'', the other pillar being ''Mons Abila'', either Monte Hacho or Jebel Musa on the African side of the Strait. According to ancient myths fostered by the Greeks and the Phoenicians, and later perpetuated by the Romans, the two points marked the limit to the known world, although the Phoenicians had actually sailed beyond this point into the Atlantic, both northward and southward. The Mediterranean Sea surroun ...
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Romney Hut
The Romney hut is a prefabricated steel structure used by the British military, developed during World War II to supersede the Iris hut. History At the outbreak of World War II, the British military developed a series of prefabricated huts to supplement the World-War-I-era Nissen hut. The Iris hut was one of these, a medium-scale hut of span and from to in length, with bays of sectional length able to be added as required. However, the Iris hut had a major design flaw: it was unable to resist the weight of snow lying on the roof and had a tendency to collapse after snowfalls. For this reason, it was superseded by the Romney hut by 1941. Both the Iris hut and the Romney hut were constructed of a clamped tubular steel frame with a central entrance. The hut was used to accommodate facilities for which abnormal roof spans were required. On some airfields, two or more Romney or Iris huts would be erected to accommodate large stores and workshops, or occasionally used as aircraft ...
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Bicester
Bicester ( ) is a historical market towngarden town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Cherwell (district), Cherwell district of northeastern Oxfordshire in Southern England that also comprises an Eco-towns, eco town at North West Bicester, North-East Bicester and self-build village aGraven Hill Its local market continues to thrive and is now located on Sheep Street, a very wide pedestrian zone in the Conservation area (United Kingdom), conservation area of the town. Bicester is also known for Bicester Village, a nearby shopping centre selling discounted branded clothing. Between 1951 and 2001 this historic market centre was one of the fastest-growing towns in Oxfordshire. Development has been favoured by its proximity to junction 9 of the M40 motorway linking it to London, Birmingham and Banbury. It has good road links to Oxford, Kidlington, Brackley, Buckingham, Aylesbury and Witney and railway stations on two different lines: and . It has its own civil parish ...
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Ministry Of Defence (United Kingdom)
The Ministry of Defence (MOD or MoD) is the department responsible for implementing the defence policy set by His Majesty's Government, and is the headquarters of the British Armed Forces. The MOD states that its principal objectives are to defend the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and its interests and to strengthen international peace and stability. The MOD also manages day-to-day running of the armed forces, contingency planning and defence procurement. The expenditure, administration and policy of the MOD are scrutinised by the Defence Select Committee, except for Defence Intelligence which instead falls under the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament. History During the 1920s and 1930s, British civil servants and politicians, looking back at the performance of the state during the First World War, concluded that there was a need for greater co-ordination between the three services that made up the armed forces of the United Kingdom: t ...
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Operation Bolero
Operation Bolero was the commonly used reference for the code name of the United States military troop buildup in the United Kingdom during World War II in preparation for the initial cross-channel invasion plan known as Operation Roundup, to be implemented in mid-1943, or for its lesser contingency alternative, Operation Sledgehammer, to be executed in the fall of 1942 in the event of German setbacks or to ease Axis pressure on the Eastern Front. ("Bolero" was the code name used in official communications to stand in for "United Kingdom" when describing the theater or movements.) What later became the Bolero plan – the buildup of a strategic air force in Great Britain in preparation for Roundup – was first submitted by Commanding General of the U.S. Army Air Forces, Henry H. Arnold, to General George Marshall, the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, on April 12, 1942, and set in motion a huge movement of men and material that laid the groundwork for Operation Overlord. To complemen ...
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Nissen Huts
A Nissen hut is a prefabricated steel structure for military use, especially as barracks, made from a half-cylindrical skin of corrugated iron. Designed during the First World War by the American-born, Canadian-British engineer and inventor Major Peter Norman Nissen, it was used also extensively during the Second World War, being adapted as the similar Quonset hut in the United States. Description A Nissen hut is made from a sheet of metal bent into half a cylinder and planted in the ground with its axis horizontal. The cross-section is not precisely semi-circular, because the bottom of the hut curves out slightly. The exterior is formed from curved corrugated steel sheets 10 feet 6 inches by 2 feet 2 inches (3.2 × 0.7 m), laid with a two-corrugation lap at the side and a 6-inch (15 cm) overlap at the ends. Three sheets cover the arc of the hut. They are attached to five 3 × 2 inch (7.5 × 5 cm) wooden purlins and 3 × 2 inch wooden spikin ...
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Billet (semi-finished Product)
Semi-finished casting products are intermediate product, intermediate casting (metalworking), castings produced in a steel mill that need further processing before being finished goods. There are four types: ''ingots'', ''blooms'', ''billets'', and ''slabs''. Ingot Ingots are large rough castings designed for storage and transportation. The shape usually resembles a rectangle or square with generous fillet (mechanics), fillets. They are tapered, usually with the big-end-down. Bloom In the era of commercial wrought iron, blooms were slag-riddled iron castings poured in a bloomery before being worked into wrought iron. In the era of commercial steel, blooms are intermediate-stage pieces of steel produced by a first pass of rolling (metalworking), rolling (in a blooming mill) that works the ingots down to a smaller cross-sectional area, but still greater than . Blooms are usually further processed via rotary piercing, structural shape rolling and profile rolling. Common final produ ...
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Quonset Hut
A Quonset hut is a lightweight prefabricated structure of corrugated galvanized steel having a semi cylindrical cross-section. The design was developed in the United States, based on the Nissen hut introduced by the British during World War I. Hundreds of thousands were produced during World War II and military surplus was sold to the public. The name comes from the site of their first deployment at Quonset Point at the Davisville Naval Construction Battalion Center in Davisville, Rhode Island. Design and history The first Quonset huts were manufactured in 1941 when the United States Navy needed an all-purpose, lightweight building that could be shipped anywhere and assembled without skilled labor. The George A. Fuller construction company manufactured them, and the first was produced within 60 days of signing the contract. In 1946, the Great Lakes Steel Corporation claimed "the term 'Quonset,' as applied to builders and building materials, is a trade mark owned by the Grea ...
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