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Le Fier-class Torpedo Boat
The ''Le Fier'' class was a series of sea-going torpedo boats built for the French Navy. Laid down in 1940, the ships were incomplete as of the fall of France and remained unfinished for the rest of World War II. Design and development With rising tensions with Nazi Germany after their remilitarization of the Rhineland in 7 March 1936, the French Third Republic undertook a series of naval construction programmes to maintain military parity in the face of rapid German re-armament. On 31 December 1936, the French Parliament authorized the construction of more warships at the suggestion of Admiral François Darlan. Among them were four torpedo boats (''torpilleur''). Collectively this order was named ''Tranche 1937''. The four torpedo boats were to be named, ''Le Fier'', ''L'Agile'', ''L'Entreprenant'', and ''Le Farouche'' and were also referred to as ''torpilleurs légers de 1010'' in reference to their displacement in tons. Exactly one year after the 1937 tranche, on 31 December 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ateliers Et Chantiers De Bretagne
Ateliers et Chantiers de Bretagne was a French shipbuilding company of the late 19th and early 20th century, renamed from ''Établissement de la Brosse et Fouché'' in 1909. The shipyard often built destroyers for the French Navy. References * * {{Coord missing, France Shipyards of France ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Torpedo Boat
A torpedo boat is a relatively small and fast naval ship designed to carry torpedoes into battle. The first designs were steam-powered craft dedicated to ramming enemy ships with explosive spar torpedoes. Later evolutions launched variants of self-propelled Whitehead torpedoes. These were inshore craft created to counter both the threat of battleships and other slow and heavily armed ships by using speed, agility, and powerful torpedoes, and the overwhelming expense of building a like number of capital ships to counter an enemy's. A swarm of expendable torpedo boats attacking en masse could overwhelm a larger ship's ability to fight them off using its large but cumbersome guns. A fleet of torpedo boats could pose a similar threat to an adversary's capital ships, albeit only in the coastal areas to which their small size and limited fuel load restricted them. The introduction of fast torpedo boats in the late 19th century was a serious concern to the era's naval strategists, i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parsons Marine Steam Turbine Company
Parsons Marine Steam Turbine Company was a British engineering company based on the River Tyne at Wallsend, North East England. History Charles Algernon Parsons founded the company in 1897 with £500,000 of capital. It specialised in building the steam turbine engines that he had invented for marine use. The first vessel powered by a Parsons turbine was ''Turbinia'', launched in 1894. The successful demonstration of this vessel led to the creation of the company and the building of engines for the first two turbine-powered destroyers for the Royal Navy, and , launched in 1899. Although both these vessels came to grief, the new engines were not to blame, and the Admiralty was convinced. Parsons' son became a director in the company and was replaced during the First World War by his daughter Rachel Parsons. Parsons turbines powered the Royal Navy's first turbine powered battleship, , and the world's first turbine ocean liners, and '' Virginian''. Parsons turbines powered the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Auguste Rateau
Auguste Rateau (13 October 1863 – 13 January 1930) was an engineer and industrialist born in Royan, France, specializing in turbines. Biography After studies, first at the École Polytechnique and then at the École des Mines de Paris, he began his career as a teacher at the École des Mines de Saint-Étienne from 1888 to 1897. He then embarked on an industrial career exploiting turbines. He manufactured fans for mines, blowers for steel mills, water pumps, and steam turbines for ships. To this end, he created a design office in Paris and, in 1903, the ''Société pour l’exploitation des appareils Rateau'', which moved in 1917 to La Courneuve where he opened a factory two years later. The company has since been integrated into Alstom, and La Courneuve's premises are still operated by GE Power Service. This entity manages the maintenance of turbomachines, turbo-pumps and turbocompressors installed on nuclear, thermal and industrial sites in France and in some parts of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chamber Of Deputies (France)
Chamber of Deputies (french: Chambre des députés) was a parliamentary body in France in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: * 1814–1848 during the Bourbon Restoration and the July Monarchy, the Chamber of Deputies was the lower house of the French Parliament, elected by census suffrage. * 1875–1940 during the French Third Republic, the Chamber of Deputies was the legislative assembly of the French Parliament, elected by universal suffrage. When reunited with the Senate in Versailles, the French Parliament was called the National Assembly (''Assemblée nationale'') and carried out the election of the president of the French Republic. During the Bourbon Restoration Created by the Charter of 1814 and replacing the Corps législatif, which existed under the First French Empire, the Chamber of Deputies was composed of individuals elected by census suffrage. Its role was to discuss laws and, most importantly, to vote taxes. According to the Charter, deputies were elected f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
François Darlan
Jean Louis Xavier François Darlan (7 August 1881 – 24 December 1942) was a French admiral and political figure. Born in Nérac, Darlan graduated from the ''École navale'' in 1902 and quickly advanced through the ranks following his service during World War I. He was promoted to rear admiral in 1929, vice admiral in 1932, lieutenant admiral in 1937 before finally being made admiral and Chief of the Naval Staff in 1937. In 1939, Darlan was promoted to admiral of the fleet, a rank created specifically for him. Darlan was Commander-in-Chief of the French Navy at the beginning of World War II. After France's armistice with Germany in June 1940, Darlan served in Philippe Pétain's Vichy regime as Minister of Marine, and in February 1941 he took over as Vice-President of the Council, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of the Interior and Minister of National Defence, making him the ''de facto'' head of the Vichy government. In April 1942, Darlan resigned his ministries to Pierre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Admiral
Admiral is one of the highest ranks in some navies. In the Commonwealth nations and the United States, a "full" admiral is equivalent to a "full" general in the army or the air force, and is above vice admiral and below admiral of the fleet, or fleet admiral. Etymology The word in Middle English comes from Anglo-French , "commander", from Medieval Latin , . These evolved from the Arabic () – (), “king, prince, chief, leader, nobleman, lord, a governor, commander, or person who rules over a number of people,” and (), the Arabic article answering to “the.” In Arabic, admiral is also represented as (), where () means the sea. The 1818 edition of Samuel Johnson's '' A Dictionary of the English Language'', edited and revised by the Rev. Henry John Todd, states that the term “has been traced to the Arab. emir or amir, lord or commander, and the Gr. , the sea, q. d. ''prince of the sea''. The word is written both with and without the d, in other languages, as we ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French Parliament
The French Parliament (french: Parlement français) is the bicameral legislature of the French Republic, consisting of the Senate () and the National Assembly (). Each assembly conducts legislative sessions at separate locations in Paris: the Senate meets in the and the National Assembly convenes at . Each house has its own regulations and rules of procedure. However, occasionally they may meet as a single house known as the Congress of the French Parliament (), convened at the Palace of Versailles, to revise and amend the Constitution of France. History and name The French Parliament, as a legislative body, should not be confused with the various parlements of the Ancien Régime in France, which were courts of justice and tribunals with certain political functions varying from province to province and as to whether the local law was written and Roman, or customary common law. The word "Parliament", in the modern meaning of the term, appeared in France in the 19th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Re-armament
German rearmament (''Aufrüstung'', ) was a policy and practice of rearmament carried out in Germany during the interwar period (1918–1939), in violation of the Treaty of Versailles which required German disarmament after WWI to prevent Germany from starting another war. It began on a small, secret, and informal basis shortly after the treaty was signed, but it was openly and massively expanded after the Nazi Party came to power in 1933. Despite its scale, German re-armament remained a largely covert operation, carried out using front organizations such as glider clubs for training pilots and sporting clubs, and Nazi SA militia groups for teaching infantry combat techniques. Front companies like MEFO were set up to finance the rearmament by placing massive orders with Krupp, Siemens, Gutehofnungshütte, and Rheinmetall for weapons forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. Carl von Ossietzky exposed the reality of the German rearmament in 1931 and his disclosures won him the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French Third Republic
The French Third Republic (french: Troisième République, sometimes written as ) was the system of government adopted in France from 4 September 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed during the Franco-Prussian War, until 10 July 1940, after the Fall of France during World War II led to the formation of the Vichy government. The early days of the Third Republic were dominated by political disruptions caused by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, which the Republic continued to wage after the fall of Emperor Napoleon III in 1870. Harsh reparations exacted by the Prussians after the war resulted in the loss of the French regions of Alsace (keeping the Territoire de Belfort) and Lorraine (the northeastern part, i.e. present-day department of Moselle), social upheaval, and the establishment of the Paris Commune. The early governments of the Third Republic considered re-establishing the monarchy, but disagreement as to the nature of that monarchy and the rightful occ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Remilitarization Of The Rhineland
The remilitarization of the Rhineland () began on 7 March 1936, when German military forces entered the Rhineland, which directly contravened the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Treaties. Neither France nor Britain was prepared for a military response, so they did not act. After 1939 commentators often said that a strong military move in 1936 might have ruined Hitler's expansionist plans. However, recent historiography agrees that both public and elite opinion in Britain and France strongly opposed a military intervention, and neither had an army prepared to move in. After the end of World War I, the Rhineland came under Allied occupation. Under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, the German military was forbidden from all territories west of the Rhine or within 50 km east of it. The 1925 Locarno Treaties reaffirmed the then-permanently-demilitarized status of the Rhineland. In 1929, German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann negotiated the withdrawal of the Allied forces. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a dictatorship. Under Hitler's rule, Germany quickly became a totalitarian state where nearly all aspects of life were controlled by the government. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", alluded to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which Hitler and the Nazis referred to as the Thousand-Year Reich, ended in May 1945 after just 12 years when the Allies defeated Germany, ending World War II in Europe. On 30 January 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany, the head of gove ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
