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Occupation Of German Samoa
The Occupation of Samoa was the takeover – and subsequent administration – of the Pacific colony of German Samoa by New Zealand during World War I. It started in late August 1914 with landings by the Samoa Expeditionary Force from New Zealand. The landings were unopposed and the New Zealanders took possession of Samoa for the New Zealand Government on behalf of King George V. The Samoa Expeditionary Force remained in the country until 1915, while its commander, Colonel Robert Logan, continued to administer Samoa on behalf of the New Zealand Government until 1919. The takeover of Samoa was New Zealand's first military action in World War I. Background Upon the outbreak of World War I on 5 August, the New Zealand Government authorised the raising of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF) for service in the war. Mobilisation for the war had already begun, with preparations discreetly beginning a few days prior. The day after the declaration of war, the British Government r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asian And Pacific Theatre Of World War I
Asian and Pacific theatre of World War I consisted of various military engagements that took place on the Asian continent and on Pacific islands. They include naval battles, the Allied conquest of German colonial possessions in the Pacific Ocean and China, and an anti-Russian rebellion in Russian Turkestan and an Ottoman-supported rebellion in British Malaya. The most significant military action was the careful and well-executed Siege of Tsingtao in China, but smaller actions were also fought at Bita Paka and Toma in German New Guinea. All other German and Austrian possessions in Asia and the Pacific fell without bloodshed. Naval warfare was common; all of the colonial powers had naval squadrons stationed in the Indian or Pacific Oceans. These fleets operated by supporting the invasions of German-held territories and by destroying the East Asia Squadron of the Imperial German Navy. Allied offensives Tsingtao Tsingtao was the most significant German base in the area. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Zealand Staff Corps
The New Zealand Staff Corps was a corps of professional officers in the regular New Zealand Military Forces which, in peacetime, administered the Territorial Force. During the First and Second World Wars, many members of the corps commanded battalions and brigades in the New Zealand Expeditionary Forces sent overseas. The corps was disbanded in 1947. Background For much of the 19th century, New Zealand lacked a modern army. By the mid-1880s, following a series of "Russian Scares", in which it was feared Russia was the most likely military threat to the country, the forerunner to the New Zealand Military Forces, the New Zealand Permanent Force, was established. The Permanent Force numbered no more than a few hundred men at any one time, and New Zealand's local defence needs depended on the militia, known as the Volunteer Force. The Volunteer Force had a number of defects, the first of which was the quality of its men. Although they funded their own equipment and trained on t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Battlecruiser
The battlecruiser (also written as battle cruiser or battle-cruiser) was a type of capital ship of the first half of the 20th century. These were similar in displacement, armament and cost to battleships, but differed in form and balance of attributes. Battlecruisers typically had thinner armour (to a varying degree) and a somewhat lighter main gun battery than contemporary battleships, installed on a longer hull with much higher engine power in order to attain greater speeds. The first battlecruisers were designed in the United Kingdom, as a development of the armoured cruiser, at the same time as the dreadnought succeeded the pre-dreadnought battleship. The goal of the design was to outrun any ship with similar armament, and chase down any ship with lesser armament; they were intended to hunt down slower, older armoured cruisers and destroy them with heavy gunfire while avoiding combat with the more powerful but slower battleships. However, as more and more battlecruisers were ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fiji
Fiji ( , ,; fj, Viti, ; Fiji Hindi: फ़िजी, ''Fijī''), officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies about north-northeast of New Zealand. Fiji consists of an archipelago of more than 330 islands—of which about 110 are permanently inhabited—and more than 500 islets, amounting to a total land area of about . The most outlying island group is Ono-i-Lau. About 87% of the total population of live on the two major islands, Viti Levu and Vanua Levu. About three-quarters of Fijians live on Viti Levu's coasts: either in the capital city of Suva; or in smaller urban centres such as Nadi—where tourism is the major local industry; or in Lautoka, where the Sugarcane, sugar-cane industry is dominant. The interior of Viti Levu is sparsely inhabited because of its terrain. The majority of Fiji's islands were formed by Volcano, volcanic activity starting around 150 million years ago. Some geo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael King (historian)
Michael King (15 December 1945 – 30 March 2004) was a New Zealand historian, author, and biographer. He wrote or edited over 30 books on New Zealand topics, including the best-selling ''Penguin History of New Zealand'', which was the most popular New Zealand book of 2004. Life King was born in Wellington, one of four children to Eleanor and Lewis King, and grew up at Paremata. His Glasgow-born father was an advertising executive who had left New Zealand to serve as a naval officer in World War II and had risen to the rank of lieutenant-commander. King's family moved to Auckland for a while, where he attended Sacred Heart College, then returned to Wellington, where he attended St Patrick's College, Silverstream in Upper Hutt. He studied history at Victoria University of Wellington, working part-time for the '' Evening Post'', and graduated with a BA in 1967. He married Ros Henry in 1967. They moved to Hamilton, where King worked full-time as a journalist at the ''Waikato Time ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SMS Gneisenau
SMS ''Gneisenau''). was an armored cruiser of the German ''Kaiserliche Marine'' (Imperial Navy), part of the two-ship . Named for the earlier screw corvette of the same name, the ship was laid down in June 1904 at the AG Weser shipyard in Bremen, launched in June 1906, and commissioned in March 1908. She was armed with a main battery of eight guns, a significant increase in firepower over earlier German armored cruisers, and she had a top speed of . ''Gneisenau'' initially served with the German fleet in I Scouting Group, though her service there was limited owing to the British development of the battlecruiser by 1909, which the less powerful armored cruisers could not effectively combat. Accordingly, ''Gneisenau'' was assigned to the German East Asia Squadron, where she joined her sister ship . The two cruisers formed the core of the squadron, which included several light cruisers. Over the next four years, ''Gneisenau'' patrolled Germany's colonial possessions in Asia an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SMS Scharnhorst
SMS was an armored cruiser of the Imperial German Navy, built at the Blohm+Voss, Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, Germany. She was the lead ship of Scharnhorst-class cruiser, her class, which included . and her sister were enlarged versions of the preceding ; they were equipped with a greater number of main gun battery, main guns and were capable of a higher top speed. The ship was named after the Prussian military reformer General Gerhard von Scharnhorst and commissioned into service on 24 October 1907. served briefly with the High Seas Fleet in Germany in 1908, though most of this time was spent conducting sea trials. She was assigned to the German East Asia Squadron based in Qingdao, Tsingtao, China, in 1909. After arriving, she replaced the cruiser as the squadron flagship, a position she would hold for the rest of her career. Over the next five years, she went on several tours of various Asian ports to :wikt:show the flag, show the flag for German Empire, Germany. She ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
East Asia Squadron
The German East Asia Squadron (german: Kreuzergeschwader / Ostasiengeschwader) was an Imperial German Navy cruiser Squadron (naval), squadron which operated mainly in the Pacific Ocean between the mid-1890s until 1914, when it was destroyed at the Battle of the Falkland Islands. It was based at Germany's Kiautschou Bay concession in China. Background The Treaty of Tientsin, Treaty of Peking of September 1861 between the Kingdom of Prussia and China allowed Prussian warships to operate in Chinese waters. As East Asia grew in economic and political importance to the recently united Germany, in 1881 a flying squadron was formed for the area under the command of a flag officer. Since African colonies were then seen as of greater value, an African Cruiser Squadron was established in 1885 with permanent status, and shortly thereafter the Imperial German Navy reduced the East Asia presence to two small gunboats. From 1888 to 1892, was flagship of the German East Asia Squadron, initial ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maximilian Von Spee
Maximilian Johannes Maria Hubert Reichsgraf von Spee (22 June 1861 – 8 December 1914) was a naval officer of the German ''Kaiserliche Marine'' (Imperial Navy), who commanded the East Asia Squadron during World War I. Spee entered the navy in 1878 and served in a variety of roles and locations, including on a colonial gunboat in German West Africa in the 1880s, the East Africa Squadron in the late 1890s, and as commander of several warships in the main German fleet in the early 1900s. During his time in Germany in the late 1880s and early 1890s, he married his wife, Margareta, and had three children, his sons Heinrich and Otto and his daughter Huberta. By 1912, he had returned to the East Asia Squadron as its commander, and was promoted to the rank of ''Vizeadmiral'' (Vice Admiral) the following year. After the outbreak of World War I in July 1914, Spee led his squadron across the Pacific to the coast of South America. Here on 1 November, he defeated the British 4th Cruiser Sq ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Protected Cruiser
Protected cruisers, a type of naval cruiser of the late-19th century, gained their description because an armoured deck offered protection for vital machine-spaces from fragments caused by shells exploding above them. Protected cruisers resembled armored cruisers, which had in addition a belt of armour along the sides. Evolution From the late 1850s, navies began to replace their fleets of wooden ships-of-the-line with armoured ironclad warships. However, the frigates and sloops which performed the missions of scouting, commerce raiding and trade protection remained unarmoured. For several decades, it proved difficult to design a ship which had a meaningful amount of protective armour but at the same time maintained the speed and range required of a "cruising warship". The first attempts to do so, armored cruisers like , proved unsatisfactory, generally lacking enough speed for their cruiser role. During the 1870s the increasing power of armour-piercing shells made armou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HMAS Psyche
HMAS ''Psyche'' (formerly HMS ''Psyche'') was a protected cruiser built for the Royal Navy at the end of the 19th century. Initially operating on the North America and West Indies Station, the cruiser was transferred to the Australian Squadron in 1903, and remained there until the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) took over responsibility in 1913. After a stint in New Zealand waters and involvement in the Occupation of German Samoa, ''Psyche'' was paid off in 1915. At the recommendation of the Australian government, the ship was commissioned into the RAN in 1915, and assigned to patrol the coast of Burma, in response to the threat of a German-instigated uprising. ''Psyche'' operated in the Bay of Bengal and around Sumatra until 1916, when she was docked at Hong Kong for refit. During this, personnel from the ship were used to commission and man the river gunboat . After the refit's conclusion, ''Psyche'' patrolled in Chinese waters, before returning to the Bay of Bengal. ''Psyche'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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