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Operation Astonia
Operation Astonia was the codename for an Allies of World War II, Allied attack on the German-held English Channel, Channel port of Le Havre in France, during the Second World War. The city had been declared a ''German World War II strongholds, Festung'' (fortress) by Hitler, to be held to the last man. Fought from 10 to 12 September 1944, the Allied objective was to secure the harbour facilities intact, to deliver supplies to the Allied armies in Continental Europe. The Allies refused to let the civilian population be evacuated, despite offers of free passage by the fortress commander. From 26 August, Royal Navy ships and Royal Air Force aircraft carried out a blockade and an extensive preparatory bombardment of the city, which killed over 2,000 civilians and 19 German troops. The land attack was carried out by British infantry, aided by specialist armoured vehicles from the 79th Armoured Division (United Kingdom), 79th Armoured Division, including Canadian troops. The German garr ...
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Western Front (World War II)
The Western Front was a European theatre of World War II, military theatre of World War II encompassing Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, Netherlands, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. The Italian campaign (World War II), Italian front is considered a separate but related theater. The Western Front's 1944-1945 phase was officially deemed the European Theater of Operations, United States Army, European Theater by the United States, whereas Italy fell under the Mediterranean Theater of Operations, United States Army, Mediterranean Theater along with North Africa. The Western Front was marked by two phases of large-scale combat operations. The first phase saw the capitulation of Luxembourg, Netherlands, Belgium, and France during May and June 1940 after their defeat in the Low Countries and the northern half of France, and continued into an air war between Germany and Britain that climaxed with the Battle of Britain. The second phase consisted of large- ...
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France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its Metropolitan France, metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea; overseas territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and many islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean. Due to its several coastal territories, France has the largest exclusive economic zone in the world. France borders Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Monaco, Italy, Andorra, and Spain in continental Europe, as well as the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Netherlands, Suriname, and Brazil in the Americas via its overseas territories in French Guiana and Saint Martin (island), ...
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Tallboy (bomb)
Tallboy or Bomb, Medium Capacity, 12,000 lb was an earthquake bomb developed by the British aeronautical engineer Barnes Wallis and used by the Royal Air Force (RAF) during the Second World War."Medium capacity" refers to the ratio of bomb case to explosive filling; in the case of the Tallboy, this was less than 50 per cent explosive by weight, in contrast to "high capacity" bombs like the Blockbuster bombs, in which up to three-quarters of their weight was the explosive. At , it could be carried only by a modified model of the Avro Lancaster heavy bomber. It proved to be effective against large, fortified structures against which conventional bombing had proved ineffective. History Wallis presented his ideas for a 10-ton bomb in his 1941 paper "A Note on a Method of Attacking the Axis Powers", which showed that a very large bomb exploding deep underground next to a target would transmit the shock into the foundations of the target, particularly since shock waves are trans ...
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RAF Bomber Command
RAF Bomber Command controlled the Royal Air Force's bomber forces from 1936 to 1968. Along with the United States Army Air Forces, it played the central role in the strategic bombing of Germany in World War II. From 1942 onward, the British bombing campaign against Germany became less restrictive and increasingly targeted industrial sites and the civilian manpower base essential for German war production. In total 364,514 operational sorties were flown, 1,030,500 tons of bombs were dropped and 8,325 aircraft lost in action. Bomber Command crews also suffered a high casualty rate: 55,573 were killed out of a total of 125,000 aircrew, a 44.4% death rate. A further 8,403 men were wounded in action, and 9,838 became prisoners of war. Bomber Command stood at the peak of its post-war military power in the 1960s, the V bombers holding the United Kingdom's nuclear deterrent and a supplemental force of Canberra light bombers. In August 2006, a memorial was unveiled at Lincoln Cathe ...
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HMS Dragon (D46)
HMS ''Dragon'', also known in Polish service as ORP ''Dragon'' ( pl, dragoon), was a D- or ''Danae''-class cruiser built for the Royal Navy. She was launched in Glasgow, in December 1917, and scuttled in July 1944 off the Normandy beaches as part of the Arromanches Breakwater. History Pre World War II One of the fastest-built ships of the time, ''Dragon'' (pennant number D46) was laid down on 24 January 1917 in Glasgow. She was launched on 29 December that year. However, it was not until 10 August 1918 that she was finally commissioned at Harwich Dockyard by the Royal Navy as HMS ''Dragon'', commanded by Capt. A. H. Allington. Armed with six 6-inch guns, the light cruiser was commissioned late during World War I and a Daily Mirror article of 1934 credits her South African crewman Maurice Green of firing the last shot of the war at sea when she engaged German seaplanes off Heligoland Bight on 9 November 1918. She carried the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VIII) to C ...
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K-Verband
The K-Verband (in English "small battle unit", derived from ''Kleinkampfverbände der Kriegsmarine'' "small battle units") was a World War II German naval unit that operated a mixture of midget submarine A midget submarine (also called a mini submarine) is any submarine under 150 tons, typically operated by a crew of one or two but sometimes up to six or nine, with little or no on-board living accommodation. They normally work with mother ships, ...s and explosive speed boats.Tarrant, pp.35–37 It was formed in April 1944 and operated until 26 April 1945.Tarrant, pp.222–223 The miniature submarines were a mix of one and two-man craft. The Linsen explosive motorboats were operated in units of three with two boats carrying 660-800 lb of explosives and a third tasked with remotely controlling them during their final attack run. References ;Notes ;Bibliography * External links Pickles, Graham, ''The K-Verband'', The Hemlington Nautical History Society ...
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Neger
The ''Neger'' (German for ''Negro'') was a torpedo-carrying craft generally described as a human torpedo which could not submerge, but was difficult to see during night operations. The vessel was used by Nazi Germany's ''Kriegsmarine'' between 1943 and 1945. The name comes from its constructor, Richard Mohr, whose surname in German also stands for Negro in the racial sense. Design The Neger was based on the G7e torpedo and sported a spartan cockpit covered by a perspex dome, where the warhead would have been. It had sufficient positive buoyancy to run awash while supporting a second G7e, with warhead, slung below. The vessel had a range of 48 nautical miles at 4 knots and displaced 2.7 tons. The pilot navigated via a wrist compass and air was provided through a Dräger self-contained breathing device. The pilot aimed his weapon by lining up an aiming spike on the nose with a graduated scale on the dome. Subsequently, a second aiming spike was added closer to the dome. It, howe ...
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Theodor Krancke
__NOTOC__ Theodor Krancke (30 March 1893 – 18 June 1973) was a naval commander (admiral) of Nazi Germany during World War II and a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves. Under the command of Krancke, during the five-month-long raiding cruise, the pocket battleship German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer, ''Admiral Scheer'' sank 13 merchant ships, one armed merchant cruiser , and captured three merchant ships representing of Allied and neutral shipping. During the Allied Invasion of Normandy Krancke, as Commander-in-Chief of Navy Group Command West headquartered in Paris, controlled all German naval vessels in France, as well as the various land-based naval units and the naval coastal artillery and anti-aircraft batteries along the French Atlantic coast. Dates of Rank *Fähnrich zur See – 12 April 1913 *Leutnant zur See – 22 March 1915 *Oberleutnant zur See – 25 December 1917 *Kapitänleutnant – 1 September 1922 *Korvettenkapitän – 1 Oct ...
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Liberation Of France
The liberation of France in the Second World War was accomplished through diplomacy, politics and the combined military efforts of the Allied Powers of World War II, Allied Powers, Free French forces in London and Africa, as well as the French Resistance. Battle of France, Nazi Germany invaded France in May 1940. Their rapid advance through the undefended Ardennes caused a crisis in the French government; the French Third Republic dissolved itself in July, and handed over French Constitutional Law of 1940, absolute power to Marshal Philippe Pétain, an elderly hero of World War I. Pétain signed an Armistice of 22 June 1940, armistice with Germany with the north and west of France under German military administration in occupied France during World War II, German military occupation. Pétain, charged with calling a Constitutional Authority, instead established an authoritarian government in the spa town of Vichy, in the southern ''zone libre'' ("free zone"). Though nominally inde ...
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Operation Overlord
Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allies of World War II, Allied operation that launched the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Front (World War II), Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 (D-Day) with the Normandy landings. A 1,200-plane Airborne forces, airborne assault preceded an amphibious warfare, amphibious assault involving more than 5,000 vessels. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on 6 June, and more than two million Allied troops were in France by the end of August. The decision to undertake a cross-channel invasion in 1944 was taken at the Washington Conference (1943), Trident Conference in Washington, D.C., Washington in May 1943. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was appointed commander of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, and General Bernard Montgomery was named commander of the 21st Army Group, which comprised all the land forces involved in the invasio ...
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TVA Marder
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a Federal government of the United States, federally owned electric utility corporation in the United States. TVA's service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. While owned by the federal government, TVA receives no taxpayer funding and operates similarly to a private for-profit company. It is headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee, and is the sixth largest power supplier and largest public utility in the country. The TVA was created by Congress in 1933 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Its initial purpose was to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, Urban planning, regional planning, and economic development to the Tennessee Valley, a region that had suffered from lack of infrastructure and poverty during the Great Depression, relative to the rest of th ...
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Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). Following the Allied victory over the Central Powers in 1918, the RAF emerged as the largest air force in the world at the time. Since its formation, the RAF has taken a significant role in British military history. In particular, it played a large part in the Second World War where it fought its most famous campaign, the Battle of Britain. The RAF's mission is to support the objectives of the British Ministry of Defence (MOD), which are to "provide the capabilities needed to ensure the security and defence of the United Kingdom and overseas territories, including against terrorism; to support the Government's foreign policy objectives particularly in promoting international peace and security". The R ...
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