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USS Newport News (CA-148)
USS ''Newport News'' (CA–148) was the third and last ship of the of heavy cruisers in the United States Navy. She was the first fully air-conditioned surface ship and the last active all-gun heavy cruiser in the United States Navy. Construction and career ''Newport News'' was laid down 1 November 1945, launched on 6 March 1948 by Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, Newport News, Virginia, sponsored by Eliza S. Ferguson and commissioned on 29 January 1949, with Captain Roland N. Smoot in command. 1950–1962 In addition to annual deployments to the Mediterranean from 1950 to 1961 for duty with the Sixth Fleet, she participated in major fleet exercises and midshipman training cruises in the Caribbean and Western Atlantic. On 4 January 1956 she steamed for a tour of duty in the Mediterranean as the flagship of Vice Admiral Ralph A. Ofstie, Commander Sixth Fleet. Vice Admiral Ofstie was relieved on board by Vice Admiral Harry Donald Felt on 12 April in Barcelon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maritime Call Sign
Maritime call signs are call signs assigned as unique identifiers to ships and boats. All radio transmissions must be individually identified by the call sign. Merchant and naval vessels are assigned call signs by their national licensing authorities. History One of the earliest applications of radiotelegraph operation, long predating broadcast radio, were marine radio stations installed aboard ships at sea. In the absence of international standards, early transmitters constructed after Guglielmo Marconi's first trans-Atlantic message in 1901 were issued arbitrary two-letter calls by radio companies, alone or later preceded by a one-letter company identifier. These mimicked an earlier railroad telegraph convention where short, two-letter identifiers served as Morse code abbreviations to denote the various individual stations on the line (for instance, AX could represent Halifax). "N" and two letters would identify U.S. Navy; "M" and two letters would be a Marconi station. On Apr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tactical Air Navigation System
A tactical air navigation system, commonly referred to by the acronym TACAN, is a navigation system used by military aircraft. It provides the user with bearing and distance (slant-range or hypotenuse) to a ground or ship-borne station. It is a more accurate version of the VOR/ DME system that provides bearing and range information for civil aviation. The DME portion of the TACAN system is available for civil use; at VORTAC facilities where a VOR is combined with a TACAN, civil aircraft can receive VOR/DME readings. Aircraft equipped with TACAN avionics can use this system for en route navigation as well as non-precision approaches to landing fields. The Space Shuttle is one such vehicle that was designed to use TACAN navigation but later upgraded with GPS as a replacement. The typical TACAN onboard user panel has control switches for setting the channel (corresponding to the desired surface station's assigned frequency), the operation mode for either transmit/receive (T/R, to get ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roland N
Roland (; frk, *Hrōþiland; lat-med, Hruodlandus or ''Rotholandus''; it, Orlando or ''Rolando''; died 15 August 778) was a Frankish military leader under Charlemagne who became one of the principal figures in the literary cycle known as the Matter of France. The historical Roland was military governor of the Breton March, responsible for defending Francia's frontier against the Bretons. His only historical attestation is in Einhard's ''Vita Karoli Magni'', which notes he was part of the Frankish rearguard killed in retribution by the Basques in Iberia at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass. The story of Roland's death at Roncevaux Pass was embellished in later medieval and Renaissance literature. The first and most famous of these epic treatments was the Old French ''Chanson de Roland'' of the 11th century. Two masterpieces of Italian Renaissance poetry, the ''Orlando Innamorato'' and ''Orlando Furioso'' (by Matteo Maria Boiardo and Ludovico Ariosto respectively), are even further ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homer L
Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history. Homer's ''Iliad'' centers on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles during the last year of the Trojan War. The ''Odyssey'' chronicles the ten-year journey of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, back to his home after the fall of Troy. The poems are in Homeric Greek, also known as Epic Greek, a literary language which shows a mixture of features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic. Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally. Homer's epic poems shaped aspects of ancient Greek culture and education, fostering ideals of heroism, glory, and honor. To Plato, Homer was simply the one who ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage of its active battle fleet alone exceeding the next 13 navies combined, including 11 allies or partner nations of the United States as of 2015. It has the highest combined battle fleet tonnage (4,635,628 tonnes as of 2019) and the world's largest aircraft carrier fleet, with eleven in service, two new carriers under construction, and five other carriers planned. With 336,978 personnel on active duty and 101,583 in the Ready Reserve, the United States Navy is the third largest of the United States military service branches in terms of personnel. It has 290 deployable combat vessels and more than 2,623 operational aircraft . The United States Navy traces its origins to the Continental Navy, which was established during the American Revo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heavy Cruisers
The heavy cruiser was a type of cruiser, a naval warship designed for long range and high speed, armed generally with naval guns of roughly 203 mm (8 inches) in caliber, whose design parameters were dictated by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930. The heavy cruiser is part of a lineage of ship design from 1915 through the early 1950s, although the term "heavy cruiser" only came into formal use in 1930. The heavy cruiser's immediate precursors were the light cruiser designs of the 1900s and 1910s, rather than the armored cruisers of the years before 1905. When the armored cruiser was supplanted by the battlecruiser, an intermediate ship type between this and the light cruiser was found to be needed—one larger and more powerful than the light cruisers of a potential enemy but not as large and expensive as the battlecruiser so as to be built in sufficient numbers to protect merchant ships and serve in a number of combat theaters. With ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lifeboat (shipboard)
A lifeboat or liferaft is a small, rigid or inflatable boat carried for emergency evacuation in the event of a disaster aboard a ship. Lifeboat drills are required by law on larger commercial ships. Rafts (liferafts) are also used. In the military, a lifeboat may double as a whaleboat, dinghy, or gig. The ship's tenders of cruise ships often double as lifeboats. Recreational sailors usually carry inflatable liferafts, though a few prefer small proactive lifeboats that are harder to sink and can be sailed to safety. Inflatable lifeboats may be equipped with auto-inflation (carbon dioxide or nitrogen) canisters or mechanical pumps. A quick release and pressure release mechanism is fitted on ships so that the canister or pump automatically inflates the lifeboat, and the lifeboat breaks free of the sinking vessel. Commercial aircraft are also required to carry auto-inflating liferafts in case of an emergency water landing; offshore oil platforms also have liferafts. Ship-launche ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helipad
A helipad is a landing area or platform for helicopters and powered lift aircraft. While helicopters and powered lift aircraft are able to operate on a variety of relatively flat surfaces, a fabricated helipad provides a clearly marked hard surface away from obstacles where such aircraft can land safely. Larger helipads, intended for use by helicopters and other vertical take-off and landing aircraft (VTOL), may be called ''vertiports.'' An example is Vertiport Chicago, which opened in 2015. Usage Helipads may be located at a heliport or airport where fuel, air traffic control and service facilities for aircraft are available. Most helipads are located remote from populated areas due to sounds, winds, space and cost constraints. However, some skyscrapers maintain a helipad on their roofs in order to accommodate air taxi services. Some basic helipads are built on top of highrise buildings for evacuation in case of a major fire outbreak. Major police departments may use a d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aircraft Catapult
An aircraft catapult is a device used to allow aircraft to take off from a very limited amount of space, such as the deck of a vessel, but can also be installed on land-based runways in rare cases. It is now most commonly used on aircraft carriers, as a form of assisted take off. In the form used on aircraft carriers the catapult consists of a track, or slot, built into the flight deck, below which is a large piston or ''shuttle'' that is attached through the track to the nose gear of the aircraft, or in some cases a wire rope, called a catapult bridle, is attached to the aircraft and the catapult shuttle. Other forms have been used historically, such as mounting a launching cart holding a seaplane on a long girder-built structure mounted on the deck of a warship or merchant vessel, but most catapults share a similar sliding track concept. Different means have been used to propel the catapult, such as weight and derrick, gunpowder, flywheel, air pressure, hydraulic, and steam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oerlikon 20 Mm Cannon
The Oerlikon 20 mm cannon is a series of autocannons, based on an original German Becker Type M2 20 mm cannon design that appeared very early in World War I. It was widely produced by Oerlikon Contraves and others, with various models employed by both Allied and Axis forces during World War II. Many versions of the cannon are still used today. Blowback-operated models History Origins During World War I, the German industrialist Reinhold Becker developed a 20 mm caliber cannon, known now as the 20 mm Becker using the advanced primer ignition blowback (API blowback) method of operation. This used a 20×70mmRB cartridge and had a cyclic rate of fire of 300 rpm. It was used on a limited scale as an aircraft gun on ''Luftstreitkräfte'' warplanes, and an anti-aircraft gun towards the end of that war. Because the Treaty of Versailles banned further production of such weapons in Germany, the patents and design works were transferred in 1919 to the Swiss firm SEMAG (''Seeba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
3"/50 Caliber Gun
The 3"/50 caliber gun (spoken "three-inch fifty-caliber") in United States naval gun terminology indicates the gun fired a projectile in diameter, and the barrel was 50 calibers long (barrel length is 3 in × 50 = ). Different guns (identified by Mark numbers) of this caliber were used by the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard from 1890 through to 1994 on a variety of combatant and transport ship classes. The gun is still in use with the Spanish Navy on ''Serviola''-class patrol boats. Early low-angle guns The US Navy's first 3"/50 caliber gun (Mark 2) was an early model with a projectile velocity of per second. Low-angle (single-purpose/non-anti-aircraft) mountings for this gun had a range of 7000 yards at the maximum elevation of 15 degrees. The gun entered service around 1900 with the s, and was also fitted to s. By World War II these guns were found only on a few Coast Guard cutters and Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships. Low-angle 3"/50 caliber guns (Marks 3, 5, 6 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
5"/38 Caliber Gun
The Mark 12 5"/38 caliber gun was a United States dual-purpose naval gun, but also installed in single-purpose mounts on a handful of ships. The 38 caliber barrel was a mid-length compromise between the previous United States standard 5"/51 low-angle gun and 5"/25 anti-aircraft gun. United States naval gun terminology indicates the gun fired a projectile in diameter, and the barrel was 38 calibers long. The increased barrel length provided greatly improved performance in both anti-aircraft and anti-surface roles compared to the 5"/25 gun. However, except for the barrel length and the use of semi-fixed ammunition, the 5"/38 gun was derived from the 5"/25 gun. Both weapons had power ramming, which enabled rapid fire at high angles against aircraft. The 5"/38 entered service on , commissioned in 1934, the first new destroyer design since the last ''Clemson'' was built in 1922. The base ring mount, which improved the effective rate of fire, entered service on , commissioned ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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