|
Washing Machine Charlie
Washing Machine Charlie was a name given by the Allies (primarily the United States) to Imperial Japanese aircraft that performed usually solitary, nocturnal operations over Henderson Field on Guadalcanal during the Guadalcanal campaign, as well as over other Allied bases during the Solomon Islands campaign, during the Pacific Theatre of World War II. The name came from the distinctive sound of the aircraft's engines. The Japanese sent solitary aircraft on night-time missions over Guadalcanal and later other islands held by the Allies for various reasons, including scouting, dropping flares over Allied positions to assist Japanese naval or ground forces operating on or near the island, bombing airfields and installations, or simply harassing troops and disrupting their sleep. Various aircraft were used, including ship- or shore-based single-engine seaplanes from the R-Area Air Force, and occasionally twin-engine Mitsubishi G4M bombers whose pilots made sure the engines were out of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allies Of World War II
The Allies, formally referred to as the United Nations from 1942, were an international military coalition formed during the Second World War (1939–1945) to oppose the Axis powers, led by Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy. Its principal members by 1941 were the United Kingdom, United States, Soviet Union, and China. Membership in the Allies varied during the course of the war. When the conflict broke out on 1 September 1939, the Allied coalition consisted of the United Kingdom, France, and Poland, as well as their respective dependencies, such as British India. They were soon joined by the independent dominions of the British Commonwealth: Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Consequently, the initial alliance resembled that of the First World War. As Axis forces began invading northern Europe and the Balkans, the Allies added the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Greece, and Yugoslavia. The Soviet Union, which initially had a nonaggression pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mitsubishi G4M
The Mitsubishi G4M was a twin-engine, land-based medium bomber formerly manufactured by the Mitsubishi Aircraft Company, a part of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and operated by the Imperial Japanese Navy from 1940 to 1945. Its official designation is and was commonly referred to by Japanese Navy pilots as due to the cylindrical shape of its fuselage and its penchant for igniting after a hit. The Allied reporting name was "Betty". Designed to a strict specification to succeed the Mitsubishi G3M already in service, the G4M boasted very good performance and excellent range and was considered the best land-based naval bomber at the time. This was achieved by its structural lightness and an almost total lack of protection for the crew, with no armor plating or self-sealing fuel tanks. The G4M was officially adopted on 2 April 1941 but the aforementioned problems would prove to be a severe drawback, often suffering heavy losses; Allied fighter pilots nicknamed the G4M "The Flying L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Naval Base Guadalcanal
US Naval Base Solomons was a number of United States Navy bases in the Solomon Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Most were built by the US Navy Seabees, Naval Construction Battalions, during World War II as part of the Pacific War. In August 1942 the United States Armed Forces took the Guadalcanal in the Solomon, in the Battle of Guadalcanal. US Navy Seabees built a new base at Guadalcanal, Naval Base Guadalcanal and then on other islands in the Solomons. Naval Base Guadalcanal One of the major activities of the Naval Base Guadalcanal was the support of the building of the airbase Henderson Field. The first aircraft landed on Henderson Field on August 12, 1942. Naval Base Guadalcanal also supported the many troops on Guadalcanal and staging for coming actions. The seas off Naval Base Guadalcanal, Savo Sound, were nicknamed ''Ironbottom Sound'' due to the many ships and planes sunk off Guadalcanal, in the battle, codenamed Operation Watchtower. On 28 July 1942, the US Navy and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eastern Front (World War II)
The Eastern Front of World War II was a Theater (warfare), theatre of conflict between the European Axis powers against the Soviet Union (USSR), Polish Armed Forces in the East, Poland and other Allies of World War II, Allies, which encompassed Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Northern Europe, Northeast Europe (Baltic states, Baltics), and Southeast Europe (Balkans) from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945. It was known as the Great Patriotic War (term), Great Patriotic War in the Soviet Union – and still is in some of its successor states, while almost everywhere else it has been called the ''Eastern Front''. In present-day German and Ukrainian historiography the name German-Soviet War is typically used. The battles on the Eastern Front of the Second World War constituted the largest military confrontation in history. They were characterised by unprecedented ferocity and brutality, wholesale destruction, mass deportations, and immense loss of life due to combat, starvation, expos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national republics; in practice, both its government and its economy were highly centralized until its final years. It was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with the city of Moscow serving as its capital as well as that of its largest and most populous republic: the Russian SFSR. Other major cities included Leningrad (Russian SFSR), Kiev (Ukrainian SSR), Minsk ( Byelorussian SSR), Tashkent (Uzbek SSR), Alma-Ata (Kazakh SSR), and Novosibirsk (Russian SFSR). It was the largest country in the world, covering over and spanning eleven time zones. The country's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Night Witches
"Night Witches" (german: die Nachthexen; russian: Ночные ведьмы, ) was a World War II German nickname for the all-female military aviators of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, known later as the 46th "Taman" Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment, of the Soviet Air Forces. Though women were officially barred from combat at the time, Major Marina Raskova used her position and personal contacts with the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to obtain permission to form female combat units. "Combat facilitated and ushered in a reluctant acceptance of women in military, based more upon practicality and necessity than for equality". On October 8, 1941, an order was issued to deploy three women's air-force units, including the 588th Regiment. The regiment, formed by Raskova and led by Major Yevdokiya Bershanskaya, was composed primarily of female volunteers in their late teens and early twenties. An attack technique of the night bombers involved idling the engine near the target and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luftwaffe
The ''Luftwaffe'' () was the aerial-warfare branch of the German ''Wehrmacht'' before and during World War II. Germany's military air arms during World War I, the ''Luftstreitkräfte'' of the Imperial Army and the '' Marine-Fliegerabteilung'' of the Imperial Navy, had been disbanded in May 1920 in accordance with the terms of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles which banned Germany from having any air force. During the interwar period, German pilots were trained secretly in violation of the treaty at Lipetsk Air Base in the Soviet Union. With the rise of the Nazi Party and the repudiation of the Versailles Treaty, the ''Luftwaffe''s existence was publicly acknowledged on 26 February 1935, just over two weeks before open defiance of the Versailles Treaty through German rearmament and conscription would be announced on 16 March. The Condor Legion, a ''Luftwaffe'' detachment sent to aid Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War, provided the force with a valuable testing grou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
European Theatre Of World War II
The European theatre of World War II was one of the two main Theater (warfare), theatres of combat during World War II. It saw heavy fighting across Europe for almost six years, starting with Nazi Germany, Germany's invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 and end of World War II in Europe, ending with the Western allies, Western Allies conquering most of Western Europe, the Soviet Union conquering most of Eastern Europe and German Instrument of Surrender, Germany's unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945 (9 May in the Soviet Union) but the fighting on the Eastern Front (World War II), Eastern front continued until 11 May during the Prague offensive and the end of the Battle of Odzak on 25 May. The Allies of World War II, Allied powers fought the Axis powers on two major fronts (Eastern Front (World War II), Eastern Front and Western Front (World War II), Western Front) as well as in a Bombings of Germany, strategic bombing offensive and in the adjoining Mediterranean and Middle East ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Night Fighter
A night fighter (also known as all-weather fighter or all-weather interceptor for a period of time after the Second World War) is a fighter aircraft adapted for use at night or in other times of bad visibility. Night fighters began to be used in World War I and included types that were specifically modified to operate at night. During the Second World War, night fighters were either purpose-built night fighter designs, or more commonly, heavy fighters or light bombers adapted for the mission, often employing radar or other systems for providing some sort of detection capability in low visibility. Many night fighters of the conflict also included instrument landing systems for landing at night, as turning on the runway lights made runways into an easy target for opposing intruders. Some experiments tested the use of day fighters on night missions, but these tended to work only under very favourable circumstances and were not widely successful. Avionics systems were greatly mini ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
R-Area Air Force
was a unit of the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service (IJNAS) during the Pacific War that was involved in the Guadalcanal Campaign and Solomon Islands Campaign. The unit operated seaplanes with a primary mission to protect resupply convoys headed for Guadalcanal and to conduct aerial reconnaissance. History The R-Area Air Force was created by the 8th Fleet on 28 August 1942 in response to the Allied landing at Guadalcanal a few weeks earlier. It exclusively operated seaplanes in order to compensate for the lack of land bases in the Solomon Islands area. The unit's primary strength was drawn from the 11th Seaplane Tender Division, whose commander Rear Admiral Takatsugu Jōjima also became the commander of the R-Area Air Force. The squadrons from the division's four seaplane tenders ( ''Chitose'', ''Kamikawa Maru'', ''Sanyō Maru'' and ''Sanuki Maru'') formed two air groups. Eventually, aircraft from other squadrons also joined the R-Area Air Force, such as from ''Kuni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, nine Minor Outlying Islands, and 326 Indian reservations. The United States is also in free association with three Pacific Island sovereign states: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau. It is the world's third-largest country by both land and total area. It shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations. With a population of over 333 million, it is the most populous country in the Americas and the third most populous in the world. The national capital of the United States is Washington, D.C. and its most populous city and principal financial center is New York City. Paleo-Americ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seaplane
A seaplane is a powered fixed-wing aircraft capable of takeoff, taking off and water landing, landing (alighting) on water.Gunston, "The Cambridge Aerospace Dictionary", 2009. Seaplanes are usually divided into two categories based on their technological characteristics: floatplanes and flying boats; the latter are generally far larger and can carry far more. Seaplanes that can also take off and land on airfields are in a subclass called amphibious aircraft, or amphibians. Seaplanes were sometimes called ''hydroplanes'', but currently this term applies instead to Hydroplane (boat), motor-powered watercraft that use the technique of Planing (boat), hydrodynamic lift to skim the surface of water when running at speed. The use of seaplanes gradually tapered off after World War II, partially because of the investments in airports during the war but mainly because landplanes were less constrained by weather conditions that could result in sea states being too high to operate seaplan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
