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West Place Of Arms
The West Place of Arms is a place-of-arms in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar that was originally used as a troop assembly point. It is located in the gap between the North Bastion and its Counterguard, a structure built in 1804. The Counterguard provided defensive cover for the West Place of Arms, which was also fortified by a ditch into which a large caponier projected. In 1834 the Counterguard was recorded as being armed with thirteen 24-pdrs and two 9-pdrs. They were replaced by ten 32-pdrs and two 8-inch howitzer A howitzer () is a long- ranged weapon, falling between a cannon (also known as an artillery gun in the United States), which fires shells at flat trajectories, and a mortar, which fires at high angles of ascent and descent. Howitzers, like ot ...s between 1859 and 1863. By 1885 there were three 32-pdr smoothbore guns, two 8-inch howitzers and four 64-pdr rifled muzzle loaders (RMLs). The other guns were gradually replaced by RMLs in the final ye ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fortifications Of Gibraltar
The Gibraltar peninsula, located at the far southern end of Iberia, has great strategic importance as a result of its position by the Strait of Gibraltar where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. It has repeatedly been contested between European and North African powers and has endured fourteen sieges since it was first settled in the 11th century. The peninsula's occupants – Moors, Spanish, and British – have built successive layers of fortifications and defences including walls, bastions, casemates, gun batteries, magazines, tunnels and galleries. At their peak in 1865, the fortifications housed around 681 guns mounted in 110 batteries and positions, guarding all land and sea approaches to Gibraltar. Hughes & Migos, p. 91 The fortifications continued to be in military use until as late as the 1970s and by the time tunnelling ceased in the late 1960s, over of galleries had been dug in an area of only . Gibraltar's fortifications are clustered in three main a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gibraltar
) , anthem = " God Save the King" , song = " Gibraltar Anthem" , image_map = Gibraltar location in Europe.svg , map_alt = Location of Gibraltar in Europe , map_caption = United Kingdom shown in pale green , mapsize = , image_map2 = Gibraltar map-en-edit2.svg , map_alt2 = Map of Gibraltar , map_caption2 = Map of Gibraltar , mapsize2 = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = , established_title = British capture , established_date = 4 August 1704 , established_title2 = , established_date2 = 11 April 1713 , established_title3 = National Day , established_date3 = 10 September 1967 , established_title4 = Accession to EEC , established_date4 = 1 January 1973 , established_title5 = Withdrawal from the EU , established_date5 = 31 January 2020 , official_languages = English , languages_type = Spoken languages , languages = , capital = Westside, Gibraltar (de facto) , coordinates = , largest_settlement_type = largest district , l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coastal Artillery
Coastal artillery is the branch of the armed forces concerned with operating anti-ship artillery or fixed gun batteries in coastal fortifications. From the Middle Ages until World War II, coastal artillery and naval artillery in the form of cannons were highly important to military affairs and generally represented the areas of highest technology and capital cost among materiel. The advent of 20th-century technologies, especially military aviation, naval aviation, jet aircraft, and guided missiles, reduced the primacy of cannons, battleships, and coastal artillery. In countries where coastal artillery has not been disbanded, these forces have acquired amphibious capabilities. In littoral warfare, mobile coastal artillery armed with surface-to-surface missiles can still be used to deny the use of sea lanes. It was long held as a rule of thumb that one shore-based gun equaled three naval guns of the same caliber, due to the steadiness of the coastal gun which allowed for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Artillery Battery
In military organizations, an artillery battery is a unit or multiple systems of artillery, mortar systems, rocket artillery, multiple rocket launchers, surface-to-surface missiles, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, etc., so grouped to facilitate better battlefield communication and command and control, as well as to provide dispersion for its constituent gunnery crews and their systems. The term is also used in a naval context to describe groups of guns on warships. Land usage Historically the term "battery" referred to a cluster of cannon in action as a group, either in a temporary field position during a battle or at the siege of a fortress or a city. Such batteries could be a mixture of cannon, howitzer, or mortar types. A siege could involve many batteries at different sites around the besieged place. The term also came to be used for a group of cannon in a fixed fortification, for coastal or frontier defence. During the 18th century "battery" began to be used as a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Government Of Gibraltar
His Majesty's Government of Gibraltar is the democratically elected government of the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. The head of state is King Charles III who is represented by the Governor. Elections in Gibraltar are held every four years, with a unicameral parliament of 18 members of which 17 members are elected by popular vote and one, the Speaker, appointed by Parliament. The executive The leader of the majority party (or majority coalition) is formally appointed by the governor as the Chief Minister (head of government). The legislature The Cabinet (Council of Ministers) is generally formed by 10 of the 17 elected Members of Parliament, through choice made by the Chief Minister with the approval of the Governor. The seven remaining members constitute the Opposition ( Shadow Cabinet). The last general election was held on 17 October 2019. Cabinet The Cabinet (elected as from December 2011) and after the reshuffle, as announced by the Chief Minister after the 2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ministry Of Defence (United Kingdom)
The Ministry of Defence (MOD or MoD) is the department responsible for implementing the defence policy set by His Majesty's Government, and is the headquarters of the British Armed Forces. The MOD states that its principal objectives are to defend the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and its interests and to strengthen international peace and stability. The MOD also manages day-to-day running of the armed forces, contingency planning and defence procurement. The expenditure, administration and policy of the MOD are scrutinised by the Defence Select Committee, except for Defence Intelligence which instead falls under the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament. History During the 1920s and 1930s, British civil servants and politicians, looking back at the performance of the state during the First World War, concluded that there was a need for greater co-ordination between the three services that made up the armed forces of the United Kingdom: t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Place-of-arms
A place-of-arms ( it, piazza d'armi, french: place d'armes) is any place in a fortification where troops can gather. The term has a number of meanings, but it generally refers to an enlarged area of the covertway designed as an assembly point for soldiers, or a square In Euclidean geometry, a square is a regular quadrilateral, which means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles (90- degree angles, π/2 radian angles, or right angles). It can also be defined as a rectangle with two equal-length a ... in the centre of a fortress, also known as a parade ground. There are two types of places-of-arms: *Salient place-of-arms: a place-of-arms which protrudes outside the polygonal shape of the fortification *Re-entrant place-of-arms: a place-of-arms which does not protrude outside the polygonal shape of the fortification References Fortification (architectural elements) {{fort-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Overseas Territories
The British Overseas Territories (BOTs), also known as the United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs), are fourteen dependent territory, territories with a constitutional and historical link with the United Kingdom. They are the last remnants of the former British Empire and do not form part of the United Kingdom itself. The permanently inhabited territories are internally Self-governance, self-governing, with the United Kingdom retaining responsibility for Defence (military), defence and foreign relations. Three of the territories are inhabited only by a transitory population of military or scientific personnel. All but one of the rest are listed by the Special Committee on Decolonization, UN Special Committee on Decolonization as United Nations list of non-self-governing territories, non-self-governing territories. All fourteen have the Monarchy of the United Kingdom, British monarch as head of state. three territories (the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar and the Akrotiri an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North Bastion, Gibraltar
The North Bastion, formerly the ''Baluarte San Pablo'' (St. Paul's Bastion) was part of the fortifications of Gibraltar, in the north of the peninsula, protecting the town against attack from the mainland of Spain. The bastion was based on the older Giralda tower, built in 1309. The bastion, with a mole that extended into the Bay of Gibraltar to the west and a curtain wall stretching to the Rock of Gibraltar on its east, was a key element in the defenses of the peninsula. After the British took Gibraltar in 1704 they further strengthened these fortifications, flooding the land in front and turning the curtain wall into the Grand Battery. Today, the bastion is surrounded by reclaimed land to the west and north. Glacis Road runs along the base of the bastion's former glacis. Smith Dorrien Avenue separates the bastion from the curtain wall, which is still largely intact. The bastion is occupied by the Giralda Gardens and a pétanque club. The Government of Gibraltar has plans to reh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Counterguard
The counterguard (german: Kontergarde, french: contre-garde) is an outwork in a bastioned fortification system that usually comprises only a low rampart and which is sited in front of the actual fortress moat that runs around the bastions or ravelins. The rampart way of a counterguard is, however, so constructed and at least wide enough that it enables the positioning of guns. An additional ditch in front of it guards the work from a frontal enemy assault. The function of counterguards was to protect the higher ravelin or bastion behind it from direct fire and to delay an attack on it as long as possible. So that the counterguards and the works that they were to protect, could not come under simultaneous fire along the line of the rampart they were not allowed to run parallel to one another.Rüstow: ''Militärisches Handwörterbuch.'' 1859, s.v. Contregarden If such a rampart work was built for defending infantry alone, i.e. without artillery positions, it was called a couvreface ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caponier
A caponier is a type of defensive structure in a fortification. Fire from this point could cover the ditch beyond the curtain wall to deter any attempt to storm the wall. The word originates from the French ', meaning "chicken coop" (a ''capon'' is a castrated male chicken). In some types of bastioned fortifications, the caponier served as a means of access to the outworks, protecting troops from direct fire; they were often roofless. Although they could be used for firing along the ditch, the flanks of the bastions were the main defence of the ditch by fire. In later polygonal forts, caponiers were often roofed, and were not intended as a type of ''covered way'', but as the main way of keeping the ditch clear of the enemy. History Originally the term referred to a covered passageway that traversed the ditch outside the curtain of a fortress. Fire from this point could cover the ditch beyond the curtain wall to deter any attempt to storm the wall. Thus the passageway was equip ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Howitzer
A howitzer () is a long- ranged weapon, falling between a cannon (also known as an artillery gun in the United States), which fires shells at flat trajectories, and a mortar, which fires at high angles of ascent and descent. Howitzers, like other artillery equipment, are usually organized in a group called a battery. Howitzers, together with long-barreled guns, mortars, and rocket artillery, are the four basic types of modern artillery. Mortars fire at angles of elevation greater than 45°, and are useful for mountain warfare because the projectile could go over obstacles. Cannons fire at low angles of elevation (<45°), and the projectile lands much faster at its target than it would in the case of a mortar. But the cannon is not useful if there is an obstacle like a hill/wall in front of its target. Etymology The English word ''howitzer'' comes from the Czech word , from , 'crowd', and is in turn a borrowing from the Middle High German word or (mode ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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