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Vickers Machine Gun
The Vickers machine gun or Vickers gun is a water-cooled .303 British (7.7 mm) machine gun produced by Vickers Limited, originally for the British Army. The gun was operated by a three-man crew but typically required more men to move and operate it: one fired, one fed the ammunition, the others helped to carry the weapon, its ammunition, and spare parts. It was in service from before the First World War until the 1960s, with air-cooled versions of it on many Allied World War I fighter aircraft. The weapon had a reputation for great solidity and reliability. Ian V. Hogg, in ''Weapons & War Machines'', describes an action that took place in August 1916, during which the British 100th Company of the Machine Gun Corps fired their ten Vickers guns to deliver sustained fire for twelve hours. Using 100 barrels, they fired a million rounds without breakdowns. "It was this absolute foolproof reliability which endeared the Vickers to every British soldier who ever fired one. It nev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vickers–Berthier
The Vickers–Berthier (VB) is a light machine gun that was produced by the British company Vickers-Armstrong. It was adopted by the British Indian Army and saw combat during World War II. History Berthier machine gun The Vickers–Berthier was based on a French design of just before World War I. It was proposed for use with infantry as ''Fusil Mitrailleur Berthier Modèle 1910'', ''Modèle 1911'', ''Modèle 1912'', ''Modèle 1916'' and ''Modèle 1920''. It was also proposed in 1918 to US Army which finally refused it. A later version, the ''Fusil Mitrailleur Berthier Modèle 1922'', competed for the replacement of the Chauchat LMG in the French army but the ''Fusil Mitrailleur MAC modèle 1924'' was adopted. Vickers-Berthier machine gun In 1925 Vickers in Britain purchased licence rights of the Berthier Model 1922 for production in their Crayford factory, and as a replacement for the Lewis Gun. It was an alternative to the water-cooled Vickers machine gun made by the sam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1948 Arab–Israeli War
The 1948 (or First) Arab–Israeli War was the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. It formally began following the end of the British Mandate for Palestine at midnight on 14 May 1948; the Israeli Declaration of Independence had been issued earlier that day, and a military coalition of Arab states entered the territory of British Palestine in the morning of 15 May. The day after the 29 November 1947 adoption of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine – which planned to divide Palestine into an Arab state, a Jewish state, and the Special International Regime encompassing the cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem – an ambush of two buses carrying Jews took place in an incident regarded as the first in the civil war which broke out after the UN decision. The violence had certain continuities with the past, the Fajja bus attack being a direct response to a Lehi massacre on 19 November of five members of an Arab family, suspected of being British informa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
303 British
The .303 British (designated as the 303 British by the C.I.P. and SAAMI) or 7.7×56mmR, is a calibre rimmed rifle cartridge. The .303 inch bore diameter is measured between rifling lands as is the common practice in Europe which follows the traditional black powder convention. It was first manufactured in Britain as a stop-gap black powder round put into service in December 1888 for the Lee–Metford rifle. From 1891 the cartridge used smokeless powder which had been the intention from the outset, but the decision on which smokeless powder to adopt had been delayed. It was the standard British and Commonwealth military cartridge for rifles and machine guns from 1889 until the 1950s when it was replaced by the 7.62×51mm NATO. Cartridge specifications The .303 British has 3.64 ml (56 grains H2O) cartridge case capacity. The pronounced tapering exterior shape of the case was designed to promote reliable case feeding and extraction in bolt-action rifles and machine guns a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vickers
Vickers was a British engineering company that existed from 1828 until 1999. It was formed in Sheffield as a steel foundry by Edward Vickers and his father-in-law, and soon became famous for casting church bells. The company went public in 1867, acquired more businesses, and began branching out into military hardware and shipbuilding. In 1911, the company expanded into aircraft manufacture and opened a flying school. They expanded even further into electrical and railway manufacturing, and in 1928 acquired an interest in the Supermarine. Beginning in the 1960s, various parts of the company were nationalised, and in 1999 the rest of the company was acquired by Rolls-Royce plc, who sold the defence arm to Alvis plc. The Vickers name lived on in Alvis Vickers, until the latter was acquired by BAE Systems in 2004 to form BAE Systems Land Systems. History Early history Vickers was formed in Sheffield as a steel foundry by Edward Vickers and his father-in-law George N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2022 Russian Invasion Of Ukraine
On 24 February 2022, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths on both sides. It has caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. An estimated 8 million Ukrainians were displaced within their country by late May and 7.8 million fled the country by 8 November 2022, while Russia, within five weeks of the invasion, experienced its greatest emigration since the 1917 October Revolution. Following the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution, Russia annexed Crimea, and Russian-backed paramilitaries seized part of the Donbas region of south-eastern Ukraine, which consists of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts, sparking a regional war. In March 2021, Russia began a large military build-up along its border with Ukraine, eventually amassing up to 190,000 troops and their equipment. Despite the build-up, denials of plans to invade or attack Ukraine were issued by various Russian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South African Border War
The South African Border War, also known as the Namibian War of Independence, and sometimes denoted in South Africa as the Angolan Bush War, was a largely asymmetric conflict that occurred in Namibia (then South West Africa), Zambia, and Angola from 26 August 1966 to 21 March 1990. It was fought between the South African Defence Force (SADF) and the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), an armed wing of the South West African People's Organisation (SWAPO). The South African Border War resulted in some of the largest battles on the African continent since World War II and was closely intertwined with the Angolan Civil War. Following several years of unsuccessful petitioning through the United Nations and the International Court of Justice for Namibian independence from South Africa, SWAPO formed the PLAN in 1962 with material assistance from the Soviet Union, China, and sympathetic African states such as Tanzania, Ghana, and Algeria. Fighting broke out between PLAN and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aden Emergency
The Aden Emergency, also known as the Radfan Uprising (), was an armed rebellion by NLF and FLOSY during the Cold War against the Federation of South Arabia, a protectorate of the United Kingdom, which now forms part of Yemen. Partly inspired by Gamal Abdel Nasser's pan-Arab nationalism, it began on 14 October 1963 with the throwing of a grenade at a gathering of British officials at Aden Airport. A state of emergency was then declared in the British Crown colony of Aden and its hinterland, the Aden Protectorate. The emergency escalated in 1967 and hastened the end of British rule in the territory which had begun in 1839. On 30 November 1967, British forces withdrew and the independent People's Republic of South Yemen was proclaimed. Background Aden was originally of interest to Britain as an anti-piracy station to protect shipping on the routes to British India. With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, it further served as a coaling station. Over the period since the a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Congo Crisis
The Congo Crisis (french: Crise congolaise, link=no) was a period of political upheaval and conflict between 1960 and 1965 in the Republic of the Congo (today the Democratic Republic of the Congo). The crisis began almost immediately after the Congo became independent from Belgium and ended, unofficially, with the entire country under the rule of Joseph-Désiré Mobutu. Constituting a series of civil wars, the Congo Crisis was also a proxy conflict in the Cold War, in which the Soviet Union and the United States supported opposing factions. Around 100,000 people are believed to have been killed during the crisis. A nationalist movement in the Belgian Congo demanded the end of colonial rule: this led to the country's independence on 30 June 1960. Minimal preparations had been made and many issues, such as federalism, tribalism, and ethnic nationalism, remained unresolved. In the first week of July, a mutiny broke out in the army and violence erupted between black and whit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cypriot Intercommunal Violence
Several distinct periods of Cypriot intercommunal violence involving the two main ethnic communities, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, marked mid-20th century Cyprus. These included the Cyprus Emergency of 1955–59 during British rule, the post-independence Cyprus crisis of 1963–64, and the Cyprus crisis of 1967. Hostilities culminated in the 1974 ''de facto'' division of the island along the Green Line following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The region has been relatively peaceful since then, but the Cyprus dispute has continued, with various attempts to solve it diplomatically having been generally unsuccessful. Background Cyprus, an island lying in the eastern Mediterranean, hosted a population of Greeks and Turks (four-fifths and one-fifth, respectively), who lived under British rule in the late nineteenth-century and the first half of the twentieth-century. Christian Orthodox Church of Cyprus played a prominent political role among the Greek Cypriot community, a p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Osprey Publishing
Osprey Publishing is a British, Oxford-based, publishing company specializing in military history. Predominantly an illustrated publisher, many of their books contain full-colour artwork plates, maps and photographs, and the company produces over a dozen ongoing series, each focusing on a specific aspect of the history of warfare. Osprey has published over 2,300 books. They are best known for their ''Men-at-Arms'' series, running to over 500 titles, with each book dedicated to a specific historical army or military unit. Osprey is an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing. History In the 1960s, the Brooke Bond Tea Company began including a series of military aircraft cards with packages of their tea. The cards proved popular, and the artist Dick Ward proposed the idea of publishing illustrated books about military aircraft. The idea was approved and a small subsidiary company called Osprey was formed in 1968. The company’s first book, ''North American P-51D Mustang in USAAF-USAF Ser ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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