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DUKW
The DUKW (GMC type nomenclature, colloquially known as Duck) is a six-wheel-drive amphibious modification of the GMC CCKW "deuce-and-a-half" 2½-ton trucks used by the U.S. military during World War II and the Korean War. Designed by a partnership under military auspices of Sparkman & Stephens and General Motors Corporation (GMC), the DUKW was used for the transportation of goods and troops over land and water. Excelling at approaching and crossing beaches in amphibious warfare attacks, it was intended only to last long enough to meet the demands of combat. Surviving DUKWs have since found popularity as tourist craft providing travel across aquatic areas. Etymology The name DUKW comes from General Motors Corporation model nomenclature: * D, 1942 production series * U, Utility * K, all wheel drive * W, tandem rear axles, both driven Decades later, the designation was explained erroneously by writers such as Donald Clarke, who wrote in 1978 that it was an initialism for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
GMC CCKW 2½-ton 6×6 Truck
The GMC (automobile), GMC CCKW, also known as "Jimmy", or the G-508 by its List of U.S. military vehicles by supply catalog designation, Ordnance Supply Catalog number, was a highly successful series of Off-road vehicle, off-road capable, 2 1/2-ton 6×6 truck, 2-ton, 6×6 trucks, built in large numbers to a standardized design (from 1941 to 1945) for the U.S. Army, that saw heavy service, predominantly as cargo trucks, in both World War II and the Korean War. The original "Deuce and a Half", it formed the backbone of the Red Ball Express that kept World War II allies, Allied armies supplied as they pushed eastward after the Normandy invasion. The CCKW came in many variants, including open or closed cab, long wheelbase (LWB) CCKW-353 and short (SWB) CCKW-352, and over a score of specialized models, but the bulk were standard, general purpose, cargo models. A large minority were built with a front mounted winch, and one in four of the cabs had a machine-gun mounting ring above the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sparkman & Stephens
Sparkman & Stephens is a naval architecture and yacht brokerage firm with offices in Newport, Rhode Island and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA. The firm performs design and engineering of new and existing vessels for pleasure, commercial, and military use. Sparkman & Stephens also acts as a ship and yacht brokerage. The firm offers similar design and engineering services for the performance optimization of existing yachts. Their designs have won most of the major international yacht races such as the America's Cup, for several decades, including a string of victories in the Fastnet and Sydney to Hobart as well as winning twice the Whitbread Round the World Race by '' Sayula II'' in 1974 and '' Flyer'' in 1978. S&S has a number of custom yacht design projects as well as being designers for boat builders such as Nautor's Swan, Grand Banks Yachts, and Morris Yachts. With more than 100 units built, the S&S design #1710 also known as Swan 36 became the most utilized design in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amphibious Vehicle
An amphibious vehicle (or simply amphibian) is a vehicle that works both on land and on or under water. Amphibious vehicles include amphibious Amphibious cycle, bicycles, Amphibious ATV, ATVs, Amphibious automobile, cars, Duckboats, buses, trucks, Railroad car, railway vehicles, combat vehicles, and hovercraft. Classic landing craft are not amphibious vehicles as they do not work on land, although they are part of amphibious warfare. Ground effect vehicles, such as ''ekranoplans'', will likely crash on any but the flattest of landmasses so are also not considered to be amphibious vehicles. General technical notes Two main categories of amphibious vehicles are those that travel on an air cushion (Hovercraft) and those that do not. Among the latter, many extend the off-road capabilities of land vehicles to all kinds of terrain, including ice, snow, mud, marsh, swamp etc. This explains why many designs use Tracked vehicle, tracks in addition to or instead of wheels, and in som ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yellow Coach Manufacturing Company
The Yellow Coach Manufacturing Company (informally Yellow Coach) was an early manufacturer of passenger buses in the United States. Between 1923 and 1943, Yellow Coach built transit buses, electric-powered trolley buses, and parlor coaches. Founded in Chicago in 1923 by John D. Hertz as a subsidiary of his Yellow Cab Company, the company was renamed "Yellow Truck and Coach Manufacturing Company" in 1925 when General Motors (GM) purchased a majority stake. After GM completely acquired the company in 1943, it was merged with GM's truck division to form the GM Truck & Coach Division. The car rental subsidiary (known both as ''Hertz Drivurself Corp'' and ''Yellow Drive-It-Yourself'') was purchased back by John Hertz in 1953 through The Omnibus Corporation and floated the following year as The Hertz Corporation. History John D. Hertz and associates began acquiring smaller Chicago-area companies involved in bus-building in 1922, and soon assembled a manufacturing site covering ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dennis Puleston
Dennis Puleston (30 December 1905 – 8 June 2001) was a British-American environmentalist, adventurer, and designer. He is known for playing a key part in securing a nationwide ban in the United States on the use of the pesticide DDT, a decision regarded as the first important success of the emerging environmental movement. As a result of this ban, he helped save his favourite bird, the osprey, from extinction in North America. He was co-founder and the first chairman of the Environmental Defense Fund. Puleston also co-designed the DUKW, an amphibious vehicle used in World War II. Early life and adventures Puleston was born near London, and grew up in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, England.Lewis, Paul (June 16, 2001).Dennis Puleston, 95, Environmental Leader. ''New York Times''. Retrieved 2016-12-18. His uncle introduced him to his lifelong interest in ornithology and his artist mother encouraged him to draw. He went on to become a talented wildlife artist. From an early age he was in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
GMC (automobile)
GMC (formerly the General Motors Truck Company (1911–1943), or the GMC Truck & Coach Division (1943–1998)) is a division of American automotive manufacturer General Motors (GM) for trucks and utility vehicles. GMC currently makes Sport utility vehicle, SUVs, pickup trucks, vans, and light-duty trucks. In the past, GMC also produced Fire apparatus, fire trucks, ambulances, heavy-duty trucks, military vehicles, motorhomes, transit buses, and Truck classification#Medium duty, medium duty trucks. While many of their vehicles are mechanically similar, GMC is positioned as a premium offering to the mainstream Chevrolet brand, and includes the luxury trim GMC Denali, Denali. In North America, GMC vehicles are almost always sold alongside Buick (another premium brand) vehicles at multi-brand Car dealerships in the United States, dealerships. History Roots to the GMC brand can be traced to 1900, when the "Grabowsky Motor Company" was establishedSteven Rossi, Antique Automobile, Vol. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Defense Research Committee
The National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) was an organization created "to coordinate, supervise, and conduct scientific research on the problems underlying the development, production, and use of mechanisms and devices of warfare" in the United States from June 27, 1940, until June 28, 1941. Most of its work was done with the strictest secrecy, and it began research of what would become some of the most important technology during World War II, including radar and the atomic bomb. Its working arm was superseded by the Office of Scientific Research and Development in 1941, but it remained as an influential advisory and consulting agency until it was terminated in 1947. Organization The NDRC was created by an order of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on June 27, 1940. It was part of the Council of National Defense, which had been created during 1916 to coordinate industry and resources for national security purposes. Vannevar Bush, the director of the Carnegie Institut ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Office Of Scientific Research And Development
The Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) was an agency of the United States federal government created to coordinate scientific research for military purposes during World War II. Arrangements were made for its creation during May 1941, and it was created formally by Executive Order 8807 on June 28, 1941. It superseded the work of the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), was given almost unlimited access to funding and resources, and was directed by Vannevar Bush, who reported only to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The research was widely varied, and included projects devoted to new and more accurate bombs, reliable detonators, work on the proximity fuze, guided missiles, radar and early-warning systems, lighter and more accurate hand weapons, more effective medical treatments (including work to make penicillin at scale, which was necessary for its use as a drug), more versatile vehicles, and, the most secret of all, the S-1 Section, which later becam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Coast Guard
The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is the maritime security, search and rescue, and Admiralty law, law enforcement military branch, service branch of the armed forces of the United States. It is one of the country's eight Uniformed services of the United States, uniformed services. The service is a maritime, military, multi-mission service unique among the United States military branches for having a maritime law enforcement mission with jurisdiction in both domestic and international waters and a Federal government of the United States, federal regulatory agency mission as part of its duties. It is the largest coast guard in the world, rivaling the capabilities and size of most Navy, navies. The U.S. Coast Guard protects the United States' borders and economic and security interests abroad; and defends its sovereignty by safeguarding sea lines of communication and commerce across U.S. territorial waters and its Exclusive economic zone, Exclusive Economic Zone. Due to ever-ex ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Provincetown, Massachusetts
Provincetown () is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, in the United States. A small coastal resort town with a year-round population of 3,664 as of the 2020 United States census, Provincetown has a summer population as high as 60,000. Often called "P-town" or "Ptown", the locale is known as a vacation destination for its beaches, Provincetown Harbor, harbor, artists and tourist industry. History At the time of European encounter, the area was long settled by the historic Nauset tribe, who had a settlement known as "Meeshawn". They spoke Massachusett language, Massachusett, a Southern New England Algonquian languages, Algonquian language dialect that they shared in common with their closely related neighbors, the Wampanoag people, Wampanoag. On May 15, 1602, having made landfall from the west and believing it to be an island, Bartholomew Gosnold initially named this area "Shoal Hope". Later that day, after catching ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Channel
The English Channel, also known as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates Southern England from northern France. It links to the southern part of the North Sea by the Strait of Dover at its northeastern end. It is the busiest Sea lane, shipping area in the world. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to at its narrowest in the Strait of Dover."English Channel". ''The Columbia Encyclopedia'', 2004. It is the smallest of the shallow seas around the continental shelf of Europe, covering an area of some . The Channel aided the United Kingdom in becoming a naval superpower, serving as a natural defence against invasions, such as in the Napoleonic Wars and in the World War II, Second World War. The northern, English coast of the Channel is more populous than the southern, French coast. The major languages spoken in this region are English language, English and French language, French. Names Roman historiography, Roman sources as (or , ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
M2 Browning Machine Gun
The M2 machine gun or Browning .50-caliber machine gun (informally, "Ma Deuce") is a heavy machine gun that was designed near the end of World War I by John Browning. While similar to Browning's M1919 Browning machine gun, which was chambered for the .30-06 cartridge, the M2 uses Browning's larger and more powerful .50 BMG (12.7 mm) cartridge. The design has had many designations; the official U.S. military designation for the infantry type is Browning Machine Gun, Cal. .50, M2, HB, Flexible. It has been used against infantry, light armored vehicles, watercraft, light fortifications, and low-flying aircraft. The gun has been used extensively as a vehicle weapon and for aircraft armament by the United States since the 1930s. It was heavily used during World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Falklands War, the Soviet–Afghan War, the Gulf War, the Iraq War, and the War in Afghanistan. It is the primary heavy machine gun of NATO countries and has been used by man ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
