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HMS Hecla (1940)
HMS ''Hecla'' (F20) was a destroyer tender of the Royal Navy in World War II. In addition to ample space for stores to resupply shorter-ranged destroyers at sea, ''Hecla'' boasted of workshop space and three cranes, one rated at 10-tons and the other two at 4-tons apiece. Service history Following commissioning and work-up, ''Hecla'' sailed for the North Atlantic to support anti-submarine operations in the ongoing Battle of the Atlantic. Based first at Hvalfjord, Iceland, it was there that she tended to the captured German submarine before the vessel was towed to the United Kingdom, where she was renamed HMS ''Graph'' and entered service with the Royal Navy. Reassigned, ''Hecla'' left Iceland bound for the Far East, but her journey was interrupted by an encounter with a German mine. On 15 May 1942 she struck, amidships, one of 80 mines laid a month prior by the auxiliary minelayer , killing 24 and wounding another 112 men. The worst of the damage was to her workshops and ...
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Destroyer Tender
A destroyer tender or destroyer depot ship is a type of depot ship: an auxiliary ship designed to provide maintenance support to a flotilla of destroyers or other small warships. The use of this class has faded from its peak in the first half of the 20th century as the roles and weaponry of small combatants have evolved (in conjunction with technological advances in propulsion reliability and efficiency). Background As the industrial revolution progressed, steam-powered steel ships replaced sail-powered wooden ships; but naval artillery remained the preferred weapon. The first large warship to be sunk by a torpedo was the Chilean ironclad in 1891. As major naval powers realized the vulnerability of their expensive battleships to inexpensive torpedo boats, they started building defensive flotillas of torpedo boat destroyers or destroyers for short.Potter & Nimitz, p.335 The earliest torpedo boat destroyers were small, to maximize maneuverability, and powered by large steam eng ...
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Drydock
A dry dock (sometimes drydock or dry-dock) is a narrow basin or vessel that can be flooded to allow a load to be floated in, then drained to allow that load to come to rest on a dry platform. Dry docks are used for the construction, maintenance, and repair of ships, boats, and other watercraft. History Greco-Roman world The Greek author Athenaeus of Naucratis (V 204c-d) reports something that may have been a dry dock in Ptolemaic Egypt in the reign of Ptolemy IV Philopator (221-204 BC) on the occasion of the launch of the enormous '' Tessarakonteres'' rowing ship. It has been calculated that a dock for a vessel of such a size might have had a volume of 750,000 gallons of water. In Roman times, a shipyard at Narni, which is still studied, may have served as a dry dock. Medieval China The use of dry docks in China goes at least as far back the 10th century A.D. In 1088, Song Dynasty scientist and statesman Shen Kuo (1031–1095) wrote in his '' Dream Pool Essays'': Re ...
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Ships Sunk By German Submarines In World War II
A ship is a large watercraft that travels the world's oceans and other sufficiently deep waterways, carrying cargo or passengers, or in support of specialized missions, such as defense, research, and fishing. Ships are generally distinguished from boats, based on size, shape, load capacity, and purpose. Ships have supported exploration, trade, warfare, migration, colonization, and science. After the 15th century, new crops that had come from and to the Americas via the European seafarers significantly contributed to world population growth. Ship transport is responsible for the largest portion of world commerce. The word ''ship'' has meant, depending on the era and the context, either just a large vessel or specifically a ship-rigged sailing ship with three or more masts, each of which is square-rigged. As of 2016, there were more than 49,000 merchant ships, totaling almost 1.8 billion dead weight tons. Of these 28% were oil tankers, 43% were bulk carriers, and 13% were co ...
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1940 Ships
Year 194 ( CXCIV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Septimius and Septimius (or, less frequently, year 947 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 194 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years. Events By place Roman Empire * Emperor Septimius Severus and Decimus Clodius Septimius Albinus Caesar become Roman Consuls. * Battle of Issus: Septimius Severus marches with his army (12 legions) to Cilicia, and defeats Pescennius Niger, Roman governor of Syria. Pescennius retreats to Antioch, and is executed by Severus' troops. * Septimius Severus besieges Byzantium (194–196); the city walls suffer extensive damage. Asia * Battle of Yan Province: Warlords Cao Cao and Lü Bu fight for control over Yan Province; the battle lasts for over 100 d ...
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Ships Of The Royal Navy
''Ships of the Royal Navy'' is a naval history reference work by J. J. Colledge (1908–1997); it provides brief entries on all recorded ships in commission in the Royal Navy from the 15th century, giving location of constructions, date of launch, tonnage, specification and fate. It was published in two volumes by Greenhill Books. Volume 1, first published in 1969, covers major ships; Volume 2, first published in 1970, covers Navy-built naval trawler, trawlers, Naval drifter, drifters, Tugboat, tugs and requisitioned ships including Auxiliary cruiser, Armed Merchant Cruisers. The book is the standard single-volume reference work on ships of the Royal Navy, and Colledge's conventions and spellings of names are used by museums, libraries and archives. For more data on ships of the pre-1863 Royal Navy, see ''British Warships in the Age of Sail''. A revised third version of the Volume 1 work was published in 2003 which added the ships of the late 20th century. The revision was c ...
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Destroyer Tenders
In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, manoeuvrable, long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against powerful short range attackers. They were originally developed in 1885 by Fernando Villaamil for the Spanish NavySmith, Charles Edgar: ''A short history of naval and marine engineering.'' Babcock & Wilcox, ltd. at the University Press, 1937, page 263 as a defense against torpedo boats, and by the time of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, these "torpedo boat destroyers" (TBDs) were "large, swift, and powerfully armed torpedo boats designed to destroy other torpedo boats". Although the term "destroyer" had been used interchangeably with "TBD" and "torpedo boat destroyer" by navies since 1892, the term "torpedo boat destroyer" had been generally shortened to simply "destroyer" by nearly all navies by the First World War. Before World War II, destroyers were light vessels with little endurance for unattended o ...
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Casablanca
Casablanca, also known in Arabic as Dar al-Bayda ( ar, الدَّار الْبَيْضَاء, al-Dār al-Bayḍāʾ, ; ber, ⴹⴹⴰⵕⵍⴱⵉⴹⴰ, ḍḍaṛlbiḍa, : "White House") is the largest city in Morocco and the country's economic and business center. Located on the Atlantic coast of the Chaouia plain in the central-western part of Morocco, the city has a population of about 3.71 million in the urban area, and over 4.27 million in the Greater Casablanca, making it the most populous city in the Maghreb region, and the eighth-largest in the Arab world. Casablanca is Morocco's chief port, with the Port of Casablanca being one of the largest artificial ports in the world, and the second largest port in North Africa, after Tanger-Med ( east of Tangier). Casablanca also hosts the primary naval base for the Royal Moroccan Navy. Casablanca is considered a Global Financial Centre, ranking 54th globally in the Global Financial Centres Index rankings for the ye ...
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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 , larg ...
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Werner Henke
Werner Henke (13 May 1909 – 15 June 1944) was the commander of in the Battle of the Atlantic of World War II. ''U-515'' was sunk by the US task group 22.3, commanded by Daniel V. Gallery on 9 April 1944 and Henke was captured along with about 40 of his crew. He was shot and killed while attempting to escape from the POW interrogation center in Fort Hunt, Virginia in the United States. Early life and naval career Henke was raised in Rudak, a small village just outside Thorn. When Thorn became part of Poland in 1920, the Henke family moved to Celle in the Province of Hanover. Henke joined the ''Reichsmarine'' in April 1934 after several years in the merchant marine.Mulligan 1993 Henke attended the Naval Academy at Mürwik and served on the pocket battleship . In five years' training he spent only one week studying U-boat warfare. He spent nearly two years stationed at the Pillau (now Baltiysk) naval base starting in 1937. In May 1939 he was assigned to the battleship , where h ...
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North Africa
North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in the west, to Egypt's Suez Canal. Varying sources limit it to the countries of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia, a region that was known by the French during colonial times as "''Afrique du Nord''" and is known by Arabs as the Maghreb ("West", ''The western part of Arab World''). The United Nations definition includes Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, and the Western Sahara, the territory disputed between Morocco and the Sahrawi Republic. The African Union definition includes the Western Sahara and Mauritania but not Sudan. When used in the term Middle East and North Africa ( MENA), it often refers only to the countries of the Maghreb. North Africa includes the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla, and plazas de so ...
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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 ha ...
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Operation Torch
Operation Torch (8 November 1942 – 16 November 1942) was an Allied invasion of French North Africa during the Second World War. Torch was a compromise operation that met the British objective of securing victory in North Africa while allowing American armed forces the opportunity to engage in the fight against Nazi Germany on a limited scale. It was the first mass involvement of US troops in the European–North African Theatre, and saw the first major airborne assault carried out by the United States. While the French colonies were formally aligned with Germany via Vichy France, the loyalties of the population were mixed. Reports indicated that they might support the Allies. American General Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied forces in Mediterranean Theater of Operations, planned a three-pronged attack on Casablanca (Western), Oran (Center) and Algiers (Eastern), then a rapid move on Tunis to catch Axis forces (Afrika Korps) in North Africa from the ...
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