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Albert Kesselring (30 November 1885 – 16 July 1960) was a German Luftwaffe Generalfeldmarschall during World War II.
In a military career that spanned both World Wars, Kesselring became one of Nazi Germany's most skilful commanders, being one of 27 soldiers awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds.
Nicknamed "Smiling Albert" by the Allies and "Uncle Albert" by his troops, he was one of the most popular generals of World War II with the rank and file.
Field Marshal Harold Rupert Leofric George Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis (10 December 1891 – 16 June 1969) was a British military commander and field marshal of Anglo-Irish descent who served with distinction in both world wars and, afterwards, as Governor General of Canada, the 17th since Canadian Confederation.
He rose to prominence through his service in the First World War, receiving numerous honours and decorations, and continued his military career through various British campaigns across Europe and Asia.
In the Second World War, Alexander acted as a high ranking commander in North Africa and Italy.
He commanded 15th Army Group in Sicily and again in Italy before being made Supreme Allied Commander Mediterranean.
The Akizuki class destroyers (秋月型駆逐艦, Akizuki-gata kuchikukan) was one of the primary classes of new destroyers of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) after 1942.
The IJN called them Destroyer Type-B (乙型駆逐艦, Otsu-gata Kuchikukan) from their plan name.
They were designed to fight larger ships, aircraft and submarines.
This is considered to have been the most useful class of destroyers Japan fielded during the war and was well regarded in the IJN.
They mounted a superb 3.9" (100mm) dual-purpose gun in four twin mounts.
They also were among the first Japanese vessels equipped with radar.
The ships were lighter in their torpedo armament, compared to contemporary destroyers (a single mount of four tubes, plus reloads), but the ships compensated with stronger anti-aircraft armament.
The second HMS King George V (pennant number 41) was the lead ship of the five British King George V-class battleships of the Royal Navy (RN).
Laid down in 1937 and commissioned in 1940, King George V operated during World War II as part of the British Home Fleet and the British Pacific Fleet, along with transporting Winston Churchill to the Tehran Conference.
Following the end of the war, King George V spent three years as flagship of the British Home Fleet, before she was placed into reserve in 1949.
The battleship was scrapped in Dalmuir 8 years later.
Following the tradition of naming the first battleship constructed in the reign of a new monarch after the current monarch, she was planned to be named King George VI (after George VI).
However the King instructed the Admiralty to name the ship in honour of his father, George V.
King George V was built by Vickers-Armstrong at Walker's Naval Yard, Newcastle upon Tyne and laid down on 1 January 1937, launched on 21 February 1939, and commissioned on 11 December 1940.
The German battleship Bismarck was one of the most famous warships of the Second World War.
The lead ship of her class, named after the 19th century German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, Bismarck displaced more than 50,000 tonnes fully loaded and was the largest warship then commissioned.
Bismarck took part in only one operation during her brief career.
She and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen left Gotenhafen (Gdynia) on the morning of 19 May 1941 for Operation Rheinübung, during which she was to have attempted to intercept and destroy convoys in transit between North America and Great Britain.
When Bismarck and Prinz Eugen attempted to break out into the Atlantic, the two ships were discovered by the Royal Navy and brought to battle in the Denmark Strait.
During the short engagement, the British battlecruiser HMS Hood, flagship of the Home Fleet and pride of the Royal Navy, was sunk after several minutes of firing.
In response, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill issued the order to "Sink the Bismarck," spurring a relentless pursuit by the Royal Navy.
Two days later, with Bismarck almost in reach of safer waters, Fleet Air Arm Swordfish biplanes launched from the carrier HMS Ark Royal torpedoed the ship and jammed her rudder, allowing heavy British units to catch up with her.
In the ensuing battle on the morning of 27 May 1941, Bismarck was heavily attacked for almost two hours before sinking.
HMS Repulse was a Renown-class battlecruiser, the second to last battlecruiser built by John Brown and Company, Clydebank, Scotland, for the Royal Navy.
She was originally intended to be a unit of the Revenge class battleships, but was ordered to a modified design.
She was launched in 1916, too late to take part in the Battle of Jutland, but also too early to incorporate the lessons of that battle.
Still in time to take part in the First World War, in September 1916 she joined the Grand Fleet as flagship of the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron.
The Sen Toku I-400-class (伊四〇〇型潜水艦) Imperial Japanese Navy submarines were the largest submarines of World War II and remained the largest ever built until the construction of nuclear ballistic missile submarines in the 1960s.
They were designed to surface, launch the planes then dive again quickly before they were discovered.
They also carried torpedoes for close-range combat.
The I-400-class was designed with the range to travel anywhere in the world and return.
A fleet of 18 boats was planned in 1942, and work started on the first in January 1943 at the Kure, Hiroshima arsenal.
Within a year the plan was scaled back to five, of which only three (I-400 at Kure, and I-401 and I-402 at Sasebo) were completed.
The Siege of Malta was a military campaign in the Mediterranean Theatre of World War II.
From 1940—1942, the fight for the control of the strategically important island of Malta pitted the air forces and navies of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany against the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy.
In February 1941, the Deutsches Afrikakorps (German Africa Corps, or DAK) commanded by Generalfeldmarschall (Field Marshal) Erwin Rommel was sent to North Africa to prevent an Axis rout.
Malta became a strategic and logistically vital base which could influence the outcome of the North African Campaign.
From Malta, British air and sea forces could attack Axis ships transporting vital supplies and reinforcements from Europe. Rommel recognised its importance quickly.
In May 1941, he warned that "Without Malta the Axis will end by losing control of North Africa".
The Axis resolved to bomb or starve Malta into submission by attacking its ports, towns, cities and Allied shipping supplying the island.
Malta was one of the most intensively bombed areas during the war.
The Luftwaffe (German Air Force) and the Italian Regia Aeronautica (Italian Royal Air Force) flew a total of 3,000 bombing raids over a period of two years in an effort to destroy RAF defences and the islands' ports.
In the end, Allied convoys were able to supply and reinforce Malta, while the RAF defended its airspace, though at great cost in material and lives.
By November 1942, the Axis had lost the Second Battle of El Alamein and the United States of America landed United States Army forces in Vichy French Morroco and Algeria under Operation Torch.
The Axis diverted their forces to the Battle of Tunisia, and attacks on Malta were rapidly reduced.
The siege effectively ended in November 1942.
In December 1942, air and sea forces operating from Malta went over the offensive.
By May 1943, they had sunk 230 Axis ships in 164 days, the highest Allied sinking rate of the war.
The Allied victory played a major role in the eventual Allied success in North Africa.
The Maschinengewehr 34, or MG 34, was a German machine gun that was first produced and accepted into service in 1934, and first issued to units in 1935.
It was an air-cooled machine gun firing the 7.92x57mm Mauser cartridge.
However, it was also designed to perform both as a light machine gun and in heavier roles, as an early example of a general purpose machine gun.
In the light-machine gun role, it was intended to be equipped with a bipod and 50-round ammunition belt contained in a drum-shaped magazine attached to the receiver.
In the heavier role, it was mounted on a larger tripod and was belt-fed.
In practice, the infantry relied mainly on belt-cartridge ammunition for the bipod version, functioning as a classic medium support infantry weapon.
The chandelle (which is the French word for candle) is a precision aircraft control maneuver, and not strictly speaking an aerobatic, dogfighting, or aerial combat maneuver.
It is rather a maneuver designed to show the pilot's proficiency in controlling the aircraft while performing a minimum radius climbing turn at a constant rate of turn (expressed usually in degrees per second) through a 180 degree change of heading, arriving at the new reciprocal heading at an airspeed in the "slow-flight" regime, very near the aerodynamic stall.
The aircraft can be flown in "slow-flight" after establishing the new heading, or normal cruise flight may be resumed, depending upon the purposes of the exercise or examination.
A barrel roll is an aerial maneuver in which an airplane makes a complete rotation on its longitudinal axis while following a helical path, approximately maintaining its original direction.
It is sometimes described as "a combination of a loop and a roll".
The G-force is kept positive (but not constant) on the object throughout the maneuver, commonly not more than 2-3 G, and no less than 0.5 G.