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British Defence Staff in the US held a screening of Freedom on Fire – a powerful docu-movie about Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and the atrocities that have happened since.
Defence Attache Rear Admiral Tim Woods joined with its director, Oscar-nominated Evgeny Afineevsky and Ukrainian Ambassador Oksana Markarova at the US Capitol for the event.
During the 1930’s the Bawdsey peninsula became home to the first Chain Home Radar Station and training school for Britain’s new top secret weapon 'Radar Direction Finding' Equipment, this ground breaking installation required additional security and led to the development of a series of Defence improvements of which the Bawdsey Emergency Coastal Defence Battery was an integral part of the Emergency Coastal Defence Programme (ECDP) despite initial concerns that any ECDP Battery positioned at Bawdsey would be liable to flooding, the fact that the peninsulas coastline was so vulnerable led to a Battery being built and in use by February 1942 even though the threat of Invasion had now passed.
Two Naval BL 6in MkVII Guns on PVII Mountings, No.1 Gun manufactured in 1918 and No.2 Gun in 1918, which had a 180 degree firing arc able to be trained on any point at sea almost due North to due South. Both Guns were salvaged from World War One Battleships broken up on decommissioning after the war. The Emergency Coastal Defence Battery consised of two Gun Emplacements with reinforced concrete roofs (removed sometime after 1971) with attached Magazines and Machine Housing. On either side of the Coastal Battery were two Coastal Artillery Searchlights (CASL) with two Projectors MkV (AA) 90cn Reflectors and a 22kw Lister 38hp diesel engine, placed in concrete Emplacements, which have since been lost to coastal erosion.
The Coastal Battery followed the basic layout, an enclosed structure with concrete roofs which included Crew Shelters and Ammunition Stores all of which were connected by covered passages, the entire Emplacement was designed with Small Arms Loopholes to provide a 360° arc of Defensive Fire. The Coastal Battery Observation Post was a concrete Slit Trench between the two Guns probably with a buried Landline to the Fire Control Tower which was a four story building, the basement was prone to flooding, and appears not to have been used, the ground floor was used as the Armoury, this was Defended by all round Loopholes. The first floor was the Switch / Telephone Room, the top floor housed the Rangefinder Equipment (a Naval Barr and Stroud 9ft, Type FQ 11 No 1544, Magnification x 28) and also had a 360° field of view, which is covered by an Armoured Steel Roof that was originally supported by corner posts.
Gunners from 322 Battery Royal Artillery were transferred from other Defences at Foulness and once operational the Coastal Battery would have had at least 80 Gunners on duty at any one time. In December 1943 with the threat of Invasion now highly unlikely and with trained manpower being desperately needed elsewhere, the Gunners of 322 were transferred to other duties leaving only one Officer and seven Regular Gunners to run the Coastal Battery assisted by members of the Home Guard.
Geographically the Coastal Battery is very isolated which Military planners recognised, the Coastal Battery Gunners knew this and knew that in the case of an attack the expectation was that they should Defend the Coastal Battery to the last man.
The following Defence Mechanisms are known to have been in place in support of the Coastal Battery :-
> 2 x Unrotated Projectile (UP) Anti-Aircraft Rocket Projectors, an experimental Naval Weapon which had proved totally unreliable and ineffective in operation prompting its withdrawal from Royal Navy service. One was located to the South of the Coastal Battery with the second being located to the West
> Northwest of the Coastal Battery there were two Weapon Pits both designed to hold ten Men (one armed with a Bren Light Machine Gun) and a Spigot Mortar
> West of the Coastal Battery there was a single Weapon Pit also holding a ten Men Crewing another Spigot Mortar and a single MG-30 Solothurn Machine Gun (the predecessor to the German MG34)
> South of the Coastal Battery in the Martello Tower were a further 11 men one of whom was armed with a Bren LMG.
> A further 22 Personnel armed with Rifles and two more Bren Light Machine Guns formed a Mobile Reserve patrolling out of reserve Shelters
> The nearest significant number of men in support were based at Bawdsey Manor whilst all Defensive Posts were manned by volunteers from the 5th Battalion, the Suffolk Home Guard.
Within an area behind the Coastal Battery which was populated with trees there were a series of Nissen huts used as Barracks, a Mess, Storage Buildings and other Camp Buildings.
Geographically the Coastal Battery is very isolated which Military planners recognised.
After reports of heavy siege equipment and chariots being positioned for an attack on Eastgate, the city council has commissioned new defences.
Weary from the long siege and the conflict between the now reunited brothers Dugal and Petera, the citizens, craftsmen, and soldiers have flocked to help keep the new enemy at bay.
Guatemala General Elections 2007
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Original visit photos from 2013 – www.flickr.com/photos/139375961@N08/shares/9QptB12vKi
– Coastal Defence/chain Home Low Station M136 –
The site of a Coastal Defence/Chain Home Low (CD/CHL) Radar Station at Pakefield. It was built by the British Army to monitor shipping and aircraft during World War II. CD/CHL sites opened from 1941 and comprised either a Nissen hut or brick/concrete operations block with an aerial gantry mounted on the roof and a separate standby set house for the reserve power.
Staff were billeted where possible, but some stations had a small layout of domestic hutting situated within one mile of the site. The station closed by December 1942 and by 1978 the site was used for quarrying. Aerial photography from 1978 shows that the site was a quarry and its associated buildings. It is unclear if any of these buildings were originally part of the radar stations.
Chain Home Low (CHL) was the name of a British early warning radar system operated by the RAF during World War II. The name refers to CHL's ability to detect aircraft flying at altitudes below the capabilities of the original Chain Home (CH) radars, where most CHL radars were co-located. CHL could reliably detect aircraft flying as low as 500 feet. The official name was AMES Type 2, referring to the Air Ministry Experimental Station at Bawdsey Manor where it was developed, but this name was almost never used in practice.
The system had originally been developed by the British Army's research group, also based at Bawdsey, as a system for detecting enemy shipping in the English Channel. It was built using the electronics being developed for the aircraft interception radar systems, which worked on the 1.5 m band. This high frequency (200 MHz), for the era, allowed it to use smaller antennas that could be swung back and forth to look for returns, in contrast to the enormous fixed antennas of the 6.7 m wavelength (45 MHz) Chain Home system.
When the war began, the Luftwaffe began mine-laying missions where the bomber aircraft would fly almost all of their mission at low altitude. Chain Home could only see targets above 1.5 degrees over the horizon, so these aircraft only became visible at short range. Robert Watson Watt seized several dozen of the Coastal Defense (CD) systems that were in final construction and installed them at CH stations and key locations along the seashore to fill this critical gap in the coverage.
CHL remained an important part of the Chain network for the rest of the war, and was retained in the post-war era until it was replaced during the ROTOR upgrades by the AMES Type 80. The electronics, notably the high-power transmitter, was also re-used in a number of other systems, including the AMES Type 7.
CHL traces its origins to early experiments with aircraft interception radar systems in 1936. These were developed as a short-range radar that would be used to close the gap between Chain Home's (CH) approximate 5 miles accuracy and the visual range of a night fighter pilot at about 1,000 yards. Developed by a team at Bawdsey Manor led by ''Taffy'' Bowen, the new radar had to operate at much shorter wavelengths in order to limit the antenna sizes to something that could be practically fit on an aeroplane. After considerable experimentation, the team settled on a set working at 4ft 11in wavelength, about 193 MHz in the VHF band.
In early experiments with the new set, the team found that detection of other aircraft was problematic due to their target's relatively small size, but especially due to reflections off the ground. The latter caused a very strong signal that appeared to be at a range equal to the aircraft's current altitude, and everything beyond that was invisible in the resulting clutter. This meant that a typical night bombing run by German aircraft at 15,000 feet altitude would only become visible at that range, far less than the desired minimum of 5 miles (26,000 ft).
These same experiments demonstrated an unexpected side-effect. As the aircraft flew around over Bawdsey, which is located on the coast of the English Channel, the team found strong constant returns that they later realised were the cranes at the Harwich docks, miles away. Other smaller returns were quickly identified as boats in the Channel. These were being detected at ranges far beyond the maximum range against aircraft, in spite of the antennas not being designed for this role.
The potential of this discovery was not lost, and Robert Watson-Watt asked the team to demonstrate the concept in a real-world setting. A series of military exercises in the Channel in September 1937 provided a perfect test. On 3rd September the team's test aircraft, Avro Anson K6260, detected several Royal Navy ships in the Channel, and the next day repeated this performance in spite of almost completely overcast skies. Albert Percival Rowe of the Tizard Committee later commented that ''This, had they known, was the writing on the wall for the German Submarine Service''.
Information sourced from –
www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?ui...
the drake (male) is only spectator. Drakes don't help raising the ducklings, they leave after the fun part. (pretty smart huh?) Maybe is watching to see if the crow is winning, that would be the best outcome for him cause then the hen will want to mate again to start a new nest
Tudor Defences
Henry VIII's reign saw increasing tensions with the continent and in 1522 a new gun battery was added south of the Square Tower - this structure would later become the Saluting Platform. The earth and timber ramparts around Portsmouth town were first repaired in the 1520s and then rebuilt entirely in stone between 1541 and 1544. The new defences had artillery towers covering the landward north and east sides whilst an additional square artillery tower covered the Camber. The Round Tower remained in use and was also upgraded with gun ports. Along with Southsea Castle, another Tudor construction dating from 1544, the new defences came close to being tested as the Battle of the Solent was fought against French forces in sight of the town in July 1545.
Henry VIII died in 1547 and his immediate successors - first Edward VI and then Mary I - made no major upgrades in Portsmouth. In 1560 Elizabeth I added Green Bulwark, an angular bastion, on the southern corner of the town's circuit wall and this would later be upgraded into King's Bastion. The Saluting Platform, initially a timber construction, was rebuilt in stone in 1568. These upgrades were all funded by the first state run lottery.
In 1588 Spain declared war on England commencing with the Spanish Armada. Despite its upgraded defences from earlier in the Tudor era, Portsmouth was identified as vulnerable to attack. A grand scheme for new town walls, complete with arrowhead bastions and similar in design to the fortifications at Berwick-upon-Tweed, was devised. The plan was implemented, built in earth for speed, between 1584 and 1586. Both the Saluting Platform and the Square Tower were incorporated into the defensive circuit with the latter converted into a powder store around 1600 (the Governor had moved out in 1580).
Photograph Copyright:
British Photographic
All rights reserved (2019)
After reports of heavy siege equipment and chariots being positioned for an attack on Eastgate, the city council has commissioned new defences.
Weary from the long siege and the conflict between the now reunited brothers Dugal and Petera, the citizens, craftsmen, and soldiers have flocked to help keep the new enemy at bay.
Here, soldiers are chugging away at the hard sandstone to create a ditch deep enough to stop or topple over any siege tower or similar equipment making it's way towards the tall walls of Eastgate.
Estonian Defence Force Soldiers serving with Estcoy-19 take part in live-fire tactical training while serving in Iraq as part of Operation Inherent Resolve
Photos: @kaitsevagi.edf
EDITORS NOTE: Graphic content / Civil defence members and Shiite fighters remove the body of a fallen comrade amidst clashes in the area of Tayouneh, in the southern suburb of the capital Beirut, on October 14, 2021. - Gunfire killed several people and wounded dozens at a Beirut rally organised by the Shiite Hezbollah and Amal movements to demand the dismissal of the Beirut blast lead investigator. The violence centred around Tayouneh, an area which lies at the crossroads of Shiite and Christian militia bastions that were battlegrounds in the civil conflict that ended three decades ago. (Photo by - / AFP)
In Defence
Lucky Gator Loft
Chicago, Illinois
November 19, 2010
For upcoming shows at the Lucky Gator Loft:
Glad to have participated at the Defence Leadership Symposium today. We discussed how to successfully implement Canada’s New Defence Policy #StrongSecureEngaged
6-inch breech-loading gun
Similar to the guns installed in 1905.
New Tavern Fort, Gravesend, Kent
New Tavern Fort is an unusually complete example of 18th century fortifications which underwent development in the 19th and 20th centuries. The fort displays a complete sequence of mounted guns representing each stage in its development, and contains a number of unusual features which have been preserved in situ. The site is known for its connection with General Charles Gordon who lived here from 1865-71 and was later killed at Khartoum. The foundations of his house still survive within the fort. The fort itself, along with Tilbury on the opposite bank of the Thames, illustrates well the strategic importance of the Thames Estuary and the methods employed to defend it over a period of 170 years. The fort is particularly well preserved, having been maintained over a number of years by the New Tavern Fort Project. In the north west corner of the fort is Milton Chantry, a 14th century building representing the chapel of a medieval hospital.
...New Tavern Fort was built as a result of the 1778 survey of the defensive requirements of the Thames. Fear of a French invasion led to the fort being built to provide cross fire with Tilbury on the other side of the river. Originally New Tavern Fort consisted of a battery on two faces forming an angle towards the river with a strip of rampart joining it to a smaller, straight battery, defended to the front by a flat-bottomed ditch containing a wooden palisade c.3m high. The fort was constructed of unrevetted earth and was designed for an armament of heavy, smooth-bore cannon firing through embrasures. The rear of the fort was originally open and unprotected but before the end of the century a brick wall, with loopholes for musketry, was added. Although the initial construction was between 1780 and c.1783, the armament of the fort was updated and increased at intervals throughout the 19th century. In the 1840s the fort was modernised to take a heavier armament, which involved the reconstruction of the older gun emplacements, but this did not alter the basic plan of the fort. A magazine designed to hold 250 barrels of powder was built close to the chantry building, and another smaller magazine, for 50 barrels, was established nearby. Other new buildings constructed at this time included a wash-house, coal store and a guardroom. Once again, in the 1860s and 1870s, the development of large guns forced improvements in the design and armament of coastal defences and so between 1868 and 1872 new brick emplacements for 10 heavy guns were constructed, with magazines below. Again, however, the plan of the fort was not altered. By the end of the 19th century muzzle-loaded guns had become obsolete, and the perceived danger from breech-loading weapons mounted on enemy warships meant that emphasis was placed on strengthening defences downstream from Gravesend, and thus New Tavern Fort lost some of its strategic importance. In 1905 concrete emplacements for two six-inch breech-loading guns were built, joined together by a walkway with a separate magazine underneath. Although the fort was garrisoned during World War I, its strategic importance continued to decline. In 1930 it was purchased by the Gravesend Corporation who laid it out as a pleasure garden for the public. During the Second World War the magazine built for the breech-loading guns was used for a time as an air raid shelter.
[Historic England]