title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: In 1596 Queen Elizabeth, via the Earl of Essex, and his secretary Anthony Bacon, sent her miniature portrait by Nicholas Hilliard to Prince Henry, and this was received by the Earl of Mar at Stirling. It was said that Prince Henry would be godfather to his younger brother Duke Robert, in May 1602, and afterwards stay at Dunfermline Palace with his mother, but James VI forbade this. In 1602 a visit to his mother at Falkland Palace was planned, but was postponed because of her sickness. The French ambassador in London Christophe de Harlay, Count of Beaumont, reported a rumour, spread by James's friends, that Anne of Denmark was cruel and ambitious, and hoped to rule Scotland as Regent or Governor for Henry after the death of her husband.


title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: James became King of England in 1603 at the Union of the Crowns and his family moved south. Anne of Denmark came to Stirling to collect her son, and after an argument with the Prince's keepers, Marie Stewart, Countess of Mar and the Master of Mar, was allowed to take Henry to Edinburgh on 28 May. On the following Sunday she took him to St Giles Kirk in her famous silver coach, and they subsequently travelled to England.


title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: Henry's tutor Adam Newton continued to serve the Prince, and several Scottish servants from the Stirling household were retained, including the poet David Murray. The prince was lodged at Oatlands and Nonsuch Palace, and was relocated to Winchester during an outbreak of plague. At Winchester, in September 1603, Anne of Denmark produced a masque to welcome her son, which was controversial. In November 1603 he was staying at Wilton House, and King James joked that a letter presented to Henry by the Venetian diplomats was bigger than he was. Henry rode with the Earl of Nottingham and his governor Sir Thomas Chaloner to Salisbury to dine with the Venetian ambassador Nicolò Molin and other diplomats. This was the first time he had made an appearance and dined outside the royal household, and his father joked that Henry was the ambassador's prisoner.


title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: On 15 March 1604, Henry rode on horseback behind his father through the streets of London during the delayed Royal Entry. From 1604 onwards, Henry often stayed at St James's Palace. The gardens were improved for him by Alphonsus Fowle. The daily expenses of the Prince in England were managed by the Cofferer of the Household, Henry Cocke and after 1610 David Foulis. David Murray of Gorthy was keeper of the Prince's privy purse and his accounts reveal some details of Henry's interests.


title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: Two Scottish tailors, Alexander Wilson and Patrick Black, moved to London and made the prince's clothes. Wilson made him doublets and hose from cloth supplied by Robert Grigge, and a hunting coat of green chamlet lined with velvet. The prince was supplied with perfumed gloves made of stag's leather, perfumed gloves from Córdoba, and embroidered waistcoats "wrought very curiously in colour silks".


title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: Prince Henry was introduced to a variety of sports at Stirling Castle. In September 1600 he was bought two golf clubs, two staffs, and four rackets. The handles were covered with velvet and dressed with metal passementerie. In September 1601, an English visitor, Thomas Musgrave, saw Henry dance, leap, and wield a pike. On Sunday 8 May 1603 Henry exercised in the castle garden, watched by his mother, played billiards after dinner, and after supper "ran and played at the boards".


title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: In England, Henry was tutored in music by Alfonso Ferrabosco the younger, Nicholas Villiard, and Walter Quinn. Thomas Giles taught him to dance. Charles Guerolt taught him the "science of defence", fencing. At Oatlands in 1603 Prince Henry told Scaramelli, a Venetian diplomat, about his interests in dancing, tennis and hunting. In August 1604 Henry danced for the Spanish envoy, the Constable Velasco, and showed him military pike exercises in the palace garden.


title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: In 1606 the French ambassador Antoine Lefèvre de la Boderie noted that Prince Henry played golf, which he described as a Scottish game not unlike "pallemail" or pall-mall. One of Prince Henry's biographers, "W. H.", mentioned that Henry nearly hit Adam Newton with a golf ball, and Henry said that would have paid him back. Henry also played tennis, and in July 1606 played with his uncle Christian IV of Denmark at Greenwich Palace. He had a court for "pall-mall", laid out at St James's Fields, north of St James's Palace. It was a long alley surfaced with cockle shells crushed into clay or loam.


title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: In 1607 Henry sought permission to learn to swim, but the Earls of Suffolk, and Shrewsbury, wrote to Newton that swimming was a "dangerous thing" that their own sons might practise "like feathers as light as things of nought", but was not suitable for Princes as "things of great weight and consequence". A riding school, one of the first in England, was built for him at St James's Palace in 1607. Henry competed at running at the ring with foreign visitors and diplomats including Louis Frederick, Duke of Württemberg-Montbéliard, in April and May 1610.


title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: Henry talked of the merits of various breeds of horses and his own Barbary horses to the Venetian ambassador Antonio Foscarini in 1611. He revealed an interest in Venetian maritime power and had a plan of the fortification of Palmanova. As an indoor amusement, Henry played chess.


title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: The king greatly preferred the role of schoolmaster to that of father, and he wrote texts for the schooling of his children. James directed that Henry's household "should rather imitate a College than a Court", or, as Sir Thomas Chaloner wrote in 1607, "His Highness's household [...] was intended by the King for a "courtly college" or a "collegiate court"" He passionately engaged in such physical pursuits as hawking, hunting, jousting and fencing, and from a young age studied naval and military affairs and national issues, about which he often disagreed with his father. He also disapproved of the way his father conducted the royal court, disliked Robert Carr, a favourite of his father, and esteemed Sir Walter Raleigh, wishing him to be released from the Tower of London.


title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: The prince's popularity rose so high that it threatened his father. Relations between the two could be tense, and on occasion surfaced in public. At one point, they were hunting near Royston when James criticised his son for lacking enthusiasm for the chase, and initially moved to strike his son with his cane, but Henry rode off. Most of the hunting party then followed the son.


title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: "Upright to the point of priggishness, he fined all who swore in his presence", according to Charles Carlton, a biographer of Charles I, who describes Henry as an "obdurate Protestant". In addition to the alms box to which Henry forced swearers to contribute, he made sure his household attended church services. His religious views were influenced by the clerics in his household, who came largely from a tradition of politicised Calvinism. Henry listened humbly, attentively, and regularly to the sermons preached to his household, and once told his chaplain, Richard Milbourne, that he esteemed most the preachers whose attitude suggested, "Sir, you must hear me diligently: you must have a care to observe what I say."


title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: Henry is said to have disliked his younger brother, Charles, and to have teased him, although this derives from only one anecdote: when Charles was nine years of age, Henry snatched the hat off a bishop and put it on the younger child's head, then told his younger brother that when he became king he would make Charles Archbishop of Canterbury, and then Charles would have a long robe to hide his ugly rickety legs. Charles stamped on the cap and had to be dragged off in tears.


title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: With his father's accession to the throne of England in 1603, Henry at once became Duke of Cornwall. In 1610 he was further invested as Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester, thus for the first time uniting the six automatic and two traditional Scottish and English titles held by heirs-apparent to the two thrones. The ceremony of investiture was celebrated with a pageant "London's Love to Prince Henry", and a masque, "Tethys' Festival", during which his mother gave a sword encrusted with diamonds, intended to represent justice.


title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: As a young man, Henry showed great promise and was beginning to be active in leadership matters. Among his activities, he was responsible for the reassignment of Sir Thomas Dale to the Virginia Company of London's struggling colony in North America. The city of Henricus in colonial Virginia was named in his honour in 1611; his name also survives in Henrico County, Virginia and Cape Henry. He was the "Supreme Protector" of the Company of Discoverers of the Northwest Passage, and a patron of Robert Harcourt's expedition to Guiana.


title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: The Irish Gaelic lord of Inishowen, Sir Cahir O'Doherty, had applied to gain a position as a courtier in the household of Henry, to help him in his struggles against officials in Ireland. Unknown to Sir Cahir, on 19 April 1608, the day he launched O'Doherty's Rebellion by burning Derry, his application was approved. Henry took an interest in the Kingdom of Ireland and was known to be supportive of the idea of a reconciliation with the former rebel Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, who had fled into exile during the Flight of the Earls. Because of this Tyrone and his entourage mourned when the Prince met his early death.


title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: In 1611, King James gave Woodstock Palace in Oxfordshire to Prince Henry. Henry had a banqueting house built of leafy tree branches in the park, in which he held a dinner for his parents and his sister Princess Elizabeth. David Murray paid 110 shillings for transporting musical instruments from London to Woodstock for the event.


title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: Henry died from typhoid fever at the age of 18, during the celebrations that led up to his sister Elizabeth's wedding. (The diagnosis can be made with reasonable certainty from written records of the post-mortem examination, which was ordered to be carried out in order to dispel rumours of poisoning.) It was reported that his last words were to ask for his sister Princess Elizabeth.


title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: After Henry's death, the prince's brother Charles fell ill, but he was the chief mourner at the funeral, which King James (who detested funerals) refused to attend. The body lay in state at St. James's Palace for four weeks. On 7 December, over a thousand people walked in the mile-long cortège to Westminster Abbey to hear a two-hour sermon delivered by George Abbot, the Archbishop of Canterbury. As Henry's body was lowered into the ground, his chief servants broke their staves of office at the grave.


title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: Prince Henry's death was widely regarded as a tragedy for the nation. According to Charles Carlton, "Few heirs to the English throne have been as widely and deeply mourned as Prince Henry." Henry's titles of Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay passed to Charles, who until then had lived in Henry's shadow. Four years later Charles, by then 16 years old, was created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester.


title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: Henry's chaplain, Daniel Price, delivered a series of sermons about the young man's death. (Price borrowed from John Donne's unrelated "The first Anniversary", published in 1611, and "The second Anniversary", published in 1612, for some of his language and ideas.):


title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: Within a few months of the prince's death, at least 32 poets had versified on it. In addition to those listed below, the writers included Sir Walter Raleigh (a friend), John Donne, Edward Herbert, Thomas Heywood and Henry King.


title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: In addition to the above verse-setting by Coperario, both Thomas Tomkins and Thomas Weelkes composed settings of "When David heard", a Biblical passage in which King David laments the loss of his son Absalom in battle; it is thought that both settings were directly inspired by the death of the prince.


title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography refers to a mourning song in memory of Prince Henry by John Ward remaining unpublished during the composer's lifetime; however, a "newly composed" song on the same subject was included in his "First Set" of Madrigals (1613).


title: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales

text: Henry Frederick as Prince of Wales bore the arms of the kingdom, differenced by a "label of three points argent".


title: Smoke testing (software)

text: In computer programming and software testing, smoke testing (also confidence testing, sanity testing, build verification test (BVT) and build acceptance test) is preliminary testing to reveal simple failures severe enough to, for example, reject a prospective software release. Smoke tests are a subset of test cases that cover the most important functionality of a component or system, used to aid assessment of whether main functions of the software appear to work correctly. When used to determine if a computer program should be subjected to further, more fine-grained testing, a smoke test may be called an intake test. Alternatively, it is a set of tests run on each new build of a product to verify that the build is testable before the build is released into the hands of the test team. In the DevOps paradigm, use of a BVT step is one hallmark of the continuous integration maturity stage.


title: Smoke testing (software)

text: For example, a smoke test may address basic questions like "does the program run?", "does the user interface open?", or "does clicking the main button do anything?" The process of smoke testing aims to determine whether the application is so badly broken as to make further immediate testing unnecessary. As the book "Lessons Learned in Software Testing" puts it, "smoke tests broadly cover product features in a limited time [...] if key features don't work or if key bugs haven't yet been fixed, your team won't waste further time installing or testing".


title: Smoke testing (software)

text: Smoke tests frequently run quickly, giving benefits of faster feedback, rather than running more extensive test suites, which would naturally take longer.


title: Smoke testing (software)

text: A daily build and smoke test is among industry best practices. Smoke testing is also done by testers before accepting a build for further testing. Microsoft claims that after code reviews, ""smoke testing" is the most cost-effective method for identifying and fixing defects in software".


title: Smoke testing (software)

text: One can perform smoke tests either manually or using an automated tool. In the case of automated tools, the process that generates the build will often initiate the testing.


title: Smoke testing (software)

text: Smoke tests can be functional tests or unit tests. Functional tests exercise the complete program with various inputs. Unit tests exercise individual functions, subroutines, or object methods. Functional tests may comprise a scripted series of program inputs, possibly even with an automated mechanism for controlling mouse movements. Unit tests can be implemented either as separate functions within the code itself, or else as a driver layer that links to the code without altering the code being tested.


title: Smoke testing (software)

text: In "Lessons Learned in Software Testing", Cem Kaner, James Bach, and Brett Pettichord provided the origin of the term: "The phrase "smoke test" comes from electronic hardware testing. You plug in a new board and turn on the power. If you see smoke coming from the board, turn off the power. You don't have to do any more testing."


title: .44-40 Winchester

text: The .44-40 Winchester, also known as .44 Winchester, .44 WCF (Winchester Center Fire), and .44 Largo (in Spanish-speaking countries) was introduced in 1873 by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. It was the first metallic centerfire cartridge manufactured by Winchester, and was promoted as the standard chambering for the new Winchester Model 1873 rifle. As both a rifle and a handgun caliber, the cartridge soon became widely popular, so much so that the Winchester Model 1873 rifle became known as "The gun that won the West."


title: .44-40 Winchester

text: When Winchester released the new cartridge, many other firearm companies chambered their guns in the new round. Remington and Marlin released their own rifles and pistols which chambered the round, Colt offered an alternative chambering in its popular Single Action Army revolver in a model known as the Colt Frontier Six-Shooter, and Smith & Wesson began releasing their Smith & Wesson New Model 3 chambered in .44-40. Settlers, lawmen, and cowboys appreciated the convenience of being able to carry a single caliber of ammunition which they could fire in both pistol and rifle. In both law enforcement and hunting usage, the .44-40 became the most popular cartridge in the United States, and to this day has the reputation of killing more deer than any other save the .30-30 Winchester.


title: .44-40 Winchester

text: The cartridge was originally sold as .44 Winchester. When the Union Metallic Cartridge Co. (UMC) began selling their own version of the cartridge, it adopted the name .44-40 (shorthand for .44 caliber and the standard load at the time of of black powder), as it did not want to offer free advertising for one of its competitors. Over time, the name stuck, and eventually Winchester adopted the .44-40 designation for the round after World War II. Winchester uses the designation "44-40 Winchester" on packaging.


title: .44-40 Winchester

text: The initial standard load for the cartridge was of black powder propelling a round-nose, flat-point bullet at roughly . Winchester catalogues listed velocities of by 1875. In 1886, UMC also began offering a slightly heavier, , bullet at , also with 40 gr of black powder. Winchester soon began to carry the 217-gr loading, as well, but in 1905, UMC discontinued the heavier load.


title: .44-40 Winchester

text: In 1895, Winchester introduced a cartridge bulk loaded with of DuPont No. 2 smokeless powder and a bullet for , and in 1896, UMC followed suit with a 217-gr bullet at . Soon, both companies were offering the cartridge with lead "metal patched" (i.e. copper-jacketed with lead points), and full metal jacket versions.


title: .44-40 Winchester

text: Taking advantage of the stronger-action designs of the Winchester model 1892 and the Marlin 1894 lever-action rifles, in 1903, Winchester began offering a higher-performance version of the loading called the Winchester High Velocity (WHV), with a velocity of using a 200-gr copper-jacketed bullet from a barrel length, UMC and Peters Cartridge Company soon introduced equivalents. Over the years, a number of different bullet weights and styles have been offered, including 122, 140, 160, 165, 166, 180, and 217 gr in lead, soft- and hollow-point, full metal case, blanks, and shot shells. The most common current loading is a 200-gr bullet at 1190 ft/s.


title: .44-40 Winchester

text: By 1942, more modern cartridges had all but eclipsed the .44-40, but it regained some popularity in the 1950s and 1960s when Colt began once again to manufacture the Single Action Army and Frontier. More recently, the .44-40 has had a resurgence due to the popularity of metallic silhouette and cowboy action shooting, which inspired the introduction of a low-velocity gallery load, the heaviest factory bullet ever available for the cartridge.


title: Sheb Wooley

text: Shelby Fredrick "Sheb" Wooley (April 10, 1921 – September 16, 2003) was an American singer, songwriter, actor and comedian. He recorded a series of novelty songs including the 1958 hit rock and roll comedy single "The Purple People Eater" and under the name Ben Colder the country hit "Almost Persuaded No. 2". As an actor, he portrayed Cletus Summers, the principal of Hickory High School & assistant coach in the 1986 film "Hoosiers"; Ben Miller, brother of Frank Miller in the film "High Noon"; Travis Cobb in "The Outlaw Josey Wales", and also had a co-starring role as scout Pete Nolan in the television series "Rawhide." Wooley is also credited as the voice actor who provided the Wilhelm scream and all of the other stock sound effects for Thomas J. Valentino's Major Records during the 1940s.


title: Sheb Wooley

text: Sheb Wooley was born in 1921 in Erick, Oklahoma, the third son of William C. Wooley and Ora E. Wooley. He had two older brothers, Logan and Hubert, as well as a younger brother, William. Federal census records for 1930 and 1940 identify Sheb's father only as a "Farmer", although the family's livestock holdings apparently included horses, for Sheb learned to ride at an early age and became a working cowboy and later an accomplished rodeo rider.


title: Sheb Wooley

text: Wooley married for the first time in 1940, wedding 17-year-old Melva Miller, a cousin of Roger Miller who would later become a successful song writer and actor himself. Wooley became friends with Miller when he lived in Oklahoma. He taught the boy how to play guitar chords and bought him his first fiddle.


title: Sheb Wooley

text: When the United States entered World War II, Wooley tried to enlist in the military but was unsuccessful due to his numerous rodeo injuries. Instead, in the early 1940s he worked in the oil industry and as a welder. In 1946 he moved to Fort Worth, Texas, where he earned a living as a country-western musician recording songs and traveling for three years with a band throughout the South and Southwest. In Fort Worth he also married for the second time, to Edna Talbott Bunt, a young widow with an infant son named Gary. The three of them left Texas in 1950 and moved to Hollywood, where Wooley hoped to establish himself as an actor or singer in film or in the rapidly expanding medium of television.


title: Sheb Wooley

text: At the age of 15, with a talent for music, Wooley formed a band called the "Plainview Melody Boys", that periodically performed on radio at station KASA in Elk City, Oklahoma. He started his recording career in 1945. His music encompassed Western swing, country, hillbilly, rock and roll, pop and novelty songs. At the start of the 1950s, Wooley began fusing Western swing with rhythm and blues, but later in his career his music would shift to the more commercial Nashville sound.


title: Sheb Wooley

text: In 1958, Wooley earned considerable fame with his hit rock and roll comedy single, "The Purple People Eater", utilizing tape manipulation inspired by the David Seville single "Witch Doctor". In the United Kingdom, he enjoyed a minor hit with the comedy single "Luke the Spook" on the flip side of "My Only Treasure", a ballad in the country and western tradition. Wooley also had a string of country hits, with his "That's My Pa" reaching No. 1 of "Billboard"'s Hot C&W Sides chart in March 1962. That same year, Wooley intended to record the song "Don't Go Near The Indians", but he was delayed by an acting job. Meanwhile, Rex Allen recorded the song, and it was a hit. Wooley, however, would do the sequel to the song, "Don't Go Near the Eskimos", about a boy in Alaska named Ben Colder (had never "been colder"). This sequel was so successful that Wooley continued using the name Ben Colder, with one of his later recordings being "Shaky Breaky Car" (which parodied the song "Achy Breaky Heart"). In December 1963, his single "Hootenanny Hoot" became a top-10 hit in Australia; and in 1967 his song "The Love-in" (1967) was recognized as an acerbic commentary on the 1960s' counterculture.


title: Sheb Wooley

text: In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Wooley became a regular on the television series "Hee Haw" and wrote the theme song for that long-running series. On "Hee Haw" he often appeared as the character Ben Colder, playing him as a drunken country songwriter. Outside of "Hee Haw", Wooley released music and performed as Ben Colder, although he would still sing under his own name as well. Wooley continued to tour internationally and make personal concert appearances until his death in 2003. Wooley recorded his last written song just four days before he died.


title: Sheb Wooley

text: Wooley's work in syndicated TV series included appearances on "The Range Rider", portraying outlaw Jim Younger on "Stories of the Century" (1954), and five appearances on "The Adventures of Kit Carson" (1951-1955).


title: Sheb Wooley

text: He appeared in "The Lone Ranger" episodes “Stage to Estacado” (1953); “Wake of War" (1953); "Message to Fort Apache" (1954), and "Wanted: The Lone Ranger" (1955). He portrayed Bill Bronson on "The Cisco Kid", Harry Runyon in "The Unmasking" on "My Friend Flicka", and Shev Jones in "The Iron Trail" on "Cheyenne". He appeared twice on "The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp".


title: Sheb Wooley

text: Wooley's big break professionally came when he was cast as the drover Pete Nolan on "Rawhide" (1959–1966). Wooley also wrote and directed some of the episodes.


title: Sheb Wooley

text: Wooley appeared in dozens of Western films from the 1950s through the 1990s. He was in "Rocky Mountain" (1950), and he portrayed outlaw Ben Miller in "High Noon" (1952) and Baxter in "Terror in a Texas Town" (1958).


title: Sheb Wooley

text: He also acted in major films, including "Giant", "The Outlaw Josey Wales", "Silverado", and in "Hoosiers".


title: Sheb Wooley

text: Sheb Wooley is also credited as the voice actor for the Wilhelm scream, having appeared on a memo as a voice extra for "Distant Drums" in which he had an acting role. This was later confirmed by his widow Linda Dotson. The stock recording of the distinctive scream has been used by sound-effects teams in over 200 films.


title: Sheb Wooley

text: Wooley was married five times. His first wife was Melva Miller, whom he married in 1940. Six years later he married Edna Talbott Bunt in Fort Worth, Texas. His third wife was Beverly Irene Addington. He and Beverly remained together for 19 years and adopted one daughter, Chrystie Lynn. Then, in 1985, he married Deanna Grughlin and then his manager Linda Dotson, who already had a daughter, Shauna.


title: Sheb Wooley

text: Wooley was diagnosed with leukaemia in 1996, which forced him to retire from public performing in 1999. After seven years of battling the illness, he died at the age of 82 at the Skyline Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, on September 16, 2003. He was entombed in Hendersonville Memory Gardens in Hendersonville, Tennessee.


title: Sheb Wooley

text: Wooley was the recipient of numerous awards over the years for his accomplishments as a singer, actor, and writer for both comedic and dramatic productions. In 1968 he received the Country Music Association's Comedian of the Year Award. He also received the 1992 Songwriter of the Year, two Golden Boot Awards, and he won the Western Heritage Award for nine consecutive years in recognition of his film and television work in Westerns.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Tanks were an important weapons system in World War II. Even though tanks in the inter-war years were the subject of widespread research, production was limited to relatively small numbers in a few countries. However, during World War II, most armies employed tanks, and production levels reached thousands each month. Tank usage, doctrine and production varied widely among the combatant nations. By war's end, a consensus was emerging regarding tank doctrine and design.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The tank was invented by the British in 1916 and first used during World War I, with nearly simultaneous development in France. Tanks of the First World War reflected the novelty of the idea and the primitive state of the automotive industry. World War I tanks moved at a walking pace, were relatively unreliable, and the best usage of them was still developing up to the war's end. A breakthrough in tank design was the Christie suspension: a suspension system developed by American engineer J. Walter Christie which allowed considerably longer movement of the suspension than conventional leaf-spring systems then in common use, and allowed the tanks to have considerably greater cross-country speed.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The doctrine of armored warfare changed radically in the inter-war years as armies sought ways to avoid the deadlock imposed by modern firepower and looked for the means to restore offensive power on the battlefield. Initially, tanks had been used for close support of infantry, but as modern mechanized doctrine was developed by several armies, tanks became an essential part of the combined-arms team. In addition to infantry support, tanks fulfilled traditional cavalry roles, provided mobile artillery support, and were adapted to combat engineering roles.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Tank design gradually improved in the inter-war period also. Reflecting the growth of the automotive industry, tank engines, transmissions, and track systems were improved. By the beginning of the war in September 1939, tanks were available that could travel hundreds of miles on their tracks with a limited number of breakdowns.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The war accelerated the pace of change in design. In particular, the gun-vs-armor race of the war led to rapid improvements in firepower and armor (both in thickness and design).


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The United Kingdom, the US, the Soviet Union, and France produced significant numbers of tanks before and during World War II. The early tanks of Germany were inferior to many of their opponents' tanks in the areas of armor and firepower. However, in their tactical employment the German tanks dominated all rivals early in the war. Germany concentrated the tanks and the few infantry transport vehicles it had into Panzer division. German doctrine stressed the use of rapid movement, mission-type tactics and combined-arms where tanks operated with mobile infantry and air support; this doctrine was popularly called [a] "Blitzkrieg". For this to work the German tanks were all equipped with radios, which provided unmatched command and control for flexible employment.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: In contrast, for example, almost 80 percent of French tanks lacked radios, essentially because their battle doctrine was based on a more slow-paced, deliberate conformance to planned movements. This required fewer radios at all levels. French tanks generally outclassed German tanks in firepower and armor in the 1940 campaign, but their poor command and control doctrine negated these advantages. By 1943, two-way radio was nearly universal in all armies.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: A trend towards heavier tanks was unmistakable as the war proceeded. In 1939, most tanks had maximum armor of or less, with guns with no larger caliber than 37–47 mm. Medium tanks of 1939 weighed around . By 1945, typical medium tanks had maximum armor over 60 mm thick, with guns in the range and weights of . Light tanks, which dominated most armies early in the war, gradually disappeared from front-line service.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Turrets, which had always been considered, but were not previously a universal feature on tanks, became recognized as essential. It was appreciated that if the tank's gun was to be used to engage both 'soft' (unarmored) and armored targets, then it needed to be as large and powerful as possible, making one large gun with an all-round field of fire vital. Also, mounting the gun in a turret ensured that the tank could fire from hull down cover. Hull-mounted guns required that most of the vehicle be exposed to enemy fire. Multiple-turreted or multi-gun designs such as the Soviet T-35, American Medium Tank M3 (hull mounted and turret gun), French Char B1 (hull mounted howitzer) or British Cruiser Mk I (two ancillary machine gun turrets) slowly became less common during World War II. Experience showed that a tank commander could not effectively direct the fire of several weapons; also, the newer dual-purpose guns eliminated the need for multiple weapons. Most tanks still retained a hull machine gun, and usually one or more machine guns in the turret, to protect them from infantry at short range.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Tanks were adapted to a wide range of military tasks, including engineering. Specialized models, such as flame-thrower tanks, armored recovery vehicles for towing disabled tanks from the battlefield, and command tanks with extra radios were also used. Some of these tank variants live on as other classes of armored fighting vehicle, no longer called "tanks". All major combatant powers also developed tank destroyers (self-propelled anti-tank guns for mobile defense) and assault guns, as armored vehicles carrying large-caliber guns, but often no turrets. Turreted vehicles are expensive to manufacture compared to non-turreted vehicles.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: One trend seen in World War II was the usage of older, lighter tank chassis to mount larger weapons in fixed casemates, as self-propelled guns, tank destroyers or assault guns. For example, the Soviet T-34 could mount an 85 mm gun in the turret, but the same chassis could carry the much more effective 100 mm gun in a fixed casemate such as the SU-100, the successor of the SU-85. Likewise, the obsolete German Panzer II light tank, too vulnerable for a direct fire role, was modified to take a powerful 75 mm PaK 40 gun in an open-topped, fixed casemate as the Marder II self-propelled artillery piece.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The German tank destroyers "Panzerjäger" ("tank hunters") were basically made by taking an existing anti-tank gun and mounting it on a convenient chassis to give mobility, usually with just a three-sided gun shield for crew protection. For instance, 202 obsolete Panzer I light tanks were modified by removing the turret and emplacing a Czech 4,7cm KPÚV vz. 38 (47 mm) anti-tank gun giving the Panzerjäger I self-propelled anti-tank gun. German tank destroyers based on the Panzer III and later German tanks were unique in that they had more armor than their tank counterparts.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Fully enclosed casemates on the Germans' "Sturmgeschütz" assault guns, from the beginning of the war, set a pattern used later by the similarly fully enclosed "Jagdpanzer" casemate-style tank destroyers, with the Soviets' similar "Samokhodnaya ustanovka" (SU) assault guns being used for the same dual-purpose roles. However, the lack of a rotating turret had limited the gun's traverse to a few degrees. This meant that the entire tank normally had to be turned onto its target by the driver, a much slower process than simply rotating a powered turret. If the vehicle became immobilized due to engine failure or track damage, it could not rotate its gun to counter opposing tanks, making it highly vulnerable to counterfire. This vulnerability was later exploited by opposing tank forces. Even the largest and most powerful of German tank destroyers were found abandoned on the field after a battle, having been immobilized by one or more hits by high explosive (HE) or armor-piercing (AP) shells to the track or front drive sprocket.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The Soviet Union started and ended the war with more tanks than the rest of the world combined (18,000–22,000). At the start of World War II the most common tank in Soviet service was the T-26 (derived from the Vickers 6-ton), lightly armoured and armed with a 45 mm gun capable of penetrating most German tanks at normal combat ranges. Few had radios. The design was mechanically sound although incapable of further development. The BT tank series, based on the Christie suspension system, were usually armed with the same 45 mm gun and were the most mobile tanks in the world at the time. Close-support versions of both tanks existed, armed with 76.2 mm howitzers. However, the BT was at the end of its design life. The Red Army also fielded thousands of light reconnaissance tanks such as the amphibious T-37 and T-38 tanks. These had limited combat value; although highly mobile, they were armed only with 7.62 mm machine guns and had very thin armour. The Red Army also had about 400 T-28 medium, multi-turreted tanks, which were in most respects equal to the German Panzer IV. Again, though, this design dated from 1931 and was obsolete.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The Soviet Union ended the 1930s with a huge fleet of tanks almost completely derived from foreign designs, but before 1941 developed some of the most important trend-setting tanks of the war. The problem the Soviet tank force faced in 1941 was not primarily the technical quality of its vehicles, but the very poor state of maintenance, the appalling lack of readiness, and the poor command situation brought on by the purges of the officer class. By 1940, the Red Army had adopted an advanced combat doctrine that its command structure and tank force simply could not execute.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Several excellent designs began production in 1940–1941. Just prior to the war, the Red Army embarked on two closely related projects to reorganize its mechanized forces and re-equip them with modern designs that took lessons learned from the Spanish Civil War, the Battle of Khalkhin Gol and the Winter War into account. Some of these designs were copies of other countries' designs. The most significant was the T-34, which was originally designed as the successor to the BT series. Its heavier armour and 76.2 mm dual-purpose gun, made it one of the best medium tanks of the first half of World War II. The T-34 eventually took on the roles of many other Soviet tanks. The T-34's chassis made it usable after the war, as it could be continuously upgraded with heavier guns, new turrets and other modifications. The other significant design was the KV-1 tank. These were armed with the same 76.2 mm gun as the T-34, and had the same Kharkiv model V-2 diesel engine. The KV tanks were equipped with a torsion bar suspension and much heavier armour than the T-34. The KV was slow, intended as a breakthrough tank. The KV-2 close-support version was armed with a howitzer. The KV series was the main Soviet heavy tank until 1943, with the end of production and the destruction of most surviving vehicles. Early in 1944, the KV's successor, the IS-2 was introduced. It was armed with a gun, with thicker armour and better mobility. A new infantry-support tank was introduced in 1941: the T-50. It was intended to be the replacement for the T-26, and was equipped with a 45 mm gun, torsion-bar suspension and thicker armor than most other tanks in its class. However, production problems with its new engine led to the tank being cancelled after fewer than 70 had been made. The light reconnaissance role was filled by the amphibious T-40 and the cheaper, non-amphibious T-60.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: At the beginning of German invasion of the USSR, most of the Soviet Union's tank force was composed of the T-26 and BT tanks series. A few T-40s had also appeared, along with about 1,363 mechanically unreliable early-model T-34 tanks and 677 KV series tanks. The early-model T-34s' heavy losses were caused by lack of coordination, lack of supplies, bad training, mechanical issues and the Red Army's general lack of preparation for war. Another difficulty for the T-34 was that it had only a four-man crew, with the tank commander forced to double as the gunner. Although he was spared from loading duties, unlike commanders in French tanks, it still crippled the tank commander's ability to maintain awareness of the battlefield, which gave German armour a tactical advantage.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: In 1941, large numbers of T-60s began to appear, reinforced in 1942 with the similar T-70. Both of these light tanks had torsion-bar suspension, light armour, and small engines. Their simple construction kept them in production even though their combat value was limited. The T-60 had only a 20 mm gun while the T-70 had a 45 mm. In addition, both had one-man turrets, making them difficult to crew effectively. The T-70 formed the basis for the later SU-76 self-propelled gun.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: By October 1942, the general opinion was that Soviet tanks were among the best in the world, with "Life" magazine writing that "The best tanks in the world today are probably the Russian tanks...". The T-34 outclassed every German tank in service at the time of its introduction. At its height, production of all other tanks except the IS-2 was stopped to allow all available resources to be used exclusively for this tank, due to its widespread success in a variety of roles. The T-34 forced the Germans to adopt new, heavier designs such as the Panther and Tiger I, which in turn forced Soviet, American and British tank forces to upgrade their tanks further. German tendency to develop entirely new tanks toward the end of the war, rather than upgrading existing models, reduced the availability of tanks to German tank formations and helped the Red Army gain the initiative on the Eastern Front.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Later in the war, the light tank role was increasingly filled by Lend-Lease supplies from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, including the M3 light tanks and Valentine tank. Ironically, the T-34's speed, which exceeded that of many of the light tanks that were supposed to scout for it, led to even less Soviet light tank production.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: In order to deal with improved German tanks, the Soviets upgunned the T-34 in 1943, creating the T-34-85. This model had a much larger turret mounting an gun and a larger turret capable of holding 3-men, which finally allowed the tank commander to concentrate fully on maintaining tactical awareness of the battlefield. The Soviets also introduced the 122 mm-armed IS-2 heavy tank, which had heavier armor than the KV while maintaining the same weight. Most of its armor was concentrated in the front of the tank, where it was expected to take most of its hits.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The IS-3 variant, produced in mid-1945, had a much more streamlined look and a larger, bowl-shaped tapered turret. Remarkably, the IS-3 had thicker armor but actually weighed slightly less than the IS-2, remaining under 50 tons (as compared to the Tiger II's 68). The armor design of the IS-3 was an enormous influence on postwar tank design, as seen in the Soviet T-55 and T-62 series, the United States M48 Patton and the West German Leopard 1.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Soviet tank production outstripped all other nations with the exception of the United States. The Soviets accomplished this through standardization on a few designs, generally forgoing minor qualitative improvements and changing designs only when upgrades would result in a major improvement.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Soviet tanks had turret and gun stabilization, starting with the T-28B, which had a rudimentary form as early as 1938.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Britain had been the worldwide trend-setter in tank development from 1915, but had lost its leadership position as the Second World War approached. Hampered by restricted expenditure on the army in favour of the Royal Navy and the massive expansion of the Royal Air Force in the years leading up to the war and still organised for operations in Imperial defence as an expeditionary force, the British Army entered the war unprepared for the very sort of combat its influential theorists such as J.F.C. Fuller and B. H. Liddell Hart had advocated.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The British Army had developed two types of tanks – "Infantry Tanks" which were heavily armoured with good all terrain performance but were slow. This lack of speed was not considered a flaw as they were designed to support infantry assaults on enemy strong points or urban warfare where the ability to outpace a man on foot was deemed unnecessary. The other type were "Cruiser Tanks" which were intended for independent maneuvering, rapid breakouts and flanking attacks. Early Cruiser tanks gained performance at a cost in the armour they could carry. Reliability was an important issue especially in the harsh conditions of North Africa and the mountainous terrain of Southern Europe, where the A10 and A13 in particular were plagued by broken tracks and overheating engines.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: British tank crews were trained to fire on the move and the armament was mounted for optimum balance such that the gunner could aim with his body rather than use geared elevation. This reduced available space inside the turret. Both early Cruiser and Infantry tanks carried the Ordnance QF 2-pounder, a 40 mm anti-tank gun, a good match for the contemporary German 3.7 cm KwK 36, and effective against tanks of the time but increasingly outclassed as the war progressed. Production shortages caused by losses in France and the Battle of the Atlantic forced the British to delay widespread introduction of the Ordnance QF 6-pounder (57 mm) anti-tank gun until 1942.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The lack of an adequate high-explosive shell for the 2-pounder and the growing number of 5 cm KwK 38 anti-tank guns in the Afrika Korps gave the German army in Libya a huge advantage for much of late 1941 and early 1942. This began to be offset by late 1942 but the Wehrmacht continued to enjoy a 12–18 month lead in tank and anti-tank gun development and production until the end of 1944. Britain produced 5000 tanks in the year of 1944.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The A9 Cruiser Mk I was an effective tank in the French, Greek and early North African campaigns. The 2-pounder gun was better than comparable 37 mm weapons of Germany and the US, and lethal against tanks encountered during the North African campaign. However the minimal armor made the A9 vulnerable to most contemporary anti-tank weapons and the design was quickly superseded by the A10 Cruiser, Mark II.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: A number of A10s were part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) sent to France in the early stages of World War II. The A10's cross country performance was recorded as poor, due to narrow, easily thrown tracks, but material losses incurred in the aftermath of Operation Dynamo (the evacuation of the BEF from Dunkirk in late May 1940) meant they could not be withdrawn from front line service quickly and so saw combat in small numbers in North Africa, where reliability and suspension performance in the desert conditions was praised. Sixty worn out examples were also taken to Greece by the 3rd Royal Tank Regiment and although they performed well against the German tanks, over 90% were lost due to mechanical breakdowns as opposed to enemy action (mainly through broken tracks).


title: Tanks in World War II

text: As war broke out, the British had placed into production the A13, a new faster Cruiser tank utilizing the suspension and running gear concepts of the American designer J. Walter Christie. This new suspension provided a fast, highly maneuverable design that became the basis for the rapid evolution of the Cruiser tank such as the Mk IV (A13 Mk II) a British cruiser tank derived from the original A13.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The A13 Cruiser was developed into the A15 Crusader then the A27 Cromwell. The use of the powerful Rolls Royce Meteor engine, derived from the Rolls Royce Merlin, gave the Cromwell high speed and mobility. The final British cruiser design to see service was the A34 Comet; development of the Cromwell, it carried a high-velocity 77  mm gun derived from the Ordnance QF 17-pounder anti-tank gun; one of the most effective Allied anti-tank guns of the war, although the Comet itself saw very little combat.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Beginning about mid-1942, many British tank units were equipped with vehicles supplied under lend-lease from the United States, such as the Stuart light tank, the Lee (or the British specification 'Grant' variant thereof) and the Lee's/Grant's replacement the Sherman (all these tanks received their names from the British, named after American Civil War generals; the Americans instead used their original alphanumeric designations almost exclusively until after the war). In late 1943, the British found a way to mount the QF 17-pounder anti-tank gun in the Sherman to create the Firefly, a tank with a more capable gun than the 75mm or 76mm gun normally fitted. From mid-1944, as more were produced and British designs were introduced into service the Firefly became increasingly the most common Sherman in use by the British.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Immediately before and during the war, the British produced an enormous array of prototype tanks and modified tanks for a variety of specialist engineering tasks (such as "Hobart's Funnies", produced for the invasion of France in 1944).


title: Tanks in World War II

text: For example, the Churchill Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers (AVRE) fired a short range 230 mm (11.4 inch) direct-fire mortar which was used for destroying buildings and clearing obstacles. It could also be equipped with a wide variety of combat engineering equipment such as small bridges, rolled-matt roadways, fascines, and mine rollers.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Many of these ideas had already been tried, tested, or were in experimental development both by Britain and other nations. For example, the Scorpion flail tank (a modified Matilda II) had already been used during the North African campaign to clear paths through German minefields. Soviet T-34 tanks had been modified with mine-rollers, fascines, and flamethrowers. Close-support tanks, bridge layers, and fascine carriers had been developed elsewhere also. However, the Funnies were the largest and most elaborate collection of engineering vehicles available.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: By early 1944, Hobart could demonstrate to Eisenhower and Montgomery a brigade each of swimming DD tanks, Crab mine clearers, and AVRE (Engineer) tanks along with a regiment of Crocodile flamethrowing tanks.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Prior to the entry of the United States into the war after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the Army had only a few tanks. During the Louisiana Maneuvers in September 1941, it used trucks with the word "tank" painted on their side. Even after Pearl Harbor the 10th Armored Division did not have any tanks, so crews trained by marching down roads in groups and executing orders as if they were in tanks.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The Light Tank M2 series was the most important pre-war US tank. These light tanks were mechanically very reliable, with good mobility. However, they had a high silhouette — from the use of an air-cooled radial engine for power — and poor armor. Only a few saw combat, on Guadalcanal. Their importance lies in the fact that they formed the basis for the much more successful Light Tank M3 (a.k.a. 'Stuart' in British service) series beginning in 1941. The M3 Light Tank was an improvement of the M2 Light Tank, with heavier armor and a 37  mm gun. From the M3A1 version, this gun was gyrostabilized.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The new medium tank just entering production in 1940 was the M2 Medium Tank series. This was a poor design with thin armor, a high silhouette, a 37  mm main gun, and seven machine guns.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: From 1940, new tank designs were prepared. The Battle of France had shown the importance of medium tanks. The British Army sought to have the US manufacture British designs, but the US refused, offering instead to share the output of US factories building US designs. The United States Army had a requirement for a medium tank with a 75  mm gun, and developed the M3 Medium Tank as an interim design. The medium M3 tank was intended to quickly get a 75  mm gun into the field, pending the design of a tank with a 75  mm gun in a fully rotating turret. The British rejected the design, only accepting after the US told them it was all they had to offer. The British then used the M3 Medium Tank for their own use as the 'Lee', and some with modifications to their requirements as the 'Grant' (I.e: they added a bulge in the back of the turret to fit a radio, among other things.).


title: Tanks in World War II

text: By February 1942, American civilian automobile factories only made weapons and military vehicles. Automobile manufacturers such as General Motors and Chrysler used their experience with mass production to quickly build tanks. The country manufactured as many tanks in the first half of 1942 as in all of 1941, with 1,500 in May 1942 alone. American production not only equipped its forces, but through Lend Lease also supplied all the tank needs of the free French (after 1942) and Chinese. By 1944 most British units were also equipped with US-built tanks. Finally, the US supplied over 8,000 tanks to the USSR, half of them the M4 Sherman. Similar to the Soviet Union, the United States selected a few good basic designs and standardized those models. Given the lack of tank design and production experience, it is remarkable that the United States' designs were as good as they were.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The first tanks of the United States to see combat were the Light Tank M3. They were deeply flawed in many ways, yet the M3 Light ("Stuart") and M3 Medium ("Lee" or "Grant") were the best tanks available to the Western Allies and were superior to many of their German counterparts in armor protection and firepower. The Light Tank M3 was about as well-armed as the British cruiser tanks with 2-pounder (40  mm) guns in the desert, yet was much more reliable mechanically. Its 37  mm main gun was more powerful than the main guns carried by German reconnaissance tanks. The name given by the British to the Light Tank M3 was 'Stuart'; a nickname used was 'Honey'. The M3 and its improved derivative, the Light Tank M5 series, remained in service throughout the war. By 1943, its 37  mm gun was obsolete, but no better replacement was available. The Light Tank T7 design was proposed as a successor in 1943, armed with a 57  mm gun and with better armor; however, the design was never standardized for production.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The appearance of the M3 "Lee" medium tank in the summer of 1942 finally gave the British a larger supply of medium tanks than they could otherwise have hoped for. Although poorly designed, with a very high profile, it was produced in great numbers and was very effective when engaging targets other than enemy tanks, such as infantry and gun positions.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The M3 Medium had the significant disadvantage of its 75  mm main armament being mounted offset in the hull meaning that it could not take hull down cover and use its main gun at the same time. It had a fully traversable turret with a 37  mm cannon as well, but the turret combined with a hull gun gave it a very tall profile. The United States 1st Armored Division also employed the M3 Medium in Africa. It was a stopgap solution, never intended to be a design of major importance. In American and British service the M3 Medium was phased out at the end of the North African campaign. It continued to serve in the Red Army for some time, and in a single campaign in the Pacific. Red Army crews nicknamed it "grave for seven brothers" referring to the seven-man crew.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The most important American design of the war was the M4 Medium Tank, or "Sherman" in British service. The M4 Medium became the second-most-produced tank of World War II, and was the only tank to be used by virtually all Allied forces (thanks to the American lend-lease program); approximately 40,000 M4 Mediums were produced during the war. M4s formed the main tank of American, British, Canadian, French, Polish, and Chinese units. The M4 was the equal of the German medium tanks, the Panzer III and Panzer IV, at the time it first saw service in 1942. The Red Army was supplied with about 4,000 M4s. The M4, although reliable and easy to maintain, was already outgunned by the time the US encountered the up-gunned and up-armored German medium tanks in Italy and Northern Europe (the Panzer IV and various German self-propelled guns) and by late 1943 the arrival of German Panther and Tiger I were even graver threats due to the range, accuracy and penetrating power of their main guns. While it is commonly believed that the Sherman had a tendency to explode catastrophically due to their use of petrol fuel, this is incorrect (almost all tanks used petrol in WWII, excepting Soviet tanks). The Sherman suffered from poor ammunition storage. Welded-on appliqué armor and water jackets were added to combat the problem. A U.S. Army study in 1945 concluded that 60–80 percent of the older dry-stowage and 10–15 percent of wet-stowage Shermans burned when penetrated. The Sherman gained grim nicknames such as "Tommycooker" from the Germans, who called British soldiers "Tommies".


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Technically, the M4's design was capable of handling larger guns than the 75  mm and 76  mm guns with which they left the factory. The British fitted Shermans with the more powerful Ordnance Quick Firing 17 pounder (76.2  mm) gun, a variant known informally as the Firefly. By the time of the Normandy campaign, the M4 had become the workhorse tank of the Allied forces. Some M4 Mediums were equipped with the Duplex Drive system (Sherman DD), which allowed them to swim using a collapsible screen and inflated rubber tubes. Along with this were the M4 Dozer (an M4 with a bulldozer blade), the T34 Calliope (mounting a multiple rocket launcher above the turret), the M4A3R3 Flame thrower (flame tank), and the Sherman Crab Mark I (an M4 Medium with a mine flail), as well as many other variants.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The United States eventually deployed the Light Tank M24, an improvement over the M3 Light Tank. The M24 had torsion-bar suspension, high mobility, and a compact 75  mm gun. Ergonomically the tank was quite good also. However, the M24 did not appear in combat until December 1944 and equipped only a few units by the end of the war.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Near the end of the war, the M26 Pershing tank was deployed as the first operational heavy tank of the US Army. It was designated a heavy tank when it was designed in WWII due to its 90  mm gun, which was at the time the largest caliber gun found on a US tank. The Pershing was a very modern design with torsion-bar suspension, heavy armor, and an excellent 90  mm gun. However, it was somewhat underpowered, having the same Ford GAA engine as the M4A3. Intended as an improvement of the M4 Sherman, the prolonged time of development meant that only a small number saw combat in the European theater, most notably in the 9th Armored Division's dramatic dash to take the Bridge at Remagen. In combat, it was, unlike the M4 Sherman, fairly equal in firepower and protection to both the Tiger I and Panther tanks. The M26 basic design was good enough to form the basis for all postwar American tanks through the end of the M60 series.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: At the start of the war, France had one of the largest tank forces in the world along with the Soviet, British, and German forces. Like the British and the Soviets, the French operated two classes of tank: cavalry tanks and infantry tanks.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The French had planned for a defensive war and built tanks accordingly. Their infantry tanks were heavily armored. But, also, generally, they were relatively sluggish, and operationally in terms of control of their forces, the French were at a disadvantage and were outmaneuvered by the German forces. When the French were able to mount an attack their tanks could be very effective. On 16 May, during the Battle of France a single Char B1 heavy tank, the "Eure", attacked and destroyed thirteen German tanks lying in ambush in Stonne, all of them Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs, in the course of a few minutes. The tank safely returned despite being hit 140 times (this event is not verifiable in German documents and relies on the statements of the crew). In his book "Panzer Leader", Heinz Guderian wrote of a tank battle south of Juniville:


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The total tank assets in France and its colonies were perhaps less than 5,800 during the time of the German offensive. After the armistice in the unoccupied Free Zone of France, a clandestine rebuild took place of 225 GMC Trucks into armored cars. When all of France was occupied in 1942, the secret hiding places were betrayed to the Germans.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Germany's armored force was not especially impressive from a technical standpoint at the start of the war. As noted above, it was their advanced combined arms doctrine and unrivaled command-and-control capability that gave German mechanized forces their advantage on the battlefield.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Pre-war plans called for two main tanks: the main tank was to be the Panzer III medium tank, supported by smaller numbers of the howitzer-armed Panzer IV. However, by the beginning of the invasion of Poland, only a few hundred of these vehicles were available. As a result, the invasions of Poland and France were carried out primarily with the less capable Panzer I and Panzer II light tanks (armed with machine guns and a 20  mm autocannon respectively), with some gun-armed light tanks of Czechoslovak design (Panzer 35(t) and Panzer 38(t), both armed with a 37  mm gun). Even in 1941, Panzer III production amounted only to about a thousand tanks, forcing the Germans to use Czech tanks as substitutes for the Panzer III. As the war proceeded, the production of heavier tanks increased.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The Panzer III was intended to fight other tanks; in the initial design stage, a 50  mm (2  inch) gun was specified. However, the infantry at the time was being equipped with the 37  mm (1.46  inch) PaK 36, and it was thought that in the interest of standardization the tanks should carry the same armament. As a compromise, the turret ring was made large enough to accommodate a 50  mm (2  inch) gun should a future upgrade be required. This single decision later assured the Panzer III a prolonged life in the German Army.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The Panzer IV was intended to carry a gun that could be used in support of infantry or other tanks, and was initially armed with a short-barreled 75  mm howitzer to fire high explosive (HE) fragmentation shells. In 1941 an average of 39 Panzer IV model tanks per month were built, and this rose to 83 in 1942, 252 in 1943, and 300 in 1944.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: During Operation Barbarossa, it was discovered that the Soviet T-34 tank outclassed the Panzer III and IV. Its well sloped armor could withstand most German weapons, and its 76.2 mm gun and AP rounds could penetrate the armor of all German tanks. This forced the Germans to improve their existing models. The Panzer III, which was intended to be the main medium tank, was upgraded to a longer, higher-velocity 50  mm gun.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Thus the Panzer IV, originally intended to be a support tank, became the de facto main medium tank re-armed with a long-barreled, high-velocity 75  mm gun to counter the T-34; the Panzer III, with its smaller turret ring, could not mount a gun larger than 50  mm, which had become inadequate against Allied tanks. The Germans started to develop newer, heavier tanks. This included the Panzer V Panther, which was intended to be the new main German medium tank, with comparably sloped armor to that of the T-34. The Panther tank was a compromise of various requirements. While sharing essentially the same engine as the Tiger I tank, it had better frontal armor, better gun penetration, was lighter overall and thus faster, and could handle rough terrain better than the Tigers. The trade-off was much weaker side armor; the Panther proved to be deadly in open country and shooting from long range, but was vulnerable in close-quarters combat or to flank shots.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The Germans also started to develop a new series of heavy tanks. The first was the Tiger, which outclassed all its opponents in terms of firepower and armor when it was first put into operational use. The companies Henschel and Porsche both submitted designs for the Tiger, and the Henschel design was chosen. The even heavier Tiger II (deemed "King Tiger" by Allied troops) supplemented the Tiger I late in the war. Its powerful gun – and unlike the Tiger I, its very heavy sloped armor – made it superior to nearly every Allied or Soviet tank in a one-on-one confrontation, but poor mobility, speed, and reliability limited its use.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Plans were made for a super-heavy tank, the Panzer VII Löwe, which was canceled during the design stage in favor of the yet heavier Panzer VIII Maus of which only two incomplete prototypes were made. Panzer IX and Panzer X were drawings only used for propaganda purposes.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The Italian army was mainly equipped with tankettes of the L3 series in the 1930s, and these, armed with machine guns, formed the main armor strength of Italy as late as 1940. Italy began fielding heavier tanks beginning with the Fiat M11/39 with a 37  mm the main gun in 1940. This tank and its derivatives, the M13/40, M14/41 and the M15/42 (all with 47  mm main guns) were closely comparable in combat power to light tanks such as the Soviet T-26. A heavier design, the P40 with a 75  mm main gun, was designed but saw no service with Italian forces as it became ready at the time of the Armistice of Cassibile with the Allies, after which the Germans took over production, and used roughly one hundred of them. Another tank design, the Fiat M16/43, was developed to match the British cruiser tanks but work on it was stopped when the Axis was pushed out of North Africa in May 1943.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The Fiat-Ansaldo M11/39 medium tank was used from 1940 through the early period of World War II. The M11/39 was developed as a "breakthrough tank" ("Carro di Rottura"). It was replaced by the Fiat-Ansaldo M13/40 medium tank which was used in the Greek campaign and in the North African Campaign. The M13/40 was not used on the Eastern Front; Italian forces there were equipped only with Fiat L6/40s and Semovente 47/32 tank destroyers. Armament was sufficient for 1940–41, but did not keep up with the increased armor and firepower on Allied or German tanks and anti-tank guns; its engine was underpowered and unreliable, a condition worsened by the harsh desert climate and the initial lack of training of their crews. Beginning in 1942, the Italian Army recognized the firepower weakness of the M13/40 series and employed the Semovente 75/18 self-propelled gun alongside the tanks in their armored units, which proved capable of destroying the enemy medium tanks.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The next tank in the series was the Fiat M14/41, a slightly improved version of the M13/40 with a more powerful diesel engine. The tank was also employed in the North African Campaign. Following the withdrawal of Italian forces from North Africa the M14/41 was rarely encountered. A few captured M11, M13, and M14s were pressed into service by British and Australian forces to fill the serious shortage of allied tanks in 1941.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: The next in the series was the M15/42, a 15-tonne tank first built in January 1943. Some 90 vehicles were built before the Italian armistice in September 1943 and in connection to that event they were used in the battle against the Germans by the 132nd Armoured Division Ariete in Rome. After that point, they were confiscated and used by the Germans who also built another 28 M15/42 tanks. It had a more powerful engine and air filters to cope with the harsh conditions of the desert, and an improved version of the 47  mm gun; however, by the time it entered production it was already obsolete.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Italy introduced a new tank classification scheme in 1938. Tanks were designated first with a letter (L, M, or P, for light, medium, or heavy respectively) followed by the weight in tonnes, separated by a slash followed by the year the tank was accepted for service. The classes of light, medium and heavy differed somewhat from other countries. Hence the P26/40, designated as "heavy" by the Italians with its 26-tonne weight, was more similar in weight to the medium M4 Sherman tank (30-tonne weight). The Italians also labeled the machine gun-armed L3/35 a "light tank", although it is more commonly called a tankette.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Like the US Army (which utilized French and British tanks in World War I), the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) did not have tanks of its own in World War I, so it started out by purchasing foreign tanks for evaluation during World War I and right after the war ended. Like many other nations, the Japanese initially didn't embrace the tank, as it didn't have the cavalry tradition. Cavalry was used for reconnaissance in the mountainous countryside, and initially, as with most other armies, the first designs were constrained by the tank's infantry-support role. Building tanks of their own met several problems, as Japan's priority tended to be with naval procurements so production for tank steel was on a lower level. However, they finally began designing tanks by the mid-1920s. Inspired by European designs, the Japanese tank program designed and developed the tanks which facilitated their campaigns in China and the Soviet–Japanese border conflicts, prior to World War II. They introduced many innovations as they built their designs, including bell crank suspensions, as pioneers in amphibious tanks, and the use of diesel engines that were less likely to catch fire compared with gasoline tank engines that were being used at the time. The Japanese generals had made a mistake in their assessment of the tanks used against China, a country whose army had only three tank battalions, and few anti-tank weapons.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: By 1937, Japan fielded 1,060 tanks in 8 regiments, most designed for and used in the infantry-support role. But this focus left the IJA without a tank capable of taking on other tanks, a deficiency that was brought home hard during the Battle of Khalkin-Gol, a decisive defeat inflicted by the Soviet Union on the Mongolian border in 1939. This proved fatal later when they faced the new generation of Allied tanks, as the great majority of the Japanese models were lightly armored, and not heavily gunned. As in the 1920s, with the priority of steel going to the navy and air force, the Japanese Army has relegated the remaining material for its tanks. Thus the 1930s-designed vehicles went on being mass-produced, and the warning of Khalkin-Gol was too slowly recognized. By 1940 they had the fifth-largest tank force in the world behind the Soviet Union, France, Britain, and Germany, but were behind in medium and heavy tanks. However, after December 1941, with the entry of the United States into the conflict, priority continued to be given to warships and aircraft, weapons that were more conducive to naval warfare; attacking across the Pacific, and defending the Empire from the advancing Americans.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Although the Japanese Army widely employed tanks within the Pacific theater of war, the tanks that Allied forces faced there were mostly older designs, such as the Type 95 Ha-Go light tank and Type 97 Chi-Ha medium tank. As the war progressed the Japanese built tanks and self-propelled guns to match up against the Allied tanks. These included the Type 1 Ho-Ni I tank destroyer with a 75  mm gun designed as self-propelled artillery and the Type 2 Ho-I infantry support tank, for the close-fire support role; providing Type 97 equipped tank regiments with additional firepower against the enemy armored fighting vehicles. However, they were only produced in limited numbers. The most modern Japanese tanks, such as the Type 3 Chi-Nu medium tank were delayed by material and production shortages. Even after they started to come out of the factories, a doctrine called for them to be held for the defense of the mainland against invasion.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Between 1931 and 1945, Japan produced 6450 tanks. Half of them (3300) were made by the Mitsubishi Company. The sub-total of tanks produced between 1940 and 1945 is 4424, i.e. a yearly average comparable to Italy. For a country as large and as industrialized as Japan, that is modest. However, before 1944/45, the naval fleet and the air force had priority of steel allocation and construction. It changed when the homeland became increasingly under direct threat, but it was too late. As with many innovative weapons projects during the final years of World War II, production could not advance beyond either small numbers or the prototype stage due to material shortages, and the loss of Japan's industrial infrastructure to the Allied bombing of Japan.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: During the interwar period, Romania had equipped its army with tanks from its Czechoslovak and French allies. The vehicles acquired by Romania were, however, different in many aspects from their original Czechoslovak and French counterparts. For example, the R-1, which was also built in Romania under license, had a different engine and armor thickness than other AH-IV variants. The R-2 (Romanian designation of the LT vz. 35) had a modified variant, the R-2c, with cemented armor and a different looking rear for both the turret and the hull. French Renault R35s were also acquired – their suspension was later heavily modified, so the wheels were ten times more durable.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Romania joined the Axis Powers in 1941, so its vehicles fought against the Soviet army on the Eastern Front. They were used in places like Odesa and Stalingrad. The Romanian interwar-developed tank force proved to be hardly effective against Soviet T-34s and KV-1s; during tests, it was found out that the T-34 was invulnerable to the R-2's 37  mm gun. However, Romania did upgrade its tank force with German designs such as Panzer IIIs, Panzer IVs, and StuG IIIs, referred to in the Romanian army as "T-3", "T-4" and "TAs" respectively.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: To further increase its anti-tank capacities, Romania had also started its own production of tank destroyers in late 1942. These included the Mareșal, TACAM T-60, TACAM R-2 and VDC R35, the first of which was started by Wehrmacht officials to have inspired the German Hetzer's design. Attempts were also made to produce medium tanks, such as the R-3 and a later tank project comparable in characteristics to the T-34; neither of them is known to have passed the proposal stage. Heavy modifications were also suggested for captured T-34s (see here).


title: Tanks in World War II

text: By the time of the Sudeten crisis, the Czechoslovak army used a complement of light tanks including 298 LT vz. 35 designed by Škoda, as well as 50 LT vz. 34 built by ČKD; 150 LT vz. 38 were ordered but none were delivered before the German occupation. The LT-35 and LT-38 models were superior to the Panzer I and Panzer II light tanks used in the Wehrmacht, so the Germans ordered the production of these models to be resumed.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Before the end of production in 1942, 136 more LT-35 and a total of 1414 LT-38 were produced for the Wehrmacht at Škoda Works; these tanks saw operational use in the Polish campaign, the Battle of France, and on the Soviet front. By 1942, Czech-built tanks became progressively vulnerable to Soviet T-34 medium tanks and new anti-tank guns and the LT-35 and LT-38 proved unsuitable for harsh winter conditions in Russia, so they were withdrawn from front line service in 1942; the remaining units were either redeployed in a light reconnaissance role or converted to Hetzer tank destroyers and artillery tractors.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Poland was the first to suffer the German Blitzkrieg, but it had some very good tanks in its armored forces. The most important was the 7TP ("siedmiotonowy Polski" – "7-tonne Polish") light tank, which was better armed than its most common opponents, the German Panzer I and Panzer II.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Like the similar Soviet T-26, the 7TP was a development of the British Vickers 6-ton (Mk. E) which the Poles purchased and licensed for local production. The main new features of 7TP were: a better, more reliable and powerful diesel engine (which made the 7TP world's first diesel tank), 37 mm anti-tank gun, and slightly thicker armor (17 mm in front instead of 13 mm). Only about 132 tanks were produced between 1935 and the outbreak of the war. The weight increased after the initial 7-tonne prototype was made and the actual serial tanks weighed 9.9 tonnes.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Like its British predecessor, the 7TP was initially produced in two variants: the twin turret version armed with 2 Ckm wz.30 machine guns, and a single turret version, armed with a Bofors wz. 37 gun. After initial tests, it became clear that the twin-turret variant was obsolete and lacked firepower, so it was abandoned in favor of the more-modern, single-turret design.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Poland also had the TK tankette (also known as the TK-3) which was based upon an improved chassis of the British Carden Loyd tankette. The 575 TK/TKS tankettes formed the bulk of the Polish armored forces but as their armament was limited to machine guns, their combat value was limited. They suffered heavy losses during the Invasion of Poland. Only the handful of tankettes armed with 20  mm guns had a fighting chance against the enemy tanks; in one instance on 18 September 1939 a 20  mm gunned TKS destroyed three German Panzerkampfwagen 35(t) tanks.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: All of the 7TP tanks took part in combat in the Polish Defensive War of 1939. Most of them were attached to two light tank battalions (the 1st and the 2nd).


title: Tanks in World War II

text: It is a paradox that the Polish motorized unit that performed the best had only 16 old Vickers E 6-ton tanks and 4 tankettes with 20  mm autocannon, 10th Motorized Cavalry Brigade (Poland).


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Poland also purchased and used, in September 1939, 50 (some sources claim 49) Renault R35 tanks but due to extremely rugged terrain and the tank's poor cross-country performance, many ended up destroyed by the crews. 34 tanks crossed into Romania after covering the Polish retreat after the Soviet Invasion of Poland on 17SEP39 and 2 crossed into Hungary. Only about half of the Renault tanks participated in the actual fighting.


title: Tanks in World War II

text: Polish forces in exile after the fall of Poland were reequipped by their allies. Polish LWP forces fighting alongside the Red Army were equipped with T-34, T-70, and IS-2 tanks, along with ISU-122 and SU-76 self-propelled guns. Polish forces in the west were equipped out of British stocks including M3 and M5 Stuarts, M4 Shermans, and a small number of Cromwells. Polish armor units were participants in the Battle of Berlin and played an important role in the campaign in Normandy.


title: Savitribai Phule Pune University

text: Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU), formerly the University of Poona, is a collegiate public state university located in the city of Pune, India. It was established in 1949, and is spread over a campus in the neighbourhood of Ganeshkhind. The university houses 46 academic departments. It has about 307 recognized research institutes and 612 affiliated colleges offering graduate and under-graduate courses. Savitribai Phule Pune University Ranked 12th NIRF Ranking in 2022


title: Savitribai Phule Pune University

text: The University of Pune was established on 10 February 1949 under the Pune University Act passed by the Bombay legislature in 1948. M. R. Jayakar became its first vice-chancellor. Its first office was started from the Nizam Guest House, which is part of Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute on Law College Road. The university was operated at Nizam Guest House until 1 June 1949. Its current building was originally called the Governor House. As its name suggests, it was the seasonal retreat of the governor of Bombay. B. G. Kher, Chief Minister and Education Minister of the government of Bombay, helped ensure the university received a large allocation of land for their campus. The university was allocated over 411 acres (1.66 km).


title: Savitribai Phule Pune University

text: The institution's name was changed from the University of Pune to Savitribai Phule Pune University on 9 August 2014 in honor of Savitribai Phule, the 19th century Indian social reformer who played an important role in improving the lives of women and the Dalit communities in Maharashtra during British colonial rule. She and her husband Mahatma Jyotiba Phule founded India's first native-run school for girls in 1848.


title: Savitribai Phule Pune University

text: Initially the university had a jurisdiction extending over 12 districts of western Maharashtra. With the establishment of Shivaji University in Kolhapur in 1962, the jurisdiction was restricted to five districts: Pune, Ahmednagar, Nashik, Dhule, and Jalgaon. Out of these, two districts—Dhule and Jalgaon—are attached to the North Maharashtra University in Jalgaon established in August 1990.


title: Savitribai Phule Pune University

text: The university has various departments and centres, offering courses in science, social science, management, law, etc.


title: Savitribai Phule Pune University

text: In 2018, the University of Pune was ranked 7th among universities in India by the Times Higher Education. In 2022, the University of Pune ranked between 591 and 600 in the QS World University Ranking. Savitribai Phule Pune University was ranked 601–800 in the world by the "Times Higher Education World University Rankings" of 2020, as well as 135 in Asia and 128 among Emerging Economies University Rankings in 2020. The QS World University Rankings of 2020 ranked it 191 in Asia in 2020 and 100 among universities in BRICS nations in 2019.


title: Savitribai Phule Pune University

text: It was ranked 19 in India overall by the "National Institutional Ranking Framework" in 2020 and 9th among universities.


title: Savitribai Phule Pune University

text: The Management Council is the principal executive authority of the university and is chaired by the vice-chancellor. It typically consists of around 20 member, of which, three are elected by the Academic Council and nine are elected or nominated by the senate. The Management Council formulates statutes, makes ordinances to be approved by the Senate, and administers the affairs of the university.


title: Savitribai Phule Pune University

text: Over 1,800 Indian students were granted admission in various professional courses from 2002 to 2007 for the seats reserved for Persons of Indian Origin (PIO) by then director of International Students Centre (ISC) of University of Pune. This was revealed by Sunanda Pawar enquiry committee formed by the then UoP vice chancellor Narendra Jadhav. Pawar was a member of the management council of UoP.


title: Savitribai Phule Pune University

text: In the Khelo India University Games in Odisha, Savitribai Phule Pune University was on top with 29 medals including fifteen gold, eight silver, and six bronze medals on the fifth day on 26 February 2020.


title: Savitribai Phule Pune University

text: Savitribai Phule Pune University's Joyita Sarkar was one of the 21 people and the only one from an educational institute in the state to be awarded by President Ramnath Kovind for her role in science communication and popularisation on the National Science Day in New Delhi.


title: Savitribai Phule Pune University

text: Four students from the Savitribai Phule Pune University's (SPPU) competitive exam centres have stood first in the state in their respective categories for Maharashtra Public Service Commission (MPSC) civil services exams for sales tax inspector.


title: Savitribai Phule Pune University

text: The colleges of the university provide residences for students. The International Centre provides residences for international students, including visiting students.


title: Savitribai Phule Pune University

text: Alumni of Savitribai Phule Pune University include major politicians of India including Vishwanath Pratap Singh, 7th Prime Minister of India;


title: Savitribai Phule Pune University

text: Vilasrao Deshmukh, 17th and 19th Chief Minister of Maharashtra; and Sharad Pawar, former Chief Minister of Maharashtra. P. V. Narasimha Rao, 9th Prime Minister of India, graduated from Fergusson College, when the college was under the University of Pune.


title: Savitribai Phule Pune University

text: Khaled Bahah, 2nd Vice President of Yemen and Prime Minister of Yemen, received his BCom and MCom from the university.


title: Savitribai Phule Pune University

text: In science and engineering, notable alumni of the university include Padmanabhan Balaram, chemist and director of the Indian Institute of Science; Kantilal Mardia, statistician and Guy Medallists; Thomas Kailath, electrical engineer and recipient of the 2014 National Medal of Science; Vistasp Karbhari, civil engineer and the eighth president of the University of Texas at Arlington; Suhas Patankar, professor at the University of Minnesota, and pioneer in the field of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and finite volume method; C. Kumar N. Patel, inventor of the carbon dioxide laser, recipient of the 1996 National Medal of Science and vice-Chancellor for Research at the University of California, Los Angeles; and Vinod Scaria, bioinformatician, who is known for sequencing the first Indian genome. V. S. Huzurbazar served as the first head of the statistics department. S.N. Sadasivan who was Civil Services trainer, Author and historian. Madhav Gadgil, an ecologist and Sulochana Gadgil, meteorologist.


title: Savitribai Phule Pune University

text: Academician Jyoti Gogte, graduated her BCom, MCom, and Ph.D. from the university, and was a Ph.D. guide for the university from 2006 to 2013.


title: Savitribai Phule Pune University

text: Art collector and historian Dinkar G. Kelkar graduated his D. Litt. degree from the university in 1978.


title: Kron Gracie

text: Kron Gracie (born July 11, 1988) is a Brazilian-American mixed martial artist, grappler and black belt Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner and instructor.


title: Kron Gracie

text: A member of the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Gracie family, he is the son of Rickson Gracie and a grandson of Hélio Gracie. A two-time IBJJF World and four-time Pan-American champion in coloured belts, he received his black belt at the age of 19. Gracie held in 2008 a world record of 51 consecutive matches won by submission at high level tournaments. Gracie became IBJJF European champion, World and Pan American championships medalist and in 2013 ADCC Submission Fighting World Championship Champion.


title: Kron Gracie

text: In 2014 Gracie announced that he was transitioning to mixed martial arts (MMA). Competing under the Japanese Rizin Fighting Federation before signing up with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), Gracie holds a 5-1 record for a total of six professional fights, with all of his wins coming by way of submission. Gracie's last professional fight took place at UFC Fight Night 161 on 12 October 2019.


title: Kron Gracie

text: Gracie was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil the youngest son of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) master Rickson Gracie but lived most of his life in Los Angeles after his father moved to California in 1989. He began his BJJ training under his father as a child, winning his first competition as a yellow belt at the age of ten. Kron is the youngest of four children to Rickson Gracie and grandson of the late Helio Gracie. He has two older sisters Kauan and Kaulin, his older brother Rockson died in 2000.


title: Kron Gracie

text: At the age of 16, competing as a blue belt in the Adult lightweight division, Gracie won the 2004 IBJJF American National Jiu-Jitsu Championship. After receiving his purple belt Gracie won the 2005 Pan Championship then in 2006, Gracie won both the IBJJF World Championship and the CBJJO World Cup of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Competing in grappling Gracie won the 2006 NAGA Championship in the Adult Lightweight Division. The following year as a brown belt, he became world champion for the second time and Pan American champion for the fourth time winning double gold, in his division and, after defeating Tom DeBlass, in absolute (aka open class). At that point Gracie held a record 51-match submission streak.


title: Kron Gracie

text: In 2008, at the age of 19, Gracie was promoted to black belt by his father a week before the World Championship, however Gracie was submitted by Sergio Moraes in the first match of the middleweight division. In 2009 Gracie won the European Championship after defeating Yan Cabral in the final, a few days after the death of his grandfather, Grandmaster Helio Gracie, he then won silver at the 2009 Pan Championship in the middleweight division after losing by points in the final against Lucas Leite. At the 2009 Abu Dhabi Combat Club (ADCC) grappling competition in Barcelona, the most prestigious grappling tournament in the world, Gracie lost the - Quarter-final after being submitted via mounted guillotine choke by Marcelo Garcia. Two years later Gracie won bronze at 2011 ADCC World after losing again to Marcelo Garcia in a close match after Garcia won by points. Gracie became known as "Ice Cream Kron" due to his calm demeanour when fighting.


title: Kron Gracie

text: Gracie won silver at the 2011 World Jiu-Jitsu Championship, in the lightweight division, submitting Leandro Lo then losing 9-2 to Gilbert "Durinho" Burns in the finals. At 2012 Pan Am, competing under "Rickson Gracie BJJ team", Gracie won bronze in middleweight and bronze in absolute after losing in the final against ultra heavyweight Marcus "Buchecha" Almeida; that same year he became "World Jiu-Jitsu Expo Superfight" champion after defeating Victor Estima in a tight match won by advantage at the "World Jiu Jitsu Expo" in Long Beach, California. In October 2012 Gracie participated in a Gi Superfight at Metamoris 1 in San Diego, submitting Otávio Souza at seventeen minutes of Round 1 by armbar.


title: Kron Gracie

text: In June 2013 Gracie participated in a No-gi Superfight at Metamoris 2 in Los Angeles, defeating Japanese MMA star Shinya Aoki by guillotine choke in seven minutes. In October 2013 Gracie won his division of the ADCC World Championship in Beijing submitting all his opponents including Garry Tonon in the Quarter-final, JT Torres in the Semi-final and Otávio Souza submitted by guillotine choke in the Final.


title: Kron Gracie

text: On February 24, 2014, Gracie announced his intention to pursue an MMA career. Gracie chose to cut down weight to compete at - instead of his usual jiu-jitsu and grappling weight class. He started training for his first MMA bout with the California based "Scrap Pack", a group of fighters comprising Cesar Gracie Jiu-Jitsu students Gilbert Melendez, Nick and Nate Diaz. Gracie made his mixed martial arts debut on December 23, 2014, facing fellow South Korean wrestler Hyung Soo-Kim at "Real Fighting Championship: Real 1" at a catch weight of . Gracie won the fight via armbar, sixty-five seconds into the first round.


title: Kron Gracie

text: Gracie fought on December 31, 2015 at Rizin Fighting Federation World Tournament. He faced Asen Yamamoto and won the fight by submission via triangle choke in the first round. Gracie fought Hideo Tokoro on September 25, 2016. He won via rear-naked choke in the first round.


title: Kron Gracie

text: Gracie faced MMA veteran Tatsuya Kawajiri at the Rizin Fighting Federation Grand Prix: Final Round event on December 31, 2016. He won via rear-naked choke in the second round. This improved his professional MMA record to 4-0.


title: Kron Gracie

text: In November 2018, Gracie was signed by the UFC. In his debut fight for the promotion, Gracie faced Alex Caceres on February 17, 2019 at . He won the fight via submission due to a rear-naked choke in the first round. This fight earned him his first "Performance of the Night" award.


title: Kron Gracie

text: Gracie faced Cub Swanson on October 12, 2019 at UFC on ESPN+ 19. He lost the fight via unanimous decision. This fight earned him the "Fight of the Night" bonus award. Many people were confused at Gracie's decision to strike with Swanson instead of taking the fight to the ground where he was predicted to have the advantage. In the years since, several members of the Gracie family have spoken about his loss and criticized his decision to avoid grappling, including his father Rickson and uncle Relson Gracie. Gracie has been absent from the world of MMA since.


title: Kron Gracie

text: Kano Jigoro → Mitsuyo "Count Koma" Maeda → Carlos Gracie → Helio Gracie → Rickson Gracie → Kron Gracie


title: Kron Gracie

text: When not competing, Gracie taught jiu-jitsu at his school in Culver City, California and helped run his father's association. In January 2021, Gracie announced that he was closing his longtime academy and relocating to Montana to open a new BJJ school in response to the Covid-19 restrictions in place in California. Gracie has stated to various media that he believes in the flat Earth conspiracy theory.


title: Chelsea Grin

text: Chelsea Grin is an American deathcore band from Salt Lake City, Utah. Formed in 2007, the group have released two EPs and five full-length albums. Since 2018, no original members remain in the band.


title: Chelsea Grin

text: Chelsea Grin was originally founded under the name "Ahaziah". The lineup for Ahaziah included vocalist Alex Koehler, guitarist Chris Kilbourn, bassist Austin Marticorena and lead guitarist Michael Stafford. Marticorena introduced Andrew Carlston to Chelsea Grin and assisted in rewriting their songs as well as the creation of new material as they changed the name to Chelsea Grin soon after.


title: Chelsea Grin

text: This writing process lead to the tracks on their first release, a self-titled EP that was streamed and released online through iTunes, then released on CD worldwide on July 27, 2008. Early on in the band's career, they released the songs "Crewcabanger" and "Lifeless" as singles, both of which were received well by listening audiences on Myspace.


title: Chelsea Grin

text: The band later sought to add a third guitarist position which led to the acquisition of Dan Jones and David Flinn which followed into the writing of their full-length album "Desolation of Eden" (2010), following up this record was "My Damnation" (2011) before cutting into a 2012 EP titled "Evolve".


title: Chelsea Grin

text: In 2013, Pablo Viveros replaced founding drummer Andrew Carlston and started contributing vocals to their music, allowing lead vocalist Koehler to focus solely on the screamed vocals while Viveros took on the mid to low-ranged growls. Since then, the band released two more full-lengths, "Ashes to Ashes" in 2014 and "Self Inflicted" in 2016. As of 2018, the band ended their longtime tenure of featuring three guitarists to now only featuring one. That same year, vocalist Koehler departed from the band and was replaced with Lorna Shore vocalist Tom Barber. With this new four-piece lineup, Chelsea Grin officially released their fifth album "Eternal Nightmare" on July 13, 2018.


title: Chelsea Grin

text: Following the release and success of the self-titled EP in July 2008, the signing to Statik Factory Records, and a few small successful west coast tours, Austin Marticorena (bass) left the band for personal reasons. The band recruited Jake Harmond to temporarily fill in on bass while the band found a permanent member. Not long after this, the band ousted drummer Andrew Carlston, and Kory Shilling took his place, as well as Davis Pugh taking over the full-time bass player position. In April 2009, original drummer, Carlston returned to the band, replacing Shilling, and guitar player, and original member, Chris Kilbourn left the band to start his own record label, Matchless Records. Shortly thereafter, Jake Harmond once again filled in for the band, this time as substitute rhythm guitar player.


title: Chelsea Grin

text: Soon after the band started to write the follow-up to the self-titled EP, they decided to take a new route and switch Davis Pugh from being bassist into being a third guitar player after David Flinn joined the band as bassist. The band then was added to a small, week-long Canadian run in June 2009 with The Agonist, A Plea for Purging, Arsonists Get All the Girls and Statik Factory labelmates, Attila. After the successful tour, fill-in guitar player Jake Harmond decided to become a full-time member, and the band joined into a contract with Artery Foundation representatives, Mike Milford and Eric Rushing whom then booked studio time for Chelsea Grin to record their debut full-length, "Desolation of Eden" at Lambesis Studios in San Marcos, California during August 2009. The album was produced by As I Lay Dying vocalist and studio founder, Tim Lambesis. One week prior to heading into the studio, guitar player Davis Pugh was kicked out of the band, and was replaced with ex-bandmate of Jake Harmond; Dan Jones, of another local Salt Lake City band, Hermione. Whilst in the studio the band inked a deal with Artery Recordings, a label that was imprinted between The Artery Foundation and Razor & Tie.