title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: "The explosion at the French barracks blew the whole building off its foundations and threw it about 6 meters (20 feet) westward, while breaking the windows of almost every apartment house in the neighborhood ... Grim-faced French paratroopers and Lebanese civil-defense workers aided by bulldozers also worked under spotlights through the night at the French barracks, trying to pull apart the eight stories of 90 centimeter (3 foot) thick cement that had fallen on top of one another and to reach the men they could still hear screaming for help. They regularly pumped oxygen into the mountain of rubble to keep those who were still trapped below alive."


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: The explosions resulted in 346 casualties, of which 234 (68%) were killed immediately, with head injuries, thoracic injuries and burns accounting for a large number of deaths.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: The New York Times printed a list of the identified casualties on October 26, 1983. Another list of those who survived the incident was published by the Department of Defense. The information had to be re-printed, as individuals were misidentified, and family members were told incorrect statuses of their loved ones.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: Twenty-one U.S. peacekeepers who lost their lives in the bombing were buried in Section 59 at Arlington National Cemetery, near one of the memorials to all the victims.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: U.S. President Ronald Reagan called the attack a "despicable act" and pledged to keep a military force in Lebanon. U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who had privately advised the administration against stationing U.S. Marines in Lebanon, said there would be no change in the U.S.'s Lebanon policy. French President François Mitterrand and other French dignitaries visited both the French and American bomb sites to offer their personal condolences on Monday, October 24, 1983. It was not an official visit, and President Mitterrand only stayed for a few hours, but he did declare "We will stay." During his visit, President Mitterrand visited each of the scores of American caskets and made the sign of the cross as his mark of respectful observance for each of the fallen peacekeepers. U.S. Vice President George H. W. Bush arrived and made a tour of the destroyed BLT barracks on Wednesday, October 26, 1983. Vice President Bush toured the site and said the U.S. "would not be cowed by terrorists." Vice President Bush also visited with wounded U.S. personnel aboard the U.S.S. "Iwo Jima" (LPH-2), and he took time to meet with the commanders of the other MNF units (French, Italian and British) deployed in Beirut.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: In retaliation for the attacks, France launched an airstrike in the Beqaa Valley against alleged Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) positions. President Reagan assembled his national security team and planned to target the Sheik Abdullah barracks in Baalbek, Lebanon, which housed Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) believed to be training Hezbollah militants. A joint American–French air assault on the camp where the bombing was planned was also approved by Reagan and Mitterrand. U.S. Defense Secretary Weinberger lobbied successfully against the mission, because at the time it was not certain that Iran was behind the attack.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: Some of the U.S. Marines in Beirut were moved to transport vessels offshore where they could not be targeted; yet, they would be ready and available to serve as a ready reaction force in Beirut if needed. For protection against snipers and artillery attacks, the Marines remaining at the airport built, and moved into, bunkers in the ground employing 'appropriated' Soviet-bloc CONEXes.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: Col Geraghty requested and received reinforcements to replace his unit losses. BLT 2/6, the Second Marine Division Air Alert Battalion stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and commanded by Col. Edwin C. Kelley, Jr., was dispatched and flown into Beirut by four C-141s in less than 36 hours after the bombing. Lt. Col. Kelley officially replaced the seriously injured BLT 1/8 commander, Lt. Col. Larry Gerlach. The entire Headquarters and Service Company and Weapons Company of BLT 2/6 was airlifted into Beirut, along with Company E (Reinforced). Lt. Col. Kelley quietly redesignated his unit, BLT 2/6, as BLT 1/8 to help bolster the morale of the BLT 1/8 survivors. The BLT headquarters was relocated to a landfill area west of the airfield, and Company A (Reinforced) was repositioned from the university library position to serve as landing force reserve afloat, aboard Amphibious Ready Group shipping. On November 18, 1983, the 22d MAU rotated into Beirut and relieved in place the 24th MAU. The 24th MAU with Lt. Col. Kelley commanding BLT 1/8 returned to Camp Lejeune, NC, by sea for training and refitting.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: Eventually, it became evident that the U.S. would launch no serious and immediate retaliatory attack for the Beirut Marine barracks bombing beyond naval barrages and air strikes used to interdict continuous harassing fire from Druze and Syrian missile and artillery sites. A true retaliatory strike failed to materialize because there was a rift in White House counsel (largely between George P. Shultz of the Department of State and Weinberger of the Department of Defense) and because the extant evidence pointing at Iranian involvement was circumstantial at that time: the Islamic Jihad, which took credit for the attack, was a front for Hezbollah which was acting as a proxy for Iran; thus, affording Iran plausible deniability. Secretary of State Shultz was an advocate for retaliation, but Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger was against retaliation. Secretary of Defense Weinberger, in a September 2001 "Frontline" interview, reaffirmed that rift in White House counsel when he claimed that the U.S. still lacks "'actual knowledge of who did the bombing' of the Marine barracks."


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: The had arrived and taken up station off Beirut on September 25, 1983. Special Representative in the Middle East Robert McFarlane's team had requested "New Jersey" after the August 29th Druze mortar attack that killed two marines. After the October 23rd bombing, on November 28, the U.S. government announced that the "New Jersey" would remain stationed off Beirut although her crew would be rotated. It was not until December 14 that "New Jersey" finally joined the fray and fired 11 projectiles from her 16-inch guns at hostile targets near Beirut. "This was the first time 16-inch shells were fired for effect anywhere in the world since the "New Jersey" ended her time on the gunline in Vietnam in 1969." Also in December 1983, U.S. aircraft from the and battle groups attacked Syrian targets in Lebanon, but this was ostensibly in response to Syrian missile attacks on American warplanes.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: In the meantime, the attack boosted the prestige and growth of the Shi'ite organization Hezbollah. Hezbollah officially denied any involvement in the attacks, but was seen by many Lebanese as involved nonetheless as it praised the "two martyr mujahideen" who "set out to inflict upon the U.S. Administration an utter defeat, not experienced since Vietnam." Hezbollah was now seen by many as "the spearhead of the sacred Muslim struggle against foreign occupation".


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: The 1983 report of the U.S. Department of Defense Commission's on the attack recommended that the National Security Council investigate and consider alternative ways to reach "American objectives in Lebanon" because, "as progress to diplomatic solutions slows," the security of the USMNF base continues to "deteriorate." The commission also recommended a review for the development of a broader range of "appropriate military, political, and diplomatic responses to terrorism." Military preparedness needed improvement in the development of "doctrine, planning, organization, force structure, education, and training" to better combat terrorism, while the USMNF was "not prepared" to deal with the terrorist threat at the time due to "lack of training, staff, organization, and support" specifically for defending against "terror threats."


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: Amal Movement leader Nabih Berri, who had previously supported U.S. mediation efforts, asked the U.S. and France to leave Lebanon and accused the two countries of seeking to commit 'massacres' against the Lebanese and of creating a "climate of racism" against Shias. Islamic Jihad phoned in new threats against the MNF pledging that "the earth would tremble" unless the MNF withdrew by New Year's Day 1984.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: On February 7, 1984, President Reagan ordered the Marines to begin withdrawing from Lebanon largely because of waning congressional support for the mission after the attacks on the barracks. The withdrawal of the 22d MAU from the BIA was completed 12:37 PM on February 26, 1984. "Fighting between the Lebanese Army and Druze militia in the nearby Shouf mountains provided a noisy backdrop to the Marine evacuation. One officer commented: 'This ceasefire is getting louder.'"


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: On February 8, 1984, the USS "New Jersey" fired almost 300 shells at Druze and Syrian positions in the Beqaa Valley east of Beirut. This was the heaviest shore bombardment since the Korean War. Firing without air spotting, the battleship had to rely on Israeli target intelligence. "In a nine-hour period, the USS "New Jersey" fired 288 16-inch rounds, each one weighing as much as a Volkswagen Beetle. In those nine-hours, the ship consumed 40 percent of the 16-inch ammunition available in the entire European theater ... [and] in one burst of wretched excess," "New Jersey" seemed to be unleashing eighteen months of repressed fury.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: "Many Lebanese still recall the 'flying Volkswagens,' the name given to the huge shells that struck the Shouf." In addition to destroying Syrian and Druze artillery and missile sites, approximately 30 of these behemoth projectiles rained down on a Syrian command post, killing the senior commanding Syrian general in Lebanon along with several of his senior officers.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: Following the lead of the U.S., the rest of the multinational force, the British, French and Italians, was withdrawn by the end of February 1984. The ship-borne 22d MAU contingent remained stationed offshore near Beirut while a detached 100-man ready reaction force remained stationed ashore near the U.S./U.K. Embassy. The 22d MAU was relieved in place by the 24th MAU on April 10, 1984. On April 21, the ready reaction force in Beirut was deactivated and its men were reassigned to their respective ships. In late July 1984, the last marines from the 24th MAU, the U.S./U.K. Embassy guard detail, was withdrawn from Beirut.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: Although the withdrawal of U.S. and French peacekeepers from Lebanon following the bombings has been widely cited as demonstrative of the efficacy of terrorism, Max Abrahms observes that the bombings targeted military personnel and as such are not consistent with the most widely accepted attempts to define terrorism, which emphasize deliberate violence against civilians. A 2019 study disputes that the bombings motivated the withdrawal of U.S. forces, arguing instead that the collapse of the Lebanese national army in February 1984 was the primary motivating factor behind the withdrawal.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: At the time of the bombing, an obscure group called the "Islamic Jihad" claimed responsibility for the attack. There were many in the U.S. government, such as Vice President Bush, Secretary of State George Shultz, and National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane (who was formerly Reagan's Mideast envoy), who believed Iran and/or Syria were/was responsible for the bombings. After some years of investigation, the U.S. government now believes that elements of what would eventually become Hezbollah, backed by Iran and Syria, were responsible for these bombings as well as the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut earlier in April. It is believed that Hezbollah used the name "Islamic Jihad" to remain anonymous. Hezbollah eventually announced its existence in 1985. This is while, according to President Reagan's Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, "We still do not have the actual knowledge of who did the bombing of the Marine barracks at the Beirut Airport, and we certainly didn't then." Weinberger mentions lack of certainty about Syria or Iran's involvement as the reason why America did not take any retaliatory actions against those states. Hezbollah, Iran and Syria have continued to deny any involvement in any of the bombings. An Iranian group erected a monument in a cemetery in Tehran to commemorate the 1983 bombings and its "martyrs" in 2004. Lebanese author Hala Jaber claims that Iran and Syria helped organize the bombing which was run by two Lebanese Shia, Imad Mughniyah and Mustafa Badr Al Din:


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: Imad Mughniyeh and Mustafa Badr Al Din took charge of the Syrian–Iranian backed operation. Mughniyeh had been a highly trained security man with the PLO's Force 17 . . . Their mission was to gather information and details about the American embassy and draw up a plan that would guarantee the maximum impact and leave no trace of the perpetrator. Meetings were held at the Iranian embassy in Damascus. They were usually chaired by the ambassador, Hojatoleslam Ali-Akbar Mohtashemi, who played an instrumental role in founding Hezbollah. In consultation with several senior Syrian intelligence officers, the final plan was set in motion. The vehicle and explosives were prepared in the Beqaa Valley which was under Syrian control.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: Two years after the bombing, a U.S. grand jury secretly indicted Imad Mughniyah for terrorist activities. Mughniyah was never captured, but he was killed by a car bomb in Syria on February 12, 2008.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: Commentators argue that the lack of a response by the Americans emboldened terrorist organizations to conduct further attacks against U.S. targets. Along with the U.S. embassy bombing, the barracks bombing prompted the Inman Report, a review of the security of U.S. facilities overseas for the U.S. State Department.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: On March 8, 1985, a truck bomb blew up in Beirut, killing more than 80 people and injuring more than 200. The bomb detonated near the apartment block of Sheikh Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, a Shia cleric thought by many to be the spiritual leader of Hezbollah. Although the U.S. did not engage in any direct military retaliation to the attack on the Beirut barracks, the 1985 bombing was widely believed by Fadlallah and his supporters to be the work of the United States; Sheikh Fadlallah stating that "'They sent me a letter and I got the message,' and an enormous sign on the remains of one bombed building read: 'Made in the U.S.A.'" Robert Fisk also claims that CIA operatives planted the bomb and that evidence of this is found in an article in "The Washington Post" newspaper. Journalist Robin Wright quotes articles in "The Washington Post" and "The New York Times" as saying that according to the CIA the "Lebanese intelligence personnel and other foreigners had been undergoing CIA training" but that "this was not our [CIA] operation and it was nothing we planned or knew about." "Alarmed U.S. officials subsequently canceled the covert training operation" in Lebanon, according to Wright.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: Shortly after the barracks bombing, President Ronald Reagan appointed a military fact-finding committee headed by retired Admiral Robert L. J. Long to investigate the bombing. The commission's report found senior military officials responsible for security lapses and blamed the military chain of command for the disaster. It suggested that there might have been many fewer deaths if the barracks guards had carried loaded weapons and a barrier more substantial than the barbed wire the bomber drove over easily. The commission also noted that the "prevalent view" among U.S. commanders was that there was a direct link between the navy shelling of the Muslims at Suq-al-Garb and the truck bomb attack.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: Following the bombing and the realization that insurgents could deliver weapons of enormous yield with an ordinary truck or van, the presence of protective barriers (bollards) became common around critical government facilities in the United States and elsewhere, particularly Western civic targets situated overseas.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: A 2009 article in "Foreign Policy" titled "Lesson Unlearned" argues that the U.S. military intervention in the Lebanese Civil War has been downplayed or ignored in popular history – thus unlearned – and that lessons from Lebanon are "unlearned" as the U.S. militarily intervenes elsewhere in the world.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: On October 3 and December 28, 2001, the families of the 241 U.S. peacekeepers who were killed as well as several injured survivors filed civil suits against the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Ministry of Information and Security (MOIS) in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. In their separate complaints, the families and survivors sought a judgment that Iran was responsible for the attack and relief in the form of damages (compensatory and punitive) for wrongful death and common-law claims for battery, assault, and intentional infliction of emotional distress resulting from an act of state-sponsored terrorism.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: Iran (the defendant) was served with the two complaints (one from Deborah D. Peterson, Personal Representative of the Estate of James C. Knipple, et al., the other from Joseph and Marie Boulos, Personal Representatives of the Estate of Jeffrey Joseph Boulos) on May 6 and July 17, 2002. Iran denied responsibility for the attack but did not file any response to the claims of the families. On December 18, 2002, Judge Royce C. Lamberth entered defaults against defendants in both cases.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: On May 30, 2003, Lamberth found Iran legally responsible for providing Hezbollah with financial and logistical support that helped them carry out the attack. Lamberth concluded that the court had personal jurisdiction over the defendants under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, that Hezbollah was formed under the auspices of the Iranian government and was completely reliant on Iran in 1983, and that Hezbollah carried out the attack in conjunction with MOIS agents.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: On September 7, 2007, Lamberth awarded $2,656,944,877 to the plaintiffs. The judgment was divided up among the victims; the largest award was $12 million to Larry Gerlach, who became a paraplegic as a result of a broken neck he suffered in the attack.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: The attorney for the families of the victims uncovered some new information, including a U.S. National Security Agency intercept of a message sent from Iranian intelligence headquarters in Tehran to Hojjat ol-eslam Ali-Akbar Mohtashemi, the Iranian ambassador in Damascus. As it was paraphrased by presiding U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth, "The message directed the Iranian ambassador to contact Hussein Musawi, the leader of the terrorist group Islamic Amal, and to instruct him ... 'to take a spectacular action against the United States Marines.'" Musawi's Islamic Amal was a breakaway faction of the Amal Movement and an autonomous part of embryonic Hezbollah. According to Muhammad Sahimi, high-ranking US officials had a different interpretation from that intercept, which stopped them from ordering a revengeful attack against Iran.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: In July 2012, federal Judge Royce Lamberth ordered Iran to pay more than $813m in damages and interest to the families of the 241 U.S. peacekeepers that were killed, writing in a ruling that Tehran had to be "punished to the fullest extent legally possible... Iran is racking up quite a bill from its sponsorship of terrorism." In April 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that frozen assets of Iran's Central Bank held in the U.S. could be used to pay the compensation to families of the victims.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: Former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky, in his 1990 book "By Way of Deception", has accused the Mossad of knowing the specific time and location of the bombing, but only gave general information to the Americans of the attack, information which was worthless. According to Ostrovsky, then Mossad head Nahum Admoni decided against giving the specific details to the Americans on the grounds that the Mossad's responsibility was to protect Israel's interests, not Americans. Admoni denied having any prior knowledge of the attack. Benny Morris, in his review of Ostrovsky's book, wrote that Ostrovsky was "barely a case officer before he was fired; most of his (brief) time in the agency was spent as a trainee" adding that due to compartmentalization "he did not and could not have had much knowledge of then current Mossad operations, let alone operational history." Benny Morris wrote that the claim regarding the barracks was "odd" and an example of one of Ostrovsky's "wet" stories which were "mostly fabricated."


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: A Beirut Memorial has been established at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, and has been used as the site of annual memorial services for the victims of the attack. A Beirut Memorial Room at the USO in Jacksonville, North Carolina has also been created.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: The Armed Forces Chaplaincy Center, the site of Chaplain Corps training for the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force at Fort Jackson, Columbia, South Carolina, includes the partially destroyed sign from the Beirut barracks chapel as a memorial to those who died in the attack. According to Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff, one of the navy chaplains present during the attack, "Amidst the rubble, we found the plywood board which we had made for our "Peace-keeping Chapel." The Chaplain Corps Seal had been hand-painted, with the words "Peace-keeping" above it, and "Chapel" beneath. Now "Peace-keeping" was legible, but the bottom of the plaque was destroyed, with only a few burned and splintered pieces of wood remaining. The idea of peace – above; the reality of war – below."


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: Other memorials to the victims of the Beirut barracks bombing have been erected in various locations within the U.S., including one at Penn's Landing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Boston, Massachusetts, and one in Florida. Additionally, a Lebanese cedar has been planted in Arlington National Cemetery near the graves of some of the victims of the attack, in their memory. A plaque in the ground in front of the tree, dedicated in a ceremony on the first anniversary of the attack, reads: "Let peace take root: This cedar of Lebanon tree grows in living memory of the Americans killed in the Beirut terrorist attack and all victims of terrorism around the world." The National Museum of the Marine Corps, in Quantico, Virginia, unveiled an exhibit in 2008 in memory of the attack and its victims.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: One memorial to the attack is located outside the U.S., where Gilla Gerzon, the director of the Haifa, Israel USO during the time of the attack coordinated the creation of a memorial park that included 241 olive trees, one for each of the U.S. military personnel who died in the attack. The trees lead to an overpass on Mount Carmel looking toward Beirut.


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: In 2004 it was reported that an Iranian group called the Committee for the Commemoration of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Campaign had erected a monument, at the Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery in Tehran, to commemorate the 1983 bombings and its "martyrs".


title: 1983 Beirut barracks bombings

text: There is also an ongoing effort on the part of Beirut veterans and family members to convince the U.S. Postal Service and Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee to create a stamp in memory of the victims of the attack, but the recommendation has not yet been approved. In the meantime, Beirut veterans have created a "PC Postage" commercially produced Beirut Memorial statue private vendor stamp (with or without the words "They Came in Peace") that is approved for use as postage by the U.S. Postal Service.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: The United States Army Reserve (USAR) is a reserve force of the United States Army. Together, the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard constitute the Army element of the reserve components of the United States Armed Forces.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: Since July 2020, the Chief of the United States Army Reserve is Lieutenant General Jody J. Daniels. The senior enlisted leader of the Army Reserve is Command Sergeant Major Andrew J. Lombardo.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: On 23 April 1908 Congress created the Medical Reserve Corps, the official predecessor of the Army Reserve. After World War I, under the National Defense Act of 1920, Congress reorganized the U.S. land forces by authorizing a Regular Army, a National Guard and an Organized Reserve (Officers Reserve Corps and Enlisted Reserve Corps) of unrestricted size, which later became the Army Reserve. This organization provided a peacetime pool of trained Reserve officers and enlisted men for use in war. The Organized Reserve included the Officers Reserve Corps, Enlisted Reserve Corps and Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC).


title: United States Army Reserve

text: The Organized Reserve infantry divisions raised immediately after World War I generally continued the lineage and geographic area distribution of National Army divisions that had served in the war. They were maintained on paper with all of their officers and one-third of their enlisted men. Units in other arms of the Army besides infantry, most notably cavalry, field artillery and engineers were also formed. Organized Reserve units sometimes maintained relationships with one or several colleges or universities in close proximity, which populated them with officers through the ROTC.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: Service in the Organized Reserve during the interwar period was not as appealing as the Army expected, and suffered because of limited funding that restricted training opportunities. Most divisions reached their full complement of officers, but had less than 100 enlisted men, since there was no incentive for them to serve. The extent of prewar mobilization--"a state neither of war nor of peace"--disrupted the Organized Reserve, and officers were called to active duty individually beginning in 1940 and assigned to Regular Army and National Guard units. When the Organized Reserve was nominally mobilized via presidential order beginning in 1942, "few of the Reserve officers originally assigned to...units were available for duty with them. Consequently, the units as activated bore small resemblance to those of peacetime." The order and timetable in which the Organized Reserve divisions were ordered to active duty was based upon a number of factors, such as the number of World War I battle honors earned, if applicable, the location and availability of training sites, and the ability of the Army to furnish divisional cadres and filler replacements.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: The 101st Infantry Division was designated a division of the Organized Reserve after World War I and assigned to the state of Wisconsin; unlike the 82nd Airborne Division, the Reserve division was disbanded when the 101st Airborne Division was raised in the Army of the United States on 15 August 1942.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: A tentative troop basis for the Organized Reserve Corps (ORC), prepared in March 1946, outlined 25 divisions: three armored, five airborne, and 17 infantry. These divisions and all other Organized Reserve Corps units were to be maintained in one of three strength categories, labeled Class A, Class B, and Class C. Class A units were divided into two groups, one for combat and one for service, and units were to be at required table of organization strength; Class B units were to have their full complement of officers and enlisted cadre strength; and Class C were to have officers only. The troop basis listed nine divisions as Class A, nine as Class B, and seven as Class C.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: Major General Ray E. Porter therefore proposed reclassification of all Class A divisions as Class B units. Eventually the War Department agreed and made the appropriate changes. Although the dispute over Class A units lasted several months, the War Department proceeded with the reorganization of the Organized Reserve Corps divisions during the summer of 1946. That all divisions were to begin as Class C (officers only) units, progressing to the other categories as men and equipment became available, undoubtedly influenced the decision. Also, the War Department wanted to take advantage of the pool of trained reserve officers and enlisted men from World War II. By that time Army Ground Forces had been reorganized as an army group headquarters that commanded six geographic armies. The armies replaced the nine corps areas of the prewar era, and the army commanders were tasked to organize and train both Regular Army and Organized Reserve Corps units.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: The plan the army commanders received called for twenty-five Organized Reserve Corps divisions, but the divisions activated between September 1946 and November 1947 differed somewhat from the original plans. The First United States Army declined to support an airborne division, and the 98th Infantry Division replaced the 98th Airborne Division. After the change, the Organized Reserve Corps had four airborne, three armored, and eighteen infantry divisions. The Second Army insisted upon the number 80 for its airborne unit because the division was to be raised in the prewar 80th Division's area, not that of the 99th. Finally, the 103rd Infantry Division, organized in 1921 in New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona, was moved to Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, and North Dakota in the Fifth United States Army area. The Seventh Army (later replaced by Third Army), allotted the 15th Airborne Division, refused the designation, and the adjutant general replaced it by constituting the 108th Airborne Division, which fell within that component's list of infantry and airborne divisional numbers. Thus the final tally of divisions formed after World War II appears to have been the 19th, 21st, and 22d Armored Divisions; the 80th, 84th, 100th and 108th Airborne Divisions; and the 76th, 77th, 79th, 81st, 83rd, 85th, 87th, 89th, 90th, 91st, 94th, 95th, 96th, 97th, 98th, 102nd, 103rd, and 104th Infantry Divisions.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: A major problem in forming divisions and other units in the Organized Reserve Corps was adequate housing. While many National Guard units owned their own armories, some dating back to the nineteenth century, the Organized Reserve Corps had no facilities for storing equipment and for training. Although the War Department requested funds for needed facilities, Congress moved slowly in response. The Organized Reserves were redesignated 25 March 1948 as the Organized Reserve Corps. Recognizing the importance of the Organized Reserve to the World War II effort, Congress authorized retirement and drill pay for the first time in 1948.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: During the summer and fall of 1951 the six army commanders in the United States, staff agencies, and the Section V Committee (created after World War I for the reserve components to have a voice in their affairs), evaluated Department of the Army reorganization plans for the ORC. The army commanders urged that all divisions in the Organized Reserve Corps be infantry divisions because they believed that the reserves could not adequately support armored and airborne training. They thought thirteen, rather than twelve, reserve divisions should be maintained to provide a better geographic distribution of the units. The Section V Committee opposed the reduction of the Organized Reserve Corps from twenty-five to thirteen divisions because it feared unfavorable publicity, particularly with the nation at war. On 20 December the Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Army, General John E. Hull, directed the reorganization and redesignation of airborne and armored divisions as infantry as soon as practicable. In March 1952 the 80th, 84th, 100th, and 108th Airborne Divisions were reorganized and redesignated as infantry divisions, and the 63d, 70th, and 75th Infantry Divisions replaced the 13th, 21st, and 22d Armored Divisions.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: Before the dust had settled on the reforms, the Army realized that it had failed to improve unit manning or meet reasonable mobilization requirements. In the fall of 1952 Army leaders thus proposed that the personnel from the thirteen inactivated Army Reserve divisions be assigned to strengthen the remaining twelve divisions. To keep the unneeded fifteen Army Reserve divisions active, they were to be reorganized as training divisions to staff training centers upon mobilization or man maneuver area commands for training troops. The continental army commanders implemented the new Army Reserve troop basis in 1955 piecemeal. They reorganized, without approved tables of organization, the 70th, 76th, 78th, 80th, 84th, 85th, 89th, 91st, 95th, 98th, 100th, and 108th Infantry Divisions as cadre for replacement training centers and organized the 75th "Maneuver Area Command" using the resources of the 75th Infantry Division. Two years later the 75th Infantry Division was inactivated along with 87th Infantry Division. Assets of the 87th were used to organize a maneuver area command; thus one unneeded division remained in the troop basis.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: While the Korean War was still underway, Congress began making significant changes in the structure and role of the Army Reserve. These changes transformed the Organized Reserve into the United States Army Reserve, from 9 July 1952. This new organization was divided into a Ready Reserve, Standby Reserve, and Retired Reserve. Army Reserve units were authorized twenty-four inactive duty training days a year and up to seventeen days of active duty (called annual training).


title: United States Army Reserve

text: In 1959 the Army decided to realign National Guard and Army Reserve divisions under Pentomic structures. Secretary of Defense Neil H. McElroy decided on 10 Army Reserve divisions. By October 1959 ten Army Reserve infantry divisions completed their transition, but at a reduced strength. The eleventh combat division in the Army Reserve, the 104th, was converted to training, for a total of thirteen training divisions, all of which were in the Army Reserve.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: To reorganize the Army Reserve to the new ROAD structures in the early 1960s, the Army Staff decided to retain one Army Reserve division in each of the six Army areas and to eliminate four divisions. Army commanders selected the 63d, 77th, 81st, 83d, 90th, and 102d Infantry Divisions for retention and reorganized them under ROAD by the end of April 1963. Each division had two tank and six infantry battalions.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: With the elimination of the 79th, 94th, 96th, and 103d Infantry Divisions, the Army decided to retain their headquarters as a way to preserve spaces for general and field grade officers. It reorganized the units as operational headquarters (subsequently called command headquarters [division]) and directed them to supervise the training of combat and support units located in the former divisional areas and to provide for their administrative support. Some former divisional units assigned to the four divisions were used to organize four brigades, which added flexibility to the force as well as provided four general officer reserve billets. In January and February 1963 the 157th, 187th, 191st, and 205th Infantry Brigades were organized with headquarters in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Montana, and Minnesota, respectively. The designation of each brigade was derived from the lowest numbered infantry brigade associated with the division under the square structure. As with the Regular Army brigades, the number and type of maneuver elements in each Army Reserve brigade varied.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: In November 1965, a long-standing controversial goal of the Defense Department, a reduction of the reserve troop basis, was achieved. Those reserve units that were judged unnecessary and others that were undermanned and underequipped were deleted and their assets used to field contingency forces. Among the units inactivated were the last six combat divisions in the Army Reserve, the 63d, 77th, 81st, 83d, 90th, and 102d Infantry Divisions, and the 79th, 94th, and 96th Command Headquarters (Division). The 103d Command Headquarters (Division) was converted to a support brigade headquarters.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: A number of U.S. Army Reserve corps headquarters were disestablished on 31 March 1968. They were reorganized as Army Reserve Commands.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: In 1980, the peacetime USAR chain of command was overlaid with a wartime trace. In an expansion of the roundout and affiliation programs begun ten years earlier, CAPSTONE purported to align every Army Reserve unit with the active and reserve component units with which they were anticipated to deploy. Units maintained lines of communication with the units – often hundreds or thousands of miles away in peacetime – who would presumably serve above or below them in the event of mobilization. This communication, in some cases, extended to coordinated annual training opportunities.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: Despite the commonly held belief that CAPSTONE traces were set in stone, the process of selecting units to mobilize and deploy in 1990 and 1991 in support of Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm frequently ignored CAPSTONE.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: In the post-Cold War draw-down, all of the Army Reserve's combat units were disbanded, except the 100th Battalion, 442nd Infantry Regiment. This meant the disestablishment of the three remaining Army Reserve fighting brigades: the 157th Infantry Brigade (Mechanized) (Separate) of Pennsylvania, the 187th Infantry Brigade (Separate) of Massachusetts, and the 205th Infantry Brigade (Separate) (Light) of Minnesota. Many of the Army Reserve training divisions were realigned as institutional training divisions.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: With the Army National Guard providing reserve component combat formations and related combat support units, the Army Reserve is configured to provide combat support, combat service support, peacekeeping, nation-building and civil support capability. With roughly twenty percent of the Army's organized units and 5.3 percent of the Army's budget, the Army Reserve provides about half of the Army's combat support and a quarter of the Army's mobilization base expansion capability.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: Reserve Component (RC) Soldiers mainly perform part-time duties as opposed to the full-time (active duty) Soldiers, but rotate through mobilizations to full-time duty. When not on active duty, RC Soldiers typically perform training and service one weekend per month, currently referred to as Battle Assembly, and for two continuous weeks at a time during the year referred to as Annual Training (AT). Many RC Soldiers are organized into Army Reserve troop program units (TPU), while others serve in active Army units as Individual Mobilization Augmentees (IMA), or are in non-drilling control groups of the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR). Soldiers may also serve on active duty in an Active Guard/Reserve (AGR) status in support of the United States Army Reserve (USAR) mission or through Active Duty Operational Support (ADOS) and Contingency Operations-Active Duty Operational Support (CO-ADOS) missions.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: All United States Army Soldiers sign an initial eight-year service contract upon entry into the military. Occasionally, the contract specifies that some of the service will be in the Regular Army (also called Active Component/AC) for two, three, or four-year periods; with the remaining obligation served in the RC. Though typically, Soldiers sign contracts specifying that all eight years be served in the RC, with the first 6 years in drilling status and the last 2 years in a non-drilling IRR status.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: Soldiers entering directly into the U.S. Army Reserve nevertheless encompasses a period of initial entry training (IET). The amount of time begins with approximately 9 weeks of Basic Combat Training (BCT), but total IET time varies according to the enlistee's elected Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) which dictates Advanced Individual Training (AIT). All U.S. Army Reserve Soldiers are subject to mobilization throughout the term of their enlistment. Soldiers who, after completing the AC portion of their enlistment contract choose not to re-enlist on active duty, are automatically transferred to the RC to complete the remainder of their Statutory Obligation (eight-year service total) and may be served in a drilling Troop Program Unit (TPU), Individual mobilization Augmentee (IMA), or Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) status.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: Non-commissioned officers of the rank of Staff Sergeant (E-6) and above will reenlist for an indefinite status after they have served for 12 years of service or more.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: A significant portion of many unit types and specializations exist in the Army Reserve. Some unique enabling units only exist in the Army Reserve.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: Army Reserve Headquarters - Fort Bragg (formerly United States Army Reserve Command (USARC)) located at Fort Bragg, North Carolina


title: United States Army Reserve

text: The Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) consists of individuals who are active reservists but not assigned to a particular Active Reserve Unit. Members of the IRR are encouraged to take advantage of training opportunities and are eligible for promotion provided all requirements are met.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: The Retired Reserve consists of soldiers who have retired from either the active or reserve components of the Army but have not reached the age of 60.


title: United States Army Reserve

text: The Army of the United States (AUS) is the official name for the conscripted force of the Army that may be raised at the discretion of the United States Congress, often at time of war or mobilization for war. The Army of the United States was first established in 1940 and its last use of the AUS was in 1974. The predecessors of the AUS were the National Army during World War I and the Volunteer Army during the American Civil War and Spanish–American War.


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: Alexandra Shân "Tiggy" Pettifer (née Legge-Bourke; born 1 April 1965) is a British former nanny and companion to Prince William and Prince Harry. She was a personal assistant to Charles III (then Prince of Wales) from 1993 to 1999. She has used her married name since her marriage to Charles Pettifer in 1999.


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: Legge-Bourke is the daughter of William Legge-Bourke (1939–2009), who served in the Royal Horse Guards. After taking a degree at Magdalene College, Cambridge, her father then became a merchant banker at Kleinwort Benson and was deputy lieutenant of Powys from 1997 until his death. Legge-Bourke's mother, Dame Shân Legge-Bourke (born 1943), was the only child of Wilfred Bailey, 3rd Baron Glanusk (1891–1948), a soldier who became a colonel in the Grenadier Guards and also served as Lord Lieutenant of Brecknockshire. When Shân Bailey's father died in 1948, she and her mother inherited his estate at Glanusk Park, near Crickhowell in Powys, while his peerage went to a cousin. Shân Legge-Bourke was appointed a lady-in-waiting to the Princess Royal in 1987, was High Sheriff of Powys in 1991, and was the Lord Lieutenant of Powys until 2018.


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: Tiggy Legge-Bourke's paternal grandfather, Sir Harry Legge-Bourke (1914–1973), was a member of parliament for the Isle of Ely from 1945 until 1973 and was chairman of the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers. His death in 1973 led to a by-election won by the Liberal Clement Freud.


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: She is a cousin of the public relations executive and television personality Eleanor Legge-Bourke, a contestant of "Nice People" in 2003, which is a French Television version of the show "Big Brother".


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: Brought up at Glanusk Park, a estate in Wales, Tiggy Legge-Bourke was educated at Heathfield School, Ascot, which she left with four O-levels, and the Institut Alpin Videmanette at Rougemont in Switzerland, a finishing school also attended by Diana, Princess of Wales.


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: She has a sister and a brother, Zara and Harry. In 1985 Zara (b. 1966) married Captain Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, known as Richard Drax: Princess Anne's daughter Zara was a bridesmaid. The marriage ended in divorce in 1997. They had two daughters. She married for a second time in 2003 (as his 2nd wife) Angus Gordon Lennox, of the dukes of Richmond, and now lives at Gordon Castle. (Her first husband Richard Drax, now an MP, remarried twice and has had two more children.)


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: Legge-Bourke's brother Harry, born in 1972, was a Page of Honour to Queen Elizabeth II between 1985 and 1987 and became an officer in the Welsh Guards. He married Iona Maclean in 2000, and had one son (Lachlan or Lochy, b. 2003, now a Page of Honour like his father, grand-uncle and great-grandfather) and one daughter. Lachlan was part of the Queen's entourage at the 2016 State Opening of Parliament.


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: In 1966, Legge-Bourke's grandmother Margaret Glenusk, widowed in 1948, married secondly William Sidney, 1st Viscount De L'Isle VC KG, who had been Governor-General of Australia from 1961 until 1965. He thus became step-grandfather to the Legge-Bourke children until his death in 1991.


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: After leaving school, Legge-Bourke took a nursery teacher training course at the St Nicholas Montessori Centre in London. She then taught for a year in Balham before leaving to set up her own nursery school in Battersea, called Mrs Tiggywinkle's.


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: In 1993, shortly after Charles, Prince of Wales, and his wife, Diana, Princess of Wales had separated, Charles hired Legge-Bourke as nanny to their two sons. As the royal nanny, she soon began to make headlines. Early controversy came when she said scornfully of the Princess of Wales's attitude towards her sons: "I give them what they need at this stage, fresh air, a rifle and a horse. She gives them a tennis racket and a bucket of popcorn at the movies". It was also considered to be a gaffe when Legge-Bourke referred to William and Harry as "my babies".


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: She often went with the princes on holidays. A heavy smoker, she was said to be able to smoke even while skiing, and was criticized by Diana for smoking near her sons. In 1996, at the age of thirteen, Prince William, avoiding a difficult choice, asked both of his parents not to attend Eton's Fourth of June celebrations, the high point of the school's year. However, they were both reported to be taken aback when he invited Legge-Bourke to attend in their place.


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: Early in 1997, she resigned, but she returned to the royal household only a few months later. On 18 July 1997, while out of Charles's service, she attended the fiftieth-birthday party he threw for Camilla Parker Bowles in Gloucestershire.


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: She helped to comfort the princes after their mother's death in a road accident in Paris on 31 August 1997.


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: There was anger in 1998 when Legge-Bourke allowed the young princes to abseil down the fifty-metre dam of Grwyne Fawr Reservoir in Wales without safety lines or helmets. Staff at St James's Palace mounted an inquiry, and Legge-Bourke was reported to have been saved only by the princes' adoration of her. The press predicted time and again that Legge-Bourke was about to be sacked, but this never happened.


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: On 9 December 1992, prime minister John Major announced in the House of Commons that Charles, Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales, were to separate but had no plans to divorce. At the time, Diana was convinced that Charles loved only Camilla Parker Bowles.


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: As early as October 1993, Diana was writing to Paul Burrell that she believed her husband was now in love with Legge-Bourke and wanted to marry her. On 3 December 1993, Diana announced that she had decided to withdraw from public life.


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: Legge-Bourke later admitted having had a "schoolgirl crush" on Charles, who had been a frequent visitor to her family's estate. Diana's biographer, Lady Colin Campbell, commented that "Charles is only interested in her as an uncle is interested in a younger niece."


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: On 20 November 1995, a television interview with the Princess of Wales by Martin Bashir was broadcast by the BBC. There was no mention of Legge-Bourke. However, on 24 January 1996, newspapers named Diana as the source of an untrue rumour circulated in November and December 1995 that Legge-Bourke had become pregnant by Charles and had had an abortion. The rumours were apparently spread by Bashir as a means to gain an interview with the princess. It was reported that words had been exchanged between Diana and Legge-Bourke on the matter at a party on 14 December 1995, when Diana had said to her "So sorry about the baby", and an "informed source" was quoted as saying "The Queen was absolutely furious and totally in sympathy with Tiggy." On 18 December 1995, Legge-Bourke, with the Queen's agreement, instructed the libel lawyer Peter Carter-Ruck to write to Diana's solicitors demanding an apology, asking that the accusation be "recognised to be totally untrue".


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: On 22 January 1996, shortly before the story of the unfounded abortion allegation was published, Diana's private secretary Patrick Jephson resigned, as did his assistant Nicole Cockell the next day. Jephson later wrote that Diana had "exulted in accusing Legge-Bourke of having had an abortion".


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: Jealous of her sons' affection for the woman who cared for them, Diana became more hostile towards Legge-Bourke, asking that she leave the room while Diana was talking to her sons on the telephone. In February 1996, newspapers published a letter from Diana to Charles in which she asked that "Miss Legge-Bourke not spend unnecessary time in the children's rooms... read to them at night, nor supervise their bathtime."


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: Charles and Diana's divorce was made absolute on 28 August 1996. One year later, Diana died in a road accident in Paris on 31 August 1997. Much later, Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington headed Operation Paget, an inquiry into the accident which reported its findings on 14 December 2006. According to the report, Diana feared that both she and Camilla Parker Bowles were the victims of a plot intended to make it possible for the Prince of Wales to marry a third woman.


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: As journalists digested Lord Stevens's report, they looked with a fresh eye at the conspiracy theories the report had demolished and tried to construct another out of Charles's supposed love for Legge-Bourke.


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: The story resurfaced again when the British inquest into the deaths of Diana and Dodi Fayed began at the Royal Courts of Justice in London on 2 October 2007, headed by Lord Justice Scott Baker sitting as a coroner. On 6 October 2007, the judge was reported as telling the court that in the evidence of Lord Mishcon, Diana's solicitor, Diana had told him that "Camilla was not really Charles's lover, but a decoy for his real favourite, the nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke".


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: In December 2007, witnesses at the inquest were questioned about a letter to Paul Burrell from the Princess dating from October 1993, of which only redacted versions had previously been public. In this letter, the Princess of Wales had written:


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: On 7 January 2008, Diana's friend Rodney Turner, giving evidence to the inquest, described his shock at seeing the contents of Diana's letter to Burrell, but on 15 January 2008, Maggie Rea, a lawyer in the firm headed by Lord Mishcon (who died in January 2006), gave evidence to the inquest about Diana's fears to much the same effect as the letter, based on a note Mishcon had left on his file and on a meeting Rea and a colleague had had with Mishcon in October 1995.


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: In what is called 'the Mishcon note', which dates from 1995, Diana forecast that in 1996 the Queen would abdicate, the Prince of Wales would discard Parker Bowles in favour of Legge-Bourke, and that she would herself die in a planned road crash. Before he died, Mishcon copied the note to the Metropolitan Police, who took no action on it.


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: On 7 October 2007, the journalist Jasper Gerard mocked the 'conspiracy theorists' promoting ever-stranger notions of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales:


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: In September 2021, Legge-Bourke was offered significant damages by the BBC after an investigation into how the 1995 interview was obtained and amid reports that Martin Bashir himself had provided Diana with a faked abortion "receipt" which led Diana to believe that Legge-Bourke had become pregnant following an affair with Prince Charles.


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: On 21 July 2022, the BBC in a High Court public apology to Legge-Bourke, in London, stated, "The BBC accepts that the allegations made against the claimant were wholly baseless, should never have been made, and that the BBC did not, at the time, adequately investigate serious concerns over the circumstances in which the BBC secured the "Panorama" interview with Diana, Princess of Wales." The BBC will pay substantial damages and legal costs to the claimant.


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: In October 1999 she married Charles Pettifer, a former Coldstream Guards officer, with two sons from a previous marriage, commenting to the press "He is magic". She pointedly did not invite Camilla Parker Bowles to her wedding, apparently as Camilla had been an adversary, and had once referred to Legge-Bourke as "the hired help". Princes William and Harry attended the wedding, but Charles said he had a prior engagement.


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: Legge-Bourke and Pettifer had a brief romance while they were teenagers at school in the 1980s (she at Heathfield, he at Eton). They stayed friends while he was married to Camilla Wyatt, and Legge-Bourke was godmother to one of their sons. Until May 1997, Pettifer was company secretary and a director of Unique Security Consultants Ltd., providing former Special Air Service officers as bodyguards. He then became chief executive of Rapport Research and Analysis Ltd, supplying companies with former SAS officers for protection work.


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: In recent years, Pettifer has developed a farmhouse bed and breakfast business at Ty'r Chanter, near Crickhowell on the Glanusk estate, billed as 'The Tiggy Experience'.


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: In April 2006, she attended the Sovereign's Parade at Sandhurst for Prince Harry's passing out as an officer of the Blues and Royals. In November 2006, the Prince of Wales was reported to be a regular visitor to Pettifer and her family in Powys.


title: Tiggy Legge-Bourke

text: Tiggy and Charles Pettifer were two of the one hundred and fifty guests invited to Camilla's sixtieth birthday party on 21 July 2007. Tiggy Pettifer also attended the service of thanksgiving for the sixtieth anniversary of the wedding of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh at Westminster Abbey on 19 November 2007.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Cirrus (cloud classification symbol: Ci) is a genus of high cloud made of ice crystals. Cirrus clouds typically appear delicate and wispy with white strands. Cirrus are usually formed when warm, dry air rises, causing water vapor deposition onto rocky or metallic dust particles at high altitudes. Globally, they form anywhere between above sea level, with the higher elevations usually in the tropics and the lower elevations in more polar regions.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Cirrus clouds can form from the tops of thunderstorms and tropical cyclones and sometimes predict the arrival of rain or storms. Although they are a sign that rain and maybe storms are on the way, cirrus themselves drop no more than falling streaks of ice crystals. These crystals dissipate, melt, and evaporate as they fall through warmer and drier air and never reach ground. Cirrus clouds warm the earth, potentially contributing to climate change. A warming earth will likely produce more cirrus clouds, potentially resulting in a self-reinforcing loop.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Optical phenomena, such as sun dogs and halos, can be produced by light interacting with ice crystals in cirrus clouds. There are two other high-level cirrus-like clouds called cirrostratus and cirrocumulus. Cirrostratus looks like a sheet of cloud, whereas cirrocumulus looks like a pattern of small cloud tufts. Unlike cirrus and cirrostratus, cirrocumulus clouds contain droplets of supercooled (below freezing point) water.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Cirrus clouds form in the atmospheres of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune; and on Titan, one of Saturn's larger moons. Some of these extraterrestrial cirrus clouds are made of ammonia or methane ice, much like water ice in cirrus on Earth. Some interstellar clouds, made of grains of dust smaller than a thousandth of a millimeter, are also called "cirrus".


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Cirrus are wispy clouds made of long strands of ice crystals that are described as feathery, hair-like, or layered in appearance. First defined scientifically by Luke Howard in an 1803 paper, their name is derived from the Latin word "cirrus", meaning 'curl' or 'fringe'. They are transparent, meaning that the Sun can be seen through them. Ice crystals in the clouds cause them to usually appear white, but the rising or setting Sun can color them various shades of yellow or red. At dusk, they can appear gray.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Cirrus comes in five visually-distinct species: castellanus, fibratus, floccus, spissatus, and uncinus:


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Cirrus clouds often produce hair-like filaments called fall streaks, made of heavier ice crystals that fall from the cloud. These are similar to the virga produced in liquid–water clouds. The sizes and shapes of fall streaks are determined by the wind shear.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Cirrus cloud cover varies diurnally. During the day, cirrus cloud cover drops, and during the night, it increases. Based on CALIPSO satellite data, cirrus covers an average of 31% to 32% of the Earth's surface. Cirrus cloud cover varies wildly by location, with some parts of the tropics reaching up to 70% cirrus cloud cover. Polar regions, on the other hand, have significantly less cirrus cloud cover, with some areas having a yearly average of only around 10% coverage. These percentages treat clear days and nights, as well as days and nights with other cloud types, as lack of cirrus cloud cover.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Cirrus clouds are usually formed as warm, dry air rises, causing water vapor to undergo deposition onto rocky or metallic dust particles at high altitudes. The average cirrus cloud altitude increases as latitude decreases, but the altitude is always capped by the tropopause. These conditions commonly occur at the leading edge of a warm front. Because absolute humidity is low at such high altitudes, this genus tends to be fairly transparent. Cirrus clouds can also form inside fallstreak holes (also called "cavum").


title: Cirrus cloud

text: At latitudes of 65° N or S, close to polar regions, cirrus clouds form, on average, only above sea level. In temperate regions, at roughly 45° N or S, their average altitude increases to above sea level. In tropical regions, at roughly 5° N or S, cirrus clouds form above sea level on average. Across the globe, cirrus clouds can form anywhere from above sea level. Cirrus clouds form with a vast range of thicknesses. They can be as little as from top to bottom to as thick as . Cirrus cloud thickness is usually somewhere between those two extremes, with an average thickness of .


title: Cirrus cloud

text: The jet stream, a high-level wind band, can stretch cirrus clouds long enough to cross continents. Jet streaks, bands of faster-moving air in the jet stream, can create arcs of cirrus cloud hundreds of kilometers long.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Cirrus cloud formation may be effected by organic aerosols (particles produced by plants) acting as additional nucleation points for ice crystal formation. However, research suggests that cirrus clouds more commonly form on rocky or metallic particles rather than on organic ones.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Sheets of cirrus clouds commonly fan out from the eye walls of tropical cyclones. (The eye wall is the ring of storm clouds surrounding the eye of a tropical cyclone.) A large shield of cirrus and cirrostratus typically accompanies the high altitude outflowing winds of tropical cyclones, and these can make the underlying bands of rain—and sometimes even the eye—difficult to detect in satellite photographs.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Thunderstorms can form dense cirrus at their tops. As the cumulonimbus cloud in a thunderstorm grows vertically, the liquid water droplets freeze when the air temperature reaches the freezing point. The anvil cloud takes its shape because the temperature inversion at the tropopause prevents the warm, moist air forming the thunderstorm from rising any higher, thus creating the flat top. In the tropics, these thunderstorms occasionally produce copious amounts of cirrus from their anvils. High-altitude winds commonly push this dense mat out into an anvil shape that stretches downwind as much as several kilometers.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Individual cirrus cloud formations can be the remnants of anvil clouds formed by thunderstorms. In the dissipating stage of a cumulonimbus cloud, when the normal column rising up to the anvil has evaporated or dissipated, the mat of cirrus in the anvil is all that is left.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Contrails are an artificial type of cirrus cloud formed when water vapor from the exhaust of a jet engine condenses on particles, which come from either the surrounding air or the exhaust itself, and freezes, leaving behind a visible trail. The exhaust can trigger the formation of cirrus by providing ice nuclei when there is an insufficient naturally-occurring supply in the atmosphere. One of the environmental impacts of aviation is that persistent contrails can form into large mats of cirrus, and increased air traffic has been implicated as one possible cause of the increasing frequency and amount of cirrus in Earth's atmosphere.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Random, isolated cirrus do not have any particular significance. A large number of cirrus clouds can be a sign of an approaching frontal system or upper air disturbance. The appearance of cirrus signals a change in weather—usually more stormy—in the near future. If the cloud is a "cirrus castellanus", there might be instability at the high altitude level. When the clouds deepen and spread, especially when they are of the "cirrus radiatus" variety or "cirrus fibratus" species, this usually indicates an approaching weather front. If it is a warm front, the cirrus clouds spread out into cirrostratus, which then thicken and lower into altocumulus and altostratus. The next set of clouds are the rain-bearing nimbostratus clouds. When cirrus clouds precede a cold front, squall line or multicellular thunderstorm, it is because they are blown off the anvil, and the next to arrive are the cumulonimbus clouds. Kelvin-Helmholtz waves indicate extreme wind shear at high levels. When a jet streak creates a large arc of cirrus, weather conditions may be right for the development of winter storms.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Within the tropics, 36 hours prior to the center passage of a tropical cyclone, a veil of white cirrus clouds approaches from the direction of the cyclone. In the mid- to late-19th century, forecasters used these cirrus veils to predict the arrival of hurricanes. In the early 1870s the president of Belén College in Havana, Father Benito Viñes, developed the first hurricane forecasting system; he mainly used the motion of these clouds in formulating his predictions. He would observe the clouds hourly from 4:00 am to 10:00 pm. After accumulating enough information, Viñes began accurately predicting the paths of hurricanes; he summarized his observations in his book "Apuntes Relativos a los Huracanes de las Antilles", published in English as "Practical Hints in Regard to West Indian Hurricanes".


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Cirrus clouds cover up to 25% of the Earth (up to 70% in the tropics at night) and have a net heating effect. When they are thin and translucent, the clouds efficiently absorb outgoing infrared radiation while only marginally reflecting the incoming sunlight. When cirrus clouds are thick, they reflect only around 9% of the incoming sunlight, but they prevent almost 50% of the outgoing infrared radiation from escaping, thus raising the temperature of the atmosphere beneath the clouds by an average of 10 °C (18 °F)—a process known as the greenhouse effect. Averaged worldwide, cloud formation results in a temperature loss of 5 °C (9 °F) at the earth's surface, mainly the result of stratocumulus clouds.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Cirrus clouds are likely becoming more common due to climate change. As their greenhouse effect is stronger than their reflection of sunlight, this would act as a self-reinforcing feedback. Metallic particles from human sources act as additional nucleation seeds, potentially increasing cirrus cloud cover and thus contributing further to climate change. Aircraft in the upper troposphere can create contrail cirrus clouds if local weather conditions are right. These contrails contribute to climate change.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Cirrus cloud thinning has been proposed as a possible geoengineering approach to reduce climate damage due to carbon dioxide. Cirrus cloud thinning would involve injecting particles into the upper troposphere to reduce the amount of cirrus clouds. The 2021 IPCC Assessment Report expressed low confidence in the cooling effect of cirrus cloud thinning, due to limited understanding.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Scientists have studied the properties of cirrus using several different methods. Lidar (laser-based radar) gives highly accurate information on the cloud's altitude, length, and width. Balloon-carried hygrometers measure the humidity of the cirrus cloud but are not accurate enough to measure the depth of the cloud. Radar units give information on the altitudes and thicknesses of cirrus clouds. Another data source is satellite measurements from the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment program. These satellites measure where infrared radiation is absorbed in the atmosphere, and if it is absorbed at cirrus altitudes, then it is assumed that there are cirrus clouds in that location. NASA's Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer gives information on the cirrus cloud cover by measuring reflected infrared radiation of various specific frequencies during the day. During the night, it determines cirrus cover by detecting the Earth's infrared emissions. The cloud reflects this radiation back to the ground, thus enabling satellites to see the "shadow" it casts into space. Visual observations from aircraft or the ground provide additional information about cirrus clouds. Particle Analysis by Laser Mass Spectrometry (PALMS) is used to identify the type of nucleation seeds that spawned the ice crystals in a cirrus cloud.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Cirrus clouds have an average ice crystal concentration of 300,000 ice crystals per 10 cubic meters (270,000 ice crystals per 10 cubic yards). The concentration ranges from as low as 1 ice crystal per 10 cubic meters to as high as 100 million ice crystals per 10 cubic meters (just under 1 ice crystal per 10 cubic yards to 77 million ice crystals per 10 cubic yards), a difference of eight orders of magnitude. The size of each ice crystal is typically 0.25 millimeters, but they range from as short as 0.01 millimeters up to several millimeters. The ice crystals in contrails can be much smaller than those in naturally-occurring cirrus cloud, being around 0.001 millimeters to 0.1 millimeters in length.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: In addition to forming in different sizes, the ice crystals in cirrus clouds can crystallize in different shapes: solid columns, hollow columns, plates, rosettes, and conglomerations of the various other types. The shape of the ice crystals is determined by the air temperature, atmospheric pressure, and ice supersaturation (the amount by which the relative humidity exceeds 100%). Cirrus in temperate regions typically have the various ice crystal shapes separated by type. The columns and plates concentrate near the top of the cloud, whereas the rosettes and conglomerations concentrate near the base. In the northern Arctic region, cirrus clouds tend to be composed of only the columns, plates, and conglomerations, and these crystals tend to be at least four times larger than the minimum size. In Antarctica, cirrus are usually composed of only columns which are much longer than normal.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Cirrus clouds are usually colder than . At temperatures above , most cirrus clouds have relative humidities of roughly 100% (that is they are saturated). Cirrus can supersaturate, with relative humidities over ice that can exceed 200%. Below there are more of both undersaturated and supersaturated cirrus clouds. The more supersaturated clouds are probably young cirrus.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Cirrus clouds can produce several optical effects like halos around the Sun and Moon. Halos are caused by interaction of the light with hexagonal ice crystals present in the clouds which, depending on their shape and orientation, can result in a wide variety of white and colored rings, arcs and spots in the sky, including sun dogs, the 46° halo, the 22° halo, and circumhorizontal arcs. Circumhorizontal arcs are only visible when the Sun rises higher than 58° above the horizon, preventing observers at higher latitudes from ever being able to see them.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: More rarely, cirrus clouds are capable of producing glories, more commonly associated with liquid water-based clouds such as stratus. A glory is a set of concentric, faintly-colored glowing rings that appear around the shadow of the observer, and are best observed from a high viewpoint or from a plane. Cirrus clouds only form glories when the constituent ice crystals are aspherical; researchers suggest that the ice crystals must be between 0.009 millimeters and 0.015 millimeters in length for a glory to appear.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Cirrus clouds are one of three different genera of high-level clouds, all of which are given the prefix "cirro-". The other two genera are cirrocumulus and cirrostratus. High-level clouds usually form above . Cirrocumulus and cirrostratus are sometimes informally referred to as "cirriform clouds" because of their frequent association with cirrus.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: In the intermediate range, from , are the mid-level clouds, which are given the prefix "alto-". They comprise two genera, altostratus and altocumulus. These clouds are formed from ice crystals, supercooled water droplets, or liquid water droplets.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Low-level clouds usually form below and do not have a prefix. The two genera that are strictly low-level are stratus, and stratocumulus. These clouds are composed of water droplets, except during winter when they are formed of supercooled water droplets or ice crystals if the temperature at cloud level is below freezing. Three additional genera usually form in the low-altitude range, but may be based at higher levels under conditions of very low humidity. They are the genera cumulus, and cumulonimbus, and nimbostratus. These are sometimes classified separately as clouds of vertical development, especially when their tops are high enough to be composed of supercooled water droplets or ice crystals.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Cirrocumulus clouds form in sheets or patches and do not cast shadows. They commonly appear in regular, rippling patterns or in rows of clouds with clear areas between. Cirrocumulus are, like other members of the cumuliform category, formed via convective processes. Significant growth of these patches indicates high-altitude instability and can signal the approach of poorer weather. The ice crystals in the bottoms of cirrocumulus clouds tend to be in the form of hexagonal cylinders. They are not solid, but instead tend to have stepped funnels coming in from the ends. Towards the top of the cloud, these crystals have a tendency to clump together. These clouds do not last long, and they tend to change into cirrus because as the water vapor continues to deposit on the ice crystals, they eventually begin to fall, destroying the upward convection. The cloud then dissipates into cirrus. Cirrocumulus clouds come in four species: "stratiformis", "lenticularis", "castellanus", and "floccus". They are iridescent when the constituent supercooled water droplets are all about the same size.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Cirrostratus clouds can appear as a milky sheen in the sky or as a striated sheet. They are sometimes similar to altostratus and are distinguishable from the latter because the Sun or Moon is always clearly visible through transparent cirrostratus, in contrast to altostratus which tends to be opaque or translucent. Cirrostratus come in two species, "fibratus" and "nebulosus". The ice crystals in these clouds vary depending upon the height in the cloud. Towards the bottom, at temperatures of around , the crystals tend to be long, solid, hexagonal columns. Towards the top of the cloud, at temperatures of around , the predominant crystal types are thick, hexagonal plates and short, solid, hexagonal columns. These clouds commonly produce halos, and sometimes the halo is the only indication that such clouds are present. They are formed by warm, moist air being lifted slowly to a very high altitude. When a warm front approaches, cirrostratus clouds become thicker and descend forming altostratus clouds, and rain usually begins 12 to 24 hours later.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Cirrus clouds have been observed on several other planets. In 2008, the Martian Lander "Phoenix" took a time-lapse photograph of a group of cirrus clouds moving across the Martian sky using lidar. Near the end of its mission, the Phoenix Lander detected more thin clouds close to the north pole of Mars. Over the course of several days, they thickened, lowered, and eventually began snowing. The total precipitation was only a few thousandths of a millimeter. James Whiteway from York University concluded that "precipitation is a component of the [Martian] hydrologic cycle". These clouds formed during the Martian night in two layers, one around above ground and the other at surface level. They lasted through early morning before being burned away by the Sun. The crystals in these clouds were formed at a temperature of , and they were shaped roughly like ellipsoids 0.127 millimeters long and 0.042 millimeters wide.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: On Jupiter, cirrus clouds are composed of ammonia. When Jupiter's South Equatorial Belt disappeared, one hypothesis put forward by Glenn Orten was that a large quantity of ammonia cirrus clouds had formed above it, hiding it from view. NASA's Cassini probe detected these clouds on Saturn and thin water-ice cirrus on Saturn's moon Titan. Cirrus clouds composed of methane ice exist on Uranus. On Neptune, thin wispy clouds which could possibly be cirrus have been detected over the Great Dark Spot. As on Uranus, these are probably methane crystals.


title: Cirrus cloud

text: Interstellar cirrus clouds are composed of tiny dust grains smaller than a micrometer and are therefore not true cirrus clouds, which are composed of frozen crystals. They range from a few light years to dozens of light years across. While they are not technically cirrus clouds, the dust clouds are referred to as "cirrus" because of their similarity to the clouds on Earth. They emit infrared radiation, similar to the way cirrus clouds on Earth reflect heat being radiated out into space.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: A cutter is a type of watercraft. The term has several meanings. It can apply to the rig (or sailplan) of a sailing vessel (but with regional differences in definition), to a governmental enforcement agency vessel (such as a coast guard or border force cutter), to a type of ship's boat which can be used under sail or oars, or, historically, to a type of fast-sailing vessel introduced in the 18th century, some of which were used as small warships.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: As a sailing rig, a cutter is a single-masted boat, with two or more headsails. On the eastern side of the Atlantic, the two headsails on a single mast is the fullest extent of the modern definition. In U.S. waters, a greater level of complexity applies, with the placement of the mast and the rigging details of the bowsprit taken into account so a boat with two headsails may be classed as a sloop.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: Government agencies use the term "cutter" for vessels employed in patrolling their territorial waters and other enforcement activities. This terminology is derived from the sailing cutters which had this sort of role from the 18th century to the end of the 19th century. (See below.) Whilst the details vary from country to country, generally these are small ships that can remain at sea for extended periods and in all usual weather conditions. Many, but not all, are armed. Uses include control of a country's borders and preventing smuggling.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: Cutters as ship's boats came into use in the early 18th century (dating which roughly coincides with the decked sailing vessels described below). These were clinker-built open boats which were fitted for propulsion by both oar and sail. They were more optimised for sailing than the barges and pinnaces that were types of ship's boat used in the Royal Navy one distinctive resulting feature of this was the washstrake added to increase the freeboard. It was pierced with rowlock cut-outs for the oars, so that the thwarts did not need to be set unusually high to achieve the right geometry for efficient use.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: Cutters, as decked sailing vessels designed for speed, came into use in the early part of the 18th century. When first introduced, the term applied largely to the hull form, in the same way that clipper was used almost a hundred years later. Some of these 18th and 19th century examples were rigged as ketches or brigs. However, the typical rig, especially in Naval or revenue protection use, was a single masted rig setting a huge amount of sail. Square sails were set, as well as a full complement of fore and aft sails. In civilian use, cutter were mostly involved in smuggling. The navy and coastguard therefore also used cutters in an attempt to catch those operating illegally.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: The term cutter appeared in the early 18th century as a description of a hull type. These vessels were designed for speed and the name was used in a similar way to clipper in the next century. The concept of hull type was perpetuated by the term "cutter brig" which was used over the period "circa" 1781-1807 for those rigged as brigs. "Cutter built" was a description applied to a hull of this type and designed for speed. More generally, the unmodified word "cutter" soon became associated with a single-masted rig.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: Fast vessels were often used for illegal purposes, such as smuggling, or by the authorities trying to prevent this illegality. Therefore cutters were used for both. The Royal Navy bought and had built a large number for use in controlling smuggling, as "advice boats" (carrying dispatches), or against privateers.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: The characteristic cutter hull shape was wide, many had a length to breadth ratio of 3 to 1. It had a lot of deadrise and fine lines. A huge amount of sail could be set on these beamy hulls. The rig became standardised as having one mast, a gaff-rigged mainsail, square sails and several headsailstogether with a full range of extra light weather sails. The mainsail had a boom that extended beyond the stern. Square sails consisted of a course, topsail and topgallant. In earlier examples (before 1800) the topsail's foot had a large amount of roach and was sheeted to a separate yard that was set below the main yard (which carried the course). The headsails were a staysail, set on the forestay (which fastened to the stemhead), a jib, set flying to a traveller on the bowsprit and, in most cases, a flying jib (alternatively termed a jib-topsail) also set flying, but to a higher point on the mast. A cutter has a running bowsprit, which can be brought inboard when not needed, such as in rough weather or in harbour. The bowsprit was usually of great length, sometimes longer than the hull. The standard fair weather sails consisted of a ringtail to the mainsail and studding sails to the square sails. It was not unknown for cutters to use a removable mizzen mast for use when reaching, setting a lugsail. Since the boom of the mainsail overhang the stern, the mast would have to be removed to tack or gybe.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: The dimensions of an 18th century cutter purchased by the Royal Navy in 1763, and roughly in the middle of the size range of the batch of 30 bought that year (HMS "Fly") are: length on deck , beam , measuring just over 78 tons bm. Smuggling cutters ranged from 30 tons (captured in 1747) to 140 tons. The Revenue cutters increased in size to match the vessels they attempted to catch"Repulse", of 210 tons was built in 1778. A determining factor on size was the number of crew needed to handle the large gaff mainsail with its long boom. Larger cutters purchased by the Royal Navy were sometimes converted to brigs to make them easier to handle, but still utilising the fast hull.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: At about the same time that the decked, fast-sailing cutters of the 18th century appeared, the term was also applied to a new class of ship's boat. These were clinker-built open boats, optimised for sailing but capable under oars. They had finer lines than the boats of that time (which had more rounded bows) and a transom stern. A distinctive feature was that the washstrake had cut-outs (called rowlocks) in which the oars were worked, unlike most boats of the period, that used thole pins as the pivot point for the oars. This allowed a higher freeboard, which was helpful if sailingwhen the cut-outs were filled with wooden shutters (often mis-called poppets) to keep the water out. The alternative, if the correct geometry for an efficient rowing position was adopted, was to position the thwarts awkwardly high.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: Like some other types of ship's boats used in the Royal Navy, the cutter appears to have originated in Deal. Some Navy Board correspondence of 1712 concerns disapproval of the captain of HMS "Rochester" for buying a cutter of about in length as a replacement for her pinnace. In 1722, another ship had a cutter issued for a voyage to India, and by 1740 substantial numbers of cutters were being bought from Deal boatbuilders to equip Navy ships. The size of these boats varied from in length.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: The 1740 purchases coincided with a decision to increase the number of boats carried by warships. During the Seven Years' War cutters were found particularly useful for cruising ships, being seaworthy and useful for boarding. However, they were more susceptible to damage than the heavier boats that they replaced and much less capable of carrying heavy weights, such as anchors and water casks. The range of sizes available steadily increased. By 1817 the cutters issued came in 17 different lengths, from . This big variety was reduced when the Royal Navy's warships moved to steam propulsion. Since drinking water could now be distilled on board, ships no longer needed to have the largest boats that they could carry to maximise the amount of water collected on each trip. The standard-issue cutters from 1877 to 1900 came in 11 different lengths, ranging from . This was cut to 5 sizes from in 1914.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: The sailing rig of the cutters used as ship's boats was usually two masted. In 1761, the larger Deal-built cutters had spritsails set on these masts, soon transitioning to a dipping lug fore-sail and a sprit mizzen. For much of the 19th century, and into the 20th, cutters were rigged with a dipping lug on the foremast and a standing lug on the mizzen. This made them similar to many of the luggers worked from the beaches and harbours of Britain. The sail plan illustration here (1880 Sail Plan) even replicates the civilian lugger terminology of having a fore and mizzen mast, and not using the term "main mast". A variation on this rig, seen for example in 1887, was to have two dipping lugs.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: The number of oars pulled varied with the size of the boat. A schedule of ship's boats of 1886 shows cutters pulling 12 oars, , 10 oars, , 8 oars and the two smallest sizes of , 6 oars. The smaller boats could be single banked whilst the larger and later examples were generally double-banked. For transporting large numbers of men, in moderate weather conditions, a 34 ft cutter could carry a total of 66 men, a 26 ft cutter, 36 men and a 20 ft cutter, 21 men.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: Steam powered ship's boats saw a slow introduction to the Royal Navy from 1864. By 1877, three types were in use: steam launches, picket boats and steam cutters. However, right up to the time of the First World War, the majority of the boats in use continued to be propelled solely by sail and oar. The Royal Navy still has some cutters that can be worked under sail or oar.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: In the simpler definition, the sailing rig called "cutter" has a single mast with fore and aft sails which include more than one headsail. The mainsail (set abaft, or behind the mast) could be gaff, Bermuda, standing lug or gunter rigged. A more complex definition may be applied in American waters, where a boat with two headsails would be termed a sloop if the mast has a more forward position and the bowsprit is permanently rigged. An example of this is the Friendship Sloop. A traditional cutter, by contrast, has a running bowsprit and the jib is set flying on a traveller that is hauled out to the end of the bowsprit. In a vessel such as a Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter, a storm jib might be set on a reefed bowsprit, with the bowsprit partially run in from its most fully extended position.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: The cutter is one of several types of sailboats. Traditionally the sloop rig was a rig with a single mast located forward of 70% of the length of the sailplan. In this traditional definition a sloop could have multiple jibs on a fixed bowsprit.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: Cutters had a rig with a single mast more centrally located, which could vary from 50% to 70% of the length of the sailplan, with multiple headsails and a running bowsprit. A mast located aft of 50% would be considered a mast aft rig.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: Between the 1950s and 2000s there was a shift in these definitions such that a sloop only flew one headsail and a cutter had multiple headsails and mast position became irrelevant. In this modern idiom, a cutter is a sailing vessel with more than one head sail and one mast. Cutters carry a staysail directly in front of the mast, set from the forestay. A traditional vessel would also normally have a bowsprit to carry one or more jibs from its end via jibstay(s) on travelers (to preserve the ability to reef the bowsprit). In modern vessels the jib may be set from a permanent stay fixed to the end of a fixed (non-reeving) bowsprit, or directly to the stem fitting of the bow itself. In these cases, that may be referred to as the forestay, and the inner one, which will be less permanent in terms of keeping the mast up, may be called the stays'l stay. A sloop carries only one head sail, called either the foresail or jib..


title: Cutter (boat)

text: The cutter rig, especially a gaff rig version where the sails aft the mast were divided between a mainsail below the gaff and a topsail above, was useful for sailing with small crews as the total sail area was divided into smaller individual sails. These could be managed without the need for large crews, winches, or complex tackles, making the cutter especially suitable for pilot, customs and coast guard duties. For example, a pilot cutter may only have two people on board for its outward trip—the pilot to be delivered to a ship and an assistant who had to sail the cutter back to port single-handed. The cutter sailing rig became so ubiquitous for these tasks that the modern-day motorised vessels now engaged in these duties are known as 'cutters'.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: The watermen of London used similar boats in the 18th century often decorated as depicted in historical prints and pictures of the River Thames in the 17th and 18th centuries. The modern waterman's cutter is based on drawings of these boats. They are long with a beam of . They can have up to six oarsmen either rowing or sculling and can carry a cox and passengers. The organisers of the Great River Race developed the modern version in the 1980s and now many of the fleet of 24 compete annually in this "Marathon of the River". Watermen's cutters also compete annually in the Port of London Challenge, and the Port Admirals' Challenge. Cutter races are also to be found at various town rowing and skiffing regattas. In addition the cutters perform the role of ceremonial Livery Barges with the canopies and armorial flags flying on special occasions.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: Cutters have been used for record-breaking attempts and crews have achieved record times for sculling the English Channel (2 h 42 min) in 1996 and for sculling non-stop from London to Paris (4 days 15 min) in 1999.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: The pilot cutter developed from the need for a fast boat to take maritime pilots from harbour to incoming large trading vessels.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: As most early pilots were local fisherman who undertook both jobs, although licensed by the harbour to operate within their jurisdiction, pilots were generally self-employed, and the quickest transport meant greater income. As their fishing boats were heavy working boats, and filled with fishing equipment, they needed a new type of boat; early boats were developed from single masted fishing cutter designs and twin masted yawls, and latterly into the specialist pilot cutter.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: The natural dangers of the Bristol Channel brought about over many years the development of the specialist Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter. According to records from Pill, Somerset now housed in the Bristol Museum, the first official Bristol Channel pilot was barge master George James Ray, appointed by the Corporation of Bristol in May 1497 to pilot John Cabot's from Bristol harbour to the open sea beyond. In 1837 Pilot George Ray guided Brunel's , and in 1844 William Ray piloted the larger on her maiden voyage.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: The term "cutter" is also used for any seaworthy vessel used in the law enforcement duties of the United Kingdom's Border Force, the United States Coast Guard (because of its descent from the Revenue Cutter Service) or the customs services of other countries.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: In the United States, the early Revenue Cutter Service operated customs cutters that were commonly schooners or brigs. In Britain, they were usually rigged as defined under "Sailing" (above). The British Board of Customs also used other vessels as hulks, which were moored in places such as tidal creeks. Customs officers worked from the hulks in smaller boats.


title: Cutter (boat)

text: In the UK, the Border Force (successor to the UK Border Agency and HM Customs and Excise) currently operates a fleet of 42 m corvette-type vessels throughout UK territorial waters as border cutters, inspecting vessels for illicit cargoes.


title: Neutropenia

text: Neutropenia is an abnormally low concentration of neutrophils (a type of white blood cell) in the blood. Neutrophils make up the majority of circulating white blood cells and serve as the primary defense against infections by destroying bacteria, bacterial fragments and immunoglobulin-bound viruses in the blood. People with neutropenia are more susceptible to bacterial infections and, without prompt medical attention, the condition may become life-threatening (neutropenic sepsis).


title: Neutropenia

text: Neutropenia can be divided into congenital and acquired, with severe congenital neutropenia (SCN) and cyclic neutropenia (CyN) being autosomal dominant and mostly caused by heterozygous mutations in the ELANE gene (neutrophil elastase). Neutropenia can be acute (temporary) or chronic (long lasting). The term is sometimes used interchangeably with "leukopenia" ("deficit in the number of white blood cells").


title: Neutropenia

text: Decreased production of neutrophils is associated with deficiencies of vitamin B12 and folic acid, aplastic anemia, tumors, drugs, metabolic disease, nutritional deficiency and immune mechanisms. In general, the most common oral manifestations of neutropenia include ulcer, gingivitis, and periodontitis. Agranulocytosis can be presented as whitish or greyish necrotic ulcer in oral cavity, without any sign of inflammation. Acquired agranulocytosis is much more common than the congenital form. The common causes of acquired agranulocytosis including drugs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, antiepileptics, antithyroid and antibiotics) and viral infection. Agranulocytosis has a mortality rate of 7–10%. To manage this, the application of granulocyte colony stimulating factor (G-CSF) or granulocyte transfusion and the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics to protect against bacterial infections are recommended.


title: Neutropenia

text: Signs and symptoms of neutropenia include fever, painful swallowing, gingival pain, skin abscesses, and otitis. These symptoms may exist because individuals with neutropenia often have infection.


title: Neutropenia

text: Children may show signs of irritability and poor feeding. Additionally, hypotension has also been observed in individuals who have this condition.


title: Neutropenia

text: The causes of neutropenia can be divided between problems that are "transient" and those that are "chronic". Causes can be divided into these groups:


title: Neutropenia

text: Severe bacterial infections, especially in people with underlying hematological diseases or alcoholism, can deplete neutrophil reserves and lead to neutropenia. Gram-positive bacteria are present in 60–70% of bacterial infections. There are serious concerns regarding antibiotic-resistant organisms. These would include as methicillin-resistant "Staphylococcus aureus" (MRSA) or vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE).


title: Neutropenia

text: Nutritional deficiencies, such as deficiency in vitamin B12, folate, copper or protein-calorie malnutrition are associated with chronic neutropenia. However, nutritional deficiencies are usually associated with decreases in other cell lines (multiple cytopenia or pancytopenia) rather than isolated neutropenia.


title: Neutropenia

text: Other causes of congenital neutropenia are Shwachman–Diamond syndrome, Cyclic neutropenia, bone marrow failure syndromes, cartilage–hair hypoplasia, reticular dysgenesis, and Barth syndrome. Viruses that infect neutrophil progenitors can also be the cause of neutropenia. Viruses identified that have an effect on neutrophils are rubella and cytomegalovirus. Though the body can manufacture a normal level of neutrophils, in some cases the destruction of excessive numbers of neutrophils can lead to neutropenia. These are:


title: Neutropenia

text: The pathophysiology of neutropenia can be divided into "congenital" and "acquired". The congenital neutropenia (severe and cyclic type) is autosomal dominant, with mutations in the ELA2 gene (neutrophil elastase) as the most common genetic reason for this condition. Acquired neutropenia (immune-associated neutropenia) is due to anti-neutrophil antibodies that target neutrophil-specific antigens, ultimately altering neutrophil function. Furthermore, emerging research suggests neutropenia without an identifiable etiology (idiopathic neutropenia) may be the result of a low-grade, chronic inflammatory process with an abnormal excessive production of myelosuppressive cytokines in a study conducted in the island of Crete.