Jeep Willys (other names: Willys MB, Jeep) is an American off-road car from the Second World War and the post-war period. The first prototypes of the car were built in 1940, and serial production was carried out in 1940-1945. Nearly 650,000 copies of it were created in its course! The weight of the cart was about 1.1 tons, with a length of 3.36 meters and a width of 1.57 meters. The drive was provided by a single engine with a power of 60 HP. The maximum speed was up to 105 km / h.
The Jeep Willys was developed to order and demanded by the US Army, which in 1940, faced with the war, asked for a completely new 4x4 passenger car with a load capacity of up to 250 kilograms, which could be mass-produced. It is worth adding that initially the American Bantam Car with the Bantam BRC was the clear favorite in the tender. However, the US Department of Defense, striving to ensure the best possible car design and trying to ensure trouble-free series production, handed over the plans for the Bantam BRC to the Willys and Ford plants. Based on these plans, Willys developed a Jeep that had a much better power unit than the original Bantam BRC, as well as being mechanically more perfect. Ultimately, it was this car, the Willys Jeep, that won the tender for the US Army. The presented car was actually mass-produced and went to almost all Anglo-Saxon armies fighting in World War II, and thanks to the Lend-and-Lease program, also to the Soviet Union. He took part in hostilities in North Africa, Italy, Northwest Europe and the Pacific. It is often assumed that the Jeep Willys is one of the symbols of American triumph in World War II.
M4 Sherman a fost un tanc mediu american din al Doilea Război Mondial. Primele prototipuri au fost construite în 1941, iar producția în serie a fost realizată în perioada 1942-1945. În total, au fost create aproximativ 49.000 de exemplare ale acestui tanc din toate versiunile, ceea ce îl face unul dintre cele mai produse tancuri ale celui de-al Doilea Război Mondial și cel mai important tanc din dotarea armatelor aliate în timpul acestui conflict. M4 Sherman a fost propulsat de o versiune cu un singur motor a M4A1 Continental R 975 C4 cu o putere de 400 CP . Vehiculul era înarmat cu - în funcție de versiune - un singur tun M3 de 75 mm sau un tun M1 de 76 mm sau un obuzier M4 de 105 mm și două mitraliere Browning1919A de 7,62 mm.
M4 Sherman a fost dezvoltat ca succesor al tancurilor M2 și M3, deși a folosit multe dintre componentele acestuia din urmă. În primul rând, a folosit doar un șasiu ușor schimbat al mașinii M3 Lee. La proiectarea M4 Sherman, s-a pus în primul rând pe rolul unui vehicul de sprijin al infanteriei și nu pe lupta cu tancurile inamice - acesta a fost rolul distrugătoarelor de tancuri americane. S-au presupus doar posibile ciocniri cu cărucioarele Pz.Kpfw III și Pz.Kpfw IV. Un rol semnificativ a fost jucat și în producția în masă a noului rezervor și a costurilor de producție cât mai mici. Rezultatul a fost un tanc cu armament bun pentru 1942 și începutul anului 1943, blindat mediu, dar cu o placă frontală înclinată, dar și cu manevrabilitate slabă și - mai ales în primele versiuni - foarte susceptibil la incendiu ca urmare a lovirii compartimentului motor . În același timp, însă, a fost creat un rezervor care ar putea fi cu adevărat o producție la scară largă și care avea un potențial de modernizare semnificativ. Multe versiuni de dezvoltare au fost create în cursul producției în serie M4 Sherman. Cronologic, prima a fost versiunea M4A1 care avea deja o armură turnată. Un altul - M4A2 - avea blindaj sudat și un nou motor General Motors 6460 cu 375-410 CP, dar mult mai puțin predispus la foc. A apărut și o versiune a lui M4A3, înarmată cu un obuzier de 105 mm și propulsată de un motor Ford GAA cu o capacitate de 450 CP. Pe baza versiunii M4A3, au fost create două subversiuni: M4A3E2 Jumbo cu armură întărită și M4A3E8 cu HVSS și tun de 76 mm. O versiune de dezvoltare interesantă a fost și T34 Calliope cu rachete montate care nu sunt ghidate pe turelă. M4 Sherman a fost, de asemenea, furnizat în număr mare Armatei Britanice și Roșii. Primul a dezvoltat o versiune a Firefly pe baza acestuia, cu un tun antitanc grozav de 17 lire. În timpul celui de-al Doilea Război Mondial, tancurile M4 Sherman au luptat în Africa de Nord (1942-1943), Italia (1943-1945), în timpul luptelor din Normandia, Franța și Germania de Vest (1944-1945), dar și în Pacific sau în rânduri. Armata Roșie pe Frontul de Est. După al Doilea Război Mondial, M4 Sherman a fost folosit în multe țări, inclusiv în Argentina, Belgia, India, Israel, Japonia, Pakistan și Turcia. De asemenea, a luat parte la multe conflicte post-1945, inclusiv Războiul Indo-Pakistan din 1965 și Războiul de șase zile din 1967.
Already after the first experiences of fighting in North Africa at the turn of 1942-1943, the US Army changed the position of the American infantry division. From 1943 onwards, each infantry division had three full-time infantry regiments, in turn composed of three infantry battalions. In addition, the infantry regiment also included other units, for example: an anti-tank company, an artillery company or a staff company. In total, the US Army's infantry regiment numbered approximately 3,100 soldiers. It should also be remembered that the division also included a strong artillery component consisting of four artillery battalions - 3 light and 1 medium, most often armed with 105 and 155 mm howitzers. There was also, among others, an engineering battalion, a repair company, a reconnaissance unit and a Military Police platoon. In total, the US Infantry Division numbered approximately 14,200 people from 1943. It quite clearly dominated the artillery over the German division and had much better and - above all - fully motorized means of transport, which made it a highly mobile tactical formation. It also had much richer "individual" anti-tank weapons in the form of a large number of bazooka launchers, of which there were over 500 in the entire division.
Operation Overlord is an Allied offensive operation involving an air and sea landing in Normandy (northern France), which began on June 6, 1944, and officially ended on August 30 of the same year. On the Allied side, in the first several days of the operation, about 1.4 million soldiers took part in it, and this number finally increased to about 2.1 million people. The commander-in-chief was the American General DD Eisenhower. By the way, the later president of the USA in 1953-1961. On the German side, approx. 0.3 million soldiers were fighting initially, with a total force estimated at approx. 0.65 million people. The formal commander in chief was Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt. Plans for the Western Allies' landing operations in Europe had been developed since 1942, but their final form crystallized in 1943. The operation, which was eventually codenamed Overlord, assumed the landing of allied forces - Americans and British, but also Canadians, Free French troops, and later Poles - in Normandy, with simultaneous sea and air landing. It assumed the involvement of a gigantic flotilla of auxiliary and landing craft (over 4,000 vessels in total) and over 10,000 aircraft. For this reason, Operation Overlord has gone down in history as the largest landing operation in the history of wars! The operations began on June 6, 1944 (the so-called D-Day) with the Allied landing on the beaches of Normandy. After the capture of the bridgeheads and their merger, there was a period of stalemate and the impossibility of penetrating the German defense, as exemplified by the repeated Allied attacks on the city of Caen. The breakthrough was only Operation Cobra at the end of July 1944, which led to the breakthrough and the exit to the rear of the German troops. As a result of this maneuver, the German retreat took place, which cost the Wehrmacht a lot of effort and resources. The political and military effect of the operation was the liberation of Paris and the lion's share of France, and the actual creation of the so-called Of the 2nd front in Europe.
The Focke-Wulf Fw-190 is a German, single-engine, full-metal fighter aircraft with a covered cabin in the low wing design of the Second World War. The pilots considered the Fw-190 to be a better aircraft than the Messerschmitt Bf-109. A self-supporting low wing with a working Fw-190 coating was commissioned by the Luftfahrtministerium, assembled in the fall of 1937. Kurt Tank submitted two propulsion proposals - the first with a liquid-cooled Daimler-Benz DB 601 engine, and the second with the new BMW 139 radial engine. The latter was chosen, and the work started in the spring of 1938 was headed by Obering R. Blaser. The first prototype of the Fw-190V1 was ready in May 1939, and it was flown in Bremen on June 1, 1939 by Captain Hans Sander. The second prototype, the FW-190V2, armed with two MG131 and two MG17 machine guns - all 7.92 mm caliber, was flew in October 1939. To reduce aerodynamic drag, both were equipped with a tunnel air inlet in the propeller cap, but problems with overheating of the engine resulted in a return to the proven NACA shield design. Before the tests of these prototypes began for good, the decision was already made to replace the BMW 139 engine with a stronger, but longer and heavier BMW 801. It required many changes, strengthening the structure and moving the cabin back, which later became a source of problems with the center of gravity. The advantage was the removal of problems with exhaust gas permeation and overheating of the cabin interior due to its direct vicinity to the BMW 139 engine. The third and fourth prototypes were abandoned, and the Fw-190V5 with the new engine was completed at the beginning of 1940. Later, it received wings with a wingspan enlarged by one meter (from the original 9.5 m), which made it 10 km / h slower, but it increased the rate of climb and improved maneuverability. It was marked Fw-190V5g, and the variant with the shorter wing was Fw-190V5k. The first seven machines of the Fw-190A-0 information series had a short wing, the rest - a longer one. The first operational unit equipped with the Fw-190 - 6./JG 26 stationed at Le Bourget, declared its operational readiness in August 1941 and from the first meeting of the new fighter with the British Supermarine Spitfire, its advantage over them became apparent. During the war, a dozen or so versions of this great plane were created. The machines of the "A" version, along with a dozen or so modernizations, served as fighter planes. The versions marked "B" and "C" were only prototypes of high-altitude fighters intended for fighting strategic bombers, but they did not enter into serial production. The "D" variant, as the only one of the Fw-190s, was powered by the new 1750HP Jumo 213A engine and was the German response to the P-51 Mustang. The new engine extended the fuselage by several dozen centimeters. This variant also performed mainly hunting and high-altitude fighter tasks. Numerous variants of the "F" version were used as fighter-bombers as direct support of the battlefield. The "G" version played the same role as the "F" version, but had a greater range. During the entire war, over 20,000 copies of this one of the best fighters of World War II were produced. Technical data (version Fw-190A-8): length: 9m, wingspan: 10.51m, height: 3.95m, maximum speed: 656km / h, rate of climb: 15m / s, maximum range: 800km, maximum ceiling 11410m , armament: fixed-2 MG131 13mm machine guns and 4 MG151 20mm cannons (2 MG 151 / 20E cannons for the D-9 version).