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Operation Aerial

Operation Aerial  was the evacuation of Allied military forces and civilians from ports in western France. The operation took place from 15 to 25 June 1940 during the Second World War. The embarkation followed the Allied military collapse in the Battle of France against Nazi Germany. Operation Dynamo, the evacuation from Dunkirk and Operation Cycle from Le Havre, had finished on 13 June. British and Allied ships were covered from French bases by five Royal Air Force (RAF) fighter squadrons and assisted by aircraft based in England to lift British, Polish and Czech troops, civilians and equipment from Atlantic ports, particularly from St Nazaire and Nantes.

On 17 June, the Luftwaffe evaded RAF fighter patrols and attacked evacuation ships in the Loire estuary, sinking the Cunard liner and troopship HMT HMT Lancastria which was carrying thousands of troops, RAF personnel and civilians. The ship sank quickly but nearby vessels went to the rescue and saved about 2,477 passengers and crew while under air attack. The death toll is unknown because the passenger count broke down in the haste to embark as many people as possible. Estimates of at least 3,500 dead make the sinking the greatest loss of life in a British ship. The British government tried to keep the sinking of Lancastria secret on the orders of the Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Some equipment was embarked on the evacuation ships but alarmist reports about the progress of the German Army towards the coast led some operations to be terminated early and much equipment was destroyed or left behind. The official evacuation ended on 25 June, in conformity with the terms of the Armistice of 22 June 1940 agreed by the French and German authorities but informal departures continued from French Mediterranean ports until 14 August. From the end of Operation Dynamo at Dunkirk, Operation Cycle from Le Havre, elsewhere along the Channel coast and the termination of Operation Aerial, another 191,870 troops were rescued, bringing the total of military and civilian personnel returned to Britain during the Battle of France to 558,032, including 368,491 British troops.

Royal Navy
The evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from Dunkirk left a surplus of men on the lines-of-communication, base depots and other establishments among the 140,000 troops still in France. Sufficient lines-of-communication personnel for an armoured division and four infantry divisions and an Advanced Air Striking Force (AASF) were to be retained and the rest returned to Britain. Naval operations in the Norwegian Campaign and the evacuation of Dunkirk had suffered losses, which temporarily weakened the Home Fleet, particularly in smaller vessels needed to escort evacuation ships from the French Atlantic coast. Losses inflicted on the surface ships of the Kriegsmarine made it impossible for the Germans to challenge British naval supremacy in the English Channel and the Bay of Biscay. Seven German submarines patrolling off the west coast of France made no attempt to interfere and only the Luftwaffe was used against the evacuations. Operation Aerial was commanded by Admiral William Milbourne James, the Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth. James lacked the vessels necessary for convoys and organised a flow of troopships, storeships and motor vehicle vessels from Southampton, coasters to ply from Poole and the Dutch schuyts to work from Weymouth, while such warships as were available patrolled the shipping routes. Demolition parties sailed in the ships but it was hoped that supplies and equipment could be embarked as well as troops.

RAF
After Dunkirk, the AASF squadrons in France had been moved to the area between Orléans and Le Mans during the lull before Fall Rot (Case Red), the German offensive over the Somme and Aisne rivers. From the new bases the AASF was able to operate anywhere along the front, but after the German breakthrough on 11 June, British Air Forces in France (Air Vice-Marshal Arthur Barratt) was warned by the Air Ministry to be ready for a quick getaway from France. The British squadrons were moved west to bases around Angers, Saumur, Rennes and Nantes, which were already full of French aircraft and severely congested. Barratt sent the light bomber squadrons back to England on 15 June and kept the five fighter squadrons to cover the evacuation of RAF ground staff and the three British divisions commanded by Brooke.

After Marshal Philippe Pétain requested an armistice on 17 June, Barratt had to defend seven ports on the Atlantic coast and sent the AASF anti-aircraft batteries to La Pallice and La Rochelle, the least important embarkation harbours. Nantes and St Nazaire, the most important ports, were covered by 1 Squadron, 73 Squadron and 242 Squadron, with a small detachment covering Brest. Saint-Malo and Cherbourg were protected by 17 Squadron and 501 Squadron from the aerodrome at Dinard across the bay from Saint-Malo, then later from the Channel Islands. Fighter Command squadrons from RAF Tangmere were also available for Cherbourg and Coastal Command prepared to escort returning ships. Once the arrangements were made, Barratt left for England and the Senior Air Staff Officer (SASO), Air Vice-Marshal Douglas Evill took over.

Operations Dynamo and Cycle
Operation Dynamo, the evacuation at Dunkirk from 26 May to 3 June, had rescued much of the fighting element of the BEF. Some units from the 1st Armoured Division, the Beauman Division and more than 150,000 support and line-of-communication troops, had been cut off in the south by the German dash to the sea. By the end of May, medical stores had been removed from Dieppe and a demolition party landed, ready to blow up the port infrastructure. A big depot at Le Havre had been run down by feeding troops in the area from it and removing military stores not immediately needed. A reserve of motor transport collected at Rouen had been used as transport for improvised units and specialised ammunition had been moved from the reserve around Buchy but the removal of the huge quantity of ordinary ammunition there was impossible.

On 9 June, the French commander at Le Havre contacted the 10th Army and the 51st (Highland) Division with a message that the Germans had captured Rouen and were heading for the coast. Ihler, the IX Corps commander and Major-General Victor Fortune, commander of the 51st (Highland) Division, decided that the only hope of escape was through Le Havre and abandoned the plan to retire through Rouen. The port admiral requested enough ships from the Admiralty to remove 85,000 troops but this contradicted the plans of the French supreme commander, Maxime Weygand. General John Dill (Chief of the Imperial General Staff) hesitated, ignorant that Weygand's delay in issuing the orders had made it impossible. Karslake had also urged several times that the retirement be accelerated but had no authority to issue orders. Only after receiving a message during the night from Fortune, that the 51st (Highland) Division was participating in a retreat by IX Corps towards Le Havre, did Dill learn of the true situation.

Fortune detached a force to guard Le Havre comprising the 154th Infantry Brigade, A Brigade of the Beauman Division, two artillery regiments and engineers. Arkforce (Brigadier Stanley-Clarke), moved on the night of 9/10 June towards Fécamp, where most had passed through before the 7th Panzer Division arrived. A Brigade forced its way out but lost the wireless truck intended to keep contact with the 51st (Highland) Division. The possibility of holding a line from Fécamp to Lillebonne was discounted and Stanley-Clarke ordered Arkforce on to Le Havre. A Royal Navy demolition party had been in Le Havre since late May and the port was severely bombed by the Luftwaffe on 7 June; two days later, the Admiralty sent orders for an evacuation. James sent a flotilla leader, HMS Codrington (D65), across the Channel, accompanied by six British and two Canadian destroyers, smaller craft and many Dutch schuyts.

A plan was hastily made to block Dieppe harbour and on 10 June, HMS Vega (L41) (Captain G. A. Garnon-Williams) escorted three blockships to the port. Two were sunk in the approach channel but the third ship hit a mine just outside, which prevented it being sunk at the entrance to the inner harbour. Beach parties landed at Le Havre to take control of the evacuation on 10 June and after a 24-hour postponement, the evacuation began on 11 June. The embarkation was hindered somewhat by the damage to the port caused by Luftwaffe bombing; the troopship SS Bruges (1920) was damaged and had to be beached. Electrical power to the docks was cut, rendering the cranes on the docks useless; loading vehicles via ramps was tried but was too slow. On 12 June, RAF fighters began patrolling the port, deterring more raids and an attempt was made to save the transport and equipment by diverting it over the Seine, via the ferry crossings at Caudebec or the ships at Quillebeuf at the river mouth. The quartermaster of the 14th Royal Fusiliers succeeded in getting the transport away. The greatest number of troops were removed on the night of 12/13 June and the evacuation was completed by dawn; of 11,059 British troops evacuated, 9,000 men of 'A' Brigade were taken to Cherbourg and the 154th Infantry Brigade sailed via Cherbourg to England.

St Valery-en-Caux
On 10 June British destroyers reconnoitred the smaller ports to the east of Le Havre. HMS Ambuscade (D38) was damaged by artillery fire from the cliffs near St. Valery-en-Caux during the evening. Troops not needed to hold the perimeter at St Valery moved down to the beaches and the harbour but no ships arrived; thick fog prevented them from moving inshore. An armada of 67 merchant ships and 140 small craft had been assembled but few had wireless and the fog obscured visual signalling. Only at Veules-les-Roses were many soldiers rescued, under fire from German artillery, which damaged the destroyers HMS Bulldog (H91), HMS Boadicea (H65) and Ambuscade. Near dawn, the troops at the harbour were ordered back into the town, only to discover that the local French commander had already negotiated a surrender. A total of 2,137 British and 1,184 French soldiers were rescued but over 6,000 men of the 51st (Highland) Division were taken prisoner on 12 June.

2nd BEF
On 2 June, Brooke visited the War Office, having returned from Dunkirk on 30 May and was told by Dill to go back to France to assemble another BEF. In the emergency, the force would be the 51st (Highland) Infantry Division and 1st Armoured Division, already in France, with the 52nd (Lowland) Infantry Division and the 1st Canadian Infantry Division from Britain, to be followed by the 3rd Infantry Division as soon as it was re-equipped. The II Corps headquarters was spread around Britain after its return from Dunkirk and his first choice of chief of staff was busy with General Lord Gort, the former BEF commander, writing dispatches. Brooke warned Dill and the secretary of state for war, Anthony Eden, that the enterprise was futile, except as a political gesture. He was told that on return to France he would come under the authority of Weygand. In France, Fonblanque was still in command of the lines-of-communication troops of the original BEF and lieutenant-generals Henry Karslake and James Marshall-Cornwall were assisting with command. A brigade group (the 157th (Highland Light Infantry) Brigade) of the 52nd (Lowland) Division departed for France on 7 June and Brooke returned five days later.

On 13 June, the RAF made a maximum effort to help the French armies that had been broken through on the Marne. The Germans were across the Seine in the west and the French armies near Paris fell back, isolating the Tenth Army on the Channel coast. The German advance threatened the airfields of the AASF, which was ordered to retreat towards Nantes or Bordeaux, while supporting the French armies for as long as they kept fighting. The AASF flew armed reconnaissance sorties over the Seine from dawn and German columns were attacked by a force of 10 Fairey Battles, then a second formation of 15 Battles followed by 15 Bristol Blenheims. On the Marne, 12 Battles attacked a concentration of German troops and tanks, followed by an attack by 26 Battles, which lost six aircraft and then a third attack by 15 Blenheims from Bomber Command, that lost another four. RAF attacks continued through the night, with 44 sorties over the Seine, 20 north of Paris, 41 on the Marne and 59 against road and rail communications and woods reported by the French to be full of German troops. Fighter sorties had been hampered by bad weather and were limited to coastal patrols.

Next day, attacks resumed against German units south of the Seine but the weather had worsened and fewer sorties were flown. A raid by 24 Blenheims with fighter escort was made on Merville airfield for a loss of 7 aircraft; ten Fighter Command squadrons patrolled twice in squadron strength or provided bomber escorts, the biggest effort since Dunkirk, as fighters of the AASF patrolled south of the Seine. During the night, 72 bombers attacked German marshalling yards and forests, and dropped mines in the Rhine river for a loss of two aircraft. The remnants of the 1st Armoured Division and two brigades of the Beauman Division were south of the river, along with thousands of lines-of-communication troops; but only the 157th Infantry Brigade of the 52nd (Lowland) Division, which had commenced disembarkation on 7 June, engaged in military operations. The brigade occupied successive defensive positions under command of the Tenth Army. The French armies were forced into divergent retreats with no obvious front line; on 12 June, Weygand had recommended that the French government seek an armistice, which led to the abortive plan to create a defensive zone in Brittany.

On 14 June, Brooke was able to prevent the rest of the 52nd (Lowland) Division being sent to join the 157th Infantry Brigade Group. During the night Brooke was informed that he was no longer under French command and must prepare to withdraw the British forces from France. Marshall-Cornwall was ordered to take command of all British forces under the Tenth Army as Norman Force and while continuing to co-operate, withdraw towards Cherbourg. The rest of the 52nd (Lowland) Division was ordered back to a defence line near Cherbourg to cover the evacuation on 15 June. The AASF was also directed to send the last bomber squadrons back to Britain and use the fighter squadrons to cover the evacuations. The German advance over the Seine had paused while bridges were built but the advance began again during the day, with the 157th Infantry Brigade Group engaged east of Conches-en-Ouche with the Tenth Army. The army was ordered to retreat to a line from Verneuil to Argentan and the Dives river, where the British took over an 8 mi front either side of the Mortagne-au-Perche–Verneuil-sur-Avre road. German forces followed up quickly and on 16 June, the Tenth Army commander, General Robert Altmayer, ordered the army to retreat into the Brittany peninsula.

Breton redoubt
On 29 May the Prime Minister of France, Paul Reynaud, replied to Weygand, rejecting his recommendation that an armistice be considered and asked him to study the possibility that a national redoubt could be established around a naval port in the Brittany peninsula to retain freedom of the seas and contact with French allies. The idea was discussed by the French and British governments on 31 May and an operational instruction was drawn up on 5 June, in which Brooke was appointed to command the new BEF ("2nd BEF") being prepared for France. Plan W, the original plan to land the BEF in 1939, was used with the 52nd (Lowland) Infantry Division being directed to Cherbourg and to assemble at Evreux, ready to support the 51st (Highland) Infantry Division north of the Seine. On 6 June, Weygand issued orders to begin work on the redoubt under the command of General René Altmayer.

German forces crossed the Seine on 9 June, cutting off the 51st (Highland) Division north of the river, two days after 52nd (Lowland) Division had begun to land and the assembly point of the division was changed to Rennes in Brittany; the 157th Infantry Brigade, which had arrived first, was directed to Beaumont near Le Mans; the rest of the division to follow on. The 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade of the 1st Canadian Infantry Division began its arrival at Brest on 11 June and was sent to Sablé-sur-Sarthe, on the assumption that two fresh divisions would be enough to allow the Tenth Army to retreat through them and take up positions prepared around the Brest peninsula. That day, the Anglo-French Supreme War Council met at Briare and General Charles de Gaulle (minister of war) was sent to Rennes to survey progress on the redoubt; on 12 June, de Gaulle reported that Quimper would be a favourable place for the government to retreat to, since it would be easy to take ship to England or Africa; the prospect of maintaining a redoubt in Brittany was non-existent.

Altmayer had reported that work had begun on defences, civilian labour had been recruited and 3,000 Polish troops had arrived to begin work, despite a lack of civil engineering machinery. Churchill visited France for the last time on 13 June, met Reynaud and approved the project. Brooke had visited the 1st Canadian Division in England to give the gist of the plan and met Weygand and Georges at Briare on 14 June, where all agreed that the plan was futile but the will of the civilian leadership had to be respected and the generals signed a joint agreement. Brooke telephoned Dill in London to find that no agreement had been made with the French and after checking called with the news that "Mr. Churchill knew nothing about the Brittany project". Churchill was of the view that the new corps forming in France should stay, at least until the final French collapse, then return through the nearest port. Without the support of the 52nd (Lowland) Division on the left flank, the Tenth Army was cut off from Brittany when two German divisions reached the peninsula first and forced the French line of retreat south to the Loire. French troops already in the area were able to join the main French force after the Canadians had departed for England.

Cherbourg and Saint-Malo
Initially headquarters in England were reluctant to accept that evacuation was necessary, and on 15 June Alan Brooke was told by Dill that "for political reasons" the two brigades of the 52nd Division under Drew could not be embarked from Cherbourg at present. After further telephone discussions that day with Dill and Eden, when he said shipping and "valuable hours" were being wasted, he got permission to embark the gunners but not the infantry. Most of the 52nd Lowland Division and the remnants of the 1st Armoured Division embarked from 15 to 17 June. The Beauman Division and Norman Force, both improvised formations, left on the evening of 17 June.

The rearguard battalion was evacuated in the afternoon of 18 June. A total of 30,630 men were rescued from Cherbourg and taken to Portsmouth. At Saint-Malo, 21,474 men, mostly of the 1st Canadian Division, were evacuated from 17 to 18 June; all but 789 passengers being British; no-one was killed and no ship was damaged. The Luftwaffe tried to intervene but was thwarted by the RAF; the 1st Canadian Division suffered only six losses during its brief excursion to the Continent; five men were reported missing and one man was killed; four of the missing were interned and then made it back to England.

Brest

The evacuation from the southern ports on the Bay of Biscay was commanded by Admiral Sir Martin Dunbar-Nasmith, the Commander-in-Chief of Western Approaches Command based in Devonport. The evacuation was made more difficult by a lack of information from Brest, St Nazaire and Nantes. Brest is a port city in the Finistère département in Brittany in north-west France, where a sense of urgency was communicated by the Cabinet in London and the evacuation was conducted quickly, albeit with some confusion; guns and vehicles which could have been removed were destroyed needlessly. The Germans were known to be in Paris and advancing southwards, but information about German progress was inaccurate, mainly being rumour. The ships, including the Arandora Star, Strathaird and Otranto rescued 28,145 British and 4,439 Allied personnel, mostly RAF ground crew from 16–17 June and the ships with room to spare were sent south to St Nazaire and the French wrecked the harbour facilities with assistance from the British demolition party. The French ships sailed and on 19 June the demolition party was removed aboard the destroyer HMS Broke (D83).

St Nazaire and Nantes
Saint-Nazaire in Brittany is a commune in the Loire-Atlantique department and Nantes is the capital of the Pays de la Loire region, in the same département and is the largest city in Brittany. Operations at St Nazaire, at the mouth of the Loire, where there were strong tides and other hazards to navigation and Nantes 50 mi upriver, took place concurrently. Vague and contradictory information led the navy to believe that 40,000–60,000 men were en route to Nantes but not when they would arrive. To lift so many men, Dunbar-Nasmith assembled the destroyers HMS Havelock (H88), HMS Wolverine (D78) and HMS Beagle (H30) and the liners RMS Georgic (1932), SS Duchess of York (1928), RMS Franconia (1922), RMS RMS Lancastria, the Polish ships MS Batory and MS Sobieski and several commercial cargo ships.

The ships had to anchor in Quiberon Bay, 20 mi north-west of the Loire estuary, despite having no anti-submarine defences. The evacuation began on 16 June, with 16,000 troops leaving for home on Georgic, Duchess of York and the two Polish ships. German bombers attacked the bay but were only able to damage Franconia. Loading of equipment continued overnight and more ships from England and Brest arrived, along with two more destroyers, HMS Highlander (H44) and HMS Vanoc (H33). The large troopships would have been exceedingly vulnerable, had German bombers been able to make daylight attacks. British fighter cover restricted the Luftwaffe to mine-laying, which only delayed movement until channels were swept. The RAF fighters each flew up to six sorties per day and the final patrol over Nantes was flown by 73 Squadron, then the last airworthy Hawker Hurricane flew to RAF Tangmere.

The last 4,000 British troops left for Plymouth at 11:00 a.m. on 18 June in two convoys comprising 12 small merchant ships; much equipment was abandoned after alarmist reports led to the convoys sailing in haste. In the afternoon, Dunbar-Nasmith heard that 8,000 Polish troops were approaching the port and sent six destroyers and seven troop transports to St Nazaire, which arrived on 19 June but only 2,000 men appeared; no German forces were in hot pursuit. Unserviceable Hurricanes were burned by their ground crews, a staff car was given to a friendly local café proprietor and an airman tried to sell off an Austin 7. The rear parties then departed in transport aircraft, a few hours before German tanks arrived. (On the journey home during the night of 17/18 June, Floristan, a merchantman with 2,000 men on board, of the 27,000 troops and civilians in its convoy, was attacked by a Ju 88 but being under way, dodged the bombs as soldiers fired back with Bren guns and riddled the cockpit. The bomber carried away the mast tops and aerial, then crashed into the sea to the cheers of the rest of the convoy.)

Lancastria
On 17 June, there were still about 67,000 troops waiting ashore, many at St Nazaire; ferrying men to the big ships offshore resumed early in the morning, soon joined by lighters, tenders and destroyers. The men being transported were reinforcements and lines-of-communication troops, tradesmen, labourers, mechanics and engineers of the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC), pioneers and tradesmen in RAF maintenance units from Nantes aerodrome. Several merchantmen and railway ferries from the Dover–Calais route were among the armada off St Nazaire but the largest ship was the Lancastria of the Cunard Line. Lancastria was normally permitted to carry 1,700 passengers and 375 crew but in the emergency Captain R. Sharp was ordered to take as many troops as could be crammed on board. Among the military personnel were about 40 civilians, including embassy staff, men from Avions Fairey in Belgium and their families.

As the boarding progressed, a soldier heard Sharp and his chief officer, H. Grattidge, say that 6,700 people were on the ship, as a lighter came alongside and Sharp decide that it would be the last to deliver passengers. Sharp and Grattidge kept watch on the sky as aircraft fought above the Loire estuary and German bombers tried to hit SS Oronsay (1925) about 0.5 mi distant; at 1:50 p.m., Oronsay was bombed and part of the bridge destroyed. Sharp was advised by the captain of Havelock to leave at once but for fear of U-boats, Sharp wanted a destroyer escort. No destroyer was forthcoming and Sharp decided to leave with Oronsay; Lancastria stayed at anchor rather than being made a moving target. At 3:45 p.m. more German bombers appeared, while the RAF Hurricanes were at the far end of their 30 mi patrol line and a bomber hit Lancastria with three or four bombs. The ship tilted to starboard, the bridge crew shouted for everyone to go to the port side and Lancastria came level again, then keeled over to port.

Grattidge called out "Your attention please. Clear away boats"; there were far too few for the number of people crammed aboard and some boats had been smashed in the bombing. After the remaining lifeboats had been launched, some sinking in the process after falling into the sea or being swamped, the order "every man for himself" was given. Some men in life jackets, jumped overboard from the starboard side and broke their necks, others walked down the side of the hull, where they could see the men trapped inside through portholes and stepped into the water as the ship settled. Once in the water, they were strafed by German bombers, which also dropped flares on patches of oil and burned alive some of the shipwrecked men. While Lancastria was on its side, the hull was covered by men who could not swim, singing Roll Out the Barrel until they sank with the ship, about fifteen minutes after the bombing. As time passed, exhaustion and despair led people in the sea to give up and slip underwater. About 2,477 people were rescued but more than 3,500 men, women and children were killed.

La Pallice
La Pallice, the grand port maritime de La Rochelle is the commercial, deep water port of La Rochelle. A senior British naval officer arrived by destroyer on 16 June and the evacuation began the next day. The naval officer found 10,000 men and no transports so requisitioned ships in the port, embarked the troops less their transport and departed on 18 June. Ships included the British flagged MV Thistleglen (Captain G. F. Dobson) which embarked 2,500 men and a contingent of British nurses. Dunbar-Nasmith sent ships twice more, which picked up 4,000 Polish troops on 19 June. Few men were found on 20 June and surplus ships were sent south to the Gironde ports. Most of the British troops in France had gone but more Polish and Czech troops, embassy and consular staffs, British and other civilians remained.

Other Atlantic ports

Bordeaux and Le Verdon-sur-Mer are ports on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in Aquitaine. Bayonne at the confluence of the Nive and Adour rivers and St Jean-de-Luz are ports and communes in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques département, all four ports being on the south-west coast of France. HMS Arethusa (26) was stationed off Bordeaux on 16 June as a wireless link and on 17 June, British and some Allied ships were cleared for England and the embarkation of Polish and Czech troops and civilians began. A Hunt-class destroyer HMS Berkeley (L17) (Lieutenant-Commander H. G. Walters) had been made available to Reynaud and the French government, also as a venue for discussions with Churchill and on 19 June, the ship evacuated the remaining British Consular staff from Bordeaux. British diplomatic staff, the President of Poland and his cabinet were given preferential treatment.

Berkeley was replaced by the cruiser HMS Galatea (71) and sailed for England with the VIPs. Evacuation continued at the nearby ports of Le Verdon at the river mouth and Bayonne, where on 19 June, the Polish ships Batory and Sobieski took about 9,000 Polish soldiers on board and the British SS Ettrick and SS Arandora Star took on everyone they could find and sailed for St Jean-de-Luz on 20 June. The evacuation at St Jean de Luz ended officially at 2:00 p.m. on 25 June, just after the deadline set by the terms of the armistice, with the sailing of the cargo ships SS Baron Kinnaird, SS Baron Nairn and SS Kelso, loaded with troops and civilians; about 19,000 people were lifted from Bayonne and St Jean de Luz, most being Polish troops. On the final day of the operation, the Canadian destroyer HMCS Fraser (H48) was accidentally rammed and sunk with many losses by the anti-aircraft cruiser HMS Calcutta (1918) in the Gironde estuary. Evacuations continued informally from the Mediterranean coast of France, until 14 August. On 23 June, the Admiralty gave orders that every available ship was to take anyone who could be squeezed on board to Gibraltar, thence to Britain. Small cargo ships organised by two destroyers removed about 10,000 Allied troops and civilians from 24 to 26 June, thence to Britain.

Analysis
In 1953, Lionel Ellis, the British official historian, wrote that by the end of the informal evacuations on 14 August, another 191,870 people had been evacuated after the rescue of 366,162 men in Operation Dynamo, a total of 558,032 evacuees, of whom 368,491 were British troops. In 2001, Brodhurst wrote that many civilians escaped from French Atlantic and Mediterranean ports to England via Gibraltar and that 22,656 more civilians left the Channel Islands from 19–23 June. Brodhurst gave figures of 368,491 British, 189,541 Allied troops and 30,000–40,000 civilians evacuated. Although much equipment was lost, 322 guns, 4,739 vehicles, 533 motorcycles, 32303 LT of ammunition, 33060 LT of stores, 1071 LT of petrol, 13 light tanks and 9 cruiser tanks were recovered during Operation Aerial and the earlier evacuations. German submarines could have sunk British ships in the Bay of Biscay, many of the troopships being unescorted and out of range of England-based fighters but the seven in the area did not intervene. The Luftwaffe managed to sink Lancastria but German operations against Aerial showed a lack of co-ordination between the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine. Brodhurst wrote that the success of the operation was due to the professionalism of the Royal Navy, the decisions of middle-ranking officers like Ramsay and the conduct of the navy and civilian crews, who took grave risks to rescue the army.

In 1979, Karslake described the Breton Redoubt affair and concluded that all of the people involved knew of the scheme and all had agreed, albeit with little faith in its success, for it to go ahead. Karslake also reviewed the figures given in the official history of equipment recovered during Operation Aerial. Ellis had included equipment loaded onto ships in England but not landed in France in his figures for material recovered during the operation. Ellis recorded the recovery of 322 guns, 17 of the 51st (Highland) Division from Le Havre, 120 of the 52nd (Lowland) Division from Cherbourg, 24 of the 1st Canadian Division from Brest and 32 guns of the Beauman Division from Cherbourg, 194 guns in all, with 128 more not accounted for. Karslake wrote that some guns may have been on ships sent from England but not unloaded and could not have belonged to the two BEF anti-aircraft brigades south of the Somme; the anti-aircraft brigade protecting the lines-of-communication units and the AASF airfield defence brigade had only 170 guns between them. The 53rd Heavy AA Regiment reached Marseilles with its two heavy and one light batteries but could only load the light anti-aircraft guns, due to a lack of cranes and no jumbo derrick on the evacuation ship; the remaining thirteen 3-inch anti-aircraft guns having to be destroyed and left behind.

Of the 4,739 vehicles brought back to Britain, most belonged to the 52nd and 1st Canadian divisions and had not been unloaded; the rest had been embarked before "panic orders" had been issued to the ports. Of the 32303 LT of ammunition recovered, Karslake had been given a priority list of small-arms ammunition, 25-pounder shells and the chemical warfare equipment dumped at Fécamp. Much of the chemical warfare material had been removed by early June and most of the rest of the ammunition brought back from France could be accounted for by a shipload not unloaded at Cherbourg on 15 June and another laden ship at St Nazaire. Of the 33060 LT of other stores saved, only material returned to Britain during May had been unloaded from ships and the 1071 LT of petrol was on a part-loaded ship which left St Nazaire on 16 June. On 4 June, Karslake had asked the CIGS to stop sending supplies but this request was ignored and troops saw more supplies being unloaded as they loaded ships for the evacuation. The 6th Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment stacked petrol tins in the Fôret de Savernay from 26 May – 15 June and then set fire to it on 16 June.

As the RAF presence in France was reduced, its aviation fuel requirements fell and by 5 June most RAF aircraft had returned to England, yet deliveries continued. British armoured units were also less demanding of fuel as the number of vehicles dwindled until the main users were the transport echelons of the front-line units and the lines-of-communication troops, which could be supplied by the fuel delivered up to the end of May. Karslake wrote that the small number of armoured vehicles removed from France was a mystery and that a train with the last tanks of the 2nd Armoured Brigade and some of those of the 3rd Armoured Brigade, departed from Le Mans for St Malo and disappeared. It was rumoured that the train had been sidelined by the French and the engine removed for another train but no effort was made by the road parties outside Brest to find their vehicles. No party accompanied the vehicles and no aircraft reconnaissance was sought, even though the Germans were a long way from Brittany.

Karslake wrote that in 1939, the CIGS, General Edmund Ironside, had warned Gort and Dill the Vice-CIGS before the BEF sailed for France, to prepare defence plans for rear areas, quickly to be implemented at communication centres and geographical bottlenecks, for which even the most non-combatant troops must be trained and equipped, but during the Phoney War nothing was done. It was fortunate that Brigadier Archibald Beauman, who had been "dug-out" of retirement, was on hand to organise the lines-of-communication troops south of the Somme, as far as anything could be achieved in the emergency. Karslake (jnr) wrote that had General Karslake been furnished with a staff and the power of command over all British troops, rather than this being vested in the cumbersome and disorganised French command system, the disadvantages under which the lines-of-communication troops were burdened could have been alleviated. When Brooke arrived on 12 June to command the British troops in France, he had no faith in military operations, left his staff at St Malo and concentrated on ending the British presence in France as quickly as possible.

Casualties
From May to June, including the period of Operation Aerial, the Luftwaffe lost 1,284 aircraft and the RAF lost 1,526 men killed, wounded, died of wounds or injury, injured, lost at sea or taken prisoner and 959 aircraft, including 477 fighters, shot down, destroyed on the ground or written off. The AASF lost 229 aircraft, the Air Component 279, Fighter Command 219, Bomber Command 166 and Coastal Command 66 aircraft. In the course of the operations from 5 to 18 June, the AASF lost 13 more Battles, two Blenheims and 15 Hurricanes; Fighter Command lost a Spitfire, 26 Hurricanes and three Blenheims. During the Battle of France, the British army suffered 68,111 casualties, killed, died of wounds, wounded, missing or taken prisoner and 599 men died of injury or illness; navy casualties could not be separated from operations elsewhere in the world. German casualties in the battle (only a few of the Luftwaffe losses occurring during Operation Aerial), were 27,074 killed, 111,034 wounded and 18,384 men missing.

title: Operation Aerial


text:
DD

DD, dd, or other variants may refer to:

Arts and entertainment

 * "D.D.", track from the mixtape Echoes of Silence by the Weeknd
 * DD (character), a character in The Saga of Seven Suns novels by Kevin J. Anderson
 * DD National or DD1, an Indian national television channel
 * Dancing Dolls, a Japanese all-female pop group
 * Dhivya Dharshini, Indian television host and actress, known as DD, see Koffee With DD
 * Daredevil (Marvel Comics character), a Marvel Comics character
 * Matt Murdock (Marvel Cinematic Universe), the Marvel Cinematic Universe counterpart
 * Decorative Designers
 * Donegal Daily, an Irish news website
 * Doordarshan, a public service broadcaster in India
 * Erann DD, a Danish singer and songwriter
 * DD, the production code for the 1966 Doctor Who serial The Tenth Planet
 * DD Returns (2023), the third film in the Dhilluku Dhuddu series
 * "Double D'z" (2022), a song from Elevation (Black Eyed Peas album)
 * Edd, commonly known as Double-D, a character from Ed, Edd n Eddy

Business

 * DuPont, which trades shares on the New York Stock Exchange as DD
 * Dunkin' Donuts, a company
 * Data Disc

Military

 * DD tank, an amphibious tank
 * Dishonorable discharge, a punitive discharge in the U.S. military
 * DD, the U.S. Navy hull classification for destroyers
 * DD Form 214, a form used by the U.S. Defense Department

Places

 * DD postcode area, in Scotland
 * .dd, a hypothetical domain name for the German Democratic Republic
 * Dresden, Germany (license plate code DD)
 * Daman and Diu, a former union territory of India, now part of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu

Computing

 * , an HTML element for specifying definition data
 * dd (Unix), a program that copies and converts files and data
 * Deckadance, a DJ program for Windows and Mac OS X designed by Image-Line
 * Deployment descriptor, a component in Java Platform, Enterprise Edition applications
 * Logo for Dolby Digital, audio compression technologies developed by Dolby Laboratories
 * Double density, a capacity designation on magnetic storage, usually floppy disks
 * Debian Developer, the traditional full-membership role in Debian

Other uses in science and technology

 * Data Deficient, a rating on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species
 * Decimal degrees, geographic coordinates shown using decimal fractions
 * Death domain, a protein-interaction module, a subclass of the death fold protein motif
 * DD Index, for Democracy-Dictatorship Index
 * Abbreviation for dolichospondylic dysplasia, a genetic syndrome
 * Developmental disability, or developmentally disabled, a diverse group of chronic conditions due to mental or physical impairments arising before adulthood
 * Deuterium-deuterium fusion, a type of nuclear fusion
 * d.d. or D.D., a type of abbreviaton in Bosnian language and Croatian language for Joint-stock company means "dioničko društvo"

Sports

 * Delhi Daredevils, former name of Delhi Capitals
 * Delhi Dynamos FC, an Indian Super League franchise, now Odisha FC

Transportation

 * DD tank, an amphibious tank
 * D-D locomotive, the AAR classification for a railway locomotive with two four-axle bogies
 * Danish Air Lines, former airline
 * Invincible D-D, a prototype aircraft
 * Nok Air, a low-cost airline based in Thailand
 * Victorian Railways Dd class, a class of steam locomotives in Australia

Other uses

 * DD, a brassiere measurement
 * Dd (digraph), in the Welsh language
 * Daniel Defense, a firearms manufacturer
 * Degree of difficulty, in several sports
 * Demand draft, a negotiable instrument issued by the bank
 * Deputy Director (disambiguation), a rank in some organizations
 * Designated driver, a person who remains sober as the responsible driver
 * Doctor of Divinity, an academic degree
 * Dine and dash, a form of theft by fraud
 * Direct debit, a way of paying bills

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: DD


text:
Amenhotep III

Amenhotep III (jmn-ḥtp(.w), ; "Amun is satisfied" ), also known as Amenhotep the Magnificent or Amenhotep the Great and Hellenized as Amenophis III, was the ninth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty. According to different authors, he ruled Egypt from June 1386 to 1349 BC, or from June 1388 BC to December 1351 BC/1350 BC, after his father Thutmose IV died. Amenhotep was Thutmose's son by a minor wife, Mutemwiya.

His reign was a period of unprecedented prosperity and splendour, when Egypt reached the peak of its artistic and international power, and as such he is considered one of ancient Egypt's greatest pharaohs.

When he died in the 38th or 39th year of his reign he was succeeded by his son Amenhotep IV, who later changed his name to Akhenaten.

Family and early life
Amenhotep was the son of Thutmose IV and his minor wife Mutemwiya. He was born probably around 1401 BC. Later in his life, Amenhotep commissioned the depiction of his divine birth to be displayed at Luxor Temple. Amenhotep claimed that his true father was the god Amun, who had taken the form of Thutmose IV to father a child with Mutemwiya.

In Regnal Year 2, Amenhotep married Tiye, the daughter of Yuya and Thuya. Tiye was Great Royal Wife throughout Amenhotep's reign. Many commemorative scarabs were commissioned and distributed during Amenhotep's reign. On the "marriage scarabs," Amenhotep affirmed his divine power and the legitimacy of his wife. With Tiye, Amenhotep fathered at least two sons, Crown Prince Thutmose and Amenhotep IV (later called Akhenaten). In addition, several daughters are frequently credited to the couple: Sitamun, Henuttaneb, Iset, Nebetah, and Beketaten. Most of the daughters appear frequently on statues and reliefs from Amenhotep's reign. However, Nebetah is attested only once, on a colossal limestone group of statues from Medinet Habu, and Beketaten only appears in Amarna. Amenhotep is also sometimes credited as the father of Smenkhkare or Tutankhamun, with varying proposals for their mothers, but these theories are not as accepted as his other, known children.

In addition to Tiye, Amenhotep had several other wives. In Regnal Year 10, Amenhotep married Gilukhepa, the daughter of Shuttarna II of Mitanni. He later married Tadukhepa, daughter of Tushratta of Mitanni, in or around Regnal Year 36 of his reign. Other wives, whose names are unknown, included: a daughter of Kurigalzu, king of Babylon; a daughter of Kadashman-Enlil, king of Babylon; a daughter of Tarhundaradu, ruler of Arzawa; and a daughter of the ruler of Ammia (modern-day Syria).

Finally, he married at least two of his daughters, Sitamun and Iset, in the last decade of his reign. Jar-label inscriptions from Regnal Year 30 indicate that Sitamun was elevated to the status of Great Royal Wife by that time. Although shunned by common Egyptians, incest was not uncommon among royalty. A sculpture restored by Amenhotep for his grandfather, Amenhotep II, shows Sitamun with a young prince beside her. This has led to theories that Sitamun was the mother of Smekhkare and/or Tutankhamun.

Life and reign
Amenhotep probably became pharaoh when he was between the ages of 6 and 12. While it is likely that a regent would have ruled until he came of age, none is attested in the surviving records. In Regnal Year 11, Amenhotep commanded the construction of an artificial lake at Tiye's hometown of Djakaru. He then celebrated a Festival of Opening the Lake in the third month of Inundation, day sixteen, and rowed the royal barge Aten-tjehen on the lake. This event was commemorated on at least eleven commemorative scarabs.

From other scarabs, Amenhotep is known to have killed either 102 or 110 lions in the first ten years of his reign.

Despite the martial prowess Amenhotep displayed during the hunt, he is known to have participated in only one military incident. In Regnal Year Five, he led a victorious campaign against a rebellion in Kush. This victory was commemorated by three rock-carved stelae found near Aswan and Saï in Nubia. The official account of Amenhotep's military victory emphasizes his martial prowess with the hyperbole typical of the period.

Court of Amenhotep III
There is a significant attestation for the court officials who served during Amenhotep's reign, primarily through the discovery of their tombs in the Theban Necropolis. Among these court officials were the viziers Ramose, Amenhotep, Aperel, and Ptahmose. Other officials included the treasurers Ptahmose and Merire; the high stewards, Amenemhat Surer and Amenhotep (Huy); and the Viceroy of Kush, Merimose.

Amenhotep, son of Hapu held many offices during the reign of Amenhotep the pharaoh, but is best known for receiving the right to build his mortuary temple behind that of the king. Amenhotep, son of Hapu, was deified after his death and was one of the few non-royals to be worshiped in such a manner.

Malkata Palace
The palace of Malkata was built in the 14th century BC and its ancient name was Per-Hay, "House of Rejoicing". Originally, the palace was known as the Palace of the Dazzling Aten. Built mostly out of mud-brick, it was Amenhotep's residence throughout most of the later part of his reign. Construction began around Regnal Year 11 and continued until the king moved to the palace permanently around Regnal Year 29. Once completed, it was the largest royal residence in Egypt.

Sed festivals
Amenhotep celebrated three Sed festivals in Regnal Years 30, 34, and 37, each at Malkata palace in Western Thebes. A temple of Amun and festival hall were built especially for the celebrations. The Sed festival was a tradition that dated to the Old Kingdom, consisting of a series of tests that demonstrated the pharaoh's fitness for continuing as ruler of Egypt. Based on indications left by Queen Tiye's steward Khenruef, the festival may have lasted two to eight months.

Amenhotep wanted his Sed Festivals to be far more spectacular than those of the past. He appointed Amenhotep, son of Hapu to plan the ceremony, potentially because he was one of the few courtiers still alive to have served at the last Sed Festival, held for Amenhotep II. In preparation for the first Sed Festival, Amenhotep, son of Hapu enlisted scribes to gather information from records and inscriptions, most found in ancient funerary temples, describing the appropriate rituals and costumes.

Temples were built and statues erected up and down the Nile. Craftsmen and jewelers created ornaments commentating the event including jewelry, ornaments, and stelae. The scribe Nebmerutef coordinated every step of the event. He directed Amenhotep to use his mace to knock on the temple doors. Beside him, Amenhotep-Hapu mirrored his effort like a royal shadow. The king was followed by Queen Tiye and the royal daughters. When moving to another venue, the banner of the jackal god Wepwawet, "Opener of Ways" preceded the King. The king changed his costume at each major activity of the celebration.

One of the major highlights of the festival was the king's dual coronation. He was enthroned separately for Upper and Lower Egypt. For Upper Egypt, Amenhotep wore the white crown but changed to the red crown for the Lower Egypt coronation.

After the Sed festival, Amenhotep transcended from being a near-god to one divine. The king may have later traveled across Egypt following the festival, potentially reenacting the ceremony for different audiences. Few Egyptian kings lived long enough for their own celebration. Those who survived used the celebration as the affirmation of transition to divinity.

International relations
Diplomatic correspondence from Amenhotep's reign are partially preserved in the Amarna Letters, a collection of documents found near the city of Amarna. The letters come from the rulers of Assyria, Mitanni, Babylon, Hatti, and other states, typically including requests by those rulers for gold and other gifts from Amenhotep. The letters cover the period from Year 30 of Amenhotep until at least the end of Akhenaten's reign. In Amarna Letter EA 4, Amenhotep is quoted by the Babylonian king Kadashman-Enlil I in firmly rejecting the latter's entreaty to marry one of this pharaoh's daughters:

"From time immemorial, no daughter of the king of Egy[pt] is given to anyone."

Amenhotep's refusal to allow one of his daughters to be married to the Babylonian monarch may indeed have followed from Egyptian royal custom, which allowed a claim upon the throne through descent from a royal princess. It could also be viewed as a diplomatic stratagem to enhance Egypt's prestige, as Amenhotep himself married the daughters of several foreign rulers while refusing them his own daughters.

The Amarna Letters also reference the exchange between Amenhotep and the Mitanni King Tushratta of the statue of a healing goddess, Ishtar of Nineveh, late in Amenhotep's reign. Scholars have generally assumed that the statue's sojourn to Egypt was requested by Amenhotep in order to cure him of his various ailments, which included painful abscesses in his teeth. However, William L. Moran's analysis of Amarna Letter EA 23, relating to the dispatch of the statue to Thebes, discounts this theory.

The arrival of the statue is known to have coincided with Amenhotep's marriage with Tadukhepa, Tushratta's daughter, in the pharaoh's 36th year; letter EA 23's arrival in Egypt is dated to "regnal year 36, the fourth month of winter, day 1" of his reign. Furthermore, Tushratta never mentions in EA 23 that the statue's dispatch was meant to heal Amenhotep of his maladies. Instead, Tushratta writes in part:

"... Thus Šauška of Nineveh, mistress of all lands: 'I wish to go to Egypt, a country that I love, and then return.' Now I herewith send her, and she is on her way. Now, in the time, too, of my father,...[she] went to this country, and just as earlier she dwelt there and they honored her, may my brother now honor her 10 times more than before. May my brother honor her, [then] at [his] pleasure let her go so that she may come back. May Šauška (i.e., Ishtar), the mistress of heaven, protect us, my brother and me, a 100,000 years, and may our mistress grant both of us great joy. And let us act as friends. Is Šauška for me alone my god[dess], and for my brother not his god[dess]?"

The likeliest explanation is that the statue was sent to Egypt "to shed her blessings on the wedding of Amenhotep and Tadukhepa, as she had been sent previously for Amenhotep and Gilukhepa." Moran agrees that this explanation was more likely. Further, Moran argues that the contents of Amarna Letter EA 21 support this claim, wherein Tushratta asks the gods, including Ishtar, for their blessing of the marriage.

In the 14th century BCE, the pharaoh sent an expedition to Cyprus to establish Egyptian control over the island, which was subsequently maintained for several centuries. During this time, the Egyptians established a number of settlements on the island, and they exported copper and other raw materials from Cyprus to Egypt in exchange for luxury goods and other commodities. However, the Egyptian presence on Cyprus was at times interrupted by incursions of other powers, including the Hittites and the Mycenaeans.

Succession
Thutmose, the eldest son of Amenhotep III with his wife Tiye, became Crown Prince, but died before his father. Amenhotep was ultimately succeeded by his second son, who ascended the throne as Amenhotep IV and later took the name Akhenaten.

Proposed coregency with Amenhotep IV / Akhenaten
It has long been theorized that Amenhotep III shared a coregency with his son Amenhotep IV. Lawrence Berman has claimed that proponents of the coregency theory tended to be art historians, while historians remained unconvinced.

Eric Cline, Nicholas Reeves, Peter Dorman, and other scholars argue strongly against the establishment of a long coregency between the two rulers and in favor of either no coregency or one of at most two years. Donald B. Redford, William J. Murnane, Alan Gardiner, and Lawrence Berman contest the view of any coregency whatsoever between Akhenaten and his father. Evidence against a coregency includes Amarna Letter EA 27, which is dated to Regnal Year 2 of Amenhotep IV. The subject of the letter involves a complaint from the Mitannian king Tushratta, claiming that Amenhotep IV did not honor his father's promise to send Tushratta gold statues as part of the marriage arrangement between Tadukhepa, and Amenhotep III. This correspondence implies that if any coregency occurred between Amenhotep and Akhenaten, it lasted no more than a year.

However in February 2014, Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities announced that findings from the tomb of Vizier Amenhotep-Huy gave "conclusive evidence" of a coregency that lasted at least eight years. In the tomb, the cartouches of the two pharaohs were carved side by side. However, this conclusion has since been called into question by other egyptologists, according to whom the inscription means only that construction on Amenhotep-Huy's tomb started during Amenhotep III's reign and ended under Akhenaten's, and Amenhotep-Huy thus simply wanted to pay his respects to both rulers, carving their names separately rather than simultaneously.

Health and death
Amenhotep's greatest attested regnal date is Year 38, which appears on wine jar-label dockets from Malkata. He may have lived briefly into an unrecorded Year 39 and died before the wine harvest of that year. Reliefs from the wall of the temple of Soleb in Nubia and scenes from the Theban tomb of Kheruef, Steward of the King's Great Wife, Tiye, depict Amenhotep as a visibly weak and sick figure. Scientists believe that in his final years he suffered from arthritis and obesity. Further, a forensic examination of his mummy revealed worn and cavity-pitted teeth which must have inflicted constant pain. An examination of the mummy by the Australian anatomist Grafton Elliot Smith concluded that the pharaoh had died at between the age of 40 and 50.

He was survived by at least one child, his successor Amenhotep IV. His wife Tiye is known to have outlived him by at least twelve years, as she is mentioned in several Amarna letters dated from her son's reign, as well as depicted at the royal dinner table in Akhenaten's years 9 and 12, in scenes from the tomb of Huya.

Foreign leaders communicated their grief at the pharaoh's death, with Tushratta saying:

"When I heard that my brother Nimmureya had gone to his fate, on that day I sat down and wept. On that day I took no food, I took no water."

Burial and mummy
Amenhotep was buried in tomb WV22 in the Western Valley of the Valley of the Kings outside of Thebes. The tomb is the largest in the West Valley of the Kings and includes two side chambers for his Great Royal Wives, Tiye and Sitamun. However, it does not seem that either woman was buried there. During the reign of Smendes in the Third Intermediate Period, Amenhotep's mummy was later moved to the mummy cache in KV35 along with several other pharaohs of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties, where it lay until discovered by Victor Loret in 1898.

For the 18th dynasty, the mummy shows an unusually heavy use of subcutaneous stuffing to make the mummy look more lifelike. The mummy has museum inventory number CG 61074.

In April 2021, his mummy was moved from the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, along with those of 17 other kings and 4 queens in an event termed the Pharaohs' Golden Parade.

Monuments and legacy

Amenhotep has the distinction of having the most surviving statues of any Egyptian pharaoh, with over 250 identified. These statues provide a series of portraits covering the entire length of his reign.

When Amenhotep died, he left behind a country at the very height of its power and influence, commanding immense respect in the international world. However, it was a country wedded to age-old political and religious certainties under the Amun priesthood.

The resulting upheavals from his son Akhenaten's reforming zeal shook these old certainties to their foundations, and forced the momentous question whether a pharaoh was more powerful than his society as represented in the worship of Amun. Akhenaten even moved the capital away from Thebes, the center of Amun's worship, and built Amarna, a city dedicated to his new deity, the Aten.

Amenhotep built extensively at the temple of Karnak, including the Luxor temple with two pylons, a colonnade behind the new temple entrance, and a new temple to the goddess Ma'at. Amenhotep dismantled the Fourth Pylon of the Temple of Amun at Karnak to construct a new Third Pylon — and created a new entrance to this structure where he erected two rows of columns with open papyrus capitals down the centre of this newly formed forecourt. The forecourt between the Third and Fourth Pylons, sometimes called an obelisk court, was also decorated with scenes of the sacred funerary barques of the deities Amun, Mut, and Khonsu. The king also started work on the Tenth Pylon at the Temple of Amun. Amenhotep's first recorded act as king — in his Years 1 and 2 — was to open new limestone quarries at Tura, just south of Cairo and at Dayr al-Barsha in Middle Egypt to undertake his great building projects. He virtually covered Nubia with new monuments:

"...including a small temple with a colonnade (dedicated to Thutmose III) at Elephantine, a rock temple dedicated to Amun 'Lord of the Ways' at Wadi es-Sebuam, and the temple of Horus of Miam at Aniba...[as well as founding] additional temples at Kawa and Sesebi."

His enormous mortuary temple on the west bank of the Nile was, in its day, the largest religious complex in Thebes, but the king built too close to the floodplain, and less than two hundred years later it was reduced to ruins. Much of the masonry was purloined by Merneptah and later pharaohs for their own construction projects. All that remained standing was the gateway with the Colossi of Memnon — two massive stone statues depicting Amenhotep,18 m high. Amenhotep also built the Third Pylon at Karnak and erected 600 statues of the goddess Sekhmet in the Temple of Mut to the south. Some of the most magnificent statues of New Kingdom Egypt date to his reign "such as the two outstanding couchant rose granite lions originally set before the temple at Soleb in Nubia" as well as a large series of royal sculptures. Several black granite seated statues of Amenhotep wearing the nemes headress have come from excavations behind the Colossi of Memnon as well as from Tanis in the Delta. In 2014, two giant statues of Amenhotep toppled by an earthquake in 1200 BC were reconstructed from more than 200 fragments and re-erected at the northern gate of the king's funerary temple.

One of the most stunning finds of royal statues dating to his reign was made as recently as 1989 in the courtyard of Amenhotep 's colonnade of the Temple of Luxor. The cache of statues included a nearly undamaged 6 ft-high pink quartzite statue of the king wearing the Double Crown. It was mounted on a sled, and may have been a cult statue. Only the name of the god Amun had been hacked out wherever it appeared in the pharaoh's cartouche, clearly part of Akhenaten's campaign against the god of his father.

One of Amenhotep's most popular epithets was Aten-tjehen which means "the Dazzling Sun Disk"; it appears in his titulary at Luxor temple and was frequently used as the name for one of his palaces, and for the Year 11 royal barge, as well as for a company of Amenhotep's army.

In 2021, excavations revealed a settlement near Amenhotep's mortuary temple, called the Dazzling Aten, believed to have been built by king to house craftsmen and labourers working on royal projects at Thebes, along with its own bakery and cemetery.

A Sed Festival Stela of Amenhotep III was taken from Egypt to Europe by an art dealer. Once owned by Eric Cassirer, it is now believed to be in a private collection in the United States. The white alabaster stela is 10 × 9 cm (3.94 × 3.54 in), but only its upper half survived. Front view: The god Heh, representing the number one million, holds notched palm leaves signifying years and the cartouche of Amenhotep, symbolically raising the pharoah for a million years. Side view: A series of festival (ḥb) emblems together with a Sed (sd) emblem identifying the stela as one made for Amenhotep 's Sed Festival royal jubilee. Top and back view: These show malicious damage where the cartouche was chipped away. Cassirer suggests this was another example of Akhenaten's vandalism against Amun Other gods displayed on the stela, Re and Ma’at, showed no damage. The altered stela may then have been displayed by Akhenaten.

Another striking characteristic of Amenhotep's reign is the series of over 200 large commemorative stone scarabs that have been discovered over a large geographic area ranging from Syria (Ras Shamra) through to Soleb in Nubia. Similarly, five other scarabs state that his wife Gilukhepa of Mitanni arrived in Egypt with a retinue of 317 women. She was the first of many such princesses who would enter the pharaoh's family.

Ancestry and genetics
Genetic analysis has confirmed that Amenhotep III is the father of both the KV55 mummy, identified in the study as Akhenaten, and "The Younger Lady", sibling parents of his grandson, Tutankhamun. A more recent study, published in 2020, traced the family lineage via Y-chromosomes and mtDNA. Although only a partial profile was obtained, he shares his YDNA haplogroup, R1b, with his son and grandson, upholding the family tree outlined in the earlier study. However, the specific clade of R1b was not determined. The mitochondrial haplogroup of Amenhotep III was found to be H2b, which is associated with migrations from the Pontic-Caspian steppe to South Asia and the spread of Indo-Iranian languages.

In 2022, S.O.Y. Keita analysed 8 Short Tandem loci (STR) published data from studies by Hawass et al. 2010;2012 which sought to determine familial relations and research pathological features such as potential infectious diseases among the New Kingdom royal mummies, including Tutankhamun, Amenhotep III, and Rameses III. Keita used the Popaffiliator algorithm which differentiates Eurasians, Sub-Saharan Africans, and East Asians; he concluded that "a majority [have] an affinity with 'Sub-Saharan' Africans in one affinity analysis". However, he emphasized the complexity of ethnic attributions, cautioning that the royal mummies may have had other affiliations obscured by the typological categories, and that different "data and algorithms might give different results".

According to historian William Stiebling and archaeologist Susan N. Helft, conflicting DNA analyses by different research teams have thusfar failed to establish consensus on the genetic makeup of the ancient Egyptians and their geographic origins.

title: Amenhotep III


text:
AGC

AGC may refer to:

In business

 * AGC Inc. (formerly Asahi Glass Co.), a glass manufacturer
 * Associated General Contractors of America, an association of commercial construction contractors
 * Australian Guarantee Corporation, a financial company

Military

 * Army Geospatial Center, part of the US Army Corps of Engineers
 * Adjutant General's Corps, in the British Army
 * A retired US Navy hull classification symbol: Amphibious force flagship (AGC)

Religious organizations

 * Apostolic Generation Church, a non-denominational church located in Jakarta, Indonesia
 * Associated Gospel Churches of Canada, a Canadian evangelical Christian denomination

Other organizations

 * Assyrian General Conference, a political organization in Iraq
 * Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia (aka The Gulf Clan), a drug cartel and paramilitary group in Colombia

Science and technology

 * All glass cartridge automotive fuses.
 * Apollo Guidance Computer, for the Apollo program
 * Atypical Glandular Cells, in the Bethesda system for reporting Pap smear results
 * Automatic gain control of electronic amplification
 * Automatic generation control of electricity generators
 * Autorail à grande capacité, a type of train
 * Auxiliary General sub-class C, formerly U.S. Navy ship type Amphibious Command Ship
 * Automated Guided Cart, a small Automated Guided Vehicle
 * AGC, a codon for the amino acid serine

Other uses

 * Agatu language
 * Allegheny County Airport, US, by IATA airport code
 * Attorney General of California
 * Attorney General of Canada
 * Attorney General of Colombia
 * Attorney General of Colorado
 * Attorney General of Connecticut
 * Auditor General of Canada
 * Auditor General of China
 * Auditor General of Colombia

title: AGC


text:
Conaire Mór

Conaire Mór (the great), son of Eterscél, was, according to medieval Irish legend and historical tradition, a High King of Ireland. His mother was Mess Búachalla, who was either the daughter of Eochu Feidlech and Étaín, or of Eochu Airem and his daughter by Étaín. In the Old Irish saga Togail Bruidne Dá Derga he is conceived when his mother is visited by Nemglan who flies in her skylight in the form of a bird, and is brought up as Eterscél's son.

According to the Lebor Gabála Érenn, he took power after killing his predecessor, and his father's killer, Nuadu Necht. In Togail Bruidne Dá Derga he succeeds Eterscél directly. When Eterscél dies, a bull-feast is held. A bull is killed, a man eats his fill of its meat and drinks its broth, and sleeps as incantations are chanted over him. Whoever this man sees in his sleep will be the new king. He sees a naked man coming along the road to Tara with a stone in his sling. The young Conaire, meanwhile, is hunting birds in his chariot. He chases them into the sea, where they become armed men, announce themselves as Conaire's father's bird troop, and inform him that it is forbidden for him to hunt birds. The leader of the bird troop is called Nemglan and he tells Conaire to go naked to Tara, where he will be made king, and places several geasa (taboos) on his reign. Among other things, he may not be preceded by three red men into the house of a red man. As he approaches Tara he is met by three kings carrying clothes for him, and when he arrives he is made king.

His reign is long and mostly peaceful. His end is told in the Old Irish epic Togail Bruidne Dá Derga, "The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel", in which events conspire to make him break his geasa one by one. After he has already broken several of them, he travels south along the coast of Ireland, he is advised to stay the night at Da Derga's Hostel, but as he approaches it, he sees three men dressed in red riding red horses arriving before him. "Da Derga" means "Red God". He realises that three red men have preceded him into the house of a red man, and another of his geasa has been broken. His three foster-brothers, the three sons of Dond Désa, whom Conaire had exiled to Alba (Britain) for their crimes, had made alliance with the king of the Britons, Ingcél Cáech, and they were marauding across Ireland with a large band of followers. They attack Da Derga's Hostel. Three times they attempt to burn it down, and three times the fire is put out. Conaire, protected by his champion Mac Cécht and the Ulster hero Conall Cernach, kills six hundred before he reaches his weapons, a further six hundred with his weapons. He asks for a drink, but all the water has been used to put out the fires. Mac Cécht travels across Ireland with Conaire's cup, but none of the rivers will give him water. He returns with a cup of water just in time to see two men cutting Conaire's head off. He kills both of them. Conaire's severed head drinks the water and recites a poem praising Mac Cécht. The battle rages for three more days. Mac Cécht is killed, but Conall Cernach escapes.

He had ruled for thirty or seventy years, depending on the source consulted. The Lebor Gabála Érenn synchronises his reign with that of the Roman emperor Augustus (27 BC – AD 14), and after the birth of Christ, and makes him contemporary with legendary provincial kings Conchobar mac Nessa, Cairbre Nia Fer and Ailill mac Máta. The chronology of Geoffrey Keating's Foras Feasa ar Éirinn dates his reign to 63–33 BC, that of the Annals of the Four Masters to 110–40 BC.

A descendant of Íar mac Dedad, Conaire belonged to the legendary Clanna Dedad, the legendary royal family of the Érainn. His descendants in Ireland and Scotland were known as the Síl Conairi. The last Gaelic king of Scotland from the line from Conaire Mór was Alexander III of Scotland.

title: Conaire Mór


text:
Ailill mac Máta

Ailill mac Máta is the king of the Connachta and the husband of queen Medb in the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology. He rules from Cruachan (Rathcroghan in County Roscommon).

Family background, marriage and offspring
The sagas explain mac Máta as a matronymic: his mother is Máta Muirisc, daughter of Mága, of the Fir Ol nEchmacht, a tribal grouping of Connacht, through whom he claimed the throne of the Connachta. His father is Rus Ruad, king of the Laigin, whose other sons include Cairbre Nia Fer, king of Tara, Find Fili, who succeeded him as king of the Laigin, and in some texts Cathbad, chief druid of Conchobar mac Nessa of the Ulaid. The Táin Bó Cúailnge says Medb chose him as husband, ahead of Find, Cairbre and Conchobar, because he alone among them was without meanness, jealousy or fear.

A late saga, Cath Boinde, tells a different story. It says Ailill was the grandson of Medb's sister Ele, and came to Cruachan as a young child to be raised by Medb, who was already reigning there with her then-husband Eochaid Dála. He grew up to be a fine warrior, and became chief of Medb's bodyguard, and her lover. Eochaid tried to expel Ailill from Connacht, but Medb would not allow it. He then challenged him to single combat, and lost. Ailill then became Medb's husband and king of the Connachta.

Ailill and Medb had seven sons, all called Maine. They originally had other names, but after Medb asked a druid which of her sons would kill Conchobar, and received the reply "Maine", they were all renamed as follows:

 * Fedlimid became Maine Athramail ("like his father")
 * Cairbre became Maine Máthramail ("like his mother")
 * Eochaid became Maine Andoe ("the swift")
 * Fergus became Maine Taí ("the silent")
 * Cet became Maine Mórgor ("of great duty")
 * Sin became Maine Mílscothach ("honey-speech")
 * Dáire became Maine Móepirt ("beyond description")

The prophecy was fulfilled when Maine Andoe went on to kill Conchobar, son of Arthur, son of Bruide — not Conchobar mac Nessa of the Ulaid, as Medb had assumed the druid meant. Medb and Ailill also had a daughter, Findabair.

Cattle raid
Ailill led the Táin Bó Cúailnge (cattle raid of Cooley) against the Ulaid, an expedition intended to steal their prize bull Donn Cúailnge. The prologue to the later version of the Táin says this was a result of a dispute between Ailill and Medb over who was wealthier. Their wealth was equal, except for one thing: the bull Finnbhennach, who was born into Medb's herd, but thought it was beneath his dignity to be owned by a woman and transferred himself into Ailill's ownership. The only bull his equal in Ireland was Donn Cúailnge, so it was decided to acquire him for Medb to restore their equality.

Fergus mac Róich, a former king of the Ulaid in exile and Medb's lover, was chosen to lead the way for the army. On the way the army split in two. Ailill led one party, and Medb and Fergus, leading the other, took the opportunity to sleep together. But Ailill had sent his charioteer, Cuillius, to spy on them, and Cuillius stole Fergus's sword while he was in flagrante. Ailill decided to forgive Medb on the grounds that she was probably trying to ensure Fergus' loyalty, and kept Fergus's sword safe but hidden.

Because of a divine curse on the Ulaid, the invasion was opposed only by the teenage Ulaid hero Cú Chulainn, who held up the army's advance by demanding single combat at fords. Medb and Ailill offered their daughter Findabair in marriage to a series of heroes as payment for fighting Cú Chulainn, but all were defeated. Nevertheless, they secured the bull. After Conchobar finally assembled the Ulaid's army, Ailill gave Fergus back his sword and the final battle began. The Connachta were forced to retreat, but Donn Cúailnge was brought back to Cruachan, where he fought Finnbhennach, killed him, and died of his wounds.

Death
Ailill managed to keep his promise to Medb to be without jealousy, despite her many lovers, until he saw her bathing in a lake with Fergus. His blind brother Lugaid Dalléces was nearby, so Ailill told him a hart and a doe were playing in the lake, and challenged him to kill them with a spear. Lugaid threw the spear and killed Fergus.

Late in life, the Ulaid hero Conall Cernach came to stay with Ailill and Medb, as theirs was the only household in Ireland that could satisfy his enormous appetite. Medb found Ailill was seeing another woman and demanded Conall kill him, something he was happy to do in revenge for Fergus. Ailill was killed on 1 May Lá Bealtaine which was on a Tuesday. Conall then fled, but the men of the Connachta pursued and killed him at the ford of Ballyconnell, County Cavan.

Texts

 * Ferchuitred Medba, aka Cath Bóinde: Medb's Men, or the Battle of the Boyne
 * Fled Bricrend: Bricriu's Feast
 * Aisling Óenguso: The Dream of Óengus
 * Táin Bó Fraích: The Cattle Raid of Fráech
 * Táin Bó Regamain: The Cattle Raid of Regamon
 * Táin Bó Dartada: The Raid for Dartaid's Cattle
 * Táin Bó Flidhais or The Mayo Táin: The Driving of Flidais's Cattle
 * Echtra Nerae: The Adventures of Nera
 * Táin Bó Cuailnge: The Cattle Raid of Cooley Recension 1, Recension 2
 * Aided Fergusa meic Róig: The Death of Fergus mac Róich

title: Ailill mac Máta


text:
AEF

AEF may refer to:

 * Aboriginal Evangelical Fellowship, Australia
 * Adelaide Equestrian Festival, an annual equestrian event in Adelaide, South Australia
 * Afrique Équatoriale Française or French Equatorial Africa
 * Agricultural Industry Electronics Foundation
 * Air Experience Flight
 * Allied Expeditionary Force in World War II
 * American Eagle Foundation
 * American Expeditionary Forces, in World War I
 * Asia Education Foundation
 * Asian Pacific American Bar Association Educational Fund
 * Association de l'enseignement français
 * Astana Economic Forum
 * Aviation Environment Federation

title: AEF


text:
Gemstone Publishing

Gemstone Publishing is an American company that publishes comic book price guides. The company was formed by Diamond Comic Distributors President and Chief Executive Officer Steve Geppi in 1994 when he bought Overstreet.

Gemstone published licensed Disney comic books from June 2003 until November 2008. The company has also reprinted EC Comics of the 1950s.

BOOM! Kids acquired all comic publishing licenses regarding Disney characters in the second half of 2009.

Disney comics
Gemstone's flagship publications were comic books featuring Disney characters; particularly the Donald Duck/Uncle Scrooge comics of such Duck artists as Carl Barks and Don Rosa, and the Mickey Mouse comics of Floyd Gottfredson, César Ferioli, and Romano Scarpa, among others.

While popularly known as a reprint house, Gemstone's comics were actually dominated by stories that were new to United States audiences. Vintage material, though popular with readers, was not the majority of the content.

Gemstone issued annual editions of Christmas Parade, Vacation Parade, and Spring Fever; a giveaway for Free Comic Book Day; and occasional special editions (including comic adaptations of Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers and Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas).

Gemstone's first large-size book collection, Mickey And The Gang: Classic Stories In Verse, was issued in November 2005. It was a compilation, edited by David Gerstein, of Disney cartoon story pages published from 1934 to 1944 in Good Housekeeping magazine. Gerstein later edited two Gemstone softcover books that were official tie-ins to the Walt Disney Treasures DVD collections: Disney Comics: 75 Years of Innovation (2006) and Uncle Scrooge: A Little Something Special (2008).

Russ Cochran and EC Comics reprints
Gemstone has also published reprints of EC Comics. Gemstone's Comic Book Marketplace-editor Russ Cochran had previously published (in 1973) a dozen reprints of EC titles including Crypt of Terror, Weird Science, The Haunt of Fear, The Vault of Horror, etc., before moving to Gladstone Publishing and then to Gemstone, which has been the home of Cochran's EC reprints for over 15 years.

Reprinting the Cochran/Gladstone-reprints of The Haunt of Fear, The Vault of Horror and Weird Science (all 1992), Gemstone also republished (in single issue and 'annual' – four issues per 'annual' – format):
 * Crime SuspenStories, Shock SuspenStories, Two-Fisted Tales, Weird Fantasy and Weird Science-Fantasy in 1992;
 * Incredible Science Fiction (1994)
 * Frontline Combat (1995)
 * Panic (1997)
 * Piracy and Valor (1998)
 * Aces High, Impact, M.D. and Psychoanalysis (1999), and
 * Crime Patrol and Extra! in 2000.

Oversize, hardback, slip-cased collections of these comics had been previously published in black & white by Cochran during the 1980s as "The Complete EC Library". This Library was then added to by Cochran/Gemstone with 2005's Picto-Fiction collection, comprising the EC comics: Confessions Illustrated, Crime Illustrated, Shock Illustrated and Terror Illustrated, along with "18 previously unseen stories, never published before".

Full-color hardbacks
In 2006, Cochran and Gemstone began publication of a series of full-color EC Archives editions. Promising that "[e]ach EC Archive volume will reprint six complete issues (24 stories)", the first volumes of Weird Science and Shock Suspenstories both saw print in December, 2006, with forewords from (respectively) EC fans George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Ostensibly beginning to publish two volumes every two months, the schedule changed to one-per-month and recently one every couple of months.

In addition, "Deluxe" versions of Weird Science Vol.s 1 & 2 (both signed by artist Al Feldstein), Shock Suspenstories Vol. 1 and Tales From the Crypt Vol. 1 have been published.

Closing
In early 2009, the future of Gemstone Publishing was unclear, after reports of unpaid printing bills, particularly from the EC Archives. In April, Geppi responded to the uncertainty, noting that while there had been "a reduction in staff at Gemstone," such moves did "not [signal] the end of Gemstone Publishing." Seven months after Geppi's optimistic statements, the last batch of Gemstone's Disney comics appeared in November 2008, complete with previews for next month's issues that Gemstone was to fail publishing. BOOM! Kids acquired all comic publishing licenses regarding Disney characters, and started publishing comic titles previously owned by Gemstone in the second half of 2009. Starting in 2013, Dark Horse comics began to reprint E.C. comics picking up where Gemstone left off, in the same full color hardback format.

title: Gemstone Publishing


text:
Price point

In economics, a price point is a point along the demand curve at which demand for a given product is supposed to stay relatively high. The term "price point" is often used incorrectly to refer to a price.

Characteristics
Introductory microeconomics depicts a demand curve as downward-sloping to the right and either linear or gently convex to the origin. The downwards slope generally holds, but the model of the curve is only piecewise true, as price surveys indicate that demand for a product is not a linear function of its price and not even a smooth function. Demand curves resemble a series of waves rather than a straight line.

The diagram shows price points at the points labeled A, B, and C. When a vendor increases a price beyond a price point (say to a price slightly above price point B), sales volume decreases by an amount more than proportional to the price increase. This decrease in quantity-demanded more than offsets the additional revenue from the increased unit-price. As a result, total revenue (price multiplied by quantity-demanded) decreases when a firm raises its price beyond a price point. Technically, the price elasticity of demand is low (inelastic) at a price lower than the price point (steep section of the demand curve), and high (elastic) at a price higher than a price point (gently sloping part of the demand curve). Firms commonly set prices at existing price-points as a marketing strategy.

Causes
There are three main reasons for price points to appear:

 * 1) Substitution price points
 * 2) * price points occur at the price of a close substitute
 * 3) * when an item's price rises above the cost of a close substitute, the quantity demanded drops sharply
 * 4) Customary price points
 * 5) * the market grows accustomed to paying a certain amount for a type of product
 * 6) * increasing the price beyond this amount will cause sales to drop dramatically
 * 7) Perceptual price points (also referred to as "psychological pricing" or as "odd-number pricing")
 * 8) * raising a price above 99 cents will cause demand to fall disproportionately because people perceive $1.00 as a significantly higher price

Oligopoly pricing
In relation to customary price points, oligopolies can also generate price points. Such price points do not necessarily result from collusion, but as an emergent property of oligopolies: when all firms sell at the same price, any firm which attempts to raise its selling price will experience a decrease in sales and revenues (preventing firms from raising prices unilaterally); on the other hand, any firm in an oligopoly which lowers its prices will most likely be matched by competitors, resulting in small increases in sales but decreases in revenues (for all the firms in that market). This effect can potentially produce a kinked demand-curve where the kink lies at the point of the current price-level in the market. These results depend on the elasticity of the demand curve and on the properties of each market.

title: Price point


text:
Operation Felix

Operation Felix (Unternehmen Felix) was the codename for a proposed German Wehrmacht campaign to cross into Spain and to seize Gibraltar early in the Second World War. The planned operation presupposed the co-operation of the Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco; it did not occur chiefly because of Franco's reluctance to enter the war - partially due to the influence of British intelligence.

Background
Reminiscing about the Spanish Civil War, Republican minister Federica Montseny wrote to historian Burnett Bolloten in 1950 that the government had planned to offer the Canary or the Balearic Islands to Germany in exchange of its neutrality. However, the Largo Caballero government could not provide written proof of its proposal and the Germans did continue to support the Nationalists.

After the Fall of France in June 1940, Hermann Göring advised Adolf Hitler to occupy Spain and North Africa, rather than to invade the British Isles. As early as June 1940, before the armistice with France had been signed, General Heinz Guderian also argued for seizing Britain's strategically-important naval base of Gibraltar. Guderian even urged Hitler to postpone the armistice so that he could rush on through Spain with two Panzer divisions, take Gibraltar and invade French North Africa. General Alfred Jodl, Chief of Staff of Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) operations, presented Hitler with a formal plan to cut Britain from the east of its empire by invading Spain, Gibraltar, North Africa and the Suez Canal, instead of invading Britain.

On 12 July 1940, the OKW set up a special group for the necessary planning. On 22 July, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the Abwehr and an acknowledged expert on Spain, travelled with several other German officers to Madrid, Spain, where they held talks with the Spanish dictator, General Francisco Franco, and Spanish War Minister General Juan Vigón. They then travelled on to Algeciras, where they stayed some days to reconnoitre the approaches to Gibraltar, and they returned to Germany with the conclusion that Franco's regime was reluctant to enter the war. Canaris's group determined that Gibraltar might be seized by an air-supported ground assault by at least two infantry regiments, three engineer battalions and 12 artillery regiments. Canaris declared that without 380 mm heavy assault cannon, which he knew were unavailable, Gibraltar could not be taken. When he reported to Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Canaris gave his opinion that even if Germany were able, with the co-operation of Spain, to seize Gibraltar, the British would land in Morocco and French West Africa.

In August, Canaris met with Franco's brother-in-law, Ramón Serrano Súñer, who was about to become the Spanish Foreign Minister. Canaris urged Serrano Súñer to do what he could to convince Franco to stay out of the war. Soon afterward, Franco dispatched Serrano Súñer to Berlin to get an idea of Hitler's attitude since Canaris had assured him that Germany would not forcibly intervene in Spain. When Serrano Súñer met Hitler on 16 September, Hitler did not press very hard for Spanish involvement in the war, perhaps because he planned to meet Franco himself very soon.

On 24 August, Hitler approved a general plan to seize Gibraltar. On 23 October, he met Franco at Hendaye, France, and proposed for Spain to enter the war on the Axis side as early as January 1941. Gibraltar would be taken by special Wehrmacht units and turned over to Spain, but Franco refused the offer and emphasized Spain's need for large-scale military and economic assistance. Hitler took offence when Franco expressed doubts about the possibility of a German victory in fighting the British on its home territory. Franco also pointed out that even if the British Isles were invaded and conquered, the British government, as well as most of the British Army and the powerful Royal Navy, would probably retreat to Canada and continue the Battle of the Atlantic with the support of the United States.

A meaningless memorandum of understanding was signed at Hendaye by Franco and Hitler, with neither side getting what it wanted. A few days later, Hitler was reported to have told Benito Mussolini, "I would rather have four of my own teeth pulled out than go through another meeting with that man again!"

Planning
Despite those problems, German military leaders proceeded to prepare for a large-scale operation against Gibraltar, codenamed Operation Felix. The plan called for two German army corps to enter Spain across the Pyrenees. One corps, under General Ludwig Kübler, was to cross Spain and assault Gibraltar, and the other, commanded by General Rudolf Schmidt, was to secure its flanks. Air support would need one fighter and two dive-bomber wings. The overall command of Felix was to be assigned to Field Marshal Walther von Reichenau. The plan also made provisions for the occupation of Spanish possessions in North Africa: Spanish Morocco, Río de Oro, and the Canary Islands, whose ports could then be used as bases for German U-boats.

Proposed German order of battle
Expeditionary Corps (forming the covering force); General Rudolf Schmidt
 * 16th Motorized Infantry Division (to concentrate at Valladolid)
 * 16th Panzer Division (Cáceres)
 * SS Division Totenkopf (Seville)

49 Gebirgsarmeekorps or Army Mountain Corps (forming the assault force); General Ludwig Kübler
 * Grossdeutschland Infantry Regiment
 * 98th Regiment of the 1st Mountain Division
 * 26 medium and heavy artillery battalions
 * 3 observation battalions
 * 3 engineer battalions, which would use up to 150 "Goliath" remotely-controlled mine clearing vehicles
 * 2 Nebelwerfer battalions
 * Regiment Brandenburg (detachment of 150)

Diplomatic issues
On 12 November, Hitler issued Führer Directive No. 18, which stated that "political measures to induce the prompt entry of Spain into the war have been initiated.... The aim of German intervention in the Iberian Peninsula (code name Felix) will be to drive the English out of the Western Mediterranean". It also mentioned the potential invasion of Portugal if the British gained a foothold and requested for the occupation of Madeira and the Azores to be investigated.

On 5 December 1940, Hitler met with the German High Command and decided to request permission from Franco for German troops to cross the Spanish border on 10 January 1941. It was planned that General Jodl would go to Spain to make preparations for the attack on Gibraltar as soon as Canaris had obtained Franco's agreement. Accordingly, Canaris met with Franco on 7 December and put to the need for Spain's immediate entry into the war. Franco responded that Spain was simply not capable of supporting the German Army because of shortages of food and the crippled infrastructure and nature of the country still recovering from its recent civil war, which had just officially ended on 1st April 1939. He also expressed his fear that a German seizure of Gibraltar would lead to the loss of the Canary Islands and of Spanish Africa by a British counterinvasion.

On receiving Canaris's report, Hitler decided that Operation Felix should be cancelled. His disappointment was reflected in a later letter to Mussolini in which he said, "I fear that Franco is committing here the greatest mistake of his life".

In the opening weeks of 1941, unsuccessful efforts were made by the ambassadors in Berlin and Rome to encourage the Spanish government to change its stance. Franco answered negatively to another request from Hitler to join the war that was received on 6 February citing the precarious state of Spain's economy and army. German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop told Hitler that in his opinion, "Franco has no intention of ever joining the war". In February 1941, the OKW advised the naval high command that Operation Felix was out of the question for the time being since the troops that were earmarked for it would soon be needed elsewhere.

British countermeasures
The British were well aware of Gibraltar's strategic value and its vulnerability to attack from the Spanish mainland. On the outbreaks of war with Italy, most of the civilian population were evacuated to the United Kingdom and other parts of the Empire, except for those in vital jobs in the dockyard or who were members of the Gibraltar Defence Force. The garrison was more than doubled, and the anti-aircraft defences were greatly improved. Work started on a programme of improvements to Gibraltar's fortifications, including a new network of tunnels deep inside the Rock and a system of strongpoints and minefields covering the land border.

British garrison: spring 1941

 * 2nd Battalion, The King's Regiment
 * 2nd Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry
 * 4th Battalion, The Black Watch (from July 1940)
 * 4th Battalion, Devonshire Regiment (from July 1940)
 * 3rd Heavy Regiment, Royal Artillery, with 8 x 9.2 inch, 7 x 6 inch and 6 x twin 6 pounder coast artillery guns
 * 10th Anti Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery, with 4 x 3 inch, 4 x 3.7 inch, and 2 x 2 pounder anti-aircraft guns
 * 82nd Heavy AA Regiment, Royal Artillery, (from July 1940), with 16 x 3.7 inch guns, 8 x 40mm 40mm Bofors AA guns and radar
 * 3rd Searchlight Battery, Royal Artillery.
 * "Special Detachment" of No. 1 Tunnelling Company, Royal Canadian Engineers (from November 1940)
 * No. 2 Tunnelling Company, Royal Canadian Engineers (from March 1941)
 * Royal Engineers, Royal Signals and supporting arms.

A further countermeasure was the creation of a group of specialist army and navy officers known as the 128th Liaison Delegation Party, which would be activated in the event of the German Army moving into Spain. It had two alternative roles. The initial role would be to provide support to General Franco should he decide to resist the Germans and to provide liaison for any British force sent to support the Spanish forces. The second role, in the event of Franco colluding with the Germans, was to demolish Spanish ports and infrastructure and to organise resistance and sabotage with the participation of the Special Operations Executive. That role became pre-eminent later in the war when the group was renamed the Joint Intelligence Centre.

Felix-Heinrich
On Hitler's insistence, the OKW developed a revised plan for the capture of Gibraltar, which might have been implemented once the German invasion of the Soviet Union had been completed. Codenamed Felix-Heinrich, the plan was submitted to General Franz Halder on 10 March 1941. It proposed that as soon as the invading forces in the Soviet Union reached a line between Kyiv and Smolensk, hopefully by 15 July, units could then be withdrawn to prepare for the Gibraltar operation, which it was thought could begin on 15 October. Felix-Heinrich would broadly follow the original plan, with the same forces, but with new supporting units.

title: Operation Felix


text:
Talk:Frank Ramsey (mathematician)

Untitled
Anyone know what to do with this non-sentence?

 * Ramsey's contributions extended to the field of set theory and logic where he showed that the removing the axiom of reducibility from a proposed set of axioms for set theory.

--Dante Alighieri 05:56 27 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I worry that this page is illegally reliant on http://www.dspace.cam.ac.uk/bitstream/1810/3484/1/Ramsey.html which reproduces a copyrighted article on Ramsey from Philosophy 70 (1995): 243-262. Tcassedy 21:24, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Why do you worry that, specifically? Pcb21| Pete 14:38, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Obviously, because some of the language is identical. Tcassedy 05:27, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * some of the quotations are identical (from Ramsay's brother, and from I A Richards) - maybe this article should be cited as a source for those quotations. But as far as I can see, the technical discussion isn't reliant on that article. BdC 21:57, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Is there any reference for Ramsey et al arranging for financing for Wittgenstein? He was reputedly one of the wealthiest men in Europe, although was said to give his share of the Wittgenstein fortune to his siblings. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.26.5.175 (talk) 00:55, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Ramsey Growth model
In economics Ramsey is known as much for the Ramsey Growth model as he is for Ramsey pricing. I can't find a Wiki entry for Ramsey growth model. I'll try to expand this soon.radek 06:53, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

optimal accumulation theory
'The Ramsey model is today acknowledged as the starting point for optimal accumulation theory although its importance was not recognized until many years after its first publication.' If you click on Optimal Accumulation Theory, you are led to Turnpike Theory, where Ramsey's name is not mentioned. Pamour (talk) 14:36, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

A contribution to the theory of taxation
I've read this paper and it doesn't mention monopolists. In fact it is much more general and describes optimal taxation whether the supply is monopolistic or not. Ramsey actually said that taxation should be proportional to the sum of the reciprocals of the elasticities of supply and demand, not just to elasticity of demand. The only role for a monopolist is to set the markup. So it refers to an organisation like a government or like a supermarket in a monopoly/monopsony position buying from multiple suppliers and selling to multiple consumers. This needs to be referenced and changed. -- Derek Ross | Talk'' 00:16, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 15:30, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Referring to Ramsey as (mathematician)
While Frank Ramsey was certainly a mathematician, he made contributions in many fields; perhaps the parenthetical should be removed, and the name of the article changed to "Frank Plumpton Ramsey" to disambiguate between Ramsey and the basketball player? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Closed Limelike Curves (talk • contribs) 02:17, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

title: Talk:Frank Ramsey (mathematician)


text:
Talk:4th Armored Division (United States)

Untitled
4th Armored Div was not existance post 1971/2 timeframe. Check General Wallace bio.

Tom Roberts 4th AD 66/68

Suggest revising the closing paragraph to acknowledge 4th AD's 14 years of Cold War service in Germany, its longest period of activation, as follows:

"The Division was reactivated in 1954 at Fort Hood Texas and was deployed to Germany in 1957 with headquarters in Göppingen. There it remained until final inactivation in 1971, when it was redesignated the 1st Armored Division."

John Francis, 4th AD 1966-68 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.107.59.21 (talk • contribs) 07:59, 25 May 2005.

I agree!!! My father was in the 4th AD from 1957-1959. He took basic training at Ft. Hood and then the Division was moved to West Germany. He spent the remainder of his enlistment at Erlangen. I still have his old Ike jacket with the 4th AD crest on the shoulder and SP4 insignia in the new "Army green" that didn't match the color of the Ike jacket, as well as his "yearbook" from basic training and his overseas cap with light-blue Infantry braid.--MarshallStack 03:39, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

My family went with my father first to Fort Hood, then in 1957,we went to Ulm, then Erlangen. We were there until 1960. We stayed on the post in dependent housing. I can remember the air raid practice sirens, and all the jeeps and tanks rolling out. Unfortunately, we lost all the papers in his DD214 when my brother passed away. I still look for old pics, old military pages. It was an interesting time.108.86.235.38 (talk) 21:36, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Official nickname
I think someone is confused. When the commander said that "4th Armored Division" was name enough, he meant that no further nickname was required. "Name Enough" was not its nickname, surely. Or am I confused? Ifnkovhg (talk) 05:42, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Very clever Ifnkovhg. Jolly ho, pip pip and all the rest. You know very well what the sentence means. And were you trying to call somebody Shirley but didn't know how to spell it. Yes, you probably do know how to spell "it". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.32.45.168 (talk) 13:46, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

List of Constituant Units
There needs to be an order of battle for the 4th Armored, including all constituant units such as Tank Btl's and Infantry Btl.--86.21.136.74 (talk) 14:53, 10 November 2011 (UTC)