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Battle of the Denmark Strait

The Battle of the Denmark Strait was a naval engagement in the Second World War, which took place on 24 May 1941 between ships of the Royal Navy and the Kriegsmarine. The British battleship HMS Prince of Wales (53) and the battlecruiser HMS Hood (51) fought the German battleship GERMAN BATTLESHIP Bismarck and the heavy cruiser GERMAN CRUISER Prinz Eugen, which were attempting to break out into the North Atlantic to attack Allied merchant shipping (Operation Rheinübung) through the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland.

Less than 10 minutes after the British opened fire, a shell from Bismarck struck Hood near her aft ammunition magazines. Soon afterwards, Hood exploded and sank within three minutes, with the loss of all but three of her crew. Prince of Wales continued to exchange fire with Bismarck but suffered serious malfunctions in her main armament. The British battleship had only been completed in late March 1941, and used new quadruple gun turrets that were unreliable. Prince of Wales soon broke off the engagement.

The battle was a tactical victory for the Germans, but its impact was short-lived. The damage done to Bismarck's forward fuel tanks forced the abandonment of the breakout and an attempt to escape to dry dock facilities in occupied France, producing an operational victory for the British. Incensed by the loss of Hood, a large British force pursued Bismarck, resulting in her loss three days later.

German plans
In April 1941, the German Kriegsmarine intended to send the recently completed fast battleship GERMAN BATTLESHIP Bismarck into the Atlantic Ocean to raid the convoys carrying supplies from North America to Britain. The operation was intended to complement the U-boat attacks on British supply lines during the Battle of the Atlantic. The two fast battleships GERMAN BATTLESHIP Scharnhorst and GERMAN BATTLESHIP Gneisenau had just completed a similar operation, code-named Berlin, between January and March that year. The number of major warships available to the Germans was limited; Bismarck's sister ship GERMAN BATTLESHIP Tirpitz was not yet operational, Scharnhorst was in need of a boiler overhaul after Operation Berlin, and Gneisenau had been damaged by air attacks early April while in Brest, France. Work on the heavy cruisers GERMAN CRUISER Admiral Hipper and GERMAN CRUISER Admiral Scheer, both under refit in Germany after their own raiding operations, was delayed by British air attacks that struck supply depots in Kiel. Admiral Günther Lütjens, the fleet commander who was to command German forces during the planned Operation Rheinübung, sought to delay until repairs to Scharnhorst were completed or Tirpitz could join Bismarck, but the Oberkommando der Marine (Naval High Command) instructed Lütjens to begin the operation as soon as possible to keep pressure on Britain's supply lines. As a result, the only vessel available to support Bismarck was the heavy cruiser GERMAN CRUISER Prinz Eugen.

British plans
The British Royal Navy learned of Bismarcks sortie after the Swedish cruiser HSWMS Gotland (1933) spotted the vessels passing through the western Baltic Sea on 20 May; Gotlands report was passed to the British naval attache in Stockholm, who forwarded it to the Admiralty. British reconnaissance aircraft confirmed the Germans' presence in Norway. Now aware that major German warships were at sea with the intention to break into the Atlantic, the Royal Navy began to despatch vessels to patrol the likely routes, including the heavy cruisers HMS Norfolk (78) and HMS Suffolk (55) to cover the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland. Another group, consisting of the battleship Prince of Wales, the battlecruiser HMS Hood (51), and a screen of six destroyers, HMS Electra (H27), HMS Achates (H12), HMS Antelope (H36), HMS Anthony (H40), HMS Echo (H23) and HMS Icarus (D03), under the command of Vice-Admiral Lancelot Holland in Hood, cruised to the south of Iceland to intercept the Germans once they were detected. Norfolk and Suffolk spotted Bismarck and Prinz Eugen on the evening of 23 May; Suffolk was fitted with radar that allowed them to shadow the Germans through the night whilst remaining outside of German gun range.

Prince of Wales was a newly commissioned King George V-class battleship, similar to Bismarck in size and power. Prince of Wales had not yet been properly "shaken down", and her crew was inexperienced. She still had mechanical problems, especially with her main armament. The ship had sailed with shipyard workers still aboard working on her.

For 20 years after her commissioning in 1920, Hood was the largest and heaviest warship in the world. Combining eight massive BL 15-inch Mk I naval guns with a top speed greater than any battleship on the sea, Hood was the pride of Great Britain's navy, and embodied the world dominance of British naval power. Despite this, Hood had one conspicuous flaw as compared to the super-dreadnought battleships she served alongside: as a battlecruiser, much of her bulk was dedicated to extra engine power instead of comprehensive armour coverage. This came from her design as an Admiral-class battlecruiser to meet the threat of the German Mackensen-class battlecruisers during World War I.

While her 12-inch belt armour was considered sufficient against most capital ships she was likely to encounter, her 3 inches of deck armour left her vulnerable to plunging fire at long range. At the time of her commissioning in World War I, naval gunnery was severely inaccurate at the ranges necessary to produce plunging fire, and Hood's greater speed and maneuverability were seen as an acceptable trade-off. This approach was proved to be flawed after the loss of HMS Indefatigable (1909) at the Battle of Jutland and combined with the accuracy of naval gunfire increasing in the inter-war period, Hood was eventually scheduled to receive an upgrade in 1939 that would have doubled her deck armour to 6 inches, but the outbreak of World War II meant the upgrade never took place. She thus sortied to war at a marked disadvantage against the new capital ships of the Axis powers.

Aware of Hood's inadequate protective armour, distant to the southeast of where the battle took place, Holland's superior (Admiral Sir John Tovey) considered ordering him to have Prince of Wales sail ahead of Hood. With the ships in this position, Tovey concluded the better-protected Prince of Wales could draw the German battleships' large-shell gunfire. Ultimately, Tovey did not give the order, later saying "I did not feel such interference with such a senior officer justified."

Both plans go awry

The Kriegsmarine had hoped that the Bismarck force would enter onto trans-Atlantic commerce raiding, from the Norwegian Sea via the Denmark Strait, undetected and unopposed. The Germans based this hope upon a transit from German territorial waters on the North Sea; and, through the territorial waters of German-occupied Norway into the Norwegian Sea, undetected by aerial searches; neutral ship encounters; and traditional "coast-watching" observations performed by formal and informal efforts of maritime intelligence gathering, in the neutral and occupied countries surrounding the North Sea.

In the event, the ground-level coast-watching observations from both neutral and occupied territories identified the principal combatant units sortied for the Exercise Rhine operation from the moment they left German territorial waters. The combatants (Bismarck and Prinz Eugen) were identified by in-country coast-watchers located in Denmark; who were able to identify the ships and communicate with their clandestine contacts, the dates and times of the German surface units, moving in their designated coast-watch areas of responsibility.

The HSwMS Gotland spotted the transit of Bismarck and Prinz Eugen in the normal shipping lanes in the North Sea, and reported the movement to the Swedish authorities. Swedish territory as well hosted individual ground-level coast watchers who were able to follow and report on movements in Swedish coastal waters. These observations were passed directly to Royal Navy intelligence by routine maritime diplomatic channels maintained by the British naval attaché in Stockholm. Thus, when Bismarck and her escort moved into the unoccupied fjords of German-occupied Norway, for final coastal refuelling and topping off of ships' stores and supplies, the RAF (weather permitting) was able to keep a final watch on the location and timing of the German raider force.

Holland's battle plan was to have Hood and Prince of Wales engage Bismarck while Suffolk and Norfolk engaged Prinz Eugen (which, Holland assumed, still steamed behind Bismarck and not ahead of her). He signalled this to Captain John C. Leach of Prince of Wales but did not radio Rear-Admiral Wake-Walker, who as Commander of the 1st Cruiser Squadron directed Suffolk and Norfolk, for fear of disclosing his location. Instead, he observed radio silence. Holland hoped to meet the enemy at approximately 02:00. Sunset in this latitude was at 01:51 (ship's clocks were four hours ahead of local time ). Bismarck and Prinz Eugen would be silhouetted against the sun's afterglow while Hood and Prince of Wales could approach rapidly, unseen in the darkness, to a range close enough not to endanger Hood with plunging fire from Bismarck. The Germans would not expect an attack from this quarter, giving the British the advantage of surprise.

The plan's success depended on Suffolk's continually unbroken contact with the German ships. However, Suffolk lost contact from 00:28. For 90 minutes, Holland neither sighted the German ships nor received any further news from Norfolk or Suffolk. Reluctantly, Holland ordered Hood and Prince of Wales to turn south-southwest but he detached his destroyers which continued searching to the north. However, the loss of contact should be understood as temporary and tactical only; and not strategic in terms of the tactical outcome. Suffolk lost contact with its reconnaissance target (the enemy fleet) in what was essentially a closed, confined rectangular space; aligned generally northeast (the entrance to the Denmark Strait) to southwest (the exit of the Strait into the Atlantic). The enemy units were firmly constrained by the Greenland ice pack to the north, and the extensive Royal Navy minefield to the south along the coast of Iceland. Given the prior warning of the German sortie, there was ample time for the Royal Navy to place armed reconnaissance at both ends of this narrow alignment. Suffolk and Norfolk were at the eastern entrance to the Strait (where contact was made immediately upon Bismarck's entry). Holland was waiting at the western end as the Bismarck force exited the Strait.

Strategically, it was an unquestioned fact (including the approximate timing) that Bismarcks and Prinz Eugens entrance into the Atlantic (the fundamental objective of Rhine Exercise), was known from the moment the fleet left German territorial waters. And that was a long enough time span before the fleet's final fitting out for transit to the Denmark Strait, that Lütjens could not have helped but to realize, that his force would not under any circumstance enter the Atlantic undetected nor would it enter unopposed. And by the time it was opposed, it would occur with forces that would likely ensure his fleet's ultimate destruction. And such destruction would take place before any supply convoy units (the whole purpose of the operation) were threatened by Operation Rhine Exercise.

Before contact was re-established, the two squadrons missed each other narrowly. Had the German ships not altered course to the west at 01:41 to follow the line of the Greenland icepack, the British would have intercepted them much earlier than they did. The British destroyers were just 10 mi to the southeast when the Germans made this course change. If the visibility had not been reduced to 3 - 5 mi, the German vessels would probably have been spotted (since generally on a calm, clear day ship lookouts can observe large objects and ships about 12 miles (19 km) distant on the horizon. And if the ship's lookouts are in a crow's nest, the observable distance is even farther).

Just before 03:00, Suffolk regained contact with Bismarck. Hood and Prince of Wales were 35 mi away, slightly ahead of the Germans. Holland signalled to steer toward the Germans and increased speed to 28 kn. Suffolk's loss of contact had placed the British at a disadvantage. Instead of the swiftly closing head-on approach Holland had envisioned, he would have to converge at a wider angle, much more slowly. This would leave Hood vulnerable to Bismarck's plunging shells for a much longer period. The situation worsened further when, at 03:20, Suffolk reported that the Germans had made a further course alteration to the west, placing the German and British squadrons almost abeam of each other.

At 05:35, lookouts on Prince of Wales spotted the German ships 17 mi away. The Germans, already alerted to the British presence through their hydrophonic equipment, picked up the smoke and masts of the British ships 10 minutes later. At this point, Holland had the options of joining Suffolk in shadowing Bismarck and waiting for Tovey to arrive with King George V and other ships to attack, or ordering his squadron into action. He chose the latter at 05:37. The rough seas in the Strait kept the destroyers' role to a minimum and the cruisers Norfolk and Suffolk would be too far behind the German force to reach the battle.

Opening moves
Hood opened fire at 05:52.5 at a distance of approximately 26500 yd. Holland had ordered firing to begin on the leading ship, Prinz Eugen, believing from her position that she was Bismarck. Holland soon amended his order and directed both ships to engage the rear ship, Bismarck. Prince of Wales had already identified and engaged Bismarck, whereas Hood is believed to have continued to fire at Prinz Eugen for some time.

Holland was a gunnery expert; he was well aware of the danger posed by Hood's thin deck armour, which offered weak protection against vertical plunging fire. Holland therefore wanted to reduce the range as quickly as possible, because at a shorter range the trajectory of Bismarck's shells would be flatter, and the shells would therefore be more likely to hit the armour belt protecting the sides of the ship or glance off the top deck, rather than penetrate vertically though the deck armour. Holland closed the range at an angle that placed the German ships too far forward of the beam, which meant that only 10 of the 18 British heavy guns could train and presented the Germans with a bigger target than necessary. One of Prince of Wales' forward guns became unserviceable after the first salvo, leaving only 9 still firing. Suffolk and Norfolk tried to engage Bismarck during the action but both were out of range and had an insufficient speed advantage over Bismarck to rapidly close the range.

The Germans also had the weather gauge, meaning that the British ships were steaming into the wind, with spray drenching the lenses of Prince of Wales' "A" turret's 42 ft Barr and Stroud coincidence rangefinder and both British ships' "B" turret 30 ft rangefinders. The shorter based (15 ft) ones in the director towers had to be used instead. Holland had Prince of Wales stay close to Hood, conforming to Hood's movements instead of varying course and speed, which made it easier for the Germans to find the range to both British ships. It would have aided Holland's gunners if they had both fired upon Bismarck as originally planned, since they could time precisely each other's salvos to avoid mistaking one ship's fire for the other. The British could also use Concentration Fire, where both ships' main armament salvos would be controlled by one ship's fire control computer—probably Prince of Wales' modern Admiralty Fire Control Table.

Prince of Wales struck her target first. She would ultimately hit Bismarck three times. One shell struck the commander's boat and put the seaplane catapult amidships out of action (the latter damage not being discovered until much later, during an attempt to fly off the ship's War Diary on the eve of her final battle). The second shell passed through the bow from one side to the other without exploding. The third struck the hull underwater and burst inside the ship, flooding a generator room and damaging the bulkhead to an adjoining boiler room, partially flooding it. The last two hits caused damage to Bismarck's machinery and medium flooding. The hit also severed a steam line and wounded five of Bismarck's crew by scalding. The damage to the bow cut access to 1000 LT of fuel oil in the forward fuel tanks, caused Bismarck to leave an oil slick and reduced her speed by 2 kn. Bismarck was soon listing 9° to port and lost 2 m of freeboard at her bow.

The Germans held their fire until 05:55, when both German ships fired on Hood. Lütjens did not immediately give the order to begin firing. Bismarck's first gunnery officer, Korvettenkapitän Adalbert Schneider, asked "Frage Feuererlaubnis?" (Permission to open fire?) several times without receiving a response, until the captain of Bismarck,  Kapitän zur See Ernst Lindemann, impatiently responded: "Ich lasse mir doch nicht mein Schiff unter dem Arsch wegschießen. Feuererlaubnis!" (I'm not letting my ship get shot out from under my arse. Permission to fire!)

A shell hit Hood's boat deck, starting a sizable fire in the ready-use 4 in ammunition store but this fire did not spread to other areas of the ship or cause the later explosion. It is possible that Hood was struck again at the base of her bridge and in her foretop radar director. There has been contention over which German vessel struck Hood; Prinz Eugen (Kapitän zur See Helmuth Brinkmann), was firing at Prince of Wales, following an order from the fleet commander. The Gunnery Officer of Prinz Eugen, Paul Schmalenbach is quoted as saying that Prinz Eugen's target was Hood.

Sinking of Hood

At 06:00, Holland ordered his force to turn once again to port to ensure that the aft main guns on both Hood and Prince of Wales could bear on the German ships. In terms of the force balance this would nominally give Holland's force the advantage of 18 large caliber (14/15 in.) guns (10 in Prince of Wales, 8 in Hood); to 8 (8 - 15 in. in Bismarck).

During the turn, a salvo from Bismarck, fired from about 9 mi, was seen by men aboard Prince of Wales to straddle Hood abreast her mainmast. This straddle meant that some of the salvos fell to port, some to starboard (of the hull), and some precisely aligned over the center of the main deck of Hood. It is likely that one 38 cm shell struck somewhere between Hood's mainmast and "X" turret aft of the mast. A huge pillar of flame shot upward 'like a giant blowtorch' in the vicinity of the mainmast.

This was followed by an explosion that destroyed a large portion of the ship from amidships clear to the rear of "Y" turret, blowing both aft turrets into the sea. The ship broke in two and the stern fell away and sank. Ted Briggs, one of the survivors, claimed Hood heeled to 30 degrees at which point 'we knew she just wasn't coming back'. The bow rose clear of the water, pointed upward, pivoted about and sank shortly after the stern. "A" turret fired a salvo while in this upright position, possibly from the doomed gun crew, just before the bow section sank.

Splinters rained down on Prince of Wales .5 mi away. Hood sank in about three minutes with 1,415 members of the crew. Only Ted Briggs, Bob Tilburn and Bill Dundas survived to be rescued two hours later by the destroyer HMS Electra (H27).

The Admiralty later concluded that the most likely explanation for the loss of Hood was a penetration of her magazines by a 38 cm shell from Bismarck, causing the explosion. Recent research with submersible craft suggests that the initial explosion was in the aft 4 in magazine and that it spread to the 15 in magazines via the ammunition trunks. It has been suggested from examination of the wreckage, found in 2001, that the magazine explosion in the 4 in armament near the mainmast caused the vertical blast of flame seen there, and this in turn ignited the magazines of the aft 15 in guns that caused the explosion that wrecked the stern. This explosion might have travelled through the starboard fuel tanks, igniting the fuel oil there, setting off the forward magazines and completing the destruction of the ship.

The wreck of Hood revealed the bow section bereft of any structure. A huge section of her side is missing, from the 'A' barbette to the foredeck. The midship section had its plates curled outward. Moreover, the main parts of the forward structure, including the 600 LT conning tower, were found about 1.1 km away from the main wreckage. This has sparked theories that the 15 in forward magazines exploded as a result of the force, flames and pressure, caused by the detonation of the aft magazines. However, a team of marine forensic scientists has found that implosion damage to the forward hull due to the rapid sinking of the Hood, is the most likely cause of the state of the forward hull, and they do not support any theory that the forward magazines exploded.

Prince of Wales alone
Prince of Wales found herself steering towards the sinking Hood. Her commanding officer, Captain Leach, ordered an emergency avoidance turn away from Hood's wreckage. This violent change of course disrupted her aim and put her in a position that made it easier for the Germans to target her. She resumed her previous course but was now under the concentrated fire of both German ships. Prince of Wales was struck four times by Bismarck and three times by Prinz Eugen. One shell passed through her upper superstructure, killing or wounding several crewmen in the Compass Platform and Air Defence Platform. Pieces of another shell struck her radar office aft, killing the crewmen within.

A 20.3 cm shell from Prinz Eugen found its way to the propelling charge/round manipulation chamber below the aft 5.25 in gun turrets, and a 38 cm shell from Bismarck hit underwater below the armour belt, penetrating about 13 ft into the ship's hull, about 25 ft below the waterline, but was stopped by the anti-torpedo bulkhead. Fortunately for Prince of Wales, neither shell exploded, but she still suffered minor flooding and the loss of some fuel oil.

By this time, serious gunnery malfunctions had caused intermittent problems with the main armament, leading to a 26% reduction in output. According to Captain Leach, he decided that continuing the action would risk losing Prince of Wales without inflicting further damage on the enemy. He, therefore, ordered the ship to make smoke and withdraw, 'pending a more favourable opportunity'. Prince of Wales turned away just after 06:04, firing from her rear turret under local control until the turret suffered a jammed shell ring, cutting off the ammunition supply and making the guns inoperable.

Despite efforts by crew members and civilian technicians to repair the shell ring, it took until 08:25 for all four guns to be back in service, although two of the guns were serviceable by 07:20. This temporarily left only five  14 in guns operational, but nine of the ten were operational in five hours. The final salvos fired were ragged and are believed to have fallen short. The ship retired from the battle around 06:10. Thirteen of her crew had been killed, nine were wounded. The timing of Prince of Wales' withdrawal was fortunate for her, as she had come into torpedo range of Prinz Eugen and turned away as the German cruiser was about to fire.

Breaking off the action
On Bismarck there was tremendous elation at the sinking of Hood. There was also a keen expectation that they would close on Prince of Wales and possibly finish her off. Lindemann requested that Lütjens allow Bismarck to do just that. Even if Tovey's squadron had left Scapa Flow the previous day, he would still be more than 300 nmi away from Bismarck – even if Bismarck diverted to sink Prince of Wales (a chase Lindemann calculated would take only two or three hours).

Lütjens refused to allow Lindemann to give chase, giving no explanation. Lindemann repeated his request, this time more assertively. Lütjens held firm orders from the German Naval Commander, Großadmiral Erich Raeder, to avoid unnecessary combat with the Royal Navy, especially when it could lead to further damage that could hasten delivering Bismarck toward the waiting hands of the British. He broke off combat instead of pursuing Prince of Wales and ordered a course of 270°, due west. Bismarck had fired 93 of her 353 base-fused Armour Piercing (AP) shells during the engagement.

This clash between the two senior German officers reflected their disparate and distinct command functions. As captain of Bismarck, Lindemann operated first and foremost as a tactician. As such, he had no doubt that his ship's immediate objective was to destroy Prince of Wales, and he had pressed his case as far and hard as he should. Lütjens, as fleet chief and task force commander, operated at the strategic and operational levels. To some degree, his orders were clear – attacking convoys was his priority, not risking "a major engagement for limited, and perhaps uncertain, goals". Nevertheless, Raeder had also ordered Lütjens to be bold and imaginative, to accept battle if unavoidable and conduct it vigorously to the finish.

The reality was that Lütjens' orders did not cover a spectacular success like the one just achieved. His priority therefore was to stick to his instructions - to concentrate on sinking merchant shipping and avoid encounters with enemy warships whenever possible. Moreover, before leaving Germany, Lütjens had told Admirals Conrad Patzig and Wilhelm Marschall, that he would adhere to Raeder's directives. This meant he did not intend to become the third fleet chief to be relieved for contradicting Raeder's orders; Marschall, one of his two predecessors, had been relieved of command for not following his orders to the letter despite the fact that Marschall's analysis of the changes in the tactical situation since the orders were issued resulted in the sinking of the British aircraft carrier HMS Glorious and its two escorting destroyers. Nor was he predisposed to discuss his command decisions with a subordinate officer.

Even if he had known it was the untried Prince of Wales he was fighting and not King George V, Lütjens would probably have stuck to his decision. Following her would have meant exposing the squadron to further gunfire as well as to torpedo attacks from Norfolk and Suffolk. He would have risked his ships and crews on an expressly forbidden opportunity. Lütjens would also have been facing a foe that was still combat effective, despite the hits taken the RN's damage assessment was that damage sustained was limited and caused no significant reduction in combat efficiency.

Between 06:19 and 06:25, Suffolk fired six salvoes in the direction of Bismarck, having mistaken a radar contact with an aircraft for Bismarck. Suffolk was actually out of gun range of both Bismarck and Prinz Eugen at the time.

Aftermath

Holland's death led to responsibility for Prince of Wales falling to Wake-Walker in Norfolk. With this command came the responsibility of coping with Bismarck until enough British warships could concentrate and destroy her. His choice was either to renew the action with Bismarck, or ensure that she be intercepted and brought to action by other heavy units. Wake-Walker chose the latter course, continuing to shadow the German ships. Further offensive action, he concluded, would cause more damage to Prince of Wales than to Bismarck and endanger his cruisers, plus he knew Tovey was on his way. He ordered Prince of Wales to follow Norfolk at her best speed, so that Norfolk and Suffolk could fall back on her if attacked. At 07:57 Suffolk reported that Bismarck had reduced speed and appeared damaged.

Since Bismarck's receiving the first hit in the forecastle, all six of the ship's 26-man damage control teams had worked to repair the damage. When it was reported that the tips of the starboard propeller could be seen above water, Lindemann had ordered counterflooding two compartments aft to restore the ship's trim. He then sent divers into the forecastle to connect the forward fuel tanks, containing a much-needed 1000 LT of fuel, first to the tanks near the forward boiler then to the rear fuel tank by way of a provisional line running over the upper deck.

Both these manoeuvres failed. Lindemann then requested permission to slow Bismarck and heel the ship first to one side then the other to weld patches from the inside to the holes in the forward hull. Lütjens refused, again without comment. Eventually, he had to agree to slow the ship to 22 kn to allow hammocks and collision matting to be stuffed in the holes of the No. 2 boiler room and the auxiliary boiler room to stop the growing ingress of seawater. This attempt also failed. Boiler Room No. 2 was shut down, with a loss of speed to 28 kn.

As well as taking on seawater, Bismarck was leaking fuel oil. Lütjens ordered Prinz Eugen to drop back and see how much of a trail she was leaving astern. The carpet of oil was broad enough to cover both sides of the ship's wake, was all colours of the rainbow and gave off a strong smell – all of which helped disclose Bismarck's location.

The damage to Bismarck's forward fuel tanks, combined with a missed opportunity to refuel at Bergen earlier in the voyage, left less than 3000 LT of fuel remaining, not enough to operate effectively against the Atlantic convoys. The element of surprise – which was considered essential for the operation's success – had most definitely been lost; the German ships continued to be shadowed by Wake-Walker's squadron. Lütjens concluded that he needed to abort Bismarck's mission and head toward a convenient dockyard for repairs.

The question was which dockyard to head for. The nearest friendly ports were Bergen and Trondheim in Norway, a little over 1000 mi away. Steaming in that direction meant a return passage north or south of Iceland, with the enemy's air forces now fully alerted to their presence and the possibility of other heavy units between them and Scapa Flow. Lütjens knew his intelligence was unreliable. Hood had been reported by Group North to be off West Africa and there had been no reports of a King George V-class battleship in the vicinity.

Disregarding Lindemann's recommendation to return to Bergen, Lütjens ordered Bismarck to head for the French port of Saint-Nazaire. Prince of Wales pursued for several hours and re-engaged on several occasions before the German ships evaded pursuit. Although the French coast was 600 mi further away than Bergen, Saint-Nazaire held the potential of longer nights and wider seas in which to shake off Bismarck's shadowers, plus the possibility of luring them across a line of U-boats. It would leave Bismarck poised on the edge of the British trade routes once the damage were repaired; it also meant the potential support of the battleships GERMAN BATTLESHIP Scharnhorst and GERMAN BATTLESHIP Gneisenau. Both ships had been stationed at Brest in France, since the end of Operation Berlin earlier that year but had been kept in port for repairs and overhaul. While Brest was closer than Saint-Nazaire, it was within range of Royal Air Force bombers.

Lütjens detached the undamaged Prinz Eugen to continue raiding on her own. The cruiser went further south into the Atlantic, where she refuelled from a tanker at sea. She suffered engine trouble, abandoned her commerce raiding mission without having sunk any merchant ships, and made it to Brest.

German
News of Lütjens' decision was received with shock in Berlin, Wilhelmshaven and Paris. A blizzard of urgent telephone calls raced across German-occupied Europe. While the Berlin Admiralty was satisfied with Lütjens' success, it was tempered by news of Bismarck's damage and the decision to head for France. Grand Admiral Raeder was not clear whether Lütjens intended to steam for St. Nazaire immediately or after shaking off his pursuers and oiling in mid-Atlantic. Raeder immediately conferred with his chief of staff, Admiral Otto Schniewind, who in turn telephoned Admiral Rolf Carls, who commanded Group North in Wilhelmshaven.

Carls had already drafted a message recalling Lütjens to Germany, but had not yet sent it. Schniewind pointed out that at noon Lütjens had crossed the demarcation line between the Northern Hebrides and Southern Greenland, thus passing from Group North's operational control to Group West; therefore, the decision to recall Lütjens was no longer Carls' to make. A subsequent call to Group West's commander, Admiral Alfred Saalwächter, revealed that he did not plan to recall Lütjens and that he felt such a decision should be discussed between Schniewind and Raeder.

Raeder was against issuing a recall himself, telling Schniewind they did not know enough about the situation at hand and that the person who would best know would be Lütjens. He then telephoned Adolf Hitler, who was at the Obersalzberg in the Bavarian Alps. Hitler received the news of Hood's sinking stoically, exhibiting neither joy nor any other triumphant behaviour. After hearing Raeder's report, he turned to those who were with him and expressed his personal thoughts:

"If now these British cruisers are maintaining contact and Lütjens has sunk the Hood and nearly crippled the other, which was brand new and having trouble with her guns during the action, why didn't he sink her too? Why hasn't he tried to get out of there or why hasn't he turned around?"

News of Hood's destruction was seized upon more enthusiastically by Dr. Joseph Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry. That evening it was broadcast to the nation, accompanied by "We march against England" and other martial airs. The German public, already enjoying the news of Luftwaffe victories over the Royal Navy off Crete, received the news of Hood's sinking euphorically.

British
The British public were shocked that their most emblematic warship had been destroyed so suddenly, with the loss of more than 1,400 of her crew. The Admiralty mobilised every available warship in the Atlantic to hunt down and destroy Bismarck. The Royal Navy forces pursued and brought Bismarck to battle. The German battleship was sunk on the morning of 27 May.

Moves were subsequently made to court-martial Wake-Walker and Captain John Leach of Prince of Wales. The view was taken that they were wrong not to have continued the battle with Bismarck after Hood had been sunk. John Tovey, Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet, was appalled at this criticism. A row ensued between Tovey and his superior, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound. Tovey stated that the two officers had acted correctly, ensuring that the German ships were tracked and not endangering their ships needlessly. Furthermore, Prince of Wales's main guns had repeatedly malfunctioned and she could not have matched Bismarck. Tovey threatened to resign his position and appear at any court-martial as 'defendant's friend' and defence witness. No more was heard of the proposal.

A British board of enquiry quickly investigated the cause of Hood's explosion and produced a report. After criticism that the initial enquiry did not record all the available evidence, a second board of enquiry more extensively investigated Hood's loss, and examined the vulnerabilities of other large British warships still in service in light of the probable causes of the explosion. It, like the first enquiry, concluded that a 15 in shell from Bismarck caused the explosion of Hood's aft ammunition magazines. This led to refitting some older British warships with increased protection for their ammunition magazines and some other related improvements.

Many naval historians and writers have analyzed the Bismarck engagement and weighed the participants' decisions. One of the most debated is Lütjens' decision to proceed into the Atlantic rather than continue the battle.

Parallels to Jutland
A number of parallels were drawn by historian Correlli Barnett between Holland's actions and those of Admiral David Beatty in the opening stages of the Battle of Jutland. According to Barnett, Holland felt he had to engage Bismarck immediately, rather than support Wake-Walker in shadowing until Force 'H' could arrive. Beatty, likewise, felt he needed to engage German Admiral Franz Hipper's battlecruisers with his own forces instead of drawing the Germans toward Admiral John Jellicoe and the rest of the British Grand Fleet.

Holland, like Beatty, possessed superiority in the number of heavy ships he possessed, yet he was encumbered by an inferiority in the fighting effectiveness of those units. Moreover, Holland's deployment of his units compared to Beatty's deployment at Jutland. Beatty and Holland both attacked while German units were well before the beam. As a result, the midship and aft turrets of Beatty's ships could barely fire on the enemy. Holland's ships could not use their aft turrets until the final turn to port just before Hood was sunk.

Beatty placed his lighter-armoured battlecruisers at the head of his line, leaving the more powerful and better-armoured Queen Elizabeth-class battleship battleships in the rear. Likewise, Holland placed the old and vulnerable Hood ahead of the better armoured (albeit new and untested) Prince of Wales. Both admirals exercised tight tactical control over their units from their flagships. This prevented Captain Leach from manoeuvring Prince of Wales independently and possibly taking a different line of approach that might have confused the Germans.

Order of battle
Note: The British escorting destroyers were ordered to the battle coordinates as part of the overall forces sent to intercept the German ships; they were detached the evening before the battle.

Axis

 * German battleship GERMAN BATTLESHIP Bismarck
 * German heavy cruiser GERMAN CRUISER Prinz Eugen

Allied

 * The British battleship HMS Prince of Wales (53).
 * The British battlecruiser HMS Hood
 * The British heavy cruisers HMS Suffolk (55), HMS Norfolk (78)
 * The British destroyers HMS Achates (H12), HMS Antelope (H36), HMS Anthony (H40), HMS Echo (H23), HMS Electra (H27), HMS Icarus (D03)

title: Battle of the Denmark Strait


text:
Richmond Lattimore

Richmond Alexander Lattimore (May 6, 1906 – February 26, 1984) was an American poet and classicist known for his translations of the Greek classics, especially his versions of the Iliad and Odyssey.

Biography
Born to David and Margaret Barnes Lattimore in Paotingfu, China, he graduated from Dartmouth College in 1926. His brother Owen Lattimore was a Sinologist who was blacklisted for his association with China during the McCarthy era, but subsequently rehabilitated when none of the charges against him proved to be true. Their sister Eleanor Frances Lattimore was an author and illustrator of children's books.

Richmond was a Rhodes Scholar at Christ Church, Oxford, and received his B.A. in 1932, and subsequently, under the direction of William Abbott Oldfather, received a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 1934. He joined the Department of Greek at Bryn Mawr College the following year, and married Alice Bockstahler, with whom he later had two sons, Steven and Alexander; Steven also became a classical scholar and professor at UCLA.

From 1943 to 1946, Lattimore was absent from his professorial post to serve in the United States Navy, but returned after the war to remain at Bryn Mawr College, with periodic visiting positions at other universities, until his retirement in 1971. He continued to publish poems and translations for the remainder of his life, with two poems appearing in print posthumously.

From 1953 to 1960, he partnered with David Grene to co-edit a complete translation of the Greek tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides for University of Chicago Press.

He translated the Book of Revelation in 1962. A 1979 edition by McGraw-Hill Ryerson included the four Gospels. Lattimore completed his translation of the entire New Testament, which was published posthumously in 1996 with the title The New Testament.

For many years Lattimore accompanied his wife Alice to services at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont, near Bryn Mawr College, a church with an Anglo-Catholic worship tradition. He chose to be baptized on Easter Eve 1983 and confirmed as a communicant there, due in part to his work translating the Gospel of St. Luke.

Lattimore died from cancer in Rosemont, Pennsylvania, on February 26, 1984, aged 77.

Memberships
Lattimore was a Fellow of the Academy of American Poets, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Philological Association, and the Archaeological Institute of America, as well as a Fellow of the American Academy at Rome and an Honorary Student at Christ Church, Oxford.

Translations

 * The Odes of Pindar. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947.
 * Greek Lyrics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949. Revised 1960.
 * The Iliad of Homer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951.
 * The Works and Days; Theogony; The Shield of Herakles. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959.
 * The Frogs. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962.
 * The Odyssey of Homer. New York: Harper & Row, 1967.
 * The Four Gospels and the Revelation, Newly Translated from the Greek. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1979.
 * Acts and Letters of the Apostles, Newly Translated from the Greek. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1982.
 * The New Testament. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1996.

Poetry

 * The Stride of Time. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966.
 * Poems from Three Decades. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1972.

Awards
Lattimore's translation of Aristophanes' The Frogs won the Bollingen Poetry Translation Prize in 1962.

References and sources

 * References

 * Sources

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

title: Richmond Lattimore


text:
Umberto Agnelli

Umberto Agnelli (1 November 1934 – 27 May 2004) was an Italian industrialist and politician. He was the third son of Virginia (born Donna Virginia Bourbon del Monte) and Edoardo Agnelli, and the youngest brother of Gianni Agnelli.

Agnelli served as a CEO of Italian carmaker Fiat from 1970 to 1976. After the death of his brother, he was briefly chairman of the Fiat Group until his death, aged 69, in 2004. He was also chairman and later honorary chairman of Juventus, the football team long-associated with Fiat and the Agnelli family, and was for a time the president of the Italian Football Federation. He was a Christian Democracy member of the Senate of the Republic from 1976 to 1979. In 2015, he was posthumously inducted into the Italian Football Hall of Fame.

Early life
Agnelli was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 1 November 1934, as the youngest of seven children. After the premature deaths of his parents, Edoardo Agnelli and Virginia Bourbon del Monte in two unrelated accidents, he was raised by his older brother Gianni Agnelli. He graduated in law at the University of Catania. Like his brother and his grandfather, Giovanni Agnelli, who cofounded Fiat S.p.A. in 1899, he also carried out his military service at the Pinerolo Cavalry Application School.

Career
Agnelli was chairman of Fiat France from 1965 to 1980, chief executive officer of Fiat from 1970 to 1976 and its vice president from 1976 to 1993. He was chairman of Fiat Auto from 1980 to 1990, and was a member of the International Advisory Board from 1993 to 2004. He was also chairman of Juventus between 1956 and 1961 and was honorary chairman from 1970 to 2004. He led the club to become the most successful in Italian football.

Engaged for a long time in the Fiat restructuring process, with the simultaneous opening towards foreign capital and markets, Agnelli and his family were listed 278th in the 2003 Forbes ranking of the richest people in the world, with an estimated net worth of around US$1.5 billion. Although he was a senior executive at Fiat, Agnelli was sidelined from taking a leadership role by his older brother, whom he had supported for a long time in the management of the family company even if often forced to remain on the bench for financial power games, until the latter's death in 2003.

From 2003 to 2004, Agnelli took over as chairman of the Fiat Group. Compared to the past, he decided to change his strategy by concentrating all Fiat resources on the car and turning to an external manager, Giuseppe Morchio, to whom he would entrust the leadership of the company. The Agnelli family's management was described as progressive and paternalistic.

Starting in the 1980s and accelerating into the 1990s, when the company was struggling, Agnelli was the architect of Fiat's diversification. The Fiat Group controlled several Italian newspapers and publishers in addition to the Fiat car firms and Juventus. Agnelli was in the process of restoring Fiat's fortunes, following a period in which the company's balance sheet, market share, and share value had all been in decline in the company's worst financial crisis, when he suddenly died of lung cancer after 18 months in control. Despite this, Forbes estimated that he was the world's 68th richest man with an approximate net worth of US$5.5 billion. He was a member of the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Group.

Juventus
Elected in 1955 by a council of members, including his older brother, who was president of the club, he became the youngest person to assume the highest managerial position in the history of Juventus. His management was characterized by the signings of important players, such as John Charles and Omar Sívori, who proved to be decisive for the conquest of three Serie A championships and two consecutive Coppa Italias from 1958 to 1961. Before he died, Agnelli was instrumental in signing Fabio Capello as Juventus coach in 2004. He also had transformed the club into a modern publicly-listed company with important investment projects. After leaving the presidential role in 1962, Agnelli remained tied to Juventus. In 1994, he took over the management activities previously carried out by his brother, exerting greater influence on the club as honorary president during the following decade, a period in which the club won another five Serie A titles, one more Coppa Italia, four Supercoppa Italianas, one Intercontinental Cup, one UEFA Champions League, one UEFA Intertoto Cup and one UEFA Super Cup, for a total of 19 trophies in 18 years. By virtue of the sporting successes achieved during his managerial sporting career, Agnelli was jointly inducted by the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) and the Coverciano Football Museum Foundation into the Italian Football Hall of Fame in 2015.

In 1999, Juventus improved their own record of having won all five major UEFA competitions by winning the Intertoto Cup, the next year was voted the seventh best of the FIFA Club of the Century and in 2009 was placed by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics second in the European best club of the 20th-century ranking, the highest for an Italian club in both; by the early 2000s, the club had the third best revenue in Europe at over €200 million. This all changed when, three years after his death, Calciopoli controversially hit the club,  which was demoted to Serie B for the first time in its history, despite the club being acquitted and the leagues were ruled to be regular;  it was his son, Andrea Agnelli, who built the club back up in the 2010s. When Agnelli died in 2004, Juventus had won the 2001–02 Serie A, the club's 26th scudetto, at the last matchday,  and had reached the 2003 UEFA Champions League final, the club's four UEFA Champions League final in seven years, three of which were achieved consecutively; those in 1997, against Borussia Dortmund,  and in 1998, against Real Madrid, were lost out controversially. In the words of Fulvio Bianchi, early 2000s Juventus were "stronger than all those that came after, and had €250 million in revenue, being at the top of Europe, and 100 sponsors. It took ten years to recover and return to the top Italians, not yet Europeans: now the club makes over €300 million, but in the meantime Real, Bayern, and the others have taken off."

Some observers allege that Calciopoli and its aftermath were a dispute within Juventus and between the club's owners that came after the deaths of Umberto and Gianni Agnelli, including Franzo Grande Stevens and Gianluigi Gabetti who favoured Agnelli's grandson, John Elkann, over his nephew as chairman, and wanted to get rid of Luciano Moggi, Antonio Giraudo, and Roberto Bettega, whose shares in the club increased. Whatever their intentions, it is argued they condemned Juventus: first when Carlo Zaccone, the club's lawyer, agreed for relegation to Serie B and point-deduction, when he made that statement because Juventus were the only club risking more than one-division relegation (Serie C), and he meant for Juventus (the sole club to be ultimately demoted) to have equal treatment with the other clubs; and then when Luca Cordero di Montezemolo retired the club's appeal to the Regional Administrative Court of Lazio, which could have cleared the club's name and avoid relegation, after FIFA threatened to suspend the FIGC from international play, a renounce for which then-FIFA president Sepp Blatter was thankful.

Several observers, including former FIGC president Franco Carraro, argue that had Agnelli been alive, things would have done different, as the club and its directors would have been defended properly, which could have avoided relegation and cleared the club's name much earlier than the Calciopoli trials of the 2010s. It is argued that Agnelli would have taken the same tougher stance of his son. Moggi, one of the two Juventus directors involved in the scandal, said that Calciopoli only happened because "l'Avvocato Agnelli and il Dottor Umberto died", and had the two Agnellis not died, "nothing [of this farce] would have happened." According to observers, Juventus was weak after the deaths of the Agnelli, with Moggi saying this "made us orphans and weak, it was easy to attack Juve and destroy them by making things up." According to critics, Juventus bothered because they won too much under Agnelli. Then-CONI president Gianni Petrucci said "a team that wins too much is harmful to their sport."

Politics
Politically, the Agnelli family sought to create a non-ideological, centrist political formation of Atlanticist and pro-European persuasion that sought a modernising, internationalist capitalism in contrast to the left and opposed to the populist, nationalist, or fascist right. In the 1970s, Agnelli was elected a member of the Senate of the Republic for Christian Democracy (DC). This came after the DC won over a struggle in which Gianni Agnelli would be present in the Italian Republican Party list for the 1976 Italian general election, a move that could have cost them about one million votes. In turn, the DC obtained the candidacy of Agnelli as a senator, a position he held until 1979. He took his role seriously, and he held a conference of DC senators in Rome to discuss the renewal of the party; in response, he was admonished.

Personal life and death
Agnelli's life was beset by an unusual amount of tragedy and bereavement. His father, Edoardo Agnelli, perished in an air crash when he was one year old; his mother, Virginia Bourbon del Monte, died in a car accident in 1945 when he was 11 years old. His nephew, Edoardo Agnelli, committed suicide in 2000.

In 1959, Agnelli married a cousin of his sister-in-law Marella Agnelli, the heiress Donna Antonella Bechi Piaggio, from the well-known business family of Piaggio that created Vespa, who later married a distant maternal relative of Allegra Caracciolo, Uberto Visconti di Modrone. Agnelli and Bechi Piaggio had three sons but their first, twin boys, died shortly after birth. The third son was Giovanni Alberto Agnelli, who grew up to be the head of the maternal family-firm Piaggio, and was being groomed to succeed at Fiat but died of cancer at the age of 33 in 1997. After he divorced from his wife, Agnelli married Donna Allegra Caracciolo di Castagneto in 1974. She is the first cousin of Agnelli's sister-in-law Marella Caracciolo di Castagneto, also the wife of Agnelli's brother. The ladies come from a noble family dating back to the Kingdom of Naples that has, among others, the titles of nobility of Prince of Castagneto and Duke of Melito. From his second marriage came two children, who were named Andrea (born 1975) and Anna (born 1977). His son, Andrea Agnelli, later followed in his footsteps by becoming chairman of Juventus in 2010.

Suffering from lung cancer, which became public only a month before his death after a Financial Times report, Agnelli spent his last days assisted by his wife and two children at their residence in La Mandria, which included La Mandria Regional Park, in the Venaria Reale area, where he died on 27 May 2004, fifteen days before the death of his nephew, Prince Egon von Fürstenberg. His last public appearance had taken place on 26 April, when his wife was awarded an honorary degree in veterinary medicine by the University of Turin. Agnelli's worsening health conditions prevented him from attending the Fiat shareholders' meeting on 11 May.

Honours

 * Legion Honneur Chevalier ribbon.svg Knight Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, 27 December 1967.
 * Legion Honneur Officier ribbon.svg Officer Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, 1969.
 * Grande ufficiale OMRI BAR.svg Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, 2 June 1972.
 * JPN Zuiho-sho (WW2) 1Class BAR.svg Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Sacred Treasure, 1996.

title: Umberto Agnelli


text:
East Side

East Side or Eastside may refer to:

Australia

 * East Side, Northern Territory

Canada

 * Eastside, Ontario, a neighborhood in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario
 * Downtown Eastside, Vancouver, British Columbia
 * The East Side, another name for East Vancouver, British Columbia

United Kingdom

 * Eastside, Birmingham, West Midlands, England
 * Eastside, Swansea, Wales

United States

 * East San Jose, California
 * Eastside, Long Beach, California
 * Eastside Los Angeles, a neighborhood within Los Angeles
 * East Side of Stamford, Connecticut
 * Eastside, Atlanta, Georgia
 * East Side, Chicago, Illinois
 * Eastside, Flint, Michigan
 * East Side, Kansas City, Missouri
 * Eastside, Lexington, Kentucky, a neighborhood in southeastern Lexington
 * East Side (Melrose), Massachusetts, a neighborhood
 * East Side Township, Mille Lacs County, Minnesota
 * Eastside, Paterson, New Jersey
 * East Side, Binghamton, New York, a neighborhood of Binghamton
 * East Side, Buffalo, New York
 * East Side (Manhattan), New York
 * Lower East Side, Manhattan, New York
 * Upper East Side, Manhattan, New York
 * Eastside, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
 * East Side, Pennsylvania
 * East Side, Providence, Rhode Island, a collection of neighborhoods
 * Eastside (King County, Washington), the eastern suburbs of Seattle, Washington
 * The East Side (Milwaukee), Wisconsin

Other uses

 * Eastside High School (disambiguation)
 * Eastside, part of St. David's Centre shopping centre, Cardiff, Wales
 * "East Side", a 2000 song by Canadian pop group Smoother
 * "Eastside" (song), a 2018 song by Benny Blanco, Halsey, and Khalid
 * Eastside (film), a 1999 American film directed by Lorena David

title: East Side


text:
Carver Mead

Carver Andress Mead (born 1 May 1934) is an American scientist and engineer. He currently holds the position of Gordon and Betty Moore Professor Emeritus of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), having taught there for over 40 years.

A pioneer of modern microelectronics, Mead has made contributions to the development and design of semiconductors, digital chips, and silicon compilers, technologies which form the foundations of modern very-large-scale integration chip design. Mead has also been involved in the founding of more than 20 companies.

In the 1980s, Mead focused on electronic modeling of human neurology and biology, creating "neuromorphic electronic systems." Most recently, he has called for the reconceptualization of modern physics, revisiting the theoretical debates of Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein and others in light of later experiments and developments in instrumentation.

Mead's contributions as a teacher include the classic textbook Introduction to VLSI Systems (1980), which he coauthored with Lynn Conway. He also taught Deborah Chung, the first female engineering graduate of Caltech, and advised Louise Kirkbride, the school's first female electrical engineering student.

Early life and education
Carver Andress Mead was born in Bakersfield, California, and grew up in Kernville, California. His father worked in a power plant at the Big Creek Hydroelectric Project, owned by Southern California Edison Company. Carver attended a tiny local school for some years, then moved to Fresno, California to live with his grandmother so that he could attend a larger high school. He became interested in electricity and electronics while very young, seeing the work at the power plant, experimenting with electrical equipment, qualifying for an amateur radio license and in high school working at local radio stations.

Mead studied electrical engineering at Caltech, getting his BS in 1956, his MS in 1957, and his PhD degree in 1960.

Microelectronics
Mead's contributions have arisen from the application of basic physics to the development of electronic devices, often in novel ways. During the 1960s, he carried out systematic investigations into the energy behavior of electrons in insulators and semiconductors, developing a deep understanding of electron tunneling, barrier behavior and hot electron transport. In 1960, he was the first person to describe and demonstrate a three-terminal solid-state device based on the operating principles of electron tunneling and hot-electron transport. In 1962 he demonstrated that using tunnel emission, hot electrons retained energy when traveling nanometer distances in gold. His studies of III-V compounds (with W. G. Spitzer) established the importance of interface states, laying the groundwork for band-gap engineering and the development of heterojunction devices.

GaAs MESFET
In 1966, Mead designed the first gallium arsenide gate field-effect transistor using a Schottky barrier diode to isolate the gate from the channel. As a material, GaAs offers much higher electron mobility and higher saturation velocity than silicon. The GaAs MESFET became the dominant microwave semiconductor device, used in a variety of high-frequency wireless electronics, including microwave communication systems in radio telescopes, satellite dishes and cellular phones. Carver's work on MESFETs also became the basis for the later development of HEMTs by Fujitsu in 1980. HEMTs, like MESFETs, are accumulation-mode devices used in microwave receivers and telecommunication systems.

Moore's law
Mead is credited by Gordon Moore with coining the term Moore's law, to denote the prediction Moore made in 1965 about the growth rate of the component count, "a component being a transistor, resistor, diode or capacitor," fitting on a single integrated circuit. Moore and Mead began collaborating around 1959 when Moore gave Mead "cosmetic reject" transistors from Fairchild Semiconductor for his students to use in his classes. During the 1960s Mead made weekly visits to Fairchild, visiting the research and development labs and discussing their work with Moore. During one of their discussions, Moore asked Mead whether electron tunneling might limit the size of a workable transistor. When told that it would, he asked what the limit would be.

Stimulated by Moore's question, Mead and his students began a physics-based analysis of possible materials, trying to determine a lower bound for Moore's Law. In 1968, Mead demonstrated, contrary to common assumptions, that as transistors decreased in size, they would not become more fragile or hotter or more expensive or slower. Rather, he argued that transistors would get faster, better, cooler and cheaper as they were miniaturized. His results were initially met with considerable skepticism, but as designers experimented, results supported his assertion. In 1972, Mead and graduate student Bruce Hoeneisen predicted that transistors could be made as small as 0.15 microns. This lower limit to transistor size was considerably smaller than had been generally expected. Despite initial doubts, Mead's prediction influenced the computer industry's development of submicron technology. When Mead's predicted target was achieved in actual transistor development in 2000, the transistor was highly similar to the one Mead had originally described.

Mead–Conway VLSI design
Mead was the first to predict the possibility of creating millions of transistors on a chip. His prediction implied that substantial changes in technology would have to occur to achieve such scalability. Mead was one of the first researchers to investigate techniques for very-large-scale integration, designing and creating high-complexity microchips.

He taught the world's first LSI design course, at Caltech in 1970. Throughout the 1970s, with involvement and feedback from a succession of classes, Mead developed his ideas of integrated circuit and system design. He worked with Ivan Sutherland and Frederick B. Thompson to establish computer science as a department at Caltech, which formally occurred in 1976. Also in 1976, Mead co-authored a DARPA report with Ivan Sutherland and Thomas Eugene Everhart, assessing the limitations of current microelectronics fabrication and recommending research into the system design implications of "very-large-scale integrated circuits".

Beginning in 1975, Carver Mead collaborated with Lynn Conway from Xerox PARC. They developed the landmark text Introduction to VLSI systems, published in 1979, an important spearhead of the Mead and Conway revolution. A pioneering textbook, it has been used in VLSI integrated circuit education all over the world for decades. The circulation of early preprint chapters in classes and among other researchers attracted widespread interest and created a community of people interested in the approach. They also demonstrated the feasibility of multi-project shared-wafer methodology, creating chips for students in their classes.

Their work caused a paradigm shift, a "fundamental reassessment" of the development of integrated circuits, and "revolutionized the world of computers". In 1981, Mead and Conway received the Award for Achievement from Electronics Magazine in recognition of their contributions. More than 30 years later, the impact of their work is still being assessed.

Building on the ideas of VLSI design, Mead and his PhD student David L. Johannsen created the first silicon compiler, capable of taking a user's specifications and automatically generating an integrated circuit. Mead, Johannsen, Edmund K. Cheng and others formed Silicon Compilers Inc. (SCI) in 1981. SCI designed one of the key chips for Digital Equipment Corporation's MicroVAX minicomputer. Mead and Conway laid the groundwork for the development of the MOSIS (Metal Oxide Semiconductor Implementation Service) and the fabrication of the first CMOS chip. Mead advocated for the idea of fabless manufacturing in which customers specify their design needs to fabless semiconductor companies. The companies then design special-purpose chips and outsource the chip fabrication to less expensive overseas semiconductor foundries.

Neural models of computing
Next Mead began to explore the potential for modelling biological systems of computation: animal and human brains. His interest in biological models dated back at least to 1967, when he met biophysicist Max Delbrück. Delbrück had stimulated Mead's interest in transducer physiology, the transformations that occur between the physical input initiating a perceptual process and eventual perceptual phenomena.

Observing graded synaptic transmission in the retina, Mead became interested in the potential to treat transistors as analog devices rather than digital switches. He noted parallels between charges moving in MOS transistors operated in weak inversion and charges flowing across the membranes of neurons. He worked with John Hopfield and Nobelist Richard Feynman, helping to create three new fields: neural networks, neuromorphic engineering, and the physics of computation. Mead, considered a founder of neuromorphic engineering, is credited with coining the term "neuromorphic processors".

Mead was then successful in finding venture capital funding to support the start of a number of companies, in part due to an early connection with Arnold Beckman, chairman of the Caltech Board of Trustees. Mead has said that his preferred approach to development is "technology push", exploring something interesting and then developing useful applications for it.

Touch
In 1986, Mead and Federico Faggin founded Synaptics Inc. to develop analog circuits based in neural networking theories, suitable for use in vision and speech recognition. The first product Synaptics brought to market was a pressure-sensitive computer touchpad, a form of sensing technology that rapidly replaced the trackball and mouse in laptop computers. The Synaptics touchpad was extremely successful, at one point capturing 70% of the touchpad market.

Hearing
In 1988, Richard F. Lyon and Carver Mead described the creation of an analog cochlea, modelling the fluid-dynamic traveling-wave system of the auditory portion of the inner ear. Lyon had previously described a computational model for the work of the cochlea. Such technology had potential applications in hearing aids, cochlear implants, and a variety of speech-recognition devices. Their work has inspired ongoing research attempting to create a silicon analog that can emulate the signal processing capacities of a biological cochlea.

In 1991, Mead helped to form Sonix Technologies, Inc. (later Sonic Innovations Inc.). Mead designed the computer chip for their hearing aids. In addition to being small, the chip was said to be the most powerful used in a hearing aid. Release of the company's first product, the Natura hearing aid, took place in September 1998.

Vision
In the late 1980s, Mead advised Misha Mahowald, a PhD student in computation and neural systems, to develop the silicon retina, using analog electrical circuits to mimic the biological functions of rod cells, cone cells, and other excitable cells in the retina of the eye. Mahowald's 1992 thesis received Caltech's Milton and Francis Clauser Doctoral Prize for its originality and "potential for opening up new avenues of human thought and endeavor". her work was considered "the best attempt to date" to develop a stereoscopic vision system. Mead went on to describe an adaptive silicon retina, using a two-dimensional resistive network to model the first layer of visual processing in the outer plexiform layer of the retina.

Around 1999, Mead and others established Foveon, Inc. in Santa Clara, California to develop new digital camera technology based on neurally-inspired CMOS image sensor/processing chips. The image sensors in the Foveon X3 digital camera captured multiple colors for each pixel, detecting red, green and blue at different levels in the silicon sensor. This provided more complete information and better quality photos compared to standard cameras, which detect one color per pixel. It has been hailed as revolutionary. In 2005, Carver Mead, Richard B. Merrill and Richard Lyon of Foveon were awarded the Progress Medal of the Royal Photographic Society, for the development of the Foveon X3 sensor.

Synapses
Mead's work underlies the development of computer processors whose electronic components are connected in ways that resemble biological synapses. In 1995 and 1996 Mead, Hasler, Diorio, and Minch presented single-transistor silicon synapses capable of analog learning applications and long-term memory storage. Mead pioneered the use of floating-gate transistors as a means of non-volatile storage for neuromorphic and other analog circuits.

Mead and Diorio went on to found the radio-frequency identification (RFID) provider Impinj, based on their work with floating-gate transistors (FGMOS)s. Using low-power methods of storing charges on FGMOSs, Impinj developed applications for flash memory storage and radio frequency identity tags.

Reconceptualizing physics
Carver Mead has developed an approach he calls Collective Electrodynamics, in which electromagnetic effects, including quantized energy transfer, are derived from the interactions of the wavefunctions of electrons behaving collectively. In this formulation, the photon is a non-entity, and Planck's energy–frequency relationship comes from the interactions of electron eigenstates. The approach is related to John Cramer's transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics, to the Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory of electrodynamics, and to Gilbert N. Lewis's early description of electromagnetic energy exchange at zero interval in spacetime.

Although this reconceptualization does not pertain to gravitation, a gravitational extension of it makes predictions that differ from general relativity. For instance, gravitational waves should have a different polarization under "G4v", the name given to this new theory of gravity. Moreover, this difference in polarization can be detected by advanced LIGO.

Companies
Mead has been involved in the founding of at least 20 companies. The following list indicates some of the most significant, and their main contributions.

 * Lexitron, videotype word processing
 * Actel, field programmable gate arrays
 * Foveon, silicon sensors for photographic imaging
 * Impinj, self-adaptive microchips for flash memory and RFID
 * Silicon Compilers, integrated circuit design
 * Sonic Innovations, computer chips for hearing aids
 * Synaptics, touch pads for computers
 * Silerity, automated chip design software

Awards

 * 2022 Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology
 * 2011 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award of Information and Communication Technologies "... for his influential thinking in silicon technology. His work has enabled the development of the microchips that drive the electronic devices (laptops, tablets, smartphones, DVD players) ubiquitous in our daily lives."
 * 2005, Progress Medal of the Royal Photographic Society
 * 2002, National Medal of Technology
 * 2002, Fellow of the Computer History Museum "for his contributions in pioneering the automation, methodology and teaching of integrated circuit design".
 * 2001, Dickson Prize in Science, award announced 2001, lecture March 19, 2002
 * 1999, Lemelson-MIT Prize
 * 1997, Allen Newell Award, Association for Computing Machinery
 * 1996, John Von Neumann Medal, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
 * 1996, Phil Kaufman Award for his impact on electronic design industry
 * 1992, Award for Outstanding Research, International Neural Network Society
 * 1985, John Price Wetherill Medal from The Franklin Institute, with Lynn Conway
 * 1985, Harry H. Goode Memorial Award, American Federation of Information Processing Societies
 * 1984, Elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for great insight into the problems and potentialities of VLSI, and for helping to advance the art.
 * 1984, Harold Pender Award, with Lynn Conway
 * 1981, Award for Achievement from Electronics Magazine, with Lynn Conway

title: Carver Mead


text:
Castleton, Staten Island

Castleton is a former town in the U.S. state of New York. It was located in the northeastern part of Staten Island prior to the incorporation of Staten Island into New York City in 1898. It had a total area of 3880 acres (15.7 km$2$) and was bounded by Upper New York Bay on the east and the Kill Van Kull on the north.

The town dates from the late 17th century. It was originally set aside as the manor of the governor of the Province of New York and takes its name from the manor of Governor Thomas Dongan who named it for his home Castletown, in the town Kildrought (now Celbridge) in County Kildare, Ireland. The original manor house was constructed along Richmond Terrace, between Dongan Street and Bodine Street. It was destroyed by fire on December 25, 1878. The town was incorporated by the state of New York in 1788.

The town was dissolved in 1898 upon consolidation into the City of New York.

The former town included the present-day neighborhoods of
 * Castleton Corners
 * New Brighton
 * St. George
 * Silver Lake
 * Tompkinsville

title: Castleton, Staten Island


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Children's Fairyland

Children's Fairyland, U.S.A. is an amusement park, located in Oakland, California, on the shores of Lake Merritt. It was one of the earliest "themed" amusement parks in the United States. Fairyland includes 10 acre of play sets, small rides, and animals. The park is also home to the Open Storybook Puppet Theater, the oldest continuously operating puppet theater in the United States.

Fairyland was built in 1950 by the Oakland Lake Merritt Breakfast Club, a local service club. The park was immediately recognized nationally for its unique value, and during the 1950s it inspired numerous towns to create their own parks. Walt Disney toured many amusement parks in 1950, including Children’s Fairyland, seeking ideas for what turned out to be Disneyland. He hired the first director of Fairyland, Dorothy Manes, to work at Disneyland as youth director, in which position she continued from the park's opening until 1972.

Numerous artists have contributed exhibits, murals, puppetry, and sculptures to the park. Some of the better-known artists are Ruth Asawa and Frank Oz, who was an apprentice puppeteer in the park as a teenager.

Origins of the park
On a 1947 trip to the Detroit children's zoo in Belle Isle Park, Oakland nurseryman Arthur Navlet saw a collection of small nursery-rhyme themed buildings, and wanted to create something similar in Oakland's Lake Merritt Park. His hope was to create much larger sets that children could climb in and interact with. After getting the backing of the Lake Merritt Breakfast Club, a civic organization devoted to improving the park, he took his ideas to William Penn Mott Jr., then director of Oakland's parks department. Mott and the Breakfast Club were able to raise $50,000 from Oakland citizens. Contributing sponsors included Earl Warren, Clifford E. Rishell, Joseph R. Knowland and Thomas E. Caldecott.

Navlet hired fantasy artist and architect William Russell Everritt (1904–1978) to design the original 17 sets. Everritt originally presented models which followed a standard fantasy architecture: straight-sided, "precious" buildings in gingerbread and candy. When told his models were too staid, he delightedly destroyed them and came back with buildings with no straight sides and outré colors and textures. It was exactly what Navlet was looking for.

The original park
The park opened on September 2, 1950. Admission was 9 to 14 cents, depending on age. The original guides to the park were a dwarfish married couple dressed in glamorous Munchkin-style costumes. The park was reported on nationally, with numerous newsreels shot in the park. The original sets included Pinocchio's Castle, Thumbelina, Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Merry Miller, The Three Little Pigs, Willie the Whale, and several others. The entrance to the park was through the shoe illustrating the Old Woman in the Shoe. The entrance through the shoe was sized for children, so that adults had to bend over to go through. The park thrived, and in 1956, the City of Oakland Parks and Recreation Department hired Burton Weber to promote the wonders inside Fairyland’s gates. Weber created a program for young children called Fairyland Personalities, which is still part of Fairyland's Children’s Theater program.

Fairyland is also home to the original "Magic Key" and Talking Storybook Boxes. Oakland television personality Bruce Sedley would often make appearances at the park to tell the stories of the sets. The constant strain of speaking threatened his voice, and he invented a system of talking books with recorded stories on tape. The boxes were activated by a plastic key. Sedley took the system he developed at Fairyland to zoos and children's parks across the country, where they are still used extensively. The Magic Key system is still in effect at Fairyland.

Puppet theater
Fairyland’s Storybook Puppet Theater, which opened in 1956, is the oldest continuously operating puppet theater in the United States. The theater presents three performances a day, year round, from a repertoire of more than 150 puppet shows. Most of the shows are based on classic fairytales and folk tales from around the world, including The Three Little Pigs, Pinocchio, and The Pied Piper. All of the puppets – including bunraku, shadow puppets, hand puppets, rod puppets, and marionettes – are constructed at the theater by the puppet director and apprentices.

The theater structure was designed by the park’s original architect, William Russell Everitt, with the assistance of members of the San Francisco Bay Area Puppeteers Guild. It accommodated hand and rod puppets. For the theater’s 50th anniversary, in 2006, the building was redesigned with a storage area, workshop, and higher ceiling for dramatic effects.

Many accomplished puppeteers have worked at Fairyland’s puppet theater, including Tony Urbano, Luman Coad, and Frances and Isadore ("Mike") Oznowicz. The Oznowiczes’ son, Frank, performed at the theater when he was a teenager; he later shortened his name to Frank Oz and went on to perform with The Muppets and to direct many Hollywood films. Muppet performer Alice Dinnean also got her start at Fairyland's puppet theater. Lewis Mahlmann, who served as the puppet theater’s director from 1967 to 2005, authored four books about puppetry, and twice served as president of the Puppeteers of America.

The current theater director is Randal J. Metz, who apprenticed with Mahlmann while he was still in grade school. Metz shared the director’s job with Mahlmann beginning in 1991, and became sole director upon Mahlmann’s retirement in 2005.

The park today
The park continued to grow through the early years, adding the Open Storybook Puppet Theater, also designed by Everritt, in 1956, as well as other sets. In 1994, with help from the Lake Merritt Breakfast Club, Fairyland applied for and received 501(c) (3) nonprofit status to allow it to apply for grants, receive bond funds, and solicit donations.

In 2006, the Storybook Puppet Theater celebrated its 50th anniversary with a near-complete renovation including the addition of a new facade and workshop. The current master puppeteer is Randal Metz.

In addition to exhibits, the park today has rides such as the spiderweb Ferris wheel, a carousel, and the Jolly Trolly (a train). For safety reasons, Fairyland admits adults only when they’re accompanied by children and children only when they’re accompanied by adults.

Aesop's Playhouse
In 2008, Fairyland opened Aesop's Playhouse, a dedicated children's theater funded by Oakland City bond measure DD. It is a Greek theater-style outdoor amphitheater seating 215 people. Fairyland had a long tradition of plays put on by local children ages 8–10, but they were performed on the smaller Emerald City Stage. Previous plays have included The Monkey King's Journey to the West, Brer Rabbit, The Wizard of Oz, Cuoi, the Boy in the Moon, Ohana Means Family, Little Red Riding Hood, Lost in Fairyland, Hip-Hop Pinocchio, The Panchatantra, Méxica, Aesop's Fables, The Girl Who Lost Her Smile, Harvest at the Lake, Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type, The Cat in the Hat, and Five Little Monkeys.

title: Children's Fairyland


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Alang

Alang is a census town in Bhavnagar district in the Indian state of Gujarat. Because it is home to the Alang Ship Breaking Yard, Alang beaches are considered the world's largest ship graveyard.

Demographics
As of the 2001 Indian census, Alang had a population of 18,464. Males constitute 82% of the population and females 18%. Alang has an average literacy rate of 62%, higher than the national average of 59.5%; with 89% of the males and 11% of females literate. Seven percent of the population is under 6 years of age.

Mithi Virdi nuclear power plant
Mithi Virdi (or Viradi) is a proposed site consisting of six nuclear reactors with a total capacity of 6,600 MW about 3 km north of the ship breaking beach.

The proposed nuclear plant has faced heavy opposition from the local population. The area around the proposed plant is known for growing some of the highest-quality kesar mango trees.

In popular culture
On the Road to Alang is a 2005 documentary on passenger ships scrapped at Alang, by Peter Knego of Maritime Matters.

Shipbreakers is a 2004 documentary on the industry in Alang by Michael Kot.

World War Z, a 2006 novel by Max Brooks, features Alang as a destination for refugees seeking to escape a zombie plague by sea.

Battlefield 2042, a 2021 first-person shooter, features Alang as the setting for the multiplayer map Discarded.

title: Alang