Thursday, November 1, 2012

The Pasific

The Pacific is based primarily on two memoirs of U.S. Marines: With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by Eugene Sledge; and Helmet for My Pillow by Robert Leckie.[3] The miniseries tells the stories of the two authors and Marine John Basilone, as the war against the Empire of Japan rages. It also draws on Sledge's China Marine[4] and Red Blood, Black Sand,[5] the memoir of Chuck Tatum, a Marine who fought alongside Basilone on Iwo Jima.[6]

The miniseries features well-known battles with Japan involving the 1st Marine Division, such as Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester, Peleliu, and Okinawa, as well as Basilone's involvement in the Battle of Iwo Jima.

Historian Hugh Ambrose, son of Band of Brothers author Stephen E. Ambrose, wrote the official tie-in book to the miniseries,[7] which follows the stories of two of the featured men from the miniseries, Basilone and Sledge, as well as stories of Sledge's close friend Sidney Phillips and two men not featured in the series, Marine officer Austin Shofner and U.S. Navy pilot Vernon Micheel. The different cast provides a wider view of the Pacific theatre, allowing the book to include the fall of the Philippines, Midway, Philippine Sea and Luzon and expand the narrative to include depictions of life as experienced by prisoners of war, senior officers and the development of naval aviation. It was published in the U.K. and the U.S. in March 2010.[8]

Link :

# Part 1 "Guadalcanal/Leckie" #
# Part 2 "Basilone" #
# Part 3 "Melbourne" #
# Part 4 "Gloucester/Pavavu/Banika" #
# Part 5 "Peleliu Landing" #
# Part 6 "Peleliu Airfield" #
# Part 7 "Peleliu Hills" #
# Part 8 "Iwo Jima" #
# Part 9 "Okinawa" #
# Part 10 "Home" #


The Pasific's Weapons Review


Handgun 

 M1911
 The M1911 is a single-action, semi-automatic, magazine-fed, recoil-operated handgun chambered for the .45 ACP cartridge,[1] which served as the standard-issue side arm for the United States armed forces from 1911 to 1985. It was widely used in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. The M1911 is still carried by some U.S. forces. Its formal designation as of 1940 was Automatic Pistol, Caliber .45, M1911 for the original Model of 1911 or Automatic Pistol, Caliber .45, M1911A1 for the M1911A1, adopted in 1924. The designation changed to Pistol, Caliber .45, Automatic, M1911A1 in the Vietnam era.[1] In total, the United States procured around 2.7 million M1911 and M1911A1 pistols in military contracts during its service life. The M1911 was replaced by the M9 pistol as the standard U.S. sidearm in the early 1990s, but due to its popularity among users, it has not been completely phased out. Modern M1911 variants are still in use by some units within the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps.[4]
 
Riffles

M1 Garand

 The M1 Garand (officially designated as United States Rifle, Caliber .30, M1 and later it was just called Rifle, Caliber .30, M1, and also abbreviated as US Rifle, Cal. .30, M1) is chambered for the .30-06 Springfield rifle cartridge. It was the first semi-automatic rifle to be generally issued to the infantry of any nation.[4] Called "the greatest battle implement ever devised" by General George S. Patton,[5] the Garand officially replaced the bolt-action M1903 Springfield as the standard service rifle of the United States Armed Forces in 1936 and was subsequently replaced by the selective fire M14 in 1957. However, the M1 continued to be used in large numbers until 1963 and to a lesser degree until 1966. Like its predecessor, the M1 originated from the Springfield Armory.
The M1 "is an air-cooled, gas-operated, clip-fed, and semiautomatic shoulder weapon. This means that the air cools the barrel; that the power to cock the rifle and chamber the succeeding round comes from the expanding gas of the round fired previously; that it is loaded by inserting a metal clip (containing a maximum of eight rounds) into the receiver; and that the rifle fires one round each time the trigger is pulled ".[6] After the eight rounds have been shot the clip automatically ejects causing a "ping" noise to occur.

M1 carbine

The M1 carbine (formally the United States Carbine, Caliber .30, M1) is a lightweight, easy to use semi-automatic carbine that became a standard firearm for the U.S. military during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, and was produced in several variants. It was widely used by U.S. and foreign military, paramilitary and police forces, and has also been a popular civilian firearm.
In selective fire versions capable of fully automatic fire, the carbine is designated the M2 carbine. The M3 carbine was an M2 with an active infrared scope system. Unlike conventional carbines, which are generally a version of a parent rifle with a shorter barrel (like the earlier .30-40 U.S. Krag rifle and carbine and the later M16 rifle and M4 carbine), the M1 carbine has only one minor part in common with the M1 rifle (a short buttplate screw) and fires a different cartridge.


Thompson submachine gun

The Thompson is an American submachine gun, invented by John T. Thompson in 1919, that became infamous during the Prohibition era. It was a common sight in the media of the time, being used by both law enforcement officers and criminals.[6] The Thompson was also known informally as: the "Tommy Gun", "Trench Broom", "Trench Sweeper", "Chicago Typewriter", "Chicago Piano", "Chicago Style", "Chicago Organ Grinder", and "The Chopper".[7][8][9][10]
The Thompson was favored by soldiers, criminals, police and civilians alike for its ergonomics, compactness, large .45 ACP cartridge, reliability, and high volume of automatic fire. It has since gained popularity among civilian collectors for its historical significance.

Ithaca 37

The Ithaca 37 is a pump-action shotgun made in large numbers for the civilian, military, and police markets. It utilizes a novel combination ejection/loading port on the bottom of the gun which leaves the sides closed to the elements. In addition, the outline of the gun is clean. Finally, since shells load and eject from the bottom, operation of the gun is equally convenient for both right and left hand shooters. This makes the gun popular with left-handed shooters.

M1917 Browning machine gun

The M1917 Browning machine gun is a heavy machine gun used by the United States armed forces in World War I, World War II, Korea, and to a limited extent in Vietnam, and by other nations. It was a belt-fed water-cooled machine gun that served alongside the much lighter air-cooled Browning M1919. It was used at the battalion level, and often mounted on vehicles (such as a jeep). There were two main iterations of it: the M1917, which was used in World War I; and the M1917A1; which was used thereafter. The M1917 was used on the ground and on some aircraft, and had a firing rate of 450 round/min; the M1917A1 had a firing rate of 450 to 600 round/min.

M1919 Browning machine gun

The M1919 Browning is a .30 caliber medium machine gun that was widely used during the 20th century. It was used as a light infantry, coaxial, mounted, aircraft, and anti-aircraft machine gun by the U.S. and many other countries, especially during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Although it began to be superseded by newer designs in the later half of the century (such as by the M60 machine gun), it remained in use in many North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries and elsewhere for much longer. It is very similar in design to the larger .50 caliber (12.7 mm) M2 Machine Gun, which is also a Browning-designed weapon and is still in NATO service.
Many M1919s were rechambered for the new 7.62×51 mm NATO round and served into the 1990s, as well as up to the present day in some countries. The United States Navy also converted many to 7.62 mm NATO, and designated them Mk 21 Mod 0; they were commonly used on river craft in the 1960s and 1970s in Vietnam.
The M1919 was an air-cooled development of the standard US machine gun of World War I, the Browning M1917, as designed by John M. Browning.

M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle

The Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) was a family of United States automatic rifles (or machine rifles) and light machine guns used by the United States and numerous other countries during the 20th century. The primary variant of the BAR series was the M1918, chambered for the .30-06 Springfield rifle cartridge and designed by John Browning in 1917 for the U.S. Expeditionary Corps in Europe as a replacement for the French-made Chauchat and M1909 Benet-Mercie machine guns.
The BAR was designed to be carried by advancing infantrymen, slung over the shoulder or fired from the hip, a concept called "walking fire"—thought to be necessary for the individual soldier during trench warfare.[1] However in practice, it was most often used as a light machine gun and fired from a bipod (introduced in later models).[2] A variant of the original M1918 BAR, the Colt Monitor Machine Rifle, remains the lightest production automatic gun to fire the .30-06 Springfield cartridge, though the limited capacity of its standard 20-round magazine tended to hamper its utility in that role.[2]

Bazooka

Bazooka is the common name for a man-portable recoilless rocket antitank weapon, widely fielded by the US Army. Also referred to as the "Stovepipe", the innovative bazooka was amongst the first-generation of rocket propelled anti-tank weapons used in infantry combat. Featuring a solid rocket motor for propulsion, it allowed for high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) warheads to be delivered against armored vehicles, machine gun nests, and fortified bunkers at ranges beyond that of a standard thrown grenade or mine. The Bazooka also fired a HESH round, effective against buildings and tank armour. The universally-applied nickname arose from the M1 variant's vague resemblance to the musical instrument called a "bazooka" invented and popularized by 1930s U.S. comedian Bob Burns.
During World War II, German armed forces captured several bazookas in early North African[2] and Eastern Front encounters and soon reverse engineered their own version,[3] increasing the warhead diameter to 8.8 cm (amongst other minor changes) and widely issuing it as the Raketenpanzerbüchse "Panzerschreck" ("Tank terror").[3]
The term "bazooka" continues to be used informally as a genericized term to refer to any shoulder-fired missile weapon (mainly rocket propelled grenades).

 M2 60 mm mortar

  The U.S. M2 60 mm mortar was developed from the heavier 81 mm M1 Mortar to provide a lighter-weight alternative to company-level fire support.[1] The M2 attempted to bridge the gap between the 81 mm mortar and the hand grenade. Normally employed by the weapons platoon of a U.S. infantry company, the M2 is of the usual mortar pattern of the day.[1][2] It consists of a smoothbore metal tube on a rectangular baseplate, supported by a simple bipod with the elevation and traverse mechanisms. The firing pin was fixed in the base cap of the tube, and the bomb was fired automatically when it dropped down the barrel. Though classed as a light mortar, the M2 had considerable range compared to the 50 mm and 60 mm mortars of most other nations, and its fixed-firing pin design allowed a high rate of fire by trained crews.[1]

 M2 flamethrower 


The M2 flamethrower (M2-2) was an American man-portable backpack flamethrower that was used in World War II. It was the successor to the M1 and M1A1 flamethrowers. Although its actual "burn time" was around 7 seconds and the flame was only effective out to around 20 metres,[1] it was still a functional weapon that had many uses in the war. However, with the later arrival of tanks and, especially, flamethrower tanks, the need for infantrymen to expose themselves to fire became unnecessary, as tanks offered greater protection and greater firepower.
Though some M2s were sold off, the majority were scrapped when they were declared "obsolete."

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