amphibious Operations
An attack launched from the sea by naval and landing forces, embarked in ships or craft involving a landing on a hostile or potentially hostile shore. An amphibious operation involves five phases: ...
antitank weapon
Any weapon designed to destroy a tank. These may include guns of various sizes, guided missiles, rockets and their delivery systems, grenades, mines, and other obstacle systems.
Ardennes campaign
(also called Battle of the Bulge) (16–26 December 1944) The last serious German counter offensive against Allied armies advancing into Germany in World War II (Normandy Campaign). It resulted from a ...
Army Corps of Engineers
USACE an organization of the U.S. Army, headquartered in Washington, D.C., with approximately 34,600 civilian and 650 military men and women, responsible for providing responsive engineering ...
bocage
Is the belt of higher ground that runs across the base of the Cherbourg peninsula in western France. During the early phase of the Normandy campaign its topography of steep ...
caisson
A box for carrying ammunition, mounted on two or four wheels and joined to an artillery limber. In Napoleonic times, most armies adopted the Gribeauval system of standardized carriages with ...
deception
N.those measures designed to mislead the enemy by manipulation, distortion, or falsification of evidence.
demolition
N. the destruction of structures, facilities, or material by use of fire, water, explosives, or mechanical or other means.
Dieppe raid
An unsuccessful amphibious raid on Dieppe, a channel port in northern France, made in August 1942 by a joint force of British and Canadian troops to destroy the German-held port and airfield. The ...
eastern front
(1941–5).The campaign on the eastern front was the largest land campaign ever fought. It was unsurpassed in the length of the front, depth of the advance and retreat, duration ...
FFI
(Forces françaises de l'Intérieur),formed in February 1944 from nearly all the various French resistance groups (some communist ones stayed outside it) and commanded from London by General Koenig. ...
Field Marshal Günther von Kluge
(1882–1944),German Army officer who served as a staff officer during part of the First World War, was severely wounded at Verdun in 1918, commanded the Fourth Army from 1939 ...
fighter
N.1 a fast military aircraft designed for attacking other aircraft: designers employ stealth to render a fighter invisible to radar | fighter pilots.2 a person or animal that fights, especially as a ...
FM Walther Model
(1891–1945).Model was born near Magdeburg, son of a music teacher. Commissioned into the infantry in 1910, he won the Iron Cross in 1915 and served on the general staff ...
French Riviera landings
Undertaken, after much Anglo-American wrangling, on 15 August 1944 by Patch's Seventh US Army formed for the task, and supported by naval and air forces of the two Mediterranean Cs-in-C, Admiral John ...
friendly fire
Weapon fire coming from one's own side, especially fire that causes accidental injury or death to one's own forces.
General Courtney H. Hodges
(1887–1966),US Army officer who commanded the First US Army during most of the Normandy campaign and in the fighting in north-west Europe which followed.Hodges failed his exams at ...
George Smith Patton
(1885–1945)US general. In World War II Patton commanded a corps in North Africa and then the 7th Army in Sicily. He lost his command in 1944 after a publicized incident in which he hit a soldier ...
Gerd von Rundstedt
(1875–1953)German field-marshal who commanded his country's forces against the Allied invasion of northwest Europe in 1944.From an aristocratic Prussian family, von Rundstedt rose through the ranks ...
interdiction
Is a general term for isolating a part of the battlefield or theatre of war to prevent the enemy reinforcing his troops there. It is also used more specifically of ...
