title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: While the primary reason for IPv4 address exhaustion is insufficient capacity in the design of the original Internet infrastructure, several additional driving factors have aggravated the shortcomings. Each of them increased the demand on the limited supply of addresses, often in ways unanticipated by the original designers of the network.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: Efforts to delay address space exhaustion started with the recognition of the problem in the early 1990s, and the introduction of a number of stop-gap refinements to make the existing structure operate more efficiently, such as CIDR methods and strict usage-based allocation policies.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) created the Routing and Addressing Group (ROAD) in November 1991 to respond to the scalability problem caused by the classful network allocation system in place at the time.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: IPv6, the successor technology to IPv4, was designed to address this problem. It supports approximately network addresses. Although the predicted depletion was already approaching its final stages, most providers of Internet services and software vendors were just beginning IPv6 deployment at that time.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: On 31 January 2011, the last two unreserved IANA address blocks were allocated to APNIC according to RIR request procedures. This left five reserved but unallocated blocks. In accord with ICANN policies, IANA proceeded to allocate one of those five s to each RIR, exhausting the IANA pool, at a ceremony and press conference on 3 February 2011.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: The various legacy address blocks with administration historically split among the RIRs were distributed to the RIRs in February 2011.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: APNIC was the first regional Internet registry to run out of freely allocated IPv4 addresses, on 15 April 2011. This date marked the point where not everyone who needed an IPv4 address could be allocated one. As a consequence of this exhaustion, end-to-end connectivity as required by specific applications will not be universally available on the Internet until IPv6 is fully implemented. However, IPv6 hosts cannot directly communicate with IPv4 hosts, and have to communicate using special gateway services. This means that general-purpose computers must still have IPv4 access, for example through NAT64, in addition to the new IPv6 address, which is more effort than just supporting IPv4 or IPv6. The demand for IPv6 is expected to become pervasive over three to four years.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: In early 2011, only 16–26% of computers were IPv6 capable, while only 0.2% preferred IPv6 addressing with many using transition methods such as Teredo tunneling. About 0.15% of the top million websites were IPv6 accessible in 2011. Complicating matters, 0.027% to 0.12% of visitors could not reach dual-stack sites, but a larger percentage (0.27%) could not reach IPv4-only sites. IPv4 exhaustion mitigation technologies include IPv4 address sharing to access IPv4 content, IPv6 dual-stack implementation, protocol translation to access IPv4 and IPv6-addressed content, and bridging and tunneling to bypass single protocol routers. Early signs of accelerated IPv6 adoption after IANA exhaustion are evident.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: All the RIRs have set aside a small pool of IP addresses for the transition to IPv6 (for example carrier-grade NAT), from which each LIR can typically get at most 1024 in total. ARIN and LACNIC reserves the last for IPv6 transition. APNIC, and RIPE NCC have reserved the last obtained block for IPv6 transition. AFRINIC reserves a block for this purpose. When only this last block remains, the RIR's supply of IPv4 addresses is said to be "exhausted".


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: APNIC was the first RIR to restrict allocations to 1024 addresses for each member, as its pool reached critical levels of one block on 14 April 2011. The APNIC RIR is responsible for address allocation in the area of fastest Internet expansion, including the emerging markets of China and India.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: RIPE NCC, the regional Internet registry for Europe, was the second RIR to deplete its address pool on 14 September 2012.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: On 10 June 2014, LACNIC, the regional Internet registry for Latin America and the Caribbean, was the third RIR to deplete its address pool.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: ARIN was exhausted on 24 September 2015. ARIN has been unable to allocate large requests since July 2015, but smaller requests were still being met. After IANA exhaustion, IPv4 address space requests became subject to additional restrictions at ARIN, and became even more restrictive after reaching the last in April 2014.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: On 31 March 2017, AFRINIC became the last regional Internet registry to run down to its last block of IPv4 addresses (102/8), thus triggering the first phase of its IPv4 exhaustion policy. "On 13 January 2020, AFRINIC approved an IPv4 prefix that resulted in no more than a /11 of non-reserved space to be available in the Final /8," which triggered its IPv4 Exhaustion Phase 2.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: On 25 November 2019, RIPE NCC announced that it had made its "final IPv4 allocation from the last remaining addresses in our available pool. We have now run out of IPv4 addresses." RIPE NCC will continue to allocate IPv4 addresses, but only "from organisations that have gone out of business or are closed, or from networks that return addresses they no longer need. These addresses will be allocated to our members (LIRs) according to their position on a new waiting list…" The announcement also called for support for the implementation of the IPv6 roll-out.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: Systems that require inter-continental connectivity will have to deal with exhaustion mitigation already due to APNIC exhaustion.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: At APNIC, existing LIRs could apply for twelve months stock before exhaustion when they were using more than 80% of allocated space allocated to them. Since 15 April 2011, the date when APNIC reached its last block, each (current or future) member will only be able to get one allocation of 1024 addresses (a block) once. As the slope of the APNIC pool line on the "Geoff Huston's projection of the evolution of the IP pool for each RIR" chart to the right shows, the last block would have been emptied within one month without this policy. By APNIC policy, each current or future member can receive only one block from this last (there are 16384 blocks in the last block). Since there are around 3000 current APNIC members, and around 300 new APNIC members each year, APNIC expects this last block to last for many years. Since the redistribution of recovered space, APNIC is distributing an additional to each member upon request.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: The 1,024 addresses in the block can be used by APNIC members to supply NAT44 or NAT64 as a service on an IPv6 network. However at a new large ISP, 1,024 IPv4 addresses might not be enough to provide IPv4 connectivity to all the customers due to the limited number of ports available per IPv4 address.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: The regional Internet registries (RIRs) for Asia (APNIC) and North America have a policy called the Inter-RIR IPv4 Address Transfer Policy, which allows IPv4 addresses to be transferred from North America to Asia. The ARIN policy was implemented on 31 July 2012.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: Estimates of the time of complete IPv4 address exhaustion varied widely in the early 2000s. In 2003, Paul Wilson (director of APNIC) stated that, based on then-current rates of deployment, the available space would last for one or two decades. In September 2005, a report by Cisco Systems suggested that the pool of available addresses would deplete in as little as 4 to 5 years. In the last year before exhaustion, IPv4 allocations were accelerating, resulting in exhaustion trending to earlier dates.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: By 2008 policy planning for the end-game and post-exhaustion era was underway. Several proposals have been discussed to delay shortages of IPv4 addresses:


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: Before and during the time when classful network design was still used as allocation model, large blocks of IP addresses were allocated to some organizations. Since the use of CIDR the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) could potentially reclaim these ranges and reissue the addresses in smaller blocks. ARIN, RIPE NCC and APNIC have a transfer policy, such that addresses can get returned, with the purpose to be reassigned to a specific recipient. However, it can be expensive in terms of cost and time to renumber a large network, so these organizations are likely to object, with legal conflicts possible. However, even if all of these were reclaimed, it would only result in postponing the date of address exhaustion.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: Similarly, IP address blocks have been allocated to entities that no longer exist and some allocated IP address blocks or large portions of them have never been used. No strict accounting of IP address allocations has been undertaken, and it would take a significant amount of effort to track down which addresses really are unused, as many are in use only on intranets.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: Some address space previously reserved by IANA has been added to the available pool. There have been proposals to use the class E network range of IPv4 addresses (which would add 268.4 million IP addresses to the available pool) but many computer and router operating systems and firmware do not allow the use of these addresses. For this reason, the proposals have sought not to designate the class E space for public assignment, but instead propose to permit its private use for networks that require more address space than is currently available through RFC 1918.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: Several organizations have returned large blocks of IP addresses. Notably, Stanford University relinquished their Class A IP address block in 2000, making 16 million IP addresses available. Other organizations that have done so include the United States Department of Defense, BBN Technologies, and Interop.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: The creation of markets to buy and sell IPv4 addresses has been considered to be a solution to the problem of IPv4 scarcity and a means of redistribution. The primary benefits of an IPv4 address market are that it allows buyers to maintain undisrupted local network functionality. IPv6 adoption, while in progress, is currently still in early stages. It requires a significant investment of resources, and poses incompatibility issues with IPv4, as well as certain security and stability risks.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: As the IPv4 address pool depletes, some ISPs will not be able to provide globally routable IPv4 addresses to customers. Nevertheless, customers are likely to require access to services on the IPv4 Internet. Several technologies have been developed for providing IPv4 service over an IPv6 access network.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: In ISP-level IPv4 NAT, ISPs may implement IPv4 network address translation within their networks and assign private IPv4 addresses to customers. This approach may allow customers to keep using existing hardware. Some estimates for NAT argue that US ISPs have 5-10 times the number of IPs they need in order to serve their existing customers.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: However the allocation of private IPv4 addresses to customers may conflict with private IP allocations on the customer networks. Furthermore, some ISPs may have to divide their network into subnets to allow them to reuse private IPv4 addresses, complicating network administration. There are also concerns that features of consumer-grade NAT such as DMZs, STUN, UPnP and application-level gateways might not be available at the ISP level. ISP-level NAT may result in multiple-level address translation which is likely to further complicate the use of technologies such as port forwarding used to run Internet servers within private networks.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: NAT64 translates IPv6 requests from clients to IPv4 requests. This avoids the need to provision any IPv4 addresses to clients and allows clients that only support IPv6 to access IPv4 resources. However this approach requires a DNS server with DNS64 capability and cannot support IPv4-only client devices.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: DS-Lite (Dual-Stack Light) uses tunnels from the customer premises equipment to a network address translator at the ISP. The consumer premises equipment encapsulates the IPv4 packets in an IPv6 wrapper and sends them to a host known as the "AFTR element". The AFTR element de-encapsulates the packets and performs network address translation before sending them to the public Internet. The NAT in the AFTR uses the IPv6 address of the client in its NAT mapping table. This means that different clients can use the same private IPv4 addresses, therefore avoiding the need for allocating private IPv4 IP addresses to customers or using multiple NATs.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: Address plus Port allows stateless sharing of public IP addresses based on TCP/UDP port numbers. Each node is allocated both an IPv4 address and a range of port numbers to use. Other nodes may be allocated the same IPv4 address but a different range of ports. The technique avoids the need for stateful address translation mechanisms in the core of the network, thus leaving end users in control of their own address translation.


title: IPv4 address exhaustion

text: Deployment of IPv6 is the standards-based solution to the IPv4 address shortage. IPv6 is endorsed and implemented by all Internet technical standards bodies and network equipment vendors. It encompasses many design improvements, including the replacement of the 32-bit IPv4 address format with a 128-bit address which provides an addressing space without limitations for the foreseeable future. IPv6 has been in active production deployment since June 2006, after organized worldwide testing and evaluation in the 6bone project ceased. Interoperability for hosts using only IPv4 protocols is implemented with a variety of IPv6 transition mechanisms.


title: Binny Bansal

text: Binny Bansal (born 1982/1983) is an Indian billionaire Internet entrepreneur. In 2007 he co-founded the e-commerce platform Flipkart with Sachin Bansal (no relation) and served as the chief operating officer until 11 January 2016 and was then promoted to chief executive officer (CEO). In January 2017 he was promoted to Group CEO and resigned in November 2018 due to personal misconduct allegations of Flipkart. Binny is from Chandigarh and graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi with a degree in computer science and engineering. He is currently an anchor investor in the venture firm 021 Capital which focuses on investing in the fields of biotechnology, agritech, and the internet.


title: Binny Bansal

text: Binny Bansal is originally from Chandigarh, the capital city of Punjab and Haryana. His business partner, Sachin Bansal, is also from Chandigarh. Although they share the same last name, they are not related. They both coincidentally, were students of computer science engineering at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Bansal currently resides in Bangalore. His father is a retired chief manager at a bank and his mother is in the government sector. He has no siblings and is married to a homemaker.


title: Binny Bansal

text: Before co-founding Flipkart, Binny was employed by Amazon for nine months, and before that he had been rejected by Google twice. Binny Bansal and his business partner Sachin Bansal initially thought of starting a comparison search engine, but realized that the market for E-commerce in India was very small. Hence, after leaving Amazon in 2007, they founded Flipkart as an e-commerce company. Before joining Amazon, Binny had worked with Sarnoff Corporation for a year and a half, where he developed a lane sensor device for cars which would warn you and beep automatically if you changed lanes without giving a signal.


title: Binny Bansal

text: In 2016, Binny Bansal became the CEO of Flipkart, where he worked on strategic development, direction and business management. In 2017, he assumed the role of CEO of Flipkart Group and his previous position was handed to Kalyan Krishnamurthy.


title: Binny Bansal

text: In 2018, Walmart acquired a 77% stake in Flipkart group. After the acquisition, Binny Bansal assumed the role of chairman and continued as Group CEO. His 5.5% stake in Flipkart was valued at $1 billion after the acquisition. He resigned from Flipkart in November 2018 on allegations of personal misconduct.


title: Molly Maguires

text: The Molly Maguires were an Irish 19th-century secret society active in Ireland, Liverpool and parts of the Eastern United States, best known for their activism among Irish-American and Irish immigrant coal miners in Pennsylvania. After a series of often violent conflicts, twenty suspected members of the Molly Maguires were convicted of murder and other crimes and were executed by hanging in 1877 and 1878. This history remains part of local Pennsylvania lore and the actual facts much debated among historians.


title: Molly Maguires

text: The Molly Maguires originated in Ireland, where secret societies with names such as Whiteboys and Peep o' Day Boys were common beginning in the 18th century and through most of the 19th century. In some areas the terms "Ribbonmen" and "Molly Maguires" were both used for similar activism but at different times. The main distinction between the two appears to be that the Ribbonmen were regarded as "secular, cosmopolitan, and protonationalist", with the Molly Maguires considered "rural, local, and Gaelic".


title: Molly Maguires

text: Agrarian rebellion in Ireland can be traced to local concerns and grievances relating to land usage, particularly as traditional socioeconomic practices such as small-scale potato cultivation were supplanted by the fencing and pasturing of land (known as enclosure). Agrarian resistance often took the form of fence destruction, night-time plowing of croplands that had been converted to pasture, and killing, mutilating, or driving off livestock. In areas where the land had long been dedicated to small-scale, growing-season leases of farmland, called conacre, opposition was conceived as "retributive justice" that was intended "to correct transgressions against traditional moral and social codes".


title: Molly Maguires

text: The victims of agrarian violence were frequently Irish land agents, middlemen, and tenants. Merchants and millers were often threatened or attacked if their prices were high. Landlords' agents were threatened, beaten, and assassinated. New tenants on lands secured by evictions also became targets. Local leaders were reported to have sometimes dressed as women, i.e., as mothers begging for food for their children. The leader might approach a storekeeper and demand a donation of flour or groceries. If the storekeeper failed to provide, the Mollies would enter the store and take what they wanted, warning the owner of dire consequences if the incident was reported.


title: Molly Maguires

text: While the Whiteboys were known to wear white linen frocks over their clothing, the Mollies blackened their faces with burnt cork. There are similarities – particularly in face-blackening and in the donning of women's garments – with the practice of mummery, in which festive days were celebrated by mummers who traveled from door to door demanding food, money, or drink as payment for performing. The "Threshers", the "Peep o' Day Boys", the "Lady Rocks" (deriving from Captain Rock and the Rockite movement), and the "Lady Clares" also sometimes disguised themselves as women. Similar imagery was used during the Rebecca Riots in Wales.


title: Molly Maguires

text: British and Irish newspapers reported about the Mollies in Ireland in the nineteenth century. Thomas Campbell Foster in "The Times" on 25 August 1845 traced the commencement of "Molly Maguireism" to Lord Lorton ejecting tenants in Ballinamuck, County Longford, in 1835. An "Address of 'Molly Maguire' to her children" containing twelve rules was published in "Freeman's Journal" on 7 July 1845. The person making the address claimed to be "Molly Maguire" of "Maguire's Grove, Parish of Cloone", in County Leitrim. The rules advised Mollies about how they should conduct themselves in land disputes and were an attempt to direct the movement's activities:


title: Molly Maguires

text: The Molly Maguires were also active in Liverpool, England, where many Irish people settled in the 19th century, and many more passed through Liverpool on their way to the United States or Canada. The Mollies are first mentioned in Liverpool in an article in "The Liverpool Mercury" newspaper on 10 May 1853. The newspaper reported that, "a regular faction fight took place in Marybone amongst the Irish residents in that district. About 200 men and women assembled, who were divided into four parties – the 'Molly Maguires', the 'Kellys', the 'Fitzpatricks' and the 'Murphys' – the greater number of whom were armed with sticks and stones. The three latter sections were opposed to the 'Molly Maguires' and the belligerents were engaged in hot conflict for about half an hour, when the guardians of the peace interfered."


title: Molly Maguires

text: Later Liverpool newspaper articles from the same time period refer to assaults by Mollies against other Irish Liverpudlians. The "Molly Maguire club" or "Molly's Club" was described as a "mutual defence association" that had been "formed for the mutual assistance of the members when they got into 'trouble', each member subscribing to the funds". Patrick Flynn was the secretary of the Liverpool Molly Maguire Clubs in the 1850s and their headquarters was in an alehouse in Alexander Pope Street also known as Sawney Pope Street. The Liverpool branch of the Molly Maguires was known for its gangsterism rather than any genuine concern for the welfare of Irish people.


title: Molly Maguires

text: The Mollies are believed to have been present in the anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania in the United States since at least the Panic of 1873 until becoming largely inactive following a series of arrests, trials and executions, between 1876 and 1878. Members of the Mollies were accused of murder, arson, kidnapping and other crimes, in part based on allegations by Franklin B. Gowen and the testimony of a Pinkerton detective, James McParland (also known as "James McKenna"), a native of County Armagh, Ireland. Fellow prisoners testified against the defendants, who were arrested by the Coal and Iron Police. Gowen acted as a prosecutor in some of the trials.


title: Molly Maguires

text: The trusts seem to have focused almost exclusively upon the Molly Maguires for criminal prosecution. Information passed from the Pinkerton detective, intended only for the detective agency and their client – the most powerful industrialist of the region – was also provided to vigilantes who ambushed and murdered miners suspected of being Molly Maguires, as well as their families. Molly Maguire history is sometimes presented as the prosecution of an underground movement that was motivated by personal vendettas, and sometimes as a struggle between organized labor and powerful industrial forces. Whether membership in the Mollies' society overlapped union membership to any appreciable extent remains open to conjecture.


title: Molly Maguires

text: Some historians (such as Philip Rosen, former curator of the Holocaust Awareness Museum of the Delaware Valley) believe that Irish immigrants brought a form of the Molly Maguires organization into America in the 19th century, and continued its activities as a clandestine society. They were located in a section of the anthracite coal fields dubbed the Coal Region, which included the Pennsylvania counties of Lackawanna, Luzerne, Columbia, Schuylkill, Carbon, and Northumberland. Irish miners in this organization employed the tactics of intimidation and violence used against Irish landlords during the "Land Wars" yet again in violent confrontations against the anthracite, or "hard coal", mining companies in the 19th century.


title: Molly Maguires

text: A legal self-help organization for Irish immigrants existed in the form of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), but it is generally accepted that the Mollies existed as a secret organization in Pennsylvania, and used the AOH as a front. However, Joseph Rayback's 1966 volume, "A History of American Labor", claims the "identity of the Molly Maguires has never been proved". Rayback writes:


title: Molly Maguires

text: Authors who accept the existence of the Mollies as a violent and destructive group acknowledge a significant scholarship that questions the entire history. In "The Pinkerton Story", authors James D. Horan and Howard Swiggett write sympathetically about the detective agency and its mission to bring the Mollies to justice. They observe:


title: Molly Maguires

text: During the mid-19th century, hard coal mining came to dominate northeastern Pennsylvania, a region already deforested twice over to feed America's growing need for energy. By the 1870s, powerful financial syndicates controlled the railroads and the coalfields. Coal companies had begun to recruit immigrants from overseas willing to work for less than the prevailing local wages paid to American-born employees, luring them with "promises of fortune-making". Herded into freight trains by the hundreds, these workers often replaced English-speaking miners who, according to labor historian George Korson:


title: Molly Maguires

text: About 22,000 coal miners worked in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. 5,500 of these were children between the ages of seven and sixteen years, who earned between one and three dollars a week separating slate from the coal. Injured miners, or those too old to work at the face, were assigned to picking slate at the "breakers" where the coal was crushed into a manageable size. Thus, many of the elderly miners finished their mining days as they had begun in their youth. The miners lived a life of "bitter, terrible struggle".


title: Molly Maguires

text: Wages were low, working conditions were atrocious, and deaths and serious injuries numbered in the hundreds each year. On 6 September 1869, a fire at the Avondale Mine in Luzerne County, took the lives of 110 coal miners. The families blamed the coal company for failing to finance a secondary exit for the mine.


title: Molly Maguires

text: The miners faced a speedup system that was exhausting. In its November 1877 issue, "Harper's New Monthly Magazine" published an interviewer's comments: "A miner tells me that he often brought his food uneaten out of the mine from want of time; for he must have his car loaded when the driver comes for it, or lose one of the seven car-loads which form his daily work."


title: Molly Maguires

text: As the bodies of the miners were brought up from the Avondale Mine disaster, John Siney, head of the Workingmen's Benevolent Association (WBA), climbed onto a wagon to speak to the thousands of miners who had arrived from surrounding communities:


title: Molly Maguires

text: Siney asked the miners to join the union, and thousands did so that day. Some miners faced additional burdens of prejudice and persecution. In the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s, some 20,000 Irish workers had arrived in Schuylkill County. It was a time of rampant beatings and murders in the mining district.


title: Molly Maguires

text: 1873-79 (see Panic of 1873) were marked by one of the worst depressions in the nation's history, caused by economic overexpansion, a stock market crash, and a decrease in the money supply. By 1877 an estimated one-fifth of the nation's workingmen were completely unemployed, two-fifths worked no more than six or seven months a year, and only one-fifth had full-time jobs. Labor organizers angrily watched railway directors riding about the country in luxurious private cars while proclaiming their inability to pay living wages to hungry working men.


title: Molly Maguires

text: Franklin B. Gowen, the president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railway, and of the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company and "the wealthiest anthracite coal mine owner in the world", hired Allan Pinkerton's services to deal with the Mollies. Pinkerton selected James McParland (sometimes called McParlan), a native of County Armagh, to go undercover against the Mollies. Using the alias "James McKenna", he made Shenandoah his headquarters and claimed to have become a trusted member of the organization. His assignment was to collect evidence of murder plots and intrigue, passing this information along to his Pinkerton manager. He also began working secretly with a Pinkerton agent assigned to the Coal and Iron Police for the purpose of coordinating the eventual arrest and prosecution of members of the Molly Maguires. Although there had been fifty "inexplicable murders" between 1863 and 1867 in Schuylkill County, progress in the investigations was slow. There was "a lull in the entire area, broken only by minor shootings". McParland wrote: I am sick and tired of this thing. I seem to make no progress.


title: Molly Maguires

text: The union had grown powerful; thirty thousand members — eighty-five percent of Pennsylvania's anthracite miners — had joined. But Gowen had built a combination of his own, bringing all of the mine operators into an employers' association known as the Anthracite Board of Trade. In addition to the railroad, Gowen owned two-thirds of the coal mines in southeastern Pennsylvania. He was a risk-taker and an ambitious man. Gowen decided to force a strike and showdown.


title: Molly Maguires

text: One of the burning questions for modern scholars is the relationship between the Workingmen's Benevolent Association (WBA), the Mollies, and their alleged cover organization, the Ancient Order of Hibernians. Historian Kevin Kenny notes that the convicted men were all members of the AOH. But "the Molly Maguires themselves left virtually no evidence of their existence, let alone their aims and motivation." Relying upon his personal knowledge before commencing an investigation, McParland believed that the Molly Maguires, under pressure for their activities, had taken the new name, "The Ancient Order of Hibernians" (AOH). After beginning his investigation, he estimated that there were about 450 members of the AOH in Schuylkill County.


title: Molly Maguires

text: While Kenny observes that the AOH was "a peaceful fraternal society", he does note that in the 1870s the Pinkerton Agency identified a correlation between the areas of AOH membership in Pennsylvania, and the corresponding areas in Ireland from which those particular Irish immigrants emigrated. The violence-prone areas of Ireland corresponded to areas of violence in the Pennsylvania coalfields. In his book "Big Trouble", which traces McParland's history, writer J. Anthony Lukas has written: "The WBA was run by Lancashire men adamantly opposed to violence. But [Gowen] saw an opportunity to paint the union with the Molly brush, which he did in testimony before a state investigating committee ... 'I do not charge this Workingmen's Benevolent Association with it, but I say there is an association which votes in secret, at night, that men's lives shall be taken ... I do not blame this association, but I blame another association for doing it; and it happens that the only men who are shot are the men who dare disobey the mandates of the Workingmen's Benevolent Association.'"


title: Molly Maguires

text: Of the 450 AOH members that Pinkerton Agent McParland estimated were in Schuylkill County, about 400 belonged to the union. Molly Maguireism and full-fledged trade unionism represented fundamentally different modes of organization and protest. Kenny noted that one contemporary organization, the Pennsylvania Bureau of Industrial Statistics, clearly distinguished between the union and the violence attributed to the Molly Maguires. Their reports indicate that violence could be traced to the time of the Civil War, but that in the five-year existence of the WBA, "the relations existing between employers and employees" had greatly improved. The Bureau concluded that the union had brought an end to the "carnival of crime". Kenny notes the leaders of the WBA were "always unequivocally opposed" to the Molly Maguires.


title: Molly Maguires

text: Kenny notes there were frequent tensions between miners of English and Welsh descent, who held the majority of skilled positions, and the mass of unskilled Irish laborers. However, in spite of such differences, the WBA offered a solution, and for the most part "did a remarkable job" in overcoming such differences.


title: Molly Maguires

text: F.P. Dewees, a contemporary and a confidant of Gowen, wrote that by 1873 "Mr. Gowen was fully impressed with the necessity of lessening the overgrown power of the 'Labor Union' and exterminating if possible the Molly Maguires." In December, 1874, Gowen led the other coal operators to announce a twenty percent pay cut. The miners decided to strike on 1 January 1875.


title: Molly Maguires

text: A Pinkerton agent, Robert J. Linden, was brought in to support McParland while serving with the Coal and Iron Police. On 29 August 1875, Allan Pinkerton wrote a letter to George Bangs, Pinkerton's general superintendent, recommending vigilante actions against the Molly Maguires: "The M.M.'s are a species of Thugs... Let Linden get up a vigilance committee. It will not do to get many men, but let him get those who are prepared to take fearful revenge on the M.M.'s. I think it would open the eyes of all the people and then the M.M.'s would meet with their just deserts." On 10 December 1875, three men and two women were attacked in their home by masked men. Author Anthony Lukas wrote that the attack seemed "to reflect the strategy outlined in Pinkerton's memo".


title: Molly Maguires

text: The victims had been secretly identified by McParland as Mollies. One of the men was killed in the house, and the other two supposed Mollies were wounded but able to escape. A woman, the wife of one of the reputed Mollies, was assassinated. McParland was outraged that the information he had been providing had found its way into the hands of indiscriminate killers. When McParland heard details of the attack at the house, he protested in a letter to his Pinkerton supervisor. He did not object that Mollies might be assassinated as a result of his labor spying – they "got their just deserving". McParland resigned when it became apparent the vigilantes were willing to commit the "murder of women and children", whom he deemed innocent victims. His letter stated:


title: Molly Maguires

text: There appears to be an error in the detective's report (which also constituted his resignation letter) of the vigilante incident: he failed to convey the correct number of deaths. Two of the three men "were wounded but able to escape". In the note, McParland reported that these two had been killed by vigilantes. Such notes, possibly containing erroneous or as-yet-unverified information, were forwarded daily by Pinkerton operatives. The content was routinely made available to Pinkerton clients in typed reports. Pinkerton detective reports now in the manuscripts collection at the Lackawanna County Historical Society reveal that Pinkerton had been spying on miners for the mine owners in Scranton. Pinkerton operatives were required to send a report each day. The daily reports were typed by staff, and conveyed to the client for a ten dollar fee. Such a process was relied upon to "warrant the continuance of the operative's services".


title: Molly Maguires

text: McParland believed his daily reports had been made available to the anti-Molly vigilantes. Benjamin Franklin, McParland's Pinkerton supervisor, declared himself "anxious to satisfy [McParland] that [the Pinkerton Agency has] nothing to do with [the vigilante murders.]" McParland was prevailed upon not to resign. Frank Wenrich, a first lieutenant with the Pennsylvania National Guard, was arrested as the leader of the vigilante attackers, but released on bail. Another miner, Hugh McGeehan, a 21-year-old who had been secretly identified as a killer by McParland, was fired upon and wounded by unknown assailants. Later, the McGeehan family's house was attacked by gunfire.


title: Molly Maguires

text: The union was nearly broken by the imprisonment of its leadership and by attacks conducted by vigilantes against the strikers. Gowen "deluged the newspapers with stories of murder and arson" committed by the Molly Maguires. The press produced stories of strikes in Illinois, in Jersey City, and in the Ohio mine fields, all inspired by the Mollies. The stories were widely believed. In Schuylkill County, the striking miners and their families were starving to death. A striker wrote to a friend: Since I last saw you, I have buried my youngest child, and on the day before its death there was not one bit of victuals in the house with six children.


title: Molly Maguires

text: After six months, the strike was defeated and the miners returned to work, accepting the 20 percent cut in pay. But miners belonging to the Ancient Order of Hibernians continued the fight. McParland acknowledged increasing support for the Mollies in his reports: Men, who last winter would not notice a Molly Maguire, are now glad to take them by the hand and make much of them. If the bosses exercise tyranny over the men they appear to look to the association for help. Lukas observes that the defeat was humiliating, and traces the roots of violence by the Mollies in the aftermath of the failed strike: Judges, lawyers, and policemen were overwhelmingly Welsh, German, or English ... When the coalfield Irish sought to remedy their grievances through the courts, they often met delays, obfuscation, or doors slammed in their faces. No longer looking to these institutions for justice, they turned instead to the Mollies... Before the summer was over, six men—all Welsh or German—paid with their lives.


title: Molly Maguires

text: After months of little progress, McParland reported some plans by the "inner circle". Gomer James, a Welshman, had shot and wounded one of the Mollies, and plans were formulated for a revenge killing. But the wheels of revenge were grinding slowly. And there was other violence:


title: Molly Maguires

text: A plan to destroy a railroad bridge was abandoned due to the presence of outsiders. The Irish miners had been forbidden to set foot in the public square in Mahanoy City, and a plan to occupy it by force of arms was considered then abandoned. In the meantime a messenger reported that [W.M.] Thomas, the would-be killer of one of the Mollies, had been killed in the stable where he worked. McParland himself had been asked to supply the hidden killers with food and whiskey, according to the detective. According to Horan and Swiggett:


title: Molly Maguires

text: Another plan was in the works, this one against two night watchmen, Pat McCarron and Benjamin K. Yost, a Tamaqua Borough Patrolman. Jimmy Kerrigan and Thomas Duffy were said to despise Yost, who had arrested them on numerous occasions. Yost was shot as he put out a street light, which at that time necessitated climbing the lamp pole. Before he died, he reported that his killers were Irish, but were not Kerrigan or Duffy. McParland recorded that a Mollie named William Love had killed a Justice of the Peace, surnamed Gwyther, in Girardville. Unknown Mollies were accused of wounding a man outside his saloon in Shenandoah. Gomer James was killed while tending bar. Then, McParland recorded, a group of Mollies reported to him that they had killed a mine boss named Sanger, and another man who was with him. Forewarned of the attempt, McParland had sought to arrange protection for the mine boss, but was unsuccessful.


title: Molly Maguires

text: When Gowen first hired the Pinkerton agency, he had claimed the Molly Maguires were so powerful they had made powerful financial sources and organized labor "their puppets". When the trials of the alleged puppet-masters opened, Gowen had himself appointed as special prosecutor.


title: Molly Maguires

text: The first trials were for the killing of John P. Jones. The three defendants, Michael J. Doyle, Jimmy Kerrigan and Edward Kelly, had elected to receive separate trials. Doyle went first, with his trial beginning 18 January 1876, and a conviction for first-degree murder being returned on 1 February. Before the trial completed, Kerrigan had decided to become a state's witness and gave details about the murders of Jones and Yost. Kelly's trial began on 27 March, and ended in conviction on 6 April 1876.


title: Molly Maguires

text: The first trial of defendants McGeehan, Carroll, Duffy, James Boyle, and James Roarity for the killing of Yost commenced in May 1876. Yost had not recognized the men who attacked him. Although Kerrigan has since been described, along with Duffy, as hating the night watchman enough to plot his murder, Kerrigan became a state's witness and testified against the union leaders and other miners.


title: Molly Maguires

text: However, Kerrigan's wife testified in the courtroom that her husband had committed the murder. She testified that she refused to provide her husband with clothing while he was in prison, because he had "picked innocent men to suffer for his crime". She stated that she was speaking out voluntarily, and was only interested in telling the truth about the murder. Gowen cross-examined her, but could not shake her testimony. Others supported her testimony amid speculation that Kerrigan was receiving special treatment due to the fact that McParland was engaged to his sister-in-law, Mary Ann Higgins. This trial was declared a mistrial due to the death of one of the jurors. A new trial was granted two months later. During that trial Fanny Kerrigan did not testify. The five defendants were sentenced to death. Kerrigan was allowed to go free.


title: Molly Maguires

text: The trial of Tom Munley for the murders of Thomas Sanger, a mine foreman, and William Uren, relied entirely on the testimony of McParland, and the eyewitness account of a witness. The witness stated under oath that he had seen the murderer clearly, and that Munley was not the murderer. Yet the jury accepted McParland's testimony that Munley had privately confessed to the murder. Munley was sentenced to death. Another four miners were put on trial and were found guilty on a charge of murder. McParland had no direct evidence, but had recorded that the four admitted their guilt to him. Kelly was being held in a cell for murder, and he was reputedly quoted as saying: "I would squeal on Jesus Christ to get out of here." In return for his testimony, the murder charge against him was dismissed.


title: Molly Maguires

text: In November, McAllister was convicted. McParland's testimony in the Molly Maguires trials helped send ten men to the gallows. The defense attorneys repeatedly sought to portray McParland as an agent provocateur who was responsible for not warning people of their imminent deaths. For his part, McParland testified that the AOH and the Mollies were one and the same, and the defendants guilty of the murders. In 1905, during the Colorado Labor Wars, in preparation for a trial, McParland told another witness, Harry Orchard, that "Kelly the Bum" not only had won his freedom for testifying against union leaders, he had been given $1,000 to "subsidize a new life abroad". McParland had been attempting to convince Orchard to accuse Bill Haywood, leader of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM), of conspiracy to commit another murder. Unlike the Mollies, the WFM's union leadership was acquitted. Orchard alone was convicted, and spent the rest of his life in prison.


title: Molly Maguires

text: On 21 June 1877, six men were hanged in the prison at Pottsville, and four at Mauch Chunk, Carbon County. A scaffold had been erected in the Carbon County Jail. State militia with fixed bayonets surrounded the prisons and the scaffolds. Miners arrived with their wives and children from the surrounding areas, walking through the night to honor the accused, and by nine o'clock "the crowd in Pottsville stretched as far as one could see." The families were silent, which was "the people's way of paying tribute" to those about to die. Thomas Munley's aged father had walked more than from Gilberton to assure his son that he believed in his innocence. Munley's wife arrived a few minutes after they closed the gate, and they refused to open it even for close relatives to say their final good-byes. She screamed at the gate with grief, throwing herself against it until she collapsed, but she was not allowed to pass. Four (Alexander Campbell, John "Yellow Jack" Donahue, Michael J. Doyle and Edward J. Kelly) were hanged on 21 June 1877, at a Carbon County prison in Mauch Chunk (renamed Jim Thorpe in 1953), for the murders of John P. Jones and Morgan Powell, both mine bosses, following a trial later described by a Carbon County judge, John P. Lavelle, as follows:


title: Molly Maguires

text: Campbell, just before his execution, allegedly slapped a muddy handprint on his cell wall stating "There is proof of my words. That mark of mine will never be wiped out. It will remain forever to shame the county for hanging an innocent man." Doyle and Hugh McGeehan were led to the scaffold. They were followed by Thomas Munley, James Carroll, James Roarity, James Boyle, Thomas Duffy, Kelly, Campbell, and "Yellow Jack" Donahue. Judge Dreher presided over the trials. Ten more condemned, Thomas Fisher, John "Black Jack" Kehoe, Patrick Hester, Peter McHugh, Patrick Tully, Peter McManus, Dennis Donnelly, Martin Bergan, James McDonnell and Charles Sharpe, were hanged at Mauch Chunk, Pottsville, Bloomsburg and Sunbury over the next two years. Peter McManus was the last Molly Maguire to be tried and convicted for murder at the Northumberland County Courthouse in 1878.


title: Molly Maguires

text: Many accounts of the Molly Maguires that were written during, or shortly after, the period offer no admission that there was widespread violence in the area, that vigilantism existed, nor that violence was carried out "against" the miners. In 1910, industrialist and historian James Ford Rhodes published a major scholarly analysis in the leading professional history journal:


title: Molly Maguires

text: When organized labor helped elect Terence V. Powderly as mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania two years after the Molly Maguire trials, the opposition vilified his team as the "Molly Maguire Ticket".


title: Molly Maguires

text: In 1979, Pennsylvania Governor Milton Shapp granted a posthumous pardon to John "Black Jack" Kehoe after an investigation by the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons. The request for a pardon was made by one of Kehoe's descendants. John Kehoe had proclaimed his innocence until his death. The Board recommended the pardon after investigating Kehoe's trial and the circumstances surrounding it. Shapp praised Kehoe, saying the men called "Molly Maguires" were "martyrs to labor" and heroes in the struggle to establish a union and fair treatment for workers. And "... [I]t is impossible for us to imagine the plight of the 19th Century miners in Pennsylvania's anthracite region" and that it was Kehoe's popularity among the miners that led Gowen "'to fear, despise and ultimately destroy [him]'".


title: Black project

text: A black project is a highly classified, top-secret military or defense project that is not publicly acknowledged by government, military personnel, or contractors. Examples of United States military aircraft developed as black projects include the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk stealth attack aircraft and the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, both of which were highly classified and publicly denied until they were ready to be announced to the public. In the United States, the formal term for a black project is "special access program" ("SAP"). The money that funds these projects is called the "black budget".


title: Marinara sauce

text: Marinara () sauce is a tomato sauce usually made with tomatoes, garlic, herbs, and onions. Variations include capers, olives, spices, and a dash of wine. Widely used in Italian-American cuisine, it is known as alla marinara in Italy, where it is typically made with tomatoes, basil, and oregano, but also sometimes olives, capers, and salted anchovies. It is used for spaghetti and vermicelli, but also with meat or fish.


title: Marinara sauce

text: The terms should not be confused with "spaghetti marinara", a popular dish in Australia, New Zealand, Spain, and South Africa, in which a tomato-based sauce is mixed with fresh seafood. In Italy, a pasta sauce including seafood is more commonly called "alla pescatora".


title: Marinara sauce

text: Several folk theories exist as to the origin of this sauce. One version states that cooks aboard Neapolitan ships returning from the Americas invented marinara sauce in the mid-16th century after Spaniards introduced the tomato to Europe. Another theory states this was a sauce prepared by the wives of Neapolitan sailors upon their return from the sea.


title: Marinara sauce

text: Historically, however, the first Italian cookbook to include tomato sauce, "Lo Scalco alla Moderna" ('The Modern Steward'), was written by Italian chef Antonio Latini and was published in two volumes in 1692 and 1694. Latini served as the Steward of the First Minister to the Spanish Viceroy of Naples. This early tomato sauce was more like a modern tomato salsa.


title: Marinara sauce

text: A sauce similar to Italian-American marinara sauce is known in some areas of Central Italy as "sugo finto", literally "fake (meatless) sauce".


title: Black Beauty (2020 film)

text: Black Beauty is a 2020 adventure drama family film written, edited and directed by Ashley Avis and based on the 1877 novel of the same name by Anna Sewell. A co-production between the United States, the United Kingdom, South Africa, France and Germany, it stars Kate Winslet, Mackenzie Foy, Claire Forlani, Iain Glen and Fern Deacon and is the sixth cinematic adaptation. In the film, Black Beauty is portrayed as a mare instead of a stallion and is brought to Birtwick Park where she forges a bond with a spirited teenager that carries through different chapters, challenges and adventures. Originally scheduled for a theatrical release, it was unable to be released in cinemas due to the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The film's distribution rights were acquired by Walt Disney Studios and was released on the company's streaming service Disney+ on November 27, 2020. It received mixed reviews from critics.


title: Black Beauty (2020 film)

text: A wild mustang narrates her life from birth, born free within the Onaqui Mountains of Utah. She explains that her mother taught that when horses pass away, they fly into the sky to rest among the stars. One day, the mustang accidentally draws the attention of some cowboys, who wrangle her entire herd; the mustang never sees her mother again. A horse trainer named John Manly purchases the mustang and takes her to Birtwick, a horse sanctuary. While she likes John, the mustang refuses to cooperate, but John remains patient. The mustang ends up befriending two other horses named Ginger and Merrylegs.


title: Black Beauty (2020 film)

text: John is informed that his sister and her husband died in a car accident, leaving him to care for his niece, Jo Green. Jo wants nothing to do with John but becomes entranced with the difficult mustang. Eventually, the mustang recognizes Jo's pain as similar to her own, and they end up connecting. Jo learns to tame the mustang and names her Black Beauty, or Beauty for short. John manages to get through to Jo by having her work in the stables and tend to Beauty on a regular basis. They popularize the phrase "partnering" a horse as opposed to "breaking" a horse. John informs Jo that they will eventually have to sell Beauty, but Jo refuses.


title: Black Beauty (2020 film)

text: One night, a fire breaks out from a stable handler who didn't turn off a heater, and the horses are evacuated. With Birtwick losing money, Jo is concerned that Beauty will be sold, but works out a deal with John's boss, Henry Gordon, so that she can work extra to earn the money to buy Beauty, though he states that they might lease her. The upperclass Winthorp family who are British migrants from England arrive to purchase horses for their estate with the daughter Georgina immediately choosing Beauty to be leased. John manages to convince them to have Jo come along as her tenant. At the Earlshall estate, Beauty learns that her friend Ginger was purchased for the Winthorp's son George, who unlike Georgina, is kind and takes an interest in Jo.


title: Black Beauty (2020 film)

text: Georgina is cruel and rude to Beauty, who resists the urge to harm her as it would get her and Jo in trouble. Jo discovers that Beauty has serious injuries and George tries to have Jo be closer with her, but his mother puts an end to it. A race is held at a social gathering where Georgina's poor horse riding results in Beauty injuring one of her legs. George stands up to his mother and the Winthorps choose to return Beauty. However, John arrives to inform Jo that Birtwick is closing down and all the horses have to be sold. Beauty is taken away without Jo getting a chance to say goodbye. She becomes determined to find and buy her again.


title: Black Beauty (2020 film)

text: Beauty is sold to a ranger named Terry and together they go on rescue missions in the wilderness. Eventually Terry decides to retire and Beauty is given to a farmer who uses old tools, forcing her to work harder. Then she is sold to a kind carriage driver in New York City whose daughter chooses to name her Lady. One night, Beauty is reunited with Ginger, who had been sold without George's knowledge, but she dies shortly afterwards. All this time, Beauty continues to think about Jo, who has not given up on finding her.


title: Black Beauty (2020 film)

text: When Jerry gets sick, Beauty is sold to another carriage company, which treats its horses cruelly and engages in illegal horse trading. While out driving, Beauty spots Ginger's body being taken away. Heart broken, Beauty sits on the road during her carriage rotation, which draws media attention. The company attempts to sell Beauty, but a kind stable boy named Manuel alerts the police of the company's illegal activities. Jo finds Beauty and reunites with her. Jo reveals that she has managed to rebuild Birtwick in full and now works with John and George, now her husband, to help rehabilitate horses; she even finds that Merrylegs was also recovered. Beauty lives with Jo happily ever after for the rest of her days.


title: Black Beauty (2020 film)

text: Black Beauty is portrayed by four different horses: Spirit, Jenny, Awards and Rosie. The horse that portrays her as a foal is named Black Beauty. Beauty's mother Duchess, is portrayed by a horse named Beauty. Ginger was portrayed by Susie and Orion. Merrylegs was portrayed by Lulu Belle and Victoria.


title: Black Beauty (2020 film)

text: It was announced in May 2019 that a new movie adaptation of Anna Sewell's 1877 novel "Black Beauty" was in development with Ashley Avis writing, editing and directing the film. Mackenzie Foy and Kate Winslet were set to star in the film. Filming began in South Africa in October 2019 with Claire Forlani and Iain Glen joining the cast.


title: Black Beauty (2020 film)

text: In July 2020, Walt Disney Pictures acquired distribution rights to the film from Constantin Film. "Black Beauty" was released digitally on Disney+ on November 27, 2020.


title: Black Beauty (2020 film)

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with a mixed-to-positive rating of . The website's critics consensus reads: "Unable to rein in the complexities of its source material, "Black Beauty" struggles to gallop out of the paddock." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 52 out of 100, based on 12 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews."


title: Black Beauty (2020 film)

text: Fionnuala Halligan of "Screen Daily" found the movie to be a solid reinterpretation of Anna Sewell's novel, complimented the performances of the actors, and praised the chemistry between Kate Winslet and Mackenzie Foy's characters, saying, "Like Anna Sewell’s original novel, this film’s heart is very much in the right place." Amy Amatangelo of "Paste" rated the film 7.8 out of 10, saying, "The movie looks stunning with sweeping landscapes and gorgeous shots of Beauty in action, as South Africa makes a lovely stand-in for both the American West and New York. An inspiring movie for young, old and everyone in between, I would be shocked if the movie’s final moments didn’t lead to a cathartic cry for every viewer. The beauty of this story is timeless." Jennifer Green of "Common Sense Media" rated the movie 3 out of 5 stars, praised the depiction of positive messages and role models, writing, ""Black Beauty" is emotionally taxing, with the central horse suffering abuse, loss, and danger. - That said, the film, told mostly from the horse's perspective, ultimately shows a clear respect and admiration for the animals, and it conveys positive messages of loyalty, family, perseverance, resilience."


title: Black Beauty (2020 film)

text: Kayti Burt of "Den of Geek" rated the movie 2.5 out of 5 stars, praised Ashley Avis' direction, writing, "Ashley Avis hits all the plot points and throws in some fantastically pretty shots in the process, yet there is a lack of texture (both visually and narratively) that keeps this film from graduating from serviceable horse-girl film to something greater both within and outside the limits of Horse Girl Canon" and that the movie "lacks the thematic ambition of its source material, but is a serviceable addition to Horse Girl Canon." Sara Stewart of the "New York Post" rated the film 2.5 out of 5 stars, writing, "One of the purposes of the book was to shine a line on animal cruelty, which is admirable — but "Black Beauty" veers so often into the dark and the sad I question how much appeal it'll really have for the younger set. Still, if your tear ducts need cleaning, this is one holiday film that’ll get the job done." Monica Castillo of "RogerEbert.com" rated the movie 2 out of 4 stars, claiming, "Avis’ film clearly adores its four-legged subjects. Through David Procter's cinematography, she recreates the look and feel of one of Disney's nature documentaries for the first moments of "Black Beauty"'s life. It's a golden-hour, idealized look at a herd of horses galloping through fields and in the shadows of mountains. [...] It's a narrative choice that may work better for some than others, and it probably won't ride well with devotees of the book."


title: Hexamethylenetetramine

text: Hexamethylenetetramine, also known as methenamine, hexamine, or urotropin, is a heterocyclic organic compound with the formula (CH)N. This white crystalline compound is highly soluble in water and polar organic solvents. It has a cage-like structure similar to adamantane. It is useful in the synthesis of other organic compounds, including plastics, pharmaceuticals, and rubber additives. It sublimes in vacuum at 280 °C.


title: Hexamethylenetetramine

text: The molecule has a tetrahedral cage-like structure, similar to adamantane. Four vertices are occupied by nitrogen atoms, which are linked by methylene groups. Although the molecular shape defines a cage, no void space is available at the interior for binding other atoms or molecules, unlike crown ethers or larger cryptand structures.


title: Hexamethylenetetramine

text: The molecule behaves like an amine base, undergoing protonation and "N"-alkylation (e.g. quaternium-15).


title: Hexamethylenetetramine

text: The dominant use of hexamethylenetetramine is in the production of powdery or liquid preparations of phenolic resins and phenolic resin moulding compounds, where it is added as a hardening component. These products are used as binders, e.g. in brake and clutch linings, abrasive products, non-woven textiles, formed parts produced by moulding processes, and fireproof materials.


title: Hexamethylenetetramine

text: As the mandelic acid salt (methenamine mandelate) or the hippuric acid salt (methenamine hippurate), it is used for the treatment of urinary tract infection. In an acidic environment, methenamine is believed to act as an antimicrobial by converting to formaldehyde. A systematic review of its use for this purpose in adult women found there was insufficient evidence of benefit and further research is needed.


title: Hexamethylenetetramine

text: Methenamine acts as an over-the-counter antiperspirant due to the astringent property of formaldehyde.


title: Hexamethylenetetramine

text: Together with 1,3,5-trioxane, hexamethylenetetramine is a component of hexamine fuel tablets used by campers, hobbyists, the military and relief organizations for heating camping food or military rations. It burns smokelessly, has a high energy density of 30.0 megajoules per kilogram (MJ/kg), does not liquify while burning, and leaves no ashes, although its fumes are toxic.


title: Hexamethylenetetramine

text: Standardized 0.149 g tablets of methenamine (hexamine) are used by fire-protection laboratories as a clean and reproducible fire source to test the flammability of carpets and rugs.


title: Hexamethylenetetramine

text: Hexamethylene tetramine or hexamine is also used as a food additive as a preservative (INS number 239). It is approved for usage for this purpose in the EU, where it is listed under E number E239, however it is not approved in the USA, Russia, Australia, or New Zealand.


title: Hexamethylenetetramine

text: Hexamethylenetetramine is a versatile reagent in organic synthesis. It is used in the Duff reaction (formylation of arenes), the Sommelet reaction (converting benzyl halides to aldehydes), and in the Delepine reaction (synthesis of amines from alkyl halides).


title: Hexamethylenetetramine

text: Hexamethylenetetramine is the base component to produce RDX and, consequently, C-4 as well as Octogen, hexamine dinitrate, hexamine diperchlorate and HMTD.


title: Hexamethylenetetramine

text: Hexamethylenetetramine was first introduced into the medical setting in 1895 as a urinary antiseptic. However, it was only used in cases of acidic urine, whereas boric acid was used to treat urinary tract infections with alkaline urine. Scientist De Eds found that there was a direct correlation between the acidity of hexamethylenetetramine's environment and the rate of its decomposition. Therefore, its effectiveness as a drug depended greatly on the acidity of the urine rather than the amount of the drug administered. In an alkaline environment, hexamethylenetetramine was found to be almost completely inactive.


title: Hexamethylenetetramine

text: Hexamethylenetetramine was also used as a method of treatment for soldiers exposed to phosgene in World War I. Subsequent studies have shown that large doses of hexamethylenetetramine provide some protection if taken before phosgene exposure but none if taken afterwards.


title: Hexamethylenetetramine

text: Since 1990 the number of European producers has been declining. The French SNPE factory closed in 1990; in 1993, the production of hexamethylenetetramine in Leuna, Germany ceased; in 1996, the Italian facility of Agrolinz closed down; in 2001, the UK producer Borden closed; in 2006, production at Chemko, Slovak Republic, was closed. Remaining producers include INEOS in Germany, Caldic in the Netherlands, and Hexion in Italy. In the US, Eli Lilly and Company stopped producing methenamine tablets in 2002. In Australia, Hexamine Tablets for fuel are made by Thales Australia Ltd. In México, Hexamine is produced by Abiya.


title: Short Sunderland

text: The Short S.25 Sunderland is a British flying boat patrol bomber, developed and constructed by Short Brothers for the Royal Air Force (RAF). The aircraft took its service name from the town (latterly, city) and port of Sunderland in North East England.


title: Short Sunderland

text: Developed in parallel with the civilian S.23 "Empire" flying boat, the flagship of Imperial Airways, the Sunderland was developed specifically to conform to the requirements of British Air Ministry Specification R.2/33 for a long-range patrol/reconnaissance flying boat to serve with the Royal Air Force (RAF). As designed, it served as a successor to the earlier Short Sarafand flying boat. Sharing several similarities with the S.23, it featured a more advanced aerodynamic hull and was outfitted with various offensive and defensive armaments, including machine gun turrets, bombs, aerial mines, and depth charges. The Sunderland was powered by four Bristol Pegasus XVIII radial engines and was outfitted with various detection equipment to aid combat operations, including the Leigh searchlight, the ASV Mark II and ASV Mark III radar units, and an astrodome.


title: Short Sunderland

text: The Sunderland was one of the most powerful and widely used flying boats throughout the Second World War. In addition to the RAF, the type was operated by other Allied military air wings, including the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), South African Air Force (SAAF), Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF), French Navy, Norwegian Air Force, and the Portuguese Navy. During the conflict, the type was heavily involved in Allied efforts to counter the threat posed by German U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic. On 17 July 1940, a RAAF Sunderland (of No. 10 Squadron) performed the type's first unassisted U-boat kill. Sunderlands also played a major role in the Mediterranean theatre, performing maritime reconnaissance flights and logistical support missions. During the evacuation of Crete, shortly after the German invasion of the island, several aircraft were used to transport troops. Numerous unarmed Sunderlands were also flown by civil operator British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), traversing routes as far afield as the Pacific Ocean.


title: Short Sunderland

text: During the post-war era, use of the Sunderland throughout Europe rapidly declined, while greater numbers remained in service in the Far East, where large developed runways were less prevalent. Between mid-1950 and September 1954, several squadrons of RAF Sunderlands saw combat action during the Korean War. Around a dozen aircraft had also participated in the Berlin airlift, delivering supplies to the blockaded German city. The RAF continued to use the Sunderland in a military capacity up to 1959. In December 1960, the French Navy retired their aircraft, which were the last remaining examples in military use within the Northern Hemisphere. The type also remained in service with the RNZAF up to 1967, when they were replaced by the land-based Lockheed P-3 Orion. A number of Sunderlands were converted for use within the civil sector, where they were known as the Hythe and the Sandringham; in this configuration, the type continued in airline operation until 1974. Several examples were preserved, including a single airworthy Sunderland which has been placed on display in Florida at Fantasy of Flight.


title: Short Sunderland

text: During the early 1930s, there was intense international competition to develop suitable aircraft to operate new long-range intercontinental passenger service between the United Kingdom, the United States, France and Germany. It was recognised that the United Kingdom had no existing equivalent to the new American Sikorsky S-42 flying boats or the German Dornier Do X. Accordingly, in 1934, the British Postmaster General declared that all first-class Royal Mail sent overseas was to travel by air, establishing a subsidy for the development of intercontinental air transport in a fashion similar to the U.S. domestic programme a decade earlier. In response, Imperial Airways announced a competition to design and manufacture a fleet of 28 large flying boats, each weighing and having a range of with a capacity for 24 passengers. A corresponding contract was issued to Short Brothers of Rochester for their design, which became the S.23 Empire.


title: Short Sunderland

text: While the Empire flying boat has often been credited as a predecessor of the Sunderland, according to aviation author Geoffrey Norris, this impression "is not strictly true". During November 1933, the British Air Ministry released Specification R.2/33, which called for the development of a next-generation long-range general purpose flying boat, intended to perform ocean reconnaissance missions. The specification envisioned an aircraft, either a monoplane or biplane, which would have to have performance equal to the recently delivered Short Sarafand flying boat, along with various other requirements, including the need to be powered by a maximum of four engines and to be much more compact than the Sarafand.


title: Short Sunderland

text: The release of Specification R.2/33 had been in advance of the publication of the commercial Imperial Airways requirement; by the time that Short received Imperial Airway's priority request, the company had already started planning the design of the prospective military flying boat. After reviewing both sets of requirements, Short decided to prioritise the development of the civil S.23 design but also to work on a response to specification R.2/33.


title: Short Sunderland

text: Chief Designer Arthur Gouge had originally intended for a COW 37 mm gun to be mounted in the bow of the craft to accompany the single Lewis gun installed in its tail. As with the S.23, he made efforts to produce a fuselage that generated the lowest amount of drag possible, while a much longer nose than had been used for the S.23 was ultimately adopted.


title: Short Sunderland

text: During October 1934, Shorts settled upon the general configuration and geometry of the design, opting for a four-engine shoulder-wing monoplane configuration, similar to the Short Empire that had been ordered at the same time. The military flying boat design received the internal designation of S.25. While the S.25 design bore a strong resemblance to the civil S.23, it featured an improved aerodynamic form, and sheetmetal with curvature in more than one direction, which was more complex to manufacture but gave a more ideal shape.


title: Short Sunderland

text: During late 1934, the S.25 proposal was submitted by the company to the Air Ministry. Rival firm Saunders-Roe had also designed and submitted their own flying boat, known as the Saro A.33, as their response to the issuing of Specification R.2/33. Following an initial evaluation of the submissions, the Ministry decided to place orders for the production of prototypes for both the S.25 and A.33 proposals; this measure was originally made for the purpose of performing flight tests in support of a detailed evaluation, after which production order would be awarded to one of the competitors.


title: Short Sunderland

text: During April 1936, the Air Ministry was sufficiently confident in Short's submission that a development contract for an initial batch of 11 further S.25 boats was issued to the company. On 4 July 1936, the first of the Empire flying boats to be built, G-ADHL, named 'Canopus', conducted its first flight which affirmed the basic principles of the S.25's design while the crucial final design conference was held around the same time as the flight. The competitive fly-off was abandoned after the sole A.33 was destroyed due to a structural failure, resulting in the S.25 being the only candidate.


title: Short Sunderland

text: As construction of the prototype S.25 proceeded, several design changes were performed for various reasons. In terms of its armament, in response to feedback from Air Ministry and Royal Air Force (RAF) experts reviewing the project, it was decided to change its intended defensive weapons, resulting in the switch to a single 0.303 Vickers K machine gun for the nose turret while an arrangement of four 0.303 Browning machine guns in the tail position was also adopted at the same time. The tail turret was also changed to a powered version; Gouge therefore had to devise a solution to account for the resulting movement aft of the aircraft's centre of gravity, which was initially achieved via the presence of ballast positioned in the forward area. By the end of September 1937, the prototype had been completed.


title: Short Sunderland

text: On 16 October 1937, the initial S.25 prototype ("K4774") performed the type's maiden flight, fitted with Bristol Pegasus X radial engines capable of generating of power each. The more powerful "Pegasus XXII" model was unavailable at the time. Flown by Short's chief test pilot John Lankester Parker and Harold Piper, the initial flight lasted for around 45 minutes; later that day, a second flight of a similar duration was performed. Parker later declared his satisfaction with the basic design. Prior to the first flight, the type had received the name "Sunderland".


title: Short Sunderland

text: Following early flight trials with the first prototype, the aircraft was returned to the workshop where it underwent further modifications; the adoption of a wing sweepback of 4° 15' was achieved via the addition of a spacer into the front spar attachments. This design change, which had been made to account for the changes in defensive armament, repositioned the flying boat's centre of lift enough to compensate for the altered centre of gravity; further alterations were necessary to maintain the hydrodynamics properties. On 7 March 1938, "K4774" conducted its first post-modification flight, having been outfitted with the intended Bristol Pegasus XXII radial engines, each one capable of generating .


title: Short Sunderland

text: On 21 April 1938, the first Sunderland Mark 1 of the development batch conducted its first flight. By this point, manufacturer testing of the prototype had already been completed and the prototype had been transferred to the Seaplane Experimental Station at Felixstowe, Suffolk for its official evaluation by the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment (MAEE); on 8 March 1938, it was joined by the second production aircraft. On 28 May 1938, this second aircraft, which had been cleared for operations under tropical conditions, flew a record-breaking flight to Seletar, Singapore, stopping off along the route at Gibraltar, Malta, Alexandria, Habbaniyah, Bahrain, Karachi, Gwalior, Calcutta, Rangoon, and Mergui.


title: Short Sunderland

text: Testing showed that the aircraft could be fully refueled in 20 minutes, and that its most economical cruising speed was about at . At this speed and altitude, a consumption rate of gave the aircraft an endurance of 18 hours, during which it could cover . The take-off distance was found to be .


title: Short Sunderland

text: The Short S.25 Sunderland was a large four-engined flying boat developed for military use. The design of the S.25 shared much in common with the civil-orientated S.23, principally differing in its use of a deeper hull profile. As with the S.23, the interior of the Sunderland's fuselage contained two individual decks; the lower deck contained a total of six bunks, along with a galley outfitted with a twin kerosene pressure stove, a yacht-style porcelain flush toilet, an anchoring winch, and a small machine shop for performing inflight repairs. The crew was originally intended to total seven members; this was subsequently increased for later versions of the Sunderland to around 11 crew members and sometimes greater, dependent upon the specific mission being undertaken.


title: Short Sunderland

text: The Sunderland featured all-metal, mainly flush-riveted construction, except for the flight control surfaces, which used a fabric-covered metal frame construction. Of these, the flaps employed unusual Gouge-patented devices that slid backwards along curved tracks, moving rearwards and downwards to increase the wing area and generating 30% greater lift for landing. The thick wings, upon which the aircraft's four nacelle-mounted Bristol Pegasus XXII radial engines were carried, also accommodated a total of six drum-style fuel tanks, which possessed a total capacity of 9,200 litres (2,025 Imperial gallons, 2,430 U.S. gallons). In addition to the main fuel tanks, an arrangement of four smaller fuel tanks was installed behind the rear wing spar later on; with the extra tanks fitted, the Sunderland possessed a combined total fuel capacity of 11,602 litres (2,550 Imperial gallons, 3,037 U.S. gallons), which was enough to enable the type to conduct eight- to 14-hour patrols.


title: Short Sunderland

text: The specification to which the Sunderland was developed to conform with had called for an offensive armament of a 37 mm gun and up to of bombs, mines or (eventually) depth charges. The ordnance was stored inside the fuselage in a purpose-built bomb room and was winched up to racks, under the wing centre section, that could be traversed out through doors on each side of the fuselage above the waterline to the release position. Defensive armament included a Nash & Thompson FN-13 powered turret with four .303 British Browning machine guns in the extreme tail and a pair of manually-operated .303 set on either side of the fuselage, firing from ports just below and behind the wings. These machine guns were later upgraded to 0.5-inch calibre Brownings. There were two different nose turret weapons, the most common, later, being two Browning machine guns. The nose weapons were later augmented by four fixed guns, two each side, in the forward fuselage that were fired by the pilot. Much later, a twin-gun turret was to be dorsal-mounted on the upper fuselage, about level with the wing trailing edge, bringing the total defensive armament up to 16 machine guns.


title: Short Sunderland

text: As with all water-based aircraft, there was a need to be able to navigate on water and to control the craft up to and at a mooring. In addition to the standard navigation lights, there was also a demountable mooring mast that was positioned on the upper fuselage just aft of the astrodome hatch with a 360-degree white light to show that the aircraft was moored. The crewmembers were trained in common marine signals for watercraft to ensure safety in busy waters. The craft could be moored to a buoy by a pendant that attached to the keel under the forward fuselage. When the craft was off the buoy, the forward end of the pendant was attached to the front of the hull just below the bomb aimer's window. For anchoring, there was a demountable bollard that fixed to the forward fuselage from where the front turret was retracted to allow an airman to man the position and pick up the buoy cage or to toss out the anchor.


title: Short Sunderland

text: For taxiing after landing, the galley hatches were used to extend sea drogues that could be used to turn the aircraft or maintain its crosswind progress (by deploying the drogue on one side only), or to slow forward motion as much as possible (both deployed). When not in use, the drogues were hand hauled back inboard, folded, and stowed in wall-mounted containers just below the hatches. Operation of the drogues could be a very dangerous exercise if the aircraft was travelling on the water at speed or in strong currents, because the approximately drogue would haul up on its five-tonne attachment cable end inside the galley very sharply and powerfully. Once deployed, it was normally impossible to recover a drogue unless the aircraft was stationary relative to the local tidal flow.


title: Short Sunderland

text: Portable beaching gear could be attached by ground crew so that the aircraft could be pulled up on land. The gear consisted of a pair of two-wheeled struts that could be attached to either side of the fuselage, below the wing, with a two- or four-wheel trolley and towbar attached under the rear of the hull. A standard stocked anchor was stowed in the forward compartment alongside the anchor winch. Depending on the operating area, a number of different kinds of anchor could be carried to cope with different anchorages. Another means of direction control on the water was by application of the rudder and aileron flight controls. The ailerons would cause asymmetric lift from the airflow and, ultimately, drop a float into the water to cause drag on that wing. The pilots could vary engine power to control the direction and speed of the aircraft on the water. In adverse combinations of tide, wind, and destination, this could be very difficult.


title: Short Sunderland

text: The Sunderland was usually entered through the bow compartment door on the left forward side of the aircraft. The internal compartments—bow, gun room, ward room, galley, bomb room and the after compartments—were fitted with "swash" doors to keep them watertight to about two feet (610 mm) above normal water level; these doors were normally kept closed. There was another external door in the tail compartment on the right side. This door was intended for boarding from a Braby (U-shaped) pontoon that was used where there was a full passenger service mooring alongside a wharf or similar. This door could also be used to accept passengers or stretcher-bound patients when the aircraft was in the open water; this was because the engines had to be kept running to maintain the aircraft's position for the approaching vessel and the front door was too close to the left inboard propeller. Normal access to the external upper parts of the aircraft was through the astrodome hatch at the front of the front spar of the wing centre section, just at the rear of the navigator's station.


title: Short Sunderland

text: Bombs were loaded in through the "bomb doors" that formed the upper half walls of the bomb room on both sides. The bomb racks were able to run in and out from the bomb room on tracks in the underside of the wing. In order to load them, weapons were hoisted up to the extended racks that were run inboard and either lowered to stowages on the floor or prepared for use on the retracted racks above the stowed items. The doors were spring-loaded to pop inwards from their frames and would fall under gravity so that the racks could run out through the space left in the top of the compartment. The bombs could be released locally or remotely from the pilot's position during a bomb run.


title: Short Sunderland

text: Normally, the weapons were either bombs or depth charges and the racks were limited to a maximum of each. After the first salvo was dropped, the crew had to get the next eight weapons loaded before the pilot had the aircraft positioned on the next bombing run. The fixed nose guns (introduced when in service with Australian units) were removed when the aircraft was on the water and stowed in the gun room just aft of the bow compartment. The toilet was in the right half of this same compartment and stairs from the cockpit to the bow area divided the two.


title: Short Sunderland

text: Maintenance was performed on the engines by opening panels in the leading edge of the wing either side of the powerplant. A plank could be fitted across the front of the engine on the extensions of the open panels. A small manually started auxiliary petrol engine, which was fitted into the leading edge of the right wing, powered a bilge pump for clearing water and other fluids from the fuselage bilges and a fuel pump for refuelling. Generally, the aircraft were reasonably water tight, and two people manually operating a wobble pump could transfer fuel faster than the auxiliary pump. In sheltered moorings or at sea, fuelling was accomplished by a powered or unpowered barge and with engine driven or hand powered pumps. At regular moorings, there would be specially designed refuelling barges to do the job, normally manned by trained marine crew. These vessels could refuel many aircraft during the course of the day. Handling of the fuel nozzles and opening/closing the aircraft fuel tanks would normally be an aircraftman's task.


title: Short Sunderland

text: Airframe repairs were either effected from the inside or delayed until the aircraft was in a sheltered mooring or beached. One serious problem that beset the aircraft was that the heat-treated rivets in the hull plates were susceptible to corrosion after a period in salt water (depending on the quality of the heat treatment process). The heads would pop off from stress corrosion, allowing seawater to leak into the bilges. The only option was to haul the aircraft out onto the "hard" and replace them, usually at the cost of many additional heads breaking off from the vibration of the riveting.


title: Short Sunderland

text: A large float mounted under each wing maintained stability on water. With no wind, the float on the heavier side was always in the water; with some wind, the aircraft could be held using the ailerons with both floats out of the water. In the event of a float being broken off for some reason, as the craft lost airspeed after landing crew members would go out onto the opposite wing, to keep the remaining float in the water until the aircraft could reach its mooring. Marine growths on the hull were a problem; the resulting drag could be enough to prevent a fully loaded aircraft from gaining enough speed to become airborne. The aircraft could be taken to a freshwater mooring for sufficient time to kill off the fauna and flora growing on the bottom, which would then be washed away during takeoff runs. The alternative was to scrub it off, either in the water or on land.


title: Short Sunderland

text: Aircraft with lower hull damage were patched or had the holes filled with any materials to hand before landing. The aircraft would then be immediately put onto a slipway with its wheeled beaching gear or beached on a sandy shore before it could sink. More than two fuselage compartments had to be full of water to sink the aircraft. During the Second World War, a number of severely damaged aircraft were deliberately landed on grass airfields ashore. In at least one case, an aircraft that made a grass landing was repaired to fly again. On the Sunderland Mk V, fuel could be dumped from retractable pipes that extended from the hull and were attached to the bomb room side of the galley aft bulkhead. It was expected that dumping would be done while airborne, but it could also be performed while floating on the water, albeit with care to ensure that the floating fuel went downwind away from the aircraft.


title: Short Sunderland

text: The takeoff run of a flying boat was often dependent only on the length of water that was available. The first problem was to gain sufficient speed for the craft to plane, otherwise, there would never be enough speed to become airborne. Once planing, the next problem was to break free from the "suction" (from Bernoulli's principle) of the water on the hull. This was partly helped by the "step" in the hull just behind the craft's centre of buoyancy at planing speed. The pilot could rock the craft about this point to try to break the downward pull of the water on the surface of the hull. Somewhat rough water was a help in freeing the hull, but on calm days it was often necessary to have a high speed launch cross in front of the aircraft to cause a break in the water flow under the aircraft. It was a matter of judgement of the coxswain to get the crossing close enough but not too close. Because it was expected that some takeoffs would be protracted affairs, often the crews were not very careful to keep within maximum all-up weight limitations, and getting airborne just took a little longer.


title: Short Sunderland

text: At the outbreak of the Second World War, on 3 September 1939, 39 Sunderlands were in service with the RAF. Although British anti-submarine efforts were disorganized and ineffectual at first, Sunderlands quickly proved useful in the rescue of the crews from torpedoed ships. On 21 September 1939, two Sunderlands rescued the entire 34-man crew of the torpedoed merchantman "Kensington Court" from the North Sea. As British anti-submarine measures improved, the Sunderland began to inflict losses as well. A Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Sunderland (of No. 10 Squadron) made the type's first unassisted kill of a U-boat on 17 July 1940.


title: Short Sunderland

text: During its service, the Sunderland Mark I received various improvements. The nose turret was upgraded with a second .303 (7.7 mm) gun. New propellers together with pneumatic rubber wing de-icing boots were also fitted. Although the .303 guns lacked range and hitting power, the Sunderland had a considerable number of them and it was a well-built machine that was hard to destroy. On 3 April 1940, a Sunderland operating off Norway was attacked by six German Junkers Ju 88C fighters; during the engagement, it shot one down, damaged another enough to cause it to retreat and later perform a forced landing and drove off the rest. The Germans are reputed to have nicknamed the Sunderland the "Fliegendes Stachelschwein" ("Flying Porcupine") due to its defensive firepower.


title: Short Sunderland

text: Sunderlands also proved themselves in the Mediterranean theatre. They flew many evacuation missions during the German seizure of Crete, carrying as many as 82 passengers. One flew the reconnaissance mission to observe the Italian fleet at anchor in Taranto before the famous Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm's torpedo attack on 11 November 1940.


title: Short Sunderland

text: New weapons made the flying boats more deadly in combat. In 1939 during an accidental fratricidal attack, one anti-submarine bomb hit the British submarine doing no more damage than breaking its light bulbs; other bombs had reportedly bounced up and hit their launch aircraft. In early 1943, these ineffective weapons were replaced by Torpex-filled depth charges that would sink to a determined depth and then explode. This eliminated the problem of bounce-back, and the shock wave propagating through the water augmented the explosive effect.


title: Short Sunderland

text: While the bright Leigh searchlight was rarely fitted to Sunderlands, ASV Mark II radar enabled the flying boats to attack U-boats on the surface. In response, the German submarines began to carry a radar warning system known formally as "Metox", and informally as the "Cross of Biscay" due to the appearance of its receiving antenna, that was tuned to the ASV frequency and gave the submarines early warning that an aircraft was in the area. Kills fell off drastically until ASV Mark III radar was introduced in early 1943, which operated in the centimetric band and used antennas mounted in blisters under the wings outboard of the floats, instead of the cluttered stickleback aerials. Sunderland Mark IIIs fitted with ASV Mark III were called Sunderland Mark IIIAs. Centimetric radar was invisible to Metox and baffled the Germans at first. Admiral Karl Dönitz, commander of the German U-boat force, suspected that the British were being informed of submarine movements by spies. In August 1943, a captured RAF airman misled the Germans by telling them that the aircraft were homing in on the signals radiated by the Metox, and consequently U-boat commanders were instructed to turn them off.


title: Short Sunderland

text: The Germans responded to Sunderland attacks by fitting some U-boats with one or two 37 mm and twin quad 20 mm flak guns to fire back at their attackers. While Sunderlands could suppress flak to an extent with their nose turret guns, the U-boats guns had superior range, hitting power and accuracy. Attempting to shoot down Allied aircraft did, however, prolong the U-boat's presence on the surface, which made sinking the vessel easier. Nonetheless, fitting of substantial arrays of anti-aircraft guns temporarily decreased U-boat losses while both Allied aircraft and shipping losses rose. As a countermeasure to the increased defensive armament of the U-boats, the Australians fitted their aircraft in the field with an additional four .303s (7.7 mm) in fixed mounts in the nose, allowing the pilot to add fire while diving on the submarine before bomb release. Most aircraft were similarly modified. The addition of single .50 inch (12.7 mm) flexibly mounted M2 Browning machine guns in the beam hatches behind and above the wing trailing edge also became common.


title: Short Sunderland

text: The type's capacity to defend itself was demonstrated in particular by an air battle over the Bay of Biscay on 2 June 1943, when eight Junkers Ju 88Cs attacked a single Sunderland Mk III of No. 461 Squadron RAAF: "EJ134", squadron code: "N for Nuts". The 11 crew, led by F/Lt Colin Walker, were on an anti-submarine patrol, while also watching for any signs of a missing airliner, BOAC Flight 777. At 1900 hours, the rear gunner saw the Ju 88s, which belonged to "V.Kampfgeschwader 40" and were led by Leutnant Friedrich Maeder. Walker ordered the dumping of the bombs and depth charges, and took the engines to full power. Two Ju 88s made simultaneous passes at "EJ134" from both sides, scoring hits and disabling one engine, while the pilots fought fires and took the Sunderland through corkscrew manoeuvres. On a third pass, the dorsal turret gunner badly damaged or shot down a Ju 88, although the Sunderland's rear gunner was knocked unconscious.


title: Short Sunderland

text: The next Ju 88 that attacked was hit by fire from the dorsal and nose turrets, and appeared to have been shot down. By this time, one crew member on the Sunderland had been mortally wounded and most of the others were wounded to varying degrees, while the aircraft's radio gear had been destroyed, among other damage. However, the rear gunner had recovered, and when "EJ134" was attacked from behind, another Ju 88 was badly damaged and left the fight. The remaining Ju 88s continued to attack and the front gunner damaged one of these, setting its engines on fire. Two more Ju 88s were also damaged and the Germans disengaged. "EJ134" was badly damaged and the crew threw everything they could overboard, while nursing the aircraft over the journey to Britain. At 2248 hours, Walker managed to beach the aircraft at Praa Sands, Cornwall. The 10 surviving crew members were able to wade ashore, while the Sunderland broke up in the surf. Walker received the Distinguished Service Order and several other crew members also received medals. They claimed three Ju 88s destroyed. (With the exception of Walker, the crew returned to operations in a new "N for Nuts", which was lost over the Bay of Biscay two months later, in an attack by six Ju 88s. On 2 June 2013, a memorial was opened on the green at Praa Sands.)


title: Short Sunderland

text: At the end of the Second World War, a number of new Sunderlands built at Belfast were simply taken out to sea and scuttled as there was nothing else to do with them. In Europe the type was removed from service relatively quickly but in the Far East, where well developed runways were less common and large land based maritime patrol aircraft like the new Avro Shackleton could not be used so easily, there was still a need for it, and it remained in service with the RAF Far East Air Force at Singapore until 1959, and with the Royal New Zealand Air Force's No. 5 Squadron RNZAF until 1967.


title: Short Sunderland

text: During the Berlin Airlift (June 1948 – August 1949) 10 Sunderlands and two transport variants (known as "Hythes") were used to transport goods from Finkenwerder on the Elbe near Hamburg to the isolated city, landing on the Havel river near RAF Gatow until it iced over. The Sunderlands were frequently used for transporting salt, as their airframes were already protected against corrosion from seawater. Transporting salt in standard aircraft risked rapid and severe structural corrosion in the event of a spillage. When the Havelsee did freeze over the Sunderland's role was taken by freight-converted Handley Page Halifaxes with salt being carried in panniers fitted under the fuselage to avoid the corrosion problem.


title: Short Sunderland

text: From mid-1950, RAF Sunderlands also saw service during the Korean War initially with No. 88 Squadron but shortly followed by Nos. 205 and 209 Squadrons. The three squadrons shared the operational task equally with rotational detachments of three or four aircraft and crews based at Iwakuni, Japan. Missions lasting 10 to 13 hours were flown daily throughout the war, and also during the Armistice period that followed, until September 1954. The Sunderland also saw service with the RNZAF until 1967.


title: Short Sunderland

text: The French Navy Escadrille 7FE, which received Sunderlands when it was formed in 1943 as No. 343 Squadron RAF, continued to operate them until December 1960, the last unit to operate Sunderlands in the Northern Hemisphere.


title: Short Sunderland

text: The first S.25, now named the Sunderland Mark I, flew from the River Medway on 16 October 1937 with Shorts' Chief Test Pilot, John Lankester Parker at the controls. The deeper hull and installation of nose and tail turrets gave the Sunderland a considerably different appearance from the Empire flying boats. The prototype was fitted with Bristol Pegasus X engines, each providing 950 hp (709 kW ), as the planned Pegasus XXII engines of 1,010 hp (753 kW) were not available at the time.


title: Short Sunderland

text: The 37 mm gun, originally intended as a primary anti-submarine weapon, was dropped from the plans during the prototype phase and replaced with a Nash & Thompson FN-11 nose turret mounting a single .303-inch (7.7 mm) Vickers GO machine gun. The turret could be winched back into the nose, revealing a small "deck" and demountable marine bollard used during mooring manoeuvres on the water. The change of armament in the nose to the much lighter gun moved the centre of gravity rearwards.


title: Short Sunderland

text: After the first series of flights, the prototype was modified to have a wing that was swept 4.25° to the rear, thereby moving the centre of pressure into a more reasonable position in relation to the new centre of gravity. This left the engines and wing floats canted out from the aircraft's centreline. Although the wing loading was much higher than that of any previous Royal Air Force flying boat, a new flap system kept the takeoff run to a reasonable length.