title: Dennis Edwards

text: Edwards died in a Illinois hospital on February 1, 2018, at the age of 74, two days before his 75th birthday. He had been battling meningitis before his death.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: The Titan II was an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) developed by the Glenn L. Martin Company from the earlier Titan I missile. Titan II was originally designed and used as an ICBM, but was later adapted as a medium-lift space launch vehicle (these adaptations were designated Titan II GLV and Titan 23G) to carry payloads to Earth orbit for the United States Air Force (USAF), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Those payloads included the USAF Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP), NOAA weather satellites, and NASA's Gemini crewed space capsules. The modified Titan II SLVs (Space Launch Vehicles) were launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, up until 2003.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: The Titan II ICBM was the successor to the Titan I, with double the payload. Unlike the Titan I, it used hydrazine-based hypergolic propellant which was storable and reliably ignited. This reduced time to launch and permitted it to be launched from its silo. Titan II carried the largest single warhead of any American ICBM.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: The missile consists of a two-stage, rocket engine powered vehicle and a re-entry vehicle (RV). Provisions are included for in-flight separation of Stage II from Stage I, and separation of the RV from Stage II. Stage I and Stage II vehicles each contain propellant and pressurization, rocket engine, hydraulic and electrical systems, and explosive components. In addition, Stage II contains the flight control system and missile guidance system. Stage I contained three gyros and the Autopilot. The Autopilot attempted to keep the missile straight during first stage flight and sent commands to the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) on the 2nd stage. The IMU would compensate and send steering commands to the engine actuators.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: The airframe is a two-stage, aerodynamically stable structure that houses and protects the airborne missile equipment during powered flight. The missile guidance system enables the shutdown and staging enable relay to initiate Stage I separation. Each stage is in diameter and has fuel and oxidizer tanks in tandem, with the walls of the tanks forming the skin of the missile in those areas. External conduits are attached to the outside surface of the tanks to provide passage for the wire bundles and tubing. Access doors are provided on the missile forward, aft and between-tanks structure for inspection and maintenance. A removable cover for tank entry is located on the forward dome of each tank.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: The Stage I airframe consists of an interstage structure, oxidizer tank forward skirt, oxidizer tank, inter-tank structure, and fuel tank. The interstage structure, oxidizer tank forward skirt, and inter-tank structure are all fabricated assemblies using riveted skin, stringers and frame. The oxidizer tank is a welded structure consisting of a forward dome, tank barrel, an aft dome and a feedline. The fuel tank, also a welded structure, consists of a forward dome, tank barrel, aft cone, and internal conduit.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: The Stage II airframe consists of a transition section, oxidizer tank, inter-tank structure, fuel tank and aft skirt. The transition section, inter-tank structure and aft skirt are all fabricated assemblies using riveted skin, stringers and frame. The oxidizer tank and fuel tank are welded structures consisting of forward and aft domes.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: The first Titan II guidance system was built by ACDelco. It used an IMU (inertial measurement unit, a gyroscopic sensor) made by ACDelco derived from original designs from MIT Draper Labs. The missile guidance computer (MGC) was the IBM ASC-15. Stage I contained three gyros and the Autopilot. The Autopilot attempted to keep the missile straight during first stage flight and sent commands to the IMU on the 2nd stage. The IMU would compensate and send steering commands to the engine actuators. When spares for this system became hard to obtain, it was replaced by a more modern guidance system, the Delco Universal Space Guidance System (USGS). The USGS used a Carousel IV IMU and a Magic 352 computer.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: Titan II missiles were designed to be launched from underground missile silos that were hardened against nuclear attack. This was intended to allow for the United States to ride out a nuclear first strike by an enemy and be able to retaliate with a second strike response.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: The order given to launch a Titan II was vested exclusively in the US President. Once an order was given to launch, launch codes were sent to the silos from SAC HQ or its backup in California. The signal was an audio transmission of a thirty-five letter code.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: The two missile operators would record the code in a notebook. The codes were compared to each other and if they matched, both operators proceeded to a red safe containing the missile launch documents. The safe featured a separate lock for each operator, who unlocked it using a combination known only to him or herself.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: The safe contained a number of paper envelopes with two letters on the front. Embedded in the thirty-five letter code sent from HQ was a seven-letter sub-code. The first two letters of the sub-code indicated which envelope to open. Inside was a plastic "cookie", with five more letters written on it. If the cookie matched the remaining five digits in the sub-code, the launch order was authenticated.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: The message also contained a six-letter code that unlocked the missile. This code was entered on a separate system that opened a butterfly valve on one of the oxidizer lines on the missile engines. Once unlocked, the missile was ready to launch. Other portions of the message contained a launch time, which might be immediate or might be any time in the future.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: When that time was reached, the two operators inserted keys into their respective control panels and turned them to launch. The keys had to be turned within two seconds of each other, and had to be held for five seconds. The consoles were too far apart for one person to turn them both within the required timing.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: Successfully turning the keys would start the missile launch sequence. First, the Titan II's batteries would be charged up completely and the missile would disconnect itself from silo power. Then the silo doors would slide open, giving a "SILO SOFT" alarm inside the control room. The guidance system of the Titan II would then configure itself to take control of the missile and ingest data to guide the missile to the target. Subsequently, main engine ignition would occur. Thrust would be allowed to build for a few seconds, then the supports holding the missile in place inside the silo would be released using pyrotechnic bolts, allowing the missile to lift off.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: The Titan rocket family was established in October 1955, when the Air Force awarded the Glenn L. Martin Company a contract to build an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). It became known as the Titan I, the nation's first two-stage ICBM and first underground silo-based ICBM. The Martin Company realized that the Titan I could be further improved and presented a proposal to the U.S. Air Force for an improved version. It would carry a larger warhead over a greater range with better accuracy and could be launched more quickly. The Martin company received a contract for the new missile, designated SM-68B Titan II, in June 1960. The Titan II was 50% heavier than the Titan I, with a longer first stage and a larger diameter second stage. The Titan II also used storable propellants: Aerozine 50 fuel, which is a 1:1 mixture of hydrazine and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH), and dinitrogen tetroxide oxidiser. The Titan I, whose liquid oxygen oxidizer must be loaded immediately before launching, had to be raised from its silo and fueled before launch. The use of storable propellants enabled the Titan II to be launched within 60 seconds directly from within its silo. Their hypergolic nature made them dangerous to handle; a leak could (and did) lead to explosions, and the fuel was highly toxic. However, it allowed for a much simpler and more trouble-free engine system than on cryogenic propellant boosters.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: The first flight of the Titan II was in March 1962 and the missile, now designated LGM-25C, reached initial operating capability in October 1963. The Titan II contained one W-53 nuclear warhead in a Mark 6 re-entry vehicle with a range of . The W-53 had a yield of 9 megatons. This warhead was guided to its target using an inertial guidance unit. The 54 deployed Titan IIs formed the backbone of America's strategic deterrent force until the LGM-30 Minuteman ICBM was deployed en masse during the early to mid-1960s. Twelve Titan IIs were flown in NASA's Gemini crewed space program in the mid-1960s.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: The Department of Defense predicted that a Titan II missile could eventually carry a warhead with a 35 megaton yield, based on projected improvements. However, that warhead was never developed or deployed. This would have made this warhead one of the most powerful ever, with almost double the power-to-weight ratio of the B41 nuclear bomb.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: The first Titan II launch, Missile N-2, was carried out on 16 March 1962 from LC-16 at Cape Canaveral and performed extremely well, flying downrange and depositing its reentry vehicle in the Ascension splash net. There was only one problem: a high rate of longitudinal vibrations during first stage burn. While this did not affect missile launches for the Air Force, NASA officials were concerned that this phenomenon would be harmful to astronauts on a crewed Gemini flight. The second launch, Missile N-1, lifted from LC-15 on 7 June. First stage performance was near-nominal, but the second stage developed low thrust due to a restriction in the gas generator feed. The Range Safety officer sent a manual shutdown command to the second stage, causing premature RV separation and impact well short of the intended target point. The third launch, Missile N-6 on 11 July, was completely successful. Aside from pogo oscillation (the nickname NASA engineers invented for the Titan's vibration problem since it was thought to resemble the action of a pogo stick), the Titan II was experiencing other teething problems that were expected of a new launch vehicle. The 25 July test (Vehicle N-4) had been scheduled for 27 June, but was delayed by a month when the Titan's right engine experienced severe combustion instability at ignition that caused the entire thrust chamber to break off of the booster and fall down the flame deflector pit, landing about 20 feet from the pad (the Titan's onboard computer shut the engines down the moment loss of thrust occurred). The problem was traced to a bit of cleaning alcohol carelessly left in the engine. A new set of engines had to be ordered from Aerojet, and the missile lifted off from LC-16 on the morning of 25 July. The flight went entirely according to plan up to first stage burn, but the second stage malfunctioned again when the hydraulic pump failed and thrust dropped nearly 50%. The computer system compensated by running the engine for an additional 111 seconds, when propellant depletion occurred. Because the computer had not sent a manual cutoff command, reentry vehicle separation and vernier solo phase did not occur. Impact occurred downrange, half the planned distance.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: The next three launches Missile N-5 (12 September), N-9 (12 October), and N-12 (26 October), were entirely successful, but the nagging pogo problem remained and the booster could not be considered man-rated until this was fixed. Martin–Marietta thus added a surge-suppressor standpipe to the oxidizer feed line in the first stage, but when the system was tested on Titan N-11 on 6 December, the effect was instead to worsen pogo in the first stage, which ended up vibrating so strongly that unstable engine thrust resulted. The result of this was to trip the first stage pressure switch and terminate thrust early. The second stage then separated and began its burn, but due to the improper speed and attitude at separation, the guidance system malfunctioned and caused an unstable flight trajectory. Impact occurred only downrange.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: Vehicle N-13 was launched 13 days later and carried no standpipes, but it did have increased pressure in the first stage propellant tanks, which did cut down on vibration. In addition, the oxidizer feedlines were made of aluminum instead of steel. On the other hand, the exact reason for pogo was still unclear and a vexing problem for NASA.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: The tenth Titan II flight (Vehicle N-15) took place on 10 January, the only nighttime Titan II test. While it appeared that the pogo problem was largely contained on this flight, the second stage lost thrust again due to a restriction in the gas generator and so only achieved half its intended range. While previous second stage problems were blamed on pogo, this could not be the case for N-15. Meanwhile, combustion instability was still an issue and was confirmed by Aerojet static-firing tests which showed that the LR91 Liquid-propellant engine had difficulty attaining smooth burning after the shock of startup.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: Efforts to human-rate the Titan II also ran afoul of the fact that the Air Force and not NASA was in charge of its development. The former's primary aim was to develop a missile system, not a launch vehicle for Project Gemini, and they were only interested in technical improvements to the booster insofar as they had relevance to that program. On 29 January, the Air Force Ballistic Systems Division (BSD) declared that pogo in the Titan had been reduced enough for inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) use and that no further improvements needed to be made. While adding more pressure to the propellant tanks had reduced vibration, it could only be done so much before putting unsafe structural loads on the Titan and in any case the results were still unsatisfactory from NASA's point of view. While BSD tried to come up with a way to help NASA out, they finally decided that it was not worth the time, resources, and risk of trying to cut down further on pogo and that the ICBM program ultimately came first.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: Despite the Air Force's lack of interest in human-rating the Titan II, General Bernard Adolph Schriever assured that any problems with the booster would be fixed. BSD decided that 0.6 Gs was good enough despite NASA's goal of 0.25 Gs and they stubbornly declared that no more resources were to be expended on it. On 29 March 1963, Schriever invited Space Systems Development (SSD) and BSD officials to his headquarters at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, but the meeting was not encouraging. Brig. Gen John L. McCoy (director of the Titan Systems Program Office) reaffirmed BSD's stance that the pogo and combustion instability problems in the Titan were not a serious issue to the ICBM program and it would be too difficult and risky at this point to try to improve them for NASA's sake. Meanwhile, Martin–Marietta and Aerojet both argued that most of the major development problems with the booster had been solved and it would only take a little more work to man-rate it. They proposed adding more standpipes to the first stage and using baffled injectors in the second stage.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: A closed-door meeting of NASA and Air Force officials led to the former arguing that without any definitive answer to the pogo and combustion instability problems, the Titan could not safely fly human passengers. But by this point, the Air Force was taking a bigger role in the Gemini program due to proposed uses of the spacecraft for military applications (e.g. Blue Gemini). During the first week of April, a joint plan was drafted which would ensure that pogo was to be reduced to fit NASA's target and to make design improvements to both Titan stages. The program carried the conditions that the ICBM program retained first priority and was not to be delayed by Gemini, and that General McCoy would have final say on all matters.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: Meanwhile, the Titan II development program ran into difficulties during the first half of 1963. On 16 February, Vehicle N-7 was launched from a silo at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and malfunctioned almost immediately at liftoff. An umbilical cord failed to separate cleanly, ripping out wiring in the second stage which not only cut power to the guidance system, but also prevented the range safety charges from being armed. The missile lifted with a continuous uncontrolled roll, and at about T+15 seconds, when the pitch and roll program would normally begin, it began a sudden sharp downward pitch. Launch crews were in a panic as they had a missile that was not only out of control, but could not be destroyed and might end up crashing into a populated area. Fortunately, the Titan's errant flight came to an end after flipping almost completely upside-down which caused the second stage to separate from the stack. The ISDS (Inadvertent Separation Destruct System) then activated and blew up the first stage. Most of the debris from the missile fell offshore or on the beach, and the second stage impacted the water mostly intact, although the oxidizer tank had been ruptured by flying debris from first stage destruction. Navy crews launched a salvage effort to recover the reentry vehicle and the guidance system from the sea floor. The reentry vehicle was found and dredged up along with parts of the second stage, but the guidance system was not recovered.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: The mishap was traced to an unforeseen design flaw in the silo's construction – there was not enough room for the umbilicals to detach properly which resulted in wiring being ripped out of the Titan. It was solved by adding extra lanyards to the umbilicals so they would have sufficient "play" in them to separate without damaging the missile. The flight was nonetheless considered a "partial" success in that the Titan had cleared the silo successfully. The inadvertent rolling motion of the vehicle may have also prevented a worse disaster as it added stability and prevented it from colliding with the silo walls as it ascended.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: While N-18 flew successfully from the Cape on 21 March, N-21 suffered another second stage failure after having been delayed several weeks due to another episode of the first stage thrust chambers breaking off prior to launch. This was followed by a launch from VAFB on 27 April when Missile N-8 flew successfully. N-14 (9 May), flown from LC-16 at the Cape, suffered another early second stage shutdown due to a leaking oxidizer line. Missiles N-19 on 13 May (VAFB) and N-17 on 24 May (CCAS) were successful, but of 18 Titan II launches so far, only 10 had met all of their objectives. On 29 May, Missile N-20 was launched from LC-16 with a new round of pogo-suppressing devices on board. Unfortunately, a fire broke out in the thrust section soon after liftoff, leading to loss of control during ascent. The missile pitched down and the second stage separated from the stack at T+52 seconds, triggering the ISDS, which blew the first stage to pieces. The second stage was manually destroyed by the Range Safety officer shortly thereafter. No useful pogo data was obtained due to the early termination of the flight, and the accident was traced to a stress corrosion of the aluminum fuel valve, which resulted in a propellant leak that caught fire from contacting hot engine parts.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: The next flight was Missile N-22, a silo test from Vandenberg Air Force Base on 20 June, but once again the second stage lost thrust due to a gas generator restriction. At this point, BSD suspended further flights. Of the 20 Titan launches, seven would have required the abort of a crewed launch, and General McCoy had to make good 12 of the 13 remaining scheduled tests. Since the ICBM program came first, pogo suppression had to be shelved.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: On the other hand, only Missile N-11 suffered a malfunction due to pogo and the combustion instability issue had occurred in static firings, but not any actual flights. All Titan II failures save for N-11 were caused by gas generator restrictions, broken plumbing, or faulty welds. The trouble appeared to be with Aerojet, and a visit of MSC officials to their Sacramento, California, plant in July revealed a number of extremely careless handling and manufacturing processes. A systematic effort to improve the quality control of the LR-87 engines was launched, which included extensive redesigns of components to improve reliability as well as fixes to the gas generator restriction issue.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: The Titan II was in service from 1963 to 1987. There were originally 54 Titan II Strategic Air Command missiles.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: The 54 Titan II missiles were on 24-hour continuous alert with 18 missiles each surrounding three bases: Davis–Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson, Arizona, Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas, and McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita, Kansas.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: On 9 August 1965, a fire and resultant loss of oxygen when a high-pressure hydraulic line was cut with an oxyacetylene torch in a missile silo (Site 373–4) near Searcy, Arkansas, killed 53 people, mostly civilian repairmen doing The fire occurred while the 750-ton silo lid was closed, which contributed to a reduced oxygen level for the men who survived the initial fire. Two men escaped alive, both with injuries due to the fire and smoke, one by groping in complete darkness for the exit. The missile survived and was undamaged.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: On 23 June 1975, one of two engines failed to ignite on a Titan II launch from Silo 395C at Vandenberg AFB in California. The launch was part of the Anti Ballistic Missile program and was witnessed by an entourage of general officers and congressmen. The Titan suffered severe structural failure with both the hypergolic fuel tank and the oxidizer tank leaking and accumulating in the bottom of the silo. A large number of civilian contractors were evacuated from the Command and Control Bunker.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: On 24 August 1978, SSgt Robert Thomas was killed at a site outside Rock, Kansas when a missile in its silo leaked propellant. Another airman, A1C Erby Hepstall, later died from lung injuries sustained in


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: On 19 September 1980, a major explosion occurred after a socket from a large socket wrench rolled off a platform, fell, and punctured the missile's lower-stage fuel tank, causing a fuel leak. Because of the hypergolic propellants involved, the entire missile exploded a few hours later, killing an Air Force airman, SrA David Livingston, and destroying the silo (374-7, near Damascus, Arkansas). This was the same missile that had been in the silo during the deadly fire at site 373–4, refurbished and relocated after the incident. Due to the warhead's built-in safety features, it did not detonate and was recovered about away. The 1988 television movie "Disaster at Silo 7" is loosely based on the event. Author Eric Schlosser published a book centered on the accident, "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety", in September 2013. "Command and Control", a documentary film based on Schlosser's book, aired on PBS on 10 January 2017.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: The Titan II was originally expected to be in service for only 5–7 years, but ended up lasting far longer than anyone expected in part because of its large size and throw weight. Leadership within the USAF and SAC were reluctant to retire the Titan II because while it made up only a small fraction of the total number of missiles on standby, it represented significant portion of the total megatonnage that was deployed by Air Force ICBMs.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: It is a common misconception that the Titan IIs were decommissioned because of a weapons reduction treaty, but in fact, they were simply aging victims of a weapons modernization program. Because of the volatility of the liquid fuel and the problem with aging seals, the Titan II missiles had originally been scheduled to be retired beginning in 1971. By the mid-1970s, the original AC Delco inertial guidance system had become obsolete and spare parts could no longer be obtained for it, so the guidance packages in the stock of Titan missiles were replaced by the Universal Space Guidance System. After the two accidents in 1978 and 1980, respectively, deactivation of the Titan II ICBM system finally began in July 1982. The last Titan II missile, located at Silo 373-8 near Judsonia, Arkansas, was deactivated on 5 May 1987. With their warheads removed, the deactivated missiles were initially placed in storage at Davis–Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, and the former Norton Air Force Base, California, but were later broken up for salvage by 2009.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: A single Titan II complex belonging to the former strategic missile wing at Davis–Monthan Air Force Base escaped destruction after decommissioning and is open to the public as the Titan Missile Museum at Sahuarita, Arizona. The missile resting in the silo is a real Titan II, but was a training missile and never contained fuel, oxidizer, or a warhead.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: Each Titan II ICBM wing was equipped with eighteen missiles; nine per squadron with one each at dispersed launch silos in the general area of the assigned base. See squadron article for geographic locations and other information about the assigned launch sites.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: Note: In 1959, a fifth Titan II installation comprising the 13th and 14th squadrons at the former Griffiss Air Force Base, New York, was proposed, but never constructed.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: Thirty-three Titan-II Research Test (N-type) missiles were built and all but one were launched either at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, or Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, in 1962–64. The surviving N-10, AF Ser. No. 61-2738/60-6817 resides in the silo at the Titan Missile Museum (ICBM Site 571–7), operated by the Pima Air & Space Museum at Green Valley, south of Tucson, Arizona, on Interstate-19.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: Twelve Titan-II Gemini Launch Vehicles (GLVs) were produced. All were launched from the then-Cape Kennedy Air Force Station in 1964–66. The top half of GLV-5 62-12560 was recovered offshore following its launch and is on display at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, Alabama.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: One hundred and eight Titan-II ICBM (B-Types) were produced. Forty-nine were launched for testing at Vandenberg Air Force Base from 1964 to 1976. Two were lost in accidents within silos. One B-2, AF Ser. No. 61-2756, was given to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, in the 1970s.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: The 56 surviving missiles were pulled from silos and individual base stores and all transferred to the then-Norton Air Force Base, California, during the 1980s. They were stored under plastic coverings and had helium pumped into their engine components to prevent rust. Norton Air Force Base buildings 942 and 945 held the missiles. Building 945 held 30 missiles, while Building 942 held 11 plus a single stage 1. The buildings also held extra stage engines and the interstages. 14 full missiles and one extra second stage had been transferred from Norton Air Force Base to the manufacturer, Martin Marietta, at Martin's Denver, Colorado, facility for refurbishment by the end of the decade. 13 of the 14 were launched as 23Gs. One missile, B-108, AF Ser. No. 66-4319 (23G-10 the spare for the 23G program), went to the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon. Finally, B-34 Stage 2 was delivered from Norton Air Force Base to Martin Marietta on 28 April 1986, but was not modified to a G, nor was it listed as arriving or being destroyed at the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group at Davis–Monthan Air Force Base; it is therefore unaccounted for within the open source public domain.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: Forty-two B-series missiles remained, 41 full and one first stage at Norton Air Force Base, and the second stage at Martin. Of these, 38 and one second stage were stored outside at the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center (AMARC), now known as the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (309 AMARG), adjacent to Davis–Monthan Air Force Base, to await final destruction between 2004 and 2008. Four of the 42 were saved and sent to museums (below).


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: Official Count: 108 Titan-2 'B' Series Vehicles were delivered to USAF: 49 Test launches, 2 Silo losses, 13 Space launches, 6 in museums, 37.5 destroyed at AMARC, +.5 (one second stage missing B-34)=108.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: The Titan II space-launch vehicles were purpose-built as space launchers or are decommissioned ICBMs that have been refurbished and equipped with hardware required for use as space launch vehicles. All twelve Gemini capsules, including ten crewed, were launched by Titan II launchers.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: The Titan II space launch vehicle is a two-stage liquid fueled booster, designed to provide a small-to-medium weight class capability. It is able to lift approximately into a circular polar low-Earth orbit. The first stage consists of one ground ignited Aerojet LR-87 liquid propellant rocket engine (with two combustion chambers and nozzles but a single turbopump system), while the second stage consists of an Aerojet LR91 Liquid-propellant engine.


title: LGM-25C Titan II

text: By the mid-1980s, with the stock of refurbished Atlas E/F missiles finally starting to run out, the Air Force decided to reuse decommissioned Titan IIs for space launches. The Martin Marietta Astronautics Group was awarded a contract in January 1986 to refurbish, integrate, and launch fourteen Titan II ICBMs for government space launch requirements. These were designated Titan 23G. The Air Force successfully launched the first Titan 23G space launch vehicle from Vandenberg Air Force Base 5 September 1988. NASA's Clementine spacecraft was launched aboard a Titan 23G in January 1994. All Titan 23G missions were launched from Space Launch Complex 4 West (SLC-4W) on Vandenberg Air Force Base, under the operational command of the 6595th Aerospace Test Group and its follow-on organizations of the 4th Space Launch Squadron and 2nd Space Launch Squadron. The Titan 23G ended up being less of a cost-saving measure than anticipated as the expense of refurbishing the missiles for space launches turned out to be more than the cost of flying a brand-new Delta booster. Unlike refurbished Atlas missiles, which were completely torn down and rebuilt from the ground up, the Titan 23G had relatively few changes aside from replacing the warhead interface and adding range safety and telemetry packages. The engines were merely given a brief static firing to verify their functionality. Of the 13 launches, there was one failure, when a launch of a Landsat satellite in 1993 ended in a useless orbit due to a malfunction of the satellite kick motor. The last Titan II launch was on 18 October 2003 when a DMSP weather satellite was successfully launched. This flight had been scheduled for launch in early 2001, but persistent problems with the booster and satellite delayed it over two years. A total of 282 Titan IIs were launched between 1962 and 2003, of which 25 were space launches.


title: Heavy cruiser

text: The heavy cruiser was a type of cruiser, a naval warship designed for long range and high speed, armed generally with naval guns of roughly 203 mm (8 inches) in caliber, whose design parameters were dictated by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930.


title: Heavy cruiser

text: The heavy cruiser is part of a lineage of ship design from 1915 through the early 1950s, although the term "heavy cruiser" only came into formal use in 1930. The heavy cruiser's immediate precursors were the light cruiser designs of the 1900s and 1910s, rather than the armored cruisers of the years before 1905. When the armored cruiser was supplanted by the battlecruiser, an intermediate ship type between this and the light cruiser was found to be needed—one larger and more powerful than the light cruisers of a potential enemy but not as large and expensive as the battlecruiser so as to be built in sufficient numbers to protect merchant ships and serve in a number of combat theaters.


title: Heavy cruiser

text: With their intended targets being other cruisers and smaller vessels, the role of the heavy cruiser differed fundamentally from that of the armored cruiser. Also, the heavy cruiser was designed to take advantage of advances in naval technology and design. Typically powered by oil-fired steam turbines rather than the reciprocating steam engines of the armored cruiser, heavy cruisers were capable of far faster speeds and could cruise at high speed for much longer than could an armored cruiser. They used uniform main guns, mounted in center-line superfiring turrets rather than casemates. Casemate guns and a mixed battery were eliminated to make room for above deck torpedoes, and ever increasing and more effective anti-aircraft armaments. They also benefited from the superior fire control of the 1920s and continually upgraded through the 1950s. Late in the development cycle radar and electronic countermeasure would also appear and rapidly gain in importance.


title: Heavy cruiser

text: At the end of the 19th century, cruisers were classified as first, second or third class depending on their capabilities. First-class cruisers were typically armored cruisers, with belt side armor, while lighter, cheaper and faster second- and third-class cruisers tended to have only an armored deck and protective coal bunkers, rather than armored hulls; they were hence known as protected cruisers. Their essential role had not changed since the age of sail—to serve on long-range missions, patrol for enemy warships and raid and defend commerce. Armored cruisers had proved less versatile than needed to do this adequately. In a race to outsize and outgun one another, they had grown to around 15,000 tons and up to in main gun caliber—very close to the pre-dreadnought battleships of the day, although they were generally ascribed to be weaker than the battleship due to their lack of armor and not appreciably faster due to the limits of engine technology at the time. While Japanese armored cruisers had distinguished themselves at the Battle of Tsushima in 1905, the armored cruiser as it was then known had reached the end of its development.


title: Heavy cruiser

text: Tactics and technology were gearing towards naval encounters held over increasingly longer ranges, which demanded an armament of primarily large caliber guns. The demand for speed with which to outflank a potential enemy and fulfill its traditional role as scout for the fleet demanded a speed preferably 30 percent faster than battleships. Thirty percent was the ratio by which frigates had been faster than ships of the line in the days of sail. If a battleship sailed at 20 knots, this would mean that an armored cruiser would have to steam at least 26 or 27 knots.


title: Heavy cruiser

text: Armored cruisers could not fulfill these criteria without being built much larger and taking on a different form than they had in the past. The result was the battlecruiser. HMS "Invincible" and her two sister ships were designed specifically to fulfill these requirements. In a sense they were an extension of the armored cruiser as a fast, heavily armed scout, commerce protector and cruiser-destroyer, reflected in the term originally ascribed to them, "large armored cruiser". However, they were much larger, faster and better-armed than armored cruisers, able to outpace them, stay out of range of their weapons and destroy them with relative impunity. Because they carried the heavy guns normally ascribed to battleships, they could also theoretically hold their place in a battle line more readily than armored cruisers and serve as the "battleship-cruiser" for which William Hovgaard had argued after Tsushima. All these factors made battlecruisers attractive fighting units, although Britain, Germany and Japan would be the only powers to build them. They also meant that the armored cruiser as it had been known was now outmoded. No more were built after 1910 and by the end of World War I, the majority of them had been taken out of active service.


title: Heavy cruiser

text: Although Lord Fisher, the man behind the building of "Invincible", had hoped to replace practically all forms of cruisers with battlecruisers, they proved to be too costly to build in large numbers. At the same time, the third class cruiser (of about 3,000 tons) started to carry thin steel armor on the outside of its hull and became known as a light cruiser. This new type was then joined by 5,000-ton light cruisers, analogous to the older second-class cruisers. The wide gap between the massive battlecruiser of perhaps 20,000 tons and 305 mm (12-inch) guns and the small light cruiser of up to 5,000 tons and 100 mm (4-in) or 155 mm (6-inch) guns naturally left room for an intermediate type. The first such design was the British 'Atlantic cruiser' proposal of 1912, which proposed a long-range cruiser of about 8,000 tons displacement with 190 mm (7.5-inch) guns. This was a response to a rumor that Germany was building cruisers to attack merchant shipping in the Atlantic with 170mm guns. The German raiders proved to be fictional and the 'Atlantic cruisers' were never built. However, in 1915 the requirement for long-range trade-protection cruisers resurfaced and resulted in the . Essentially enlarged light cruisers, being referred to in contemporary reference works as an "improved Birmingham" type after the 6-inch gunned 5,000-ton second-class light cruisers then entering service, the "Hawkins"-class cruisers each carried seven 190 mm (7.5-inch) guns and had a displacement just under 10,000 tons.


title: Heavy cruiser

text: The difference between these ships and ones that would follow with the heavy cruiser were almost as pronounced as that between the armored cruiser and the battlecruiser. One reason for this difference was the intended mission of these ships. They were not intended to serve as a junior battleship, as the armored cruiser had been, and were not built or designed to serve in that capacity. With their main armament of 203 mm (8-inch) guns, smaller than the typical guns of later armored cruisers, their intended targets were other cruisers and smaller vessels. Further reasons for the difference were the advances in technology and naval design, both of which the heavy cruiser was able to take advantage. Heavy cruisers, like all contemporary ships, were typically powered by oil-fired steam turbine engines and were capable of far faster speeds than armored cruisers had ever been (propelled by coal-fired reciprocating steam engines of their era). Nonetheless, heavy cruisers often had a larger number of main guns (some armored cruisers had a mixed instead of uniform complement of main guns), discarded the mounting of main guns in casemates in favor of center-line superfiring turrets (saved tonnage and enabled the ship to fire all guns on one broadside), and benefited from the introduction of fire control in the 1920s and 1930s, meaning that the heavy cruiser was considerably more powerful.


title: Heavy cruiser

text: The Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 imposed a moratorium on new battleship construction, with the exception of the two s by Great Britain, and set very strict limits on the tonnage and firepower of future battleships and battlecruisers. It also set the definition of a capital ship as a warship of more than 10,000 tons standard displacement or with armament of a caliber greater than 8 inches (203 mm). There was the concern that a subsequent race in building larger, more powerful cruisers might subvert the usefulness of the prohibition on capital ship construction and encourage navies to squander their now-limited permissible tonnage for capital ships on fast vessels designed specifically to hunt down large cruisers. To avert these challenges, representatives of the United States, Great Britain, Japan, France and Italy set limits on the tonnage and firepower of cruisers to 10,000 tons in standard displacement and 8 inches for maximum main gun caliber. These limits were in the interests of the U.S. and Britain especially. Planners in the U.S. Navy had spent two years prior to the start of negotiations designing 10,000 ton, 8-inch cruisers and were convinced that smaller vessels would not be worthwhile. Britain had just built its "Hawkins"-class cruisers and wanted to ensure they would not fall prey to a much larger type of super-cruiser.


title: Heavy cruiser

text: Despite these intentions and set limitations, a number of new, powerful cruiser classes emerged from these nations, which sparked off something of a cruiser arms-race. The Japanese navy had a doctrine of building more powerful ships in every class than its likely opponents, which led to the development of several very impressive heavy cruiser classes. British and American building was more influenced by the desire to be able to match the Japanese ships while keeping enough cruisers for their other global responsibilities. With battleships heavily regulated by the Washington Treaty, and aircraft carriers not yet mature, the cruiser question became the focus of naval affairs. The British, with a strained economy and global commitments, favored unlimited cruiser tonnage but strict limits on the individual ships. The Americans favored the opposite: strictly limited numbers of powerful cruisers. Disagreements between the British and Americans wrecked the 1927 conference on naval affairs.


title: Heavy cruiser

text: Even during the 1920s, the 10,000-ton limit was not always strictly observed, although British, French and American designers generally worked to the limit with precision. The British built 13 of the with four twin 8-inch gun turrets but with very minimal armor. The ships had fine sea-keeping qualities and a long range, but were virtually unprotected, and were easily damaged in combat. The Japanese , however, grew during its construction as the naval general staff prevailed on the designers to increase the weapons load. As well as a breach of the Treaty, this was a poor decision from the design point of view and the ships had to be reconstructed in the 1930s to reduce weight. The German was classified as armored coast defense ships under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. They superficially resembled contemporary battleships due to their massive main gun turrets and unusually high conning tower/bridge. However, they were in effect a heavy cruiser being upgunned to 11-inch batteries at the cost of slower speed; their displacement was declared at 10,000 tons but was in practice considerably greater. The Italian Navy first built two s, which sacrificed protection for speed, and then four , a much more balanced and better-protected design, plus an improved replica of the "Trento"s (); all of them, however, surpassed the displacement limit.


title: Heavy cruiser

text: The s were the US Navy's first "treaty cruisers" designed in line with Washington Naval Treaty restrictions. Their main battery consisted of ten guns, in two twin turrets on the main deck, and two triple turrets two decks above, making it one of the two US Navy ship classes (besides the s) to have different-sized turrets for main armament (Subsequent US cruisers would mount nine 8" guns in three triple turrets 2 fore 1 aft). Their thin armor on the belt (varying from in thickness) and deck was no better than that on 6-inch-gunned cruisers and was inadequate to protect their vitals from enemy 8-inch shells. Also, their unusual main battery layout and heavy tripod fore-masts made these ships top-heavy and prone to excessive rolling. This combined with low freeboard forward made them inferior seaboats compared to later designs. Rework in the shipyards modified the hull and superstructure in the 1930s to eliminate the rolling. The two vessels in this class, "Pensacola" and "Salt Lake City", were originally classified as light cruisers due to their minimal armor until re-designated in July 1931 as heavy cruisers in accord with international practice of designating all cruisers with guns larger than 6".


title: Heavy cruiser

text: In 1930 the Washington Naval Treaty was extended by the London Naval Treaty, which finally settled the arguments on cruisers which had raged in the 1920s. The treaty defined limits on both heavy cruisers – those with guns larger than 155 mm (6.1 inches) – and light cruisers – those with smaller-caliber guns. The limit of 10,000 tons displacement still applied to both. This was the point at which the split between "heavy" and "light" cruisers finally became official and widespread.


title: Heavy cruiser

text: The Treaty satisfied Britain and America. However, it deeply offended Japan, as this severely limited the numbers of heavy cruisers that the Imperial Japanese Navy could have, as they considered heavy cruisers as key warships in a line of battle with their 8-inch guns and heavy torpedo armament. The IJN placed less priority on purpose-built light cruisers, most of their existing types dating back to the 1920s (the five World War I-era light cruisers that the IJN commissioned were less well-armed than light cruisers of the US and Royal Navies), which were largely relegated to leading destroyer squadrons. The solution the Japanese adopted was to build the , which was declared as a 10,000 ton light cruiser with fifteen 6.1-inch guns. In practice, they displaced over 12,000 tons, had what was effectively a heavy cruiser hull design, and it was always intended to replace her turrets to give a final armament of ten 203 mm guns, making something of a nonsense of the light and heavy cruiser classifications. The waters were muddied further when the US Navy ceased laying down keels for new heavy cruisers in 1934 and used their new hull design for the of light cruiser. This type followed in the steps of Mogami by taking what was effectively a heavy cruiser hull and fitting light cruiser guns to it, and while the US Navy never fitted 8-inch guns to their "light" cruisers, the hull design was used as the basis for future heavy cruiser designs.


title: Heavy cruiser

text: In the mid-1930s, Britain, France and Italy ceased building heavy cruisers. It was felt that in a likely cruiser engagement, a larger number of 155 mm (6-inch) guns would be preferable to a smaller number of 203 mm (8-inch). While the 8-inch gun would inflict more damage when it hit, more 6-inch guns could be carried, likely resulting in more shells on target, and a greater chance of scoring the first hit. This led to the construction of cruisers up to the 10,000-tons limit, with twelve to fifteen 155 mm guns.


title: Heavy cruiser

text: The 1936 London Naval Treaty, principally negotiated between Britain and the United States but never ratified, abolished the heavy cruiser entirely by restricting new construction to 8,000 tons and 155 mm (6.1-inch) guns. This suited Britain's needs very well, but was largely a dead letter. The U.S. continued to build heavy cruisers, culminating in the and .


title: Heavy cruiser

text: Heavy cruisers were still being built, and they could be balanced designs when nations decided to skirt the restrictions imposed by the London Naval Treaty.


title: Heavy cruiser

text: Japans was only allowed 12 heavy cruisers by treaty, but had intentionally built the "Mogami"s with the option to have their main battery changed. The two "Tone"s were also originally planned as light cruisers, but launched after the treaty system broke down with 8-inch guns. At the start of hostilities there was thus a parity between the United States Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy with respect to heavy cruisers.


title: Heavy cruiser

text: The Germans built their heavy cruisers of 14,000 tons, although the Anglo-German Naval Agreement was supposed to limit their displacement to the 10,000 tons specified by the Washington Naval Treaty.


title: Heavy cruiser

text: The US built the of heavy cruisers during the war. While earlier heavy cruisers were noted for their powerful torpedo armament (especially Japanese heavy cruisers), later ships built by the USN concentrated mainly on anti-aircraft armament, as their main role was escorting aircraft carriers and troop transports instead of engaging in surface actions. Most Japanese heavy cruisers were sunk by aircraft or submarines, rather than in surface engagements.


title: Heavy cruiser

text: The US built the last heavy cruisers, which were finished shortly after the war. The consisted of seventeen ships, including three of the slightly different . The were the last heavy cruisers built: though based on the "Baltimore"s, they were considerably heavier and longer due to their new rapid-firing 203 mm (8-inch) guns. Additionally, two aircraft carriers were built on a "Baltimore"-derived hull, the .


title: Heavy cruiser

text: The largest heavy cruisers were the large cruisers, which were designed as "cruiser killers". They resembled contemporary battlecruisers or battleships in general appearance, as well as having main armament and displacement equal or greater than that of capital ships of the First World War. However, they were actually upscaled heavy cruisers, as their machinery layout and the possession of a single rudder was based on cruisers rather than that of capital ships. The "Alaska"-class cruisers lacked the sophisticated underwater protection system of true capital ships, making them vulnerable to shells and torpedoes that hit under the waterline. They also had proportionately less weight in armor at 28.4% of displacement, in contrast to the British battlecruiser of 30%, the German and the U.S. Navy's s of 40%. Effectively, the "Alaska"s were ill-protected to stand up against the guns of true battleships and battlecruisers, and as carrier escorts they were much more expensive than the "Baltimore"s while having only slightly better anti-aircraft capabilities. Given low priority by the USN, only two members of the class were completed and they saw little service as World War II ended not long after their commissioning.


title: Heavy cruiser

text: Heavy cruisers fell out of use after the Second World War, with the Royal Navy decommissioning its last three (, , and ) by the early 1950s. Some existing US heavy cruisers lasted well through the 1970s, with the last all-gun ship decommissioning in 1975. , and , which had been converted to guided missile cruisers (US hull symbol CG), were laid up between 1975 and 1980.


title: Josip Iličić

text: Josip Iličić (; born 29 January 1988) is a Slovenian professional footballer who plays as a forward for Slovenian PrvaLiga club Maribor.


title: Josip Iličić

text: Iličić began his professional career with Slovenian club Bonifika, later also playing for Interblock and Maribor in his home country, before moving to Italy in 2010 to join Palermo. In 2013, he signed for Fiorentina, and subsequently for Atalanta in 2017. After spending twelve years in Italy, Iličić returned to Maribor in 2022.


title: Josip Iličić

text: He enjoyed his best time as a professional footballer with Atalanta, scoring eleven or more league goals in each of his first three years at the club and was awarded a spot in the 2018–19 Serie A Team of the Year. He is the first player to ever score four away goals in a Champions League knockout match, and is also the oldest player to score four goals in a Champions League knockout match.


title: Josip Iličić

text: Iličić made his senior debut for the Slovenia national team in August 2010 in a friendly match against Australia. Three years after his debut, he scored his first international goal against Cyprus in September 2013. In total, he made 79 appearances for the team in his eleven-year career.


title: Josip Iličić

text: Born in Prijedor, SR Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iličić started his career playing in the youth teams of Triglav Kranj and later Britof from Kranj. At the age of 19, he moved to SC Bonifika, where he played for a season in the Slovenian Second League. It was there when his talent was spotted by Interblock, where he stayed for two seasons playing in the Slovenian top division. At the end of the 2009–10 season, Interblock was relegated into 2. SNL after two qualifications matches against Triglav. Despite being one of the best players of his club and one of the top prospects of Slovenian football Iličić finished the season as a reserve.


title: Josip Iličić

text: Aged 21, Iličić contemplated an idea of finishing his playing career altogether. He wanted to return to futsal, his passion, and to find a job, however, a few weeks later he received a phone call from Zlatko Zahovič, the director of football at Maribor, who proposed he should sign for the club. In a life changing decision, Iličić took the offer immediately and moved to Slovenia's second largest city, where he made a big impact from the start as he scored twice in the UEFA Europa League qualifying match against Scottish Premier League club Hibernian in July 2010. He then scored again, in the return leg of the UEFA Europa League playoff round against Sicilian Palermo, which ended in a 3–2 win for the Slovenian side. On the very next day, it was confirmed that Palermo had acquired Iličić and teammate Armin Bačinović from Maribor for a permanent move. The transfer fee paid by Palermo was undisclosed, but it was reported to be around €2.3 million.


title: Josip Iličić

text: Iličić debuted for Palermo in the Serie A on 12 September 2010 against Brescia, replacing Giulio Migliaccio in the second half. In the next round, he was already a starter and scored his first goal for Palermo at home against reigning champions Internazionale. Only four days later, on 23 September 2010, he scored his second goal of the season, this time against another Italian giant Juventus. His good performances against top Italian teams continued when he scored a goal against Fiorentina on 3 October 2010, and against Roma on 28 November 2010.


title: Josip Iličić

text: On 20 June 2011, Iličić signed a new five-year contract. He changed his shirt number to 27 on 16 August 2011. However, in the 2011–12 season Iličić struggled to make an impact mostly due to Javier Pastore – Iličić's attacking midfield partner – being sold in a record bid to Paris Saint-Germain, and Iličić provided only two goals as a result. Despite that, he was confirmed for the 2012–13 season as well, being paired with new signing Franco Brienza in a 3–4–2–1 formation by new head coach Gian Piero Gasperini. Iličić's top moment of the season came on 24 November 2012, when he scored a winning brace in a 3–1 home win for a struggling Palermo side against Catania in the Sicilian derby.


title: Josip Iličić

text: On 23 July 2013, Palermo officially confirmed the sale of Iličić to Serie A rivals Fiorentina on their website. Later, the deal was officially announced by Fiorentina on their website. The transfer fee was undisclosed, reported to be in the sum of €9 million including add-ons. He scored six goals in his first season at Fiorentina. The 2014–15 season was more successful for him, finishing as the club's top scorer with ten goals in all competitions, along with Mario Gómez.


title: Josip Iličić

text: On 5 July 2017, Atalanta signed Iličić from Fiorentina for a reported fee of €5.5 million after Fiorentina declined to offer him a contract extension. Iličić made an immediate impact in his first year at Atalanta, scoring 11 times in a seventh-place finish.


title: Josip Iličić

text: The following year, he scored twelve times in a historic season as Atalanta finished third in the Serie A, earning them a spot in the 2019–20 UEFA Champions League group stage for the first time. He was also awarded a spot in the 2018–19 Serie A Team of the Year along with teammate Duván Zapata.


title: Josip Iličić

text: On 25 January 2020, Iličić scored a hat-trick, which included a free kick goal from the halfway line, in a 7–0 victory over Torino.


title: Josip Iličić

text: On 10 March 2020, Iličić scored all four Atalanta's goals in the 2019–20 UEFA Champions league round of 16 match against Spanish side Valencia, to secure a 4–3 win and help Atalanta progress to the quarter-finals. He also became the first player in the history of the competition to score four goals in an away tie of a knockout stage match, and the oldest player at the time to score four goals in a single match in the competition at the age of 32 years and 41 days, surpassing Zlatan Ibrahimović. Iličić also received UEFA's Player of the Week award after the Champions League round of 16 matches. Later in 2020, Iličić was nominated for the UEFA 50 Men's Team of the Year.


title: Josip Iličić

text: After spending five years with the club, his contract with Atalanta was terminated by mutual consent on 31 August 2022. Overall, Iličić made 173 appearances for Atalanta and scored 60 goals.


title: Josip Iličić

text: After twelve years of playing in Serie A, Iličić returned to Slovenia and joined his former club Maribor on 5 October 2022, signing a contract until June 2025. He made his second debut for Maribor a month later, on 6 November, in a 5–1 home win over Mura, where he also scored Maribor's fifth goal from the penalty spot.


title: Josip Iličić

text: Iličić made his international debut with the Slovenian under-20 team in October 2008 in a match against Croatia. Overall, he made four appearances for the team, all of them in the Mirop Cup. He also played for the under-21 team between 2009 and 2010, including two appearances in the qualifiers for the 2011 UEFA European Under-21 Championship.


title: Josip Iličić

text: Iličić missed out on the 2010 FIFA World Cup but made his debut for the senior team in a friendly match against Australia on 11 August 2010. He scored his first international goal on 10 September 2013 against Cyprus.


title: Josip Iličić

text: A predominantly left-footed player, Iličić is capable of playing as a second striker, as a wide midfielder or winger on either flank, or even in a central role as an attacking midfielder in a 4–2–3–1 or 4–3–1–2 system. His former Palermo coach, Bortolo Mutti, believed that the 4–3–3 system was the perfect formation for his characteristics, as it allowed him to be deployed on the right flank, a position from which he could cut inside and strike on goal with his stronger left foot. He has also been deployed as a central midfielder on occasion, although this is not his preferred position. During his time at Atalanta, he has often been used in a free advanced role in a fluid 3–4–3 formation under manager Gian Piero Gasperini.


title: Josip Iličić

text: A powerful and accurate striker of the ball with either foot, in particular from distance, he is highly regarded for his touch on the ball, technique, dribbling skills, and creativity, as well as his physical strength, leadership, strong personality, and instinctive play on the pitch; he is also known for his use of feints, in particular the back-heel move, and is an accurate set piece and penalty taker. While he is known for his composure, ability to find space, and eye for goal, he is also an excellent playmaker and assist provider, courtesy of his vision, crossing, and precise passing ability, in particular with the outside of his boot, which enables him to contribute to his team's offensive plays effectively by creating goalscoring chances for himself or his teammates. Moreover, he is a hard-working player, who possesses quick feet, poise, and elegance in possession, despite his tall stature, athletic build, and lack of significant pace or acceleration. Despite his talent and ability, he has been accused by certain pundits of being inconsistent at times, and has also drawn criticism over his difficult character, defensive positioning, and tactical awareness, in particular in his youth, although he was able to improve on the mental aspect of his game as he matured and his career progressed, which saw him reach his prime and maintain a consistent level of performance into his early 30s. His playing style and speed of thought has earned him the nickname "Il Professore" ("The Professor") in the Italian media.


title: Josip Iličić

text: Josip Iličić was born in Prijedor, present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina and moved to Kranj, present-day Slovenia when he was only one year old, together with his mother Ana and brother Igor, after his father was killed. Iličić was once asked in an interview if he would be interested in playing for Croatia national team, due to his Croatian ancestry, but he replied that he would have never accepted the offer due to the fact he had lived in Slovenia his whole life. Later, he made a similar comment regarding Bosnia and Herzegovina, the country where he was born.


title: Josip Iličić

text: In 2020 he suffered from depression due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In early 2022, Iličić suffered again from mental health problems and was absent from the Atalanta squad.


title: Lossless compression

text: Lossless compression is a class of data compression that allows the original data to be perfectly reconstructed from the compressed data with no loss of information. Lossless compression is possible because most real-world data exhibits statistical redundancy. By contrast, lossy compression permits reconstruction only of an approximation of the original data, though usually with greatly improved compression rates (and therefore reduced media sizes).


title: Lossless compression

text: By operation of the pigeonhole principle, no lossless compression algorithm can efficiently compress all possible data. For this reason, many different algorithms exist that are designed either with a specific type of input data in mind or with specific assumptions about what kinds of redundancy the uncompressed data are likely to contain. Therefore, compression ratios tend to be stronger on human- and machine-readable documents and code in comparison to entropic binary data (random bytes).


title: Lossless compression

text: Lossless data compression is used in many applications. For example, it is used in the ZIP file format and in the GNU tool gzip. It is also often used as a component within lossy data compression technologies (e.g. lossless mid/side joint stereo preprocessing by MP3 encoders and other lossy audio encoders).


title: Lossless compression

text: Lossless compression is used in cases where it is important that the original and the decompressed data be identical, or where deviations from the original data would be unfavourable. Typical examples are executable programs, text documents, and source code. Some image file formats, like PNG or GIF, use only lossless compression, while others like TIFF and MNG may use either lossless or lossy methods. Lossless audio formats are most often used for archiving or production purposes, while smaller lossy audio files are typically used on portable players and in other cases where storage space is limited or exact replication of the audio is unnecessary.


title: Lossless compression

text: Most lossless compression programs do two things in sequence: the first step generates a "statistical model" for the input data, and the second step uses this model to map input data to bit sequences in such a way that "probable" (i.e. frequently encountered) data will produce shorter output than "improbable" data.


title: Lossless compression

text: The primary encoding algorithms used to produce bit sequences are Huffman coding (also used by the deflate algorithm) and arithmetic coding. Arithmetic coding achieves compression rates close to the best possible for a particular statistical model, which is given by the information entropy, whereas Huffman compression is simpler and faster but produces poor results for models that deal with symbol probabilities close to 1.


title: Lossless compression

text: There are two primary ways of constructing statistical models: in a "static" model, the data is analyzed and a model is constructed, then this model is stored with the compressed data. This approach is simple and modular, but has the disadvantage that the model itself can be expensive to store, and also that it forces using a single model for all data being compressed, and so performs poorly on files that contain heterogeneous data. "Adaptive" models dynamically update the model as the data is compressed. Both the encoder and decoder begin with a trivial model, yielding poor compression of initial data, but as they learn more about the data, performance improves. Most popular types of compression used in practice now use adaptive coders.


title: Lossless compression

text: Lossless compression methods may be categorized according to the type of data they are designed to compress. While, in principle, any general-purpose lossless compression algorithm ("general-purpose" meaning that they can accept any bitstring) can be used on any type of data, many are unable to achieve significant compression on data that are not of the form for which they were designed to compress. Many of the lossless compression techniques used for text also work reasonably well for indexed images.


title: Lossless compression

text: These techniques take advantage of the specific characteristics of images such as the common phenomenon of contiguous 2-D areas of similar tones.


title: Lossless compression

text: Every pixel but the first is replaced by the difference to its left neighbor. This leads to small values having a much higher probability than large values.


title: Lossless compression

text: This is often also applied to sound files, and can compress files that contain mostly low frequencies and low volumes.


title: Lossless compression

text: For images, this step can be repeated by taking the difference to the top pixel, and then in videos, the difference to the pixel in the next frame can be taken.


title: Lossless compression

text: A hierarchical version of this technique takes neighboring pairs of data points, stores their difference and sum, and on a higher level with lower resolution continues with the sums. This is called discrete wavelet transform. JPEG2000 additionally uses data points from other pairs and multiplication factors to mix them into the difference. These factors must be integers, so that the result is an integer under all circumstances. So the values are increased, increasing file size, but hopefully the distribution of values is more peaked.


title: Lossless compression

text: The adaptive encoding uses the probabilities from the previous sample in sound encoding, from the left and upper pixel in image encoding, and additionally from the previous frame in video encoding. In the wavelet transformation, the probabilities are also passed through the hierarchy.


title: Lossless compression

text: Many of these methods are implemented in open-source and proprietary tools, particularly LZW and its variants. Some algorithms are patented in the United States and other countries and their legal usage requires licensing by the patent holder. Because of patents on certain kinds of LZW compression, and in particular licensing practices by patent holder Unisys that many developers considered abusive, some open source proponents encouraged people to avoid using the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) for compressing still image files in favor of Portable Network Graphics (PNG), which combines the LZ77-based deflate algorithm with a selection of domain-specific prediction filters. However, the patents on LZW expired on June 20, 2003.


title: Lossless compression

text: Many of the lossless compression techniques used for text also work reasonably well for indexed images, but there are other techniques that do not work for typical text that are useful for some images (particularly simple bitmaps), and other techniques that take advantage of the specific characteristics of images (such as the common phenomenon of contiguous 2-D areas of similar tones, and the fact that color images usually have a preponderance of a limited range of colors out of those representable in the color space).


title: Lossless compression

text: As mentioned previously, lossless sound compression is a somewhat specialized area. Lossless sound compression algorithms can take advantage of the repeating patterns shown by the wave-like nature of the data – essentially using autoregressive models to predict the "next" value and encoding the (hopefully small) difference between the expected value and the actual data. If the difference between the predicted and the actual data (called the "error") tends to be small, then certain difference values (like 0, +1, −1 etc. on sample values) become very frequent, which can be exploited by encoding them in few output bits.


title: Lossless compression

text: It is sometimes beneficial to compress only the differences between two versions of a file (or, in video compression, of successive images within a sequence). This is called delta encoding (from the Greek letter Δ, which in mathematics, denotes a difference), but the term is typically only used if both versions are meaningful outside compression and decompression. For example, while the process of compressing the error in the above-mentioned lossless audio compression scheme could be described as delta encoding from the approximated sound wave to the original sound wave, the approximated version of the sound wave is not meaningful in any other context.


title: Lossless compression

text: No lossless compression algorithm can efficiently compress all possible data (see the section Limitations below for details). For this reason, many different algorithms exist that are designed either with a specific type of input data in mind or with specific assumptions about what kinds of redundancy the uncompressed data are likely to contain.


title: Lossless compression

text: Cryptosystems often compress data (the "plaintext") "before" encryption for added security. When properly implemented, compression greatly increases the unicity distance by removing patterns that might facilitate cryptanalysis. However, many ordinary lossless compression algorithms produce headers, wrappers, tables, or other predictable output that might instead make cryptanalysis easier. Thus, cryptosystems must utilize compression algorithms whose output does not contain these predictable patterns.


title: Lossless compression

text: Genetics compression algorithms (not to be confused with genetic algorithms) are the latest generation of lossless algorithms that compress data (typically sequences of nucleotides) using both conventional compression algorithms and specific algorithms adapted to genetic data. In 2012, a team of scientists from Johns Hopkins University published the first genetic compression algorithm that does not rely on external genetic databases for compression. HAPZIPPER was tailored for HapMap data and achieves over 20-fold compression (95% reduction in file size), providing 2- to 4-fold better compression much faster than leading general-purpose compression utilities.


title: Lossless compression

text: Genomic sequence compression algorithms, also known as DNA sequence compressors, explore the fact that DNA sequences have characteristic properties, such as inverted repeats. The most successful compressors are XM and GeCo. For eukaryotes XM is slightly better in compression ratio, though for sequences larger than 100 MB its computational requirements are impractical.


title: Lossless compression

text: Self-extracting executables contain a compressed application and a decompressor. When executed, the decompressor transparently decompresses and runs the original application. This is especially often used in demo coding, where competitions are held for demos with strict size limits, as small as 1k.


title: Lossless compression

text: This type of compression is not strictly limited to binary executables, but can also be applied to scripts, such as JavaScript.


title: Lossless compression

text: Lossless compression algorithms and their implementations are routinely tested in head-to-head benchmarks. There are a number of better-known compression benchmarks. Some benchmarks cover only the data compression ratio, so winners in these benchmarks may be unsuitable for everyday use due to the slow speed of the top performers. Another drawback of some benchmarks is that their data files are known, so some program writers may optimize their programs for best performance on a particular data set. The winners on these benchmarks often come from the class of context-mixing compression software.


title: Lossless compression

text: Matt Mahoney, in his February 2010 edition of the free booklet "Data Compression Explained", additionally lists the following:


title: Lossless compression

text: The Compression Ratings website published a chart summary of the "frontier" in compression ratio and time.


title: Lossless compression

text: The Compression Analysis Tool is a Windows application that enables end users to benchmark the performance characteristics of streaming implementations of LZF4, Deflate, ZLIB, GZIP, BZIP2 and LZMA using their own data. It produces measurements and charts with which users can compare the compression speed, decompression speed and compression ratio of the different compression methods and to examine how the compression level, buffer size and flushing operations affect the results.


title: Lossless compression

text: Lossless data compression algorithms (that do not attach compression id labels to their output data sets) cannot guarantee compression for all input data sets. In other words, for any lossless data compression algorithm, there will be an input data set that does not get smaller when processed by the algorithm, and for any lossless data compression algorithm that makes at least one file smaller, there will be at least one file that it makes larger. This is easily proven with elementary mathematics using a counting argument called the pigeonhole principle, as follows:


title: Lossless compression

text: Most practical compression algorithms provide an "escape" facility that can turn off the normal coding for files that would become longer by being encoded. In theory, only a single additional bit is required to tell the decoder that the normal coding has been turned off for the entire input; however, most encoding algorithms use at least one full byte (and typically more than one) for this purpose. For example, deflate compressed files never need to grow by more than 5 bytes per 65,535 bytes of input.


title: Lossless compression

text: In fact, if we consider files of length N, if all files were equally probable, then for any lossless compression that reduces the size of some file, the expected length of a compressed file (averaged over all possible files of length N) must necessarily be "greater" than N. So if we know nothing about the properties of the data we are compressing, we might as well not compress it at all. A lossless compression algorithm is useful only when we are more likely to compress certain types of files than others; then the algorithm could be designed to compress those types of data better.


title: Lossless compression

text: Thus, the main lesson from the argument is not that one risks big losses, but merely that one cannot always win. To choose an algorithm always means implicitly to select a "subset" of all files that will become usefully shorter. This is the theoretical reason why we need to have different compression algorithms for different kinds of files: there cannot be any algorithm that is good for all kinds of data.


title: Lossless compression

text: The "trick" that allows lossless compression algorithms, used on the type of data they were designed for, to consistently compress such files to a shorter form is that the files the algorithms are designed to act on all have some form of easily modeled redundancy that the algorithm is designed to remove, and thus belong to the subset of files that that algorithm can make shorter, whereas other files would not get compressed or even get bigger. Algorithms are generally quite specifically tuned to a particular type of file: for example, lossless audio compression programs do not work well on text files, and vice versa.


title: Lossless compression

text: In particular, files of random data cannot be consistently compressed by any conceivable lossless data compression algorithm; indeed, this result is used to "define" the concept of randomness in Kolmogorov complexity.


title: Lossless compression

text: It is provably impossible to create an algorithm that can losslessly compress any data. While there have been many claims through the years of companies achieving "perfect compression" where an arbitrary number "N" of random bits can always be compressed to "N" − 1 bits, these kinds of claims can be safely discarded without even looking at any further details regarding the purported compression scheme. Such an algorithm contradicts fundamental laws of mathematics because, if it existed, it could be applied repeatedly to losslessly reduce any file to length 1.


title: Lossless compression

text: On the other hand, it has also been proven that there is no algorithm to determine whether a file is incompressible in the sense of Kolmogorov complexity. Hence it is possible that any particular file, even if it appears random, may be significantly compressed, even including the size of the decompressor. An example is the digits of the mathematical constant "pi", which appear random but can be generated by a very small program. However, even though it cannot be determined whether a particular file is incompressible, a simple theorem about incompressible strings shows that over 99% of files of any given length cannot be compressed by more than one byte (including the size of the decompressor).


title: Lossless compression

text: Abstractly, a compression algorithm can be viewed as a function on sequences (normally of octets). Compression is successful if the resulting sequence is shorter than the original sequence (and the instructions for the decompression map). For a compression algorithm to be lossless, the compression map must form an injection from "plain" to "compressed" bit sequences. The pigeonhole principle prohibits a bijection between the collection of sequences of length "N" and any subset of the collection of sequences of length "N"−1. Therefore, it is not possible to produce a lossless algorithm that reduces the size of every possible input sequence.


title: Lossless compression

text: Real compression algorithm designers accept that streams of high information entropy cannot be compressed, and accordingly, include facilities for detecting and handling this condition. An obvious way of detection is applying a raw compression algorithm and testing if its output is smaller than its input. Sometimes, detection is made by heuristics; for example, a compression application may consider files whose names end in ".zip", ".arj" or ".lha" uncompressible without any more sophisticated detection. A common way of handling this situation is quoting input, or uncompressible parts of the input in the output, minimizing the compression overhead. For example, the zip data format specifies the 'compression method' of 'Stored' for input files that have been copied into the archive verbatim.


title: Lossless compression

text: Mark Nelson, in response to claims of "magic" compression algorithms appearing in comp.compression, has constructed a 415,241 byte binary file of highly entropic content, and issued a public challenge of $100 to anyone to write a program that, together with its input, would be smaller than his provided binary data yet be able to reconstitute it without error.


title: Cariba Heine

text: Cariba Heine (born 1 October 1988) is a South African-born Australian actress and dancer. She is known for her roles as Rikki Chadwick in the Network Ten show "", Bridget Sanchez in the third series of "Blue Water High", and Caroline Byrne in "".


title: Cariba Heine

text: Heine was born in Johannesburg to South African parents Michelle, a former showgirl, and Kevin Heine. She moved to Australia at the age of three with her parents and older brother Kyle (born 1985).


title: Cariba Heine

text: Her early days included training in jazz dance, tap dance, classical ballet, acrobatics and rhythmic gymnastics, and studying acting and singing at National Capital Acting School. She danced at her mother's dance school in Canberra, where she later attended Telopea Park School and St Clare's College. She was the youngest dancer to perform at the Stargazers Convention in Sydney, Australia. She was homeschooled to focus on her dance career, and performed in many stage productions, including a tour in the United States, where she featured in the music video for Will Young's song "Leave Right Now". After a serious hip injury, she was suggested to turn temporarily to acting by her manager.


title: Cariba Heine

text: Heine began her acting career in 2006 by being cast on the television series, "", where she played Rikki Chadwick, one of the lead roles. Heine next portrayed Caroline Byrne in the television film "" which was broadcast on Network Ten in Australia on 4 November 2009.


title: Cariba Heine

text: In 2011, she joined the cast of the indie film "Lord of the Crows", though the film ultimately failed to get crowdfunded. In 2012, she portrayed Heather in "Bait 3D", and Delvene Delaney in Channel 9's biographical TV miniseries "Howzat! Kerry Packer's War". In 2016, Heine reprised her role as Rikki Chadwick in the final two episodes of the third series of "", a spin-off of "HO: Just Add Water". The same year Heine had a starring role in the short film "How'd I Get in This Field" which premiered at the Massachusetts Independent Film Festival.


title: Cariba Heine

text: Heine joined the cast of "Home and Away" in 2018 as Ebony Harding. In 2020, she appeared in the thriller-drama series "The Secrets She Keeps" with Laura Carmichael and Jessica De Gouw.


title: Amadeus Cho

text: Amadeus Cho, also known as Brawn, is a superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by American writer Greg Pak and Canadian artist Takeshi Miyazawa, the character first appeared in "Amazing Fantasy" vol. 2 #15 (January 2005). Cho usually appears in books featuring the Avengers or individual members of that group, such as the Hulk or Hercules.


title: Amadeus Cho

text: A 19-year-old Korean American genius and one of the smartest people on Earth, Cho succeeded Bruce Banner as the Hulk in "The Totally Awesome Hulk" #1 (2015). In contrast with Banner, who found his Hulk powers to be a burden, Cho is a confident character who revels in his newfound abilities.


title: Amadeus Cho

text: Amadeus Cho was created by Greg Pak and Takeshi Miyazawa, and first appeared in 2005 in "Amazing Fantasy" (volume 2) #15. Pak brought Cho back as a major character in the "World War Hulk" storyline, and then as one of the primary characters in "The Incredible Hercules". He subsequently starred in his own miniseries, "Heroic Age: Prince of Power".


title: Amadeus Cho

text: In December 2015, as part of the "All-New, All-Different Marvel" event, Cho began headlining the new series "The Totally Awesome Hulk", written by Pak and drawn by Frank Cho.


title: Amadeus Cho

text: Amadeus Cho is a Korean American named after his parents' love for Mozart's music and Methodist beliefs. His story begins when he wins the Excello Soap Company's "Brain Soap" competition, making him the seventh-smartest person in the world. Pythagoras Dupree, the game's creator and the world's sixth smartest man, tries to kill Cho to preserve his ranking. In a botched attempt, Cho's parents are killed, but he survives and goes on the run with a Vespa scooter and a coyote pup. When the Hulk later saves him from some of Dupree's men, Cho considers the Hulk a friend and a hero worthy of respect.


title: Amadeus Cho

text: Cho is next seen during the events of the crossover event, World War Hulk, where he first comes across a de-powered Jen Walters. He then gathers Hulk's former colleagues, Hercules and Archangel, both of whom considered themselves in debt to the Hulk for mistakenly attacking him on a previous occasion. With the assistance of Namora they attempt and fail to stop the Hulk.


title: Amadeus Cho

text: The "Incredible Hulk" series is then retitled "Incredible Hercules" from #112 on, and Cho becomes Hercules' sidekick. While on the run with Hercules, Cho participates in a number of adventures, including helping Hercules and other Earthly gods defeat the pantheon of Skrull gods during the Secret Invasion storyline. It is revealed that Cho's greatest fear is finding out that all the bad events in his life are his fault.


title: Amadeus Cho

text: Following this storyline the pair battle Amazons. Amadeus is attracted to the Amazon warrior Delphyne Gorgon, but upon her becoming queen she is obliged to end any flirtation, to his sadness.


title: Amadeus Cho

text: Together with Athena, Amadeus and Hercules next confront the new head of the Olympians, Hera, and travel to the Underworld to rescue Zeus from Hades. There it is revealed that Cho's sister is still alive and missing. Upon learning this, he tearfully leaves Hercules, determined to find out what happened to his sister.


title: Amadeus Cho

text: Venturing to the town of Excello, Utah, he encounters former FBI Agent Sexton, who had contacted him shortly after the death of his parents, and battles Dupree. Cho realizes the potential of his brain to serve as a 'hypercomputer', and figures out that Sexton is in fact Athena in disguise.


title: Amadeus Cho

text: Amadeus finally confronts Dupree in person, and learns that Dupree was not aware of Amadeus' sister being missing. Amadeus also learns that his destiny is to be the new hero of the modern era of reason and to stop the "primordial darkness." Dupree then challenges Amadeus to a specialized version of Russian roulette, which Amadeus refuses to do, leaving Dupree to simply shoot himself. After grieving about the situation, he then discovers the truth about Hera's mysterious "Continuum" project.


title: Amadeus Cho

text: Parallel to those stories, in the aftermath of the "Secret Invasion" storyline, the character is used by writer Dan Slott in his run on the "Mighty Avengers" series.


title: Amadeus Cho

text: Athena then reveals to Cho that he is her choice to be the next Prince of Power, the "hero of the mind" as opposed to Hercules' "hero of strength," thereby suggesting that Hercules will soon meet his death. Cho vows to prevent this, but ultimately appears to be unsuccessful. After a fight to restore Athena to life after Delphyne uses a weapon to turn her to stone, Athena destroys the Continuum, causing the universe Hercules is in to be destroyed.


title: Amadeus Cho

text: A funeral service is held at the Parthenon in Athens, where a tearful Amadeus demands Athena show herself and pay her respects. In her place appears a collection of Earth's heroes including Thor and the Warriors Three, Bruce Banner, Skaar, Namor, Namora, the Black Widow, Wolverine, Angel, and Snowbird. Athena finally arrives and reveals that Amadeus is the new leader of the Olympus Group. Some of the other gods object and each chooses a mortal proxy to do battle for them. But the combatants ultimately turn against the gods, and Phobos uses his power over fear to manipulate Hades into opening a portal to the Underworld. Amadeus travels into the land of the dead to look for Hercules and meets Persephone, wife of Hades. She tells him that Hades would not have allowed him in if Hercules' soul had been there. The following Monday Athena arrives at Olympus Group headquarters to find that Amadeus has accepted her offer and is now acting as CEO. He tells her that he is not her champion, he is Hercules' champion, and that he will be using all the powers given to him to find Hercules.


title: Amadeus Cho

text: Athena meets with the Council of Godheads to discuss the new Heroic Age, and who should be selected to confront the coming darkness of Mikaboshi. Other Skyfathers suggest Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America, but Athena states that Cho will save the world. Cho, now in charge of the Olympus Group has Bruce Banner build a device capable of scanning the multiverse to find Hercules. However, it is determined that this will take over 1,000,000,000 years to work. After a battle with the Griffin, Cho is visited by Vali Halfling, the leader of the Pantheon, who proposes an alliance in order to gather the necessary ingredients to become as powerful as the Skyfathers: Hebe's ambrosia, the golden apples of Idunn, the spells of "The Book of Thoth", and the amrita cup of Dhanavantari. Cho steals the list from Vali and goes to Asgard himself, only to find that Vali had already stolen the apples, framing him for the theft. Cho convinces Thor that he is innocent, and Thor then joins his quest to both stop Halfling and resurrect Hercules. With some additional assistance from Delphyne, who is now his girlfriend, Cho succeeds in thwarting Halfling and using the elixir to assume true godhood. However, he realizes that he is inadequate to wield this power permanently, and he instead transfers it to the returned Hercules, as Hercules warns that the Chaos King is coming.


title: Amadeus Cho

text: Cho helps Hercules and Thor gather Sersi, Venus, Daimon Hellstrom, Silver Surfer, and Galactus together as the second incarnation of the God Squad. Cho calculates that Amatsu-Mikaboshi by now has consumed most of the Multiverse and urges humanity to escape to an unpopulated and sealed-off continuum. While Hulk and his allies, the God Squad, Alpha Flight, and the surviving Dead Avengers fight Amatsu-Mikaboshi's forces, Cho and Galactus work on a machine that will transfer Earth to the sealed-off continuum. Amatsu-Mikaboshi is eventually defeated when he instead is thrown into the continuum.


title: Amadeus Cho

text: During the 2011 "Fear Itself" storyline, Amadeus Cho ends up in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with X-23, Spider-Girl, Power Man, and Thunderstrike. During the battle, they are attacked by samurai sharks. It is revealed that Amadeus assembled them in the hopes that they would join him as a new super-team. The others believe he was manipulating them and turn down his offer.


title: Amadeus Cho

text: As part of the "Marvel NOW!" initiative in the pages of "Savage Wolverine", Amadeus Cho appears on an island in the Savage Land where he stops a fight between Wolverine and a tribe of Neanderthals after one of them had killed Shanna the She-Devil. He convinces them that he is their god and that they must help save Shanna's life. Using the lifeblood of a Man-Thing, the Neanderthal tribe resurrect Shanna. Cho tells Shanna what the Neanderthal natives had explained to him: the machine powering the damping field was also powering a prison, one holding an ancient hostile alien presence. Realizing that Wolverine would be releasing this creature, Shanna races to stop him. She arrives in time with Amadeus Cho behind her and stops Wolverine. Hulk appears before them, however, and quickly starts a scuffle with Wolverine in which the machine is damaged anyway.


title: Amadeus Cho

text: Following an eight-month time skip as seen in the "Time Runs Out" storyline, Cho is seen as a member of the Illuminati. He is captured by a joint S.H.I.E.L.D./Avengers task force led by Susan Storm.


title: Amadeus Cho

text: Eight months after the "Secret Wars" storyline, Cho becomes the Hulk by removing the Hulk from Bruce Banner and placing it into his body. With the help of his sister Maddy, he starts hunting down dangerous monsters that are loose on Earth, but is criticized for his irresponsible approach. He encounters She-Hulk and the second Spider-Man who aid him in the battle against the various monsters and . Cho is eventually captured by Lady Hellbender. With the help of Maddy, She-Hulk breaches Lady Hellbender's ship, releasing the horde of monsters. Cho and She-Hulk defeat the monsters. Later, Amadeus begins having "blackouts" and strange dreams about his parents' death. After an argument with Maddy, who fears that Amadeus' Hulk is starting to be like Banner's Hulk, he wanders through the desert until he encounters the Enchantress, who manipulates him into helping her take over the Ten Realms. He is found by Maddy when Thor arrives. After a brief battle, Maddy convinces Thor that Amadeus is innocent. They go to Iceland where Thor reveals that Hulk had stolen a supply of uru and given it to the Enchantress and her partner Malekith the Accursed. Upon finding her, Thor and Hulk battle her army. At first, Amadeus tries to keep himself out of the fight, fearing he might lose control again, until Maddy gives him a pep talk. He transforms into Hulk and defeats Enchantress. Thor then defeats her army and gives the uru back to the dwarfs.


title: Amadeus Cho

text: While in Manhattan, Amadeus meets Old Man Logan who thought Hulk was Bruce Banner but soon learns that Hulk is now Cho.


title: Amadeus Cho

text: During the 2016 "Civil War II" storyline, Amadeus Cho rescues Bruce Banner from a bar fight and reveals to him that he is gamma free. Later, Cho finds Banner on a beach in California, sick with influenza, and takes Banner to his secret base in Arizona. Meanwhile, Amadeus begins to worry that the gamma radiation is affecting him emotionally and causing him to black out. He talks to Bruce who tells him that he's not a monster but a hero. Amadeus then finds out about Bruce Banner's death through the news. He gets angry at Carol Danvers. Cho then heads towards the East Coast, where he plans to confront Banner's murderer Hawkeye despite the objections of Maddy and the other heroes. He meets Black Panther, who fights Cho with his own version of the Hulkbuster. As Cho is defeating Black Panther, however, he receives a distress call from Maddy who has located a giant insectoid monster in Austin, Texas. While fighting the monster, Hulk discovers that the monster feeds off people's emotions. Though Hulk is able to knock him down, the monster ultimately defeats him and kidnaps a baby. Black Panther arrives to arrest Hulk, but, after Maddy convinces him to stand down, they work together to track the monster. Upon finding it, the monster transforms into a human named Christian Sung. Amadeus tries to reason with him, but Sung refuses to talk and throws the baby. Amadeus transforms into Hulk and fights Sung, who's teleported to the Negative Zone by S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Jake Oh. Maddy then yells at Amadeus and leaves. A week later, in Topeka, Kansas, Amadeus finds Hawkeye in a diner and they both cry over Bruce Banner's death.


title: Amadeus Cho

text: Weeks later, Amadeus meets NBA basketball player Jeremy Lin, who invites him to a charity game. During the game, the stadium is attacked by robot dragons. Amadeus manages to destroy one of them but the others escape, ultimately taking Arch-E hostage. While attempting to call for reinforcements, Amadeus is approached by Maddy and is injected with a temporary gamma inhibitor. Cho rescues a rebuilt Arch-E-5912 from a robotic octopus, and, after exposing a weakness in the robot, manages to defeat it. He later appears alongside Ms. Marvel, Shang-Chi, Silk, Jake Oh and Jimmy Woo when an alien army arrives. During the battle, the heroes and a number of civilians are transported to a base near Seknarf Seven and learn that they will be consumed; Amadeus is briefly reverted to his human form when he attempts to attack the forcefield containing them. Dubbing their new group "the Protectors," Jimmy and Amadeus rally the group to prepare for battle. After creating an escape plan, Prince Regent Phalkan, ruler of Seknarf Seven, arrives with his soldiers and demands that three of the humans turn themselves in. When Amadeus, Jimmy and Jake offer themselves to the aliens, the civilians use their gadgets to disable the alien equipment; Amadeus is able to transform back into the Hulk. He is overwhelmed from defeating Phalkan's forces, but before Phalkan can kill him he is rescued by Jimmy. After the battle, the Alpha Flight Space Program arrives to rescue the group and arrest the Prince Regent. Amadeus and Jimmy later have a discussion.