title: Going for the One

text: "Awaken" is a fifteen-minute track credited to Anderson and Howe. The music originated from an incident at a hotel when Anderson heard Howe repeatedly play a chord sequence on his guitar as he walked by, which led Anderson to sing some lyrical ideas on top of it on tape. Howe had written the beginning of the guitar solo previously, which was originally to be a part of a solo guitar piece. Anderson's main source of inspiration for the song was the book "The Singer: A Classic Retelling of Cosmic Conflict" (1975) by Calvin Miller, which he had read during his time in Switzerland. The book retells the story of Jesus in the form of an allegorical poem about a Singer whose song could not be silenced. Anderson drew further inspiration from reading a biography on the Dutch painter Rembrandt, which had affected him "quite significantly". Moraz wrote an introduction for the song which was not used, but was adapted into "Time for a Change" on his solo album "Out in the Sun" (1977). Anderson wished to incorporate the harp into the song's middle section and "dream the audience, sort of Vivaldi", and later considered the song's lyrics and its final section with Wakeman's keyboards to be particularly strong. The track features choral passages performed by the Richard Williams Singers, whose musical arrangements were directed by Wakeman, and the Ars Laeta of Lausanne, recorded at the Église des Planches, a church in Montreux. An early version of the song's introduction was performed live during the band's final gig on the "Relayer" tour, in 1975.


title: Going for the One

text: In addition to a change of producers and engineers, "Going for the One" also marked a departure in the cover artists. Since 1971, they had worked with Roger Dean who became known for his surreal and fantastical landscapes and designed their distinct logo. While the band were recording Dean presented his idea for the cover painting, which had pieces of rock floating in the sky with the largest piece containing trees and a pool of water. The design was to be a conceptual sequel to his work produced on their first live album, "Yessongs" (1973). Dean said he flew to Montreux to discuss his ideas with the band but only met with Anderson, who was uninterested in his suggestions and instead, presented a rough design of what he wanted Dean to create. Anderson, however, claimed that while the band approached Dean to design the cover, he was unwilling to visit them. Howe claimed "a certain member" was no longer interested in working with Dean, which ended their collaboration until "Drama" (1980); in his 2021 memoir "All My Yesterdays" he attributes that to a "misunderstanding".


title: Going for the One

text: The band commissioned Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell of Hipgnosis to design the artwork. They came up with a marked change in direction that represented a new, revitalised attitude within the band and their return to more direct and concise songs. Artist George Hardie contributed to the graphical design. Presented as a triple gatefold sleeve, the front cover depicts the back of a standing nude male looking at the Century Plaza Towers in Century City, California against a blue sky. By the time the album was released Yes had acquired full ownership of Dean's logo, which they previously had co-owned, and used it on the cover. Dean is credited in the liner notes. Inside features a photograph of each band member by Lake Geneva and Île de Peilz, an island on the lake that consists of a single tree. Richard Manning, a freelance artist who worked for Hipgnosis at the time, used double weighted photo paper to accommodate the triple gatefold. He applied various techniques onto the design including a light blue dye wash, clouds added with an airbrush, and photomontage. The coloured lines running through the cover were added at the printing stage. Anderson said the lines intersecting through the male define "points of the anatomy relative to our development."


title: Going for the One

text: Howe was not "thrilled" at the design at the time of release, but said it worked well with the music and was pleased that Dean's logo was retained; in 2021 he said he had "no hard feelings" about it. "Melody Maker" reporter and band biographer Chris Welch wrote about the cover: "Gone were the elaborate Roger Dean landscapes. In their place came stark, geometric simplicity. Anticipating computer designs of the future ... it symbolised a new look for Yes". Martin Popoff reviewed the design in 2016. "A new accelerated, late-'70s escapism through the clean lines of Hipgnosis, who combine slick, futuristic geometric urban angles with a man in his birthday suit, perhaps urgently propelling the band forward, while simultaneously embracing roots".


title: Going for the One

text: When released, the record label promoted the album with an outdoor advertising campaign. Howe recalled that one billboard with the album cover art on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles covered up the man's buttocks and thighs with a pair of trousers. He was bemused that anyone would have taken offence at the original image, particularly the "pimps, drug dealers and loose women" who frequented the street.


title: Going for the One

text: "Going for the One" was released in the UK on 15 July 1977, available on LP, audio cassette, and 8-track tape. Its release was delayed after various problems were encountered with the pressing. It became a commercial success for the band, reaching number one on the UK Albums Chart, their second album to do so following "Tales from Topographic Oceans", for two weeks in August 1977 and peaking at number 8 on the US "Billboard" 200. Elsewhere, the album went to number 7 in Norway. It was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on 2 August 1977 for selling over 500,000 copies in the US. In the UK, the album reached silver certification by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) on 19 September 1977, signifying 60,000 copies sold and sales worth over £150,000.


title: Going for the One

text: The album spawned two singles, both released in 1977. "Wonderous Stories" was released with "Parallels" as the B-side which peaked at number 7 in the UK singles chart. To help promote the song, Yes filmed their first music video for the song which received airplay on the BBC television music show "Top of the Pops". It remains the band's highest-charting single in the country. The second, "Going for the One" with an edited version of "Awaken Pt. 1" on the B-side, reached number 24 in the UK.


title: Going for the One

text: In his review for "Los Angeles Times", Steve Pond believed the album succeeds because the band had "lowered rather than raised its sights. By going back to basics rather than trying to top its previous 'extravaganzas', Yes has produced its most appealing collection" since "Close to the Edge". He praised the "refreshing energy" the album brings, but noted their "kitchen-sink approach to song-writing, throwing everything into a composition but sometimes failing to smoothly integrate the disparate elements". In "Record Mirror", reviewer Robin Smith gave the album five "+", the highest ranking which means "Unbeatable". He praised the title track, which opens the album with "an uncharacteristic piece of boogie" and has atmosphere and an effective ending. Smith concluded that with the album, "Yes dispel all your fears that the band are over the hill and finished [...] they're back stronger than ever." "Billboard" magazine gave a positive review, noting the band "is clearly going all out here to create its most ambitious and awesome work yet", and picked the title track, "Wonderous Stories", and "Awaken" as the best cuts.


title: Going for the One

text: In a retrospective review, biographer and reporter Chris Welch welcomed the album after the more complex material on "Tales from Topographic Oceans" and "Relayer", citing its "melodic simplicity" which was "a breath of fresh air" and still stands up strong today. He praised Wakeman's performance and the band's choice in incorporating his talents into the music more effectively, which was not the case on "Tales". He praised every track, calling "Wonderous Stories" a tune that allowed the group "to fly without really trying" and the closing moments of "Awaken", in particular, "quite beautiful ... the kind of music making now almost a lost art". Ross Boissoneau, for AllMusic, gave the album three stars out of five. He described "Going for the One" as "perhaps the most overlooked item in the Yes catalog ... In many ways, this disc could be seen as the follow-up to "Fragile" (1971). Its five tracks still retain mystical, abstract lyrical images, and the music is grand and melodic, the vocal harmonies perfectly balanced by the stinging guitar work of Steve Howe, Wakeman's keyboards, and the solid rhythms of Alan White and Chris Squire". He calls "Awaken" an "evocative track" with lyrics "spacey in the extreme", but praises Anderson and Squire's vocals and the addition of Anderson's harp and White's tuned percussion.


title: Going for the One

text: Yes supported "Going for the One" with a tour of the US, Canada and Europe that ran from 30 July to 6 December 1977, and featured Donovan as their opening act. The stage set had a much simpler design compared to the band's previous three tours, which centred around a series of illuminated shapes which gave a three-dimensional effect. Wakeman's keyboards were arranged on two levels. Anderson was illuminated in multiple colours as he sung an excerpt of "The Beautiful Land" from the musical "The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd". The tour included a record six consecutive sold out nights at Wembley Arena in London that were attended by over 50,000 people. In order to play the different bass parts on "Awaken", Squire used a custom triple-necked bass made in 1975 by Wal for Roger Newell, the bassist in Wakeman's band the English Rock Ensemble. Recordings from the European tour were released on Yes's second live album, "Yesshows" (1981).


title: Going for the One

text: Yes selected "Going for the One" for their first Album Series Tour from March 2013 to June 2014, with the album performed live in its entirety and in track order.


title: Going for the One

text: "Going for the One" was first reissued on CD across Europe in 1988. A digitally remastered CD followed in 1994 made by George Marino at Sterling Sound studios. In 2003, Rhino and Elektra Records released a new digitally remastered CD with seven bonus tracks. 2013 saw two remastered "audiophile" versions put out, one by Audio Fidelity for the Super Audio CD format and the other by Friday Music releasing a 180-gram LP using analog tape dubs since the original tapes were missing.


title: Going for the One

text: All tracks arranged and produced by Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Chris Squire, Alan White, and Rick Wakeman.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: Noctilucent clouds, or night shining clouds, are tenuous cloud-like phenomena in the upper atmosphere of Earth. When viewed from space, they are called polar mesospheric clouds (PMCs), detectable as a diffuse scattering layer of water ice crystals near the summer polar mesopause. They consist of ice crystals and from the ground are only visible during astronomical twilight. "Noctilucent" roughly means "night shining" in Latin. They are most often observed during the summer months from latitudes between ±50° and ±70°. Too faint to be seen in daylight, they are visible only when the observer and the lower layers of the atmosphere are in Earth's shadow, but while these very high clouds are still in sunlight. Recent studies suggest that increased atmospheric methane emissions produce additional water vapor once the methane molecules reach the mesosphere – creating, or reinforcing existing noctilucent clouds.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: They are the highest clouds in Earth's atmosphere, located in the mesosphere at altitudes of around .


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: No confirmed record of their observation exists before 1885, although they may have been observed a few decades earlier by Thomas Romney Robinson in Armagh. Doubts now surround Robinson's out-of-season records, following observations, from several points around high northern latitudes, of NLC-like phenomena following the Chelyabinsk superbolide entry in February 2013 (outside the NLC season) that were in fact stratospheric dust reflections visible after sunset.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: Noctilucent clouds are composed of tiny crystals of water ice up to 100 nm in diameter and exist at a height of about , higher than any other clouds in Earth's atmosphere. Clouds in the Earth's lower atmosphere form when water collects on particles, but mesospheric clouds may form directly from water vapour in addition to forming on dust particles.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: Data from the Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere satellite suggests that noctilucent clouds require water vapour, dust, and very cold temperatures to form. The sources of both the dust and the water vapour in the upper atmosphere are not known with certainty. The dust is believed to come from micrometeors, although particulates from volcanoes and dust from the troposphere are also possibilities. The moisture could be lifted through gaps in the tropopause, as well as forming from the reaction of methane with hydroxyl radicals in the stratosphere.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: The exhaust from Space Shuttles, in use between 1981 and 2011, which was almost entirely water vapour after the detachment of the Solid Rocket Booster at a height of about , was found to generate minuscule individual clouds. About half of the vapour was released into the thermosphere, usually at altitudes of . In August 2014, a SpaceX Falcon 9 also caused noctilucent clouds over Orlando, Florida after a launch.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: The exhaust can be transported to the Arctic region in little over a day, although the exact mechanism of this very high-speed transfer is unknown. As the water migrates northward, it falls from the thermosphere into the colder mesosphere, which occupies the region of the atmosphere just below. Although this mechanism is the cause of individual noctilucent clouds, it is not thought to be a major contributor to the phenomenon as a whole.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: As the mesosphere contains very little moisture, approximately one hundred millionth that of air from the Sahara, and is extremely thin, the ice crystals can form only at temperatures below about . This means that noctilucent clouds form predominantly during summer when, counterintuitively, the mesosphere is coldest as a result of seasonally varying vertical winds, leading to cold summertime conditions in the upper mesosphere (upwelling and adiabatic cooling) and wintertime heating (downwelling and adiabatic heating). Therefore, they cannot be observed (even if they are present) inside the Polar circles because the Sun is never low enough under the horizon at this season at these latitudes. Noctilucent clouds form mostly near the polar regions, because the mesosphere is coldest there. Clouds in the southern hemisphere are about higher than those in the northern hemisphere.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: Ultraviolet radiation from the Sun breaks water molecules apart, reducing the amount of water available to form noctilucent clouds. The radiation is known to vary cyclically with the solar cycle and satellites have been tracking the decrease in brightness of the clouds with the increase of ultraviolet radiation for the last two solar cycles. It has been found that changes in the clouds follow changes in the intensity of ultraviolet rays by about a year, but the reason for this long lag is not yet known.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: Noctilucent clouds are known to exhibit high radar reflectivity, in a frequency range of 50 MHz to 1.3 GHz. This behaviour is not well understood but a possible explanation is that the ice grains become coated with a thin metal film composed of sodium and iron, which makes the cloud far more reflective to radar, although this explanation remains controversial. Sodium and iron atoms are stripped from incoming micrometeors and settle into a layer just above the altitude of noctilucent clouds, and measurements have shown that these elements are severely depleted when the clouds are present. Other experiments have demonstrated that, at the extremely cold temperatures of a noctilucent cloud, sodium vapour can rapidly be deposited onto an ice surface.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: Noctilucent clouds are first known to have been observed in 1885, two years after the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. It remains unclear whether their appearance had anything to do with the volcanic eruption or whether their discovery was due to more people observing the spectacular sunsets caused by the volcanic debris in the atmosphere. Studies have shown that noctilucent clouds are not caused solely by volcanic activity, although dust and water vapour could be injected into the upper atmosphere by eruptions and contribute to their formation. Scientists at the time assumed the clouds were another manifestation of volcanic ash, but after the ash had settled out of the atmosphere, the noctilucent clouds persisted. Finally, the theory that the clouds were composed of volcanic dust was disproved by Malzev in 1926. In the years following their discovery, the clouds were studied extensively by Otto Jesse of Germany, who was the first to photograph them, in 1887, and seems to have been the one to coin the term "noctilucent cloud". His notes provide evidence that noctilucent clouds first appeared in 1885. He had been doing detailed observations of the unusual sunsets caused by the Krakatoa eruption the previous year and firmly believed that, if the clouds had been visible then, he would undoubtedly have noticed them. Systematic photographic observations of the clouds were organized in 1887 by Jesse, Foerster, and Stolze and, after that year, continuous observations were carried out at the Berlin Observatory. During this research, the height of the clouds was first determined, via triangulation. That project was discontinued in 1896.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: In the decades after Otto Jesse's death in 1901, there were few new insights into the nature of noctilucent clouds. Wegener's conjecture, that they were composed of water ice, was later shown to be correct. Study was limited to ground-based observations and scientists had very little knowledge of the mesosphere until the 1960s, when direct rocket measurements began. These showed for the first time that the clouds' occurrence coincided with very low temperatures in the mesosphere.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: Noctilucent clouds were first detected from space by an instrument on the OGO-6 satellite in 1972. The OGO-6 observations of a bright scattering layer over the polar caps were identified as poleward extensions of these clouds. A later satellite, the Solar Mesosphere Explorer, mapped the distribution of the clouds between 1981 and 1986 with its ultraviolet spectrometer. The clouds were detected with a lidar in 1995 at Utah State University, even when they were not visible to the naked eye. The first physical confirmation that water ice is indeed the primary component of noctilucent clouds came from the HALOE instrument on the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite in 2001.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: In 2001, the Swedish Odin satellite performed spectral analyses on the clouds, and produced daily global maps that revealed large patterns in their distribution.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: The AIM (Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere) satellite was launched on 25 April 2007. It was the first satellite dedicated to studying noctilucent clouds, and made its first observations a month later (25 May). Images taken by the satellite show shapes in the clouds that are similar to shapes in tropospheric clouds, hinting at similarities in their dynamics.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: In the previous year, scientists with the Mars Express mission had announced their discovery of carbon dioxide–crystal clouds on Mars that extended to above the planet's surface. These are the highest clouds discovered over the surface of a rocky planet. Like noctilucent clouds on Earth, they can be observed only when the Sun is below the horizon.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: Research published in the journal "Geophysical Research Letters" in June 2009 suggests that noctilucent clouds observed following the Tunguska Event of 1908 are evidence that the impact was caused by a comet.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: The United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and the United States Department of Defense Space Test Program (STP) conducted the Charged Aerosol Release Experiment (CARE) on September 19, 2009, using exhaust particles from a Black Brant XII suborbital sounding rocket launched from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility to create an artificial noctilucent cloud. The cloud was to be observed over a period of weeks or months by ground instruments and the Spatial Heterodyne IMager for MEsospheric Radicals (SHIMMER) instrument on the NRL/STP STPSat-1 spacecraft. The rocket's exhaust plume was observed and reported to news organizations in the United States from New Jersey to Massachusetts.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: A 2018 experiment briefly created noctilucent clouds over Alaska, allowing ground-based measurements and experiments aimed at verifying computer simulations of the phenomenon. A suborbital NASA rocket was launched on 26 January 2018 by University of Alaska professor Richard Collins. It carried water-filled canisters, which were released at about above the Earth. Since the naturally-occurring clouds only appear in summer, this experiment was conducted in mid-winter to assure that its results would not be mixed with a natural event.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: Observed from the ground, this phenomenon is known as noctilucent clouds. From satellites, PMCs are most frequently observed above 70–75° in latitude and have a season of 60 to 80 days duration centered about a peak which occurs about 20 days after the summer solstice. This holds true for both hemispheres. Great variability in scattering is observed from day-to-day and year-to- year, but averaging over large time and space scales reveals a basic underlying symmetry and pattern. The long- term behaviour of polar mesospheric cloud frequency has been found to vary inversely with solar activity.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: PMC's have four major types based on physical structure and appearance. Type I veils are very tenuous and lack well-defined structure, somewhat like cirrostratus or poorly defined cirrus. Type II bands are long streaks that often occur in groups arranged roughly parallel to each other. They are usually more widely spaced than the bands or elements seen with cirrocumulus clouds. Type III billows are arrangements of closely spaced, roughly parallel short streaks that mostly resemble cirrus. Type IV whirls are partial or, more rarely, complete rings of cloud with dark centres.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: When mesospheric clouds are viewed above the atmosphere, the geometrical limitations of observing from the ground are significantly reduced. They may be observed ‘edge-on’ against the comparatively dark sky background, even in full daylight. The photometer field of view must be well baffled to avoid interference from the very bright Earth about a degree beneath the cloud layer. It is a much more difficult task to observe the clouds against the bright background of the illuminated Earth, although this has been achieved in the ultraviolet in the 200 to 300 nm spectral region, because of the very small albedo of the earth in this part of spectrum.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: American and Soviet astronauts observed the phenomenon from space as early as 1970. Most observations are reported from the night side of the orbit and the observer is looking towards the twilight sector. At this time the observer's eye is dark-adapted and polar mesospheric clouds would appear with maximum contrast against a comparatively dark background. Soviet astronauts have reported sightings of mesospheric clouds even when the Sun is above the horizon.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: Satellite observations allow the very coldest parts of the polar mesosphere to be observed, all the way to the geographic pole. In the early 1970s, visible airglow photometers first scanned the atmospheric horizon throughout the summer polar mesospause region. This experiment, which flew on the OGO-6 satellite, was the first to trace noctilucent-like cloud layers across the polar cap. The very bright scattering layer was seen in full daylight conditions, and was identified as the poleward extension of noctilucent clouds. In the early 1980s, the layer was observed again from a satellite, the Solar Mesospheric Explorer (SME). On board this satellite was an ultraviolet spectrometer, which mapped the distributions of clouds over the time period 1981 to 1986. The experiment measured the altitude profile of scattering from clouds at two spectral channels (primarily) 265 nm and 296 nm. This phenomenon is now known as Polar Mesospheric Clouds.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: The general seasonal characteristics of polar mesospheric clouds are well established from the five years of continuous SME data. Over that period, data for four cloud ‘seasons’ in the north, and five ‘seasons’ in the south were recorded. In both hemispheres, the season begins about one month before summer solstice and ends about two months afterwards. Since there are no biases due to such factors as changing number of hours of visibility, weather conditions, etc. this is a ‘true’ behaviour. It is believed to be a result of the fact that summertime mesopause region becomes coldest during this period causing water-ice to form, in contrast to most other regions of the atmosphere which are warmest in summer. Temperatures at latitudes equatorward of the boundary of detection never get low enough for water-ice to form.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: Polar mesospheric clouds generally increase in brightness and occurrence frequency with increasing latitude, from about 60 degrees to the highest latitudes observed (85 degrees). So far, no apparent dependence on longitude has been found, nor is there any evidence of a dependence on auroral activity. This indicates that control of polar mesospheric clouds is determined by geographical rather than geomagnetic factors. The brightness of polar mesospheric clouds and noctilucent clouds appears to be consistent at the latitudes where both are observed, but polar mesospheric clouds near the pole are much brighter than noctilucent clouds, even taking into account the lower sky background seen from space. Polar mesospheric cloud observations have revealed that the well-known phenomenon of the northward shifting with latitude of date of peak noctilucent cloud occurrence is partly due to the increased number of hours of noctilucent cloud visibility with latitude and partly due to an actual northward retreat of the boundary towards the end of the season.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: On 8 July 2018, NASA launched a giant balloon from Esrange, Sweden which traveled through the stratosphere across the Arctic to Western Nunavut, Canada in five days. The giant balloon was loaded with cameras, which captured six million high-resolution images filling up 120 terabytes of data storage, aiming to study the PMCs which are affected by the atmospheric gravity waves, resulted from air being pushed up by mountain ranges all the way up to the mesosphere. These images would aid in studying turbulence in the atmosphere, and consequently better weather forecasting.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: NASA uses AIM satellite to study these noctilucent clouds, which always occur during the summer season near the poles. However, tomographic analyses of AIM satellite indicate that there is a spatial negative correlation between albedo and wave‐induced altitude.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: Noctilucent clouds are generally colourless or pale blue, although occasionally other colours including red and green have been observed. The characteristic blue colour comes from absorption by ozone in the path of the sunlight illuminating the noctilucent cloud. They can appear as featureless bands, but frequently show distinctive patterns such as streaks, wave-like undulations, and whirls. They are considered a "beautiful natural phenomenon". Noctilucent clouds may be confused with cirrus clouds, but appear sharper under magnification. Those caused by rocket exhausts tend to show colours other than silver or blue, because of iridescence caused by the uniform size of the water droplets produced.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: Noctilucent clouds may be seen at latitudes of 50° to 65°. They seldom occur at lower latitudes (although there have been sightings as far south as Paris, Utah, Italy, Turkey and Spain), and closer to the poles it does not get dark enough for the clouds to become visible. They occur during summer, from mid-May to mid-August in the northern hemisphere and between mid-November and mid-February in the southern hemisphere. They are very faint and tenuous, and may be observed only in twilight around sunrise and sunset when the clouds of the lower atmosphere are in shadow, but the noctilucent cloud is illuminated by the Sun. They are best seen when the Sun is between 6° and 16° below the horizon. Although noctilucent clouds occur in both hemispheres, they have been observed thousands of times in the northern hemisphere, but fewer than 100 times in the southern. Southern hemisphere noctilucent clouds are fainter and occur less frequently; additionally the southern hemisphere has a lower population and less land area from which to make observations.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: These clouds may be studied from the ground, from space, and directly by sounding rocket. Also, some noctilucent clouds are made of smaller crystals, 30 nm or less, which are invisible to observers on the ground because they do not scatter enough light.


title: Noctilucent cloud

text: The clouds may show a large variety of different patterns and forms. An identification scheme was developed by Fogle in 1970 that classified five different forms. These classifications have since been modified and subdivided. As a result of recent research, the World Meteorological Organization now recognizes four major forms that can be subdivided. Type I veils are very tenuous and lack well-defined structure, somewhat like cirrostratus or poorly defined cirrus. Type II bands are long streaks that often occur in roughly parallel groups, usually more widely spaced than the bands or elements seen with cirrocumulus clouds. Type III billows are arrangements of closely spaced, roughly parallel short streaks that mostly resemble cirrus. Type IV whirls are partial or, more rarely, complete rings of cloud with dark centres.


title: Hugh Gibb

text: Hugh Leslie Gibb (15 January 1916 – 6 March 1992) was an English drummer, bandleader and the father of musicians Barry, Robin, Maurice and Andy Gibb. Barry, Robin and Maurice would go on to form the Bee Gees, one of the most successful musical groups of all time, while Andy would have several hits as a solo performer.


title: Hugh Gibb

text: Hugh Leslie Gibb was born in Chorlton district in Manchester to Hugh Gibb and Edith Yardley. He said: "I was the oddball in my family 'cause I liked music and the attitude was that it would never do you any good. The main theme then was go to work, have a steady job, and bring your wages home every weekend. A side track from that wasn't right in their eyes. To be a musician was like the old days, you know, when they were considered vagabonds, and that's all I ever wanted to do."


title: Hugh Gibb

text: Gibb's father was born in Lanarkshire, Scotland in 1876. His mother was born in Manchester in 1892 to William and Hannah. She was 16 years younger than her husband and became step-mother to his seven children he had from his previous marriage, to Annie, who had died in 1889 at the age of 38. Gibb's grandfather, Thomas Yardley, was born in 1826 and is recorded as a railway worker.


title: Hugh Gibb

text: Barbara Pass was a dance band vocalist and, on one of her nights off, she went with a friend to another dance hall. Later, she said: "That's where it all started." Hugh escorted Barbara home that night and thereafter romance blossomed. Despite the nightmare of the war, Hugh had fond memories of the time he met his future wife, as he said: "People enjoyed themselves more. Kids to-day think they've done everything by the time they're 18 and have nothing to look forward to." They were married on 27 May 1944 in Manchester. Their first child, daughter Lesley, was born on 12 January 1945. Shortly afterwards, they moved to Scotland, where his band was starting to play in Edinburgh; as Barbara explained: "We lived just at the outskirts of Edinburgh." After a while, Hugh, Barbara and Lesley moved back to Manchester and lived with Barbara's mother, Nora Pass, in Stretford. Then Gibb got a job on the Isle of Man and they moved to its capital, Douglas. Gibb started to play at the Douglas Bay Hotel and the Alexandra, both in Douglas.


title: Hugh Gibb

text: On 1 September 1946, his first son Barry Gibb was born at 8:45 a.m. at the Jane Crookall Maternity Home in Douglas. During that same time, Hugh was busy with his music at various hotels in Douglas when Barry was a baby: "I stayed there for [about] 10 years and Joe Loss's band used to be there; that was the big band era." On 22 December 1949, also at the Jane Crookall Maternity Home in Douglas, Hugh's second son Robin Gibb was born at 3:15 a.m. Later that morning, at 3:50 a.m., his third son Maurice Gibb was born at the same maternity home. In 1955, the Gibbs returned to the Manchester area. On 5 March 1958, Hugh's fourth son Andy Gibb was born in Stretford Memorial Hospital in Manchester.


title: Hugh Gibb

text: His band, the Hughie Gibb Orchestra, was firmly ensconced on the circuit of Mecca ballrooms, playing mainly in Northern England and Scotland. Rosalia Black, who was the daughter of the hotel owner, Carlo Raineri, recalls "The band must have been popular because the ballroom was always packed, even though the Joe Loss Orchestra was at the Villa Marina and Ronnie Aldrich, with the Squadronaires, was at the Palace Ballroom."


title: Hugh Gibb

text: Hugh was always on the lookout for work. Even as an extremely popular musician, he did not earn very much, and he often put together bands for one-off gigs. One such dance might have been the Invitation Dinner Dance held at London's Metropole Hotel on 24 February 1949; the reception was at 7:00 p.m., and the title of the show was 'Hughie Gibb and his Music', entertaining the people until 1:00 a.m.


title: Hugh Gibb

text: Hugh did not actually play on board the ferry, and his band was not paid by Douglas's Corporation (on the Isle of Man), who ran the ferry. Apart from trumpeter Charlie Whewell, others who played in Hugh's band in 1946 consisted of Arthur Crawford (accordion), Jim Caine (piano), Tommy Cowley (bass), Albert Metcalfe (tenor saxophone) and John Knight (trombone).


title: Hugh Gibb

text: Aside from being a musician, Hugh's work during the day was delivering bread. As their neighbour, Joan Hill, said: "We were all very poor in those days and Mr. Gibb was a godsend. He used to bring home dozens of loaves that had to be sold before the end of the day - bread must have been much more wholesome in those days - didn't have all the preservatives it does today. Hugh would then be able to sell these off to neighbors at a fraction of the normal cost." Hugh's musical background is credited as the Bee Gees' inspiration to follow a musical career, but his influence on his sons was actually more indirect.


title: Hugh Gibb

text: Hugh credited his wife's sister, Peggy, with the idea of emigrating to Australia, as she eventually did with her family, although it was his family that had migrated first. Later, he and Barbara applied for passage to Australia but did little to prepare for the move. As Hugh said: "Because they say, don't dispose of your property until you know what you're doing. Sometimes you have to wait two years; we got it in six weeks." At the beginning of August 1958, the family set sail for Australia.


title: Hugh Gibb

text: When the family arrived in Queensland, Hugh found work as a "bush photographer". His photography assignments were not as frequent as he would have liked, so he took on extra work for Scarborough Local Council.


title: Hugh Gibb

text: Hugh remembers that the group's break came when television was started in Brisbane around 1960: "We auditioned for one of the variety shows, anything goes right way, they signed us." When the family moved back to Britain, on 7 February 1967, at 7:40 in the morning, the 'phone rang. Robert Stigwood, Brian Epstein's partner, said: "Look, we've been doing a lot of reshuffling in the office here, and we've just come across the acetate you sent us, and we played it. Could you come along and see us this afternoon?" By November 1971, Hugh and Barbara moved to Ibiza, Spain with Andy and granddaughter, Beri.


title: Hugh Gibb

text: After Andy Gibb's death in 1988, his father lost interest in life. On 6 March 1992, one day after what would have been Andy's 34th birthday, Hugh Gibb died of internal bleeding, at the age of 76, after years of "heavy drinking". Hugh lies buried in the same cemetery as Andy in the Court of Remembrance section, at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Los Angeles. Barry Gibb's reaction was "I believe all this was meant to happen. I miss my father of course, but he stopped living when Andy died and I'm sure he's happier now."


title: Camp Peary

text: Camp Peary is an approximately 9,000 acre U.S. military reservation in York County near Williamsburg, Virginia. Officially referred to as an Armed Forces Experimental Training Activity (AFETA) under the authority of the Department of Defense, Camp Peary hosts a covert CIA training facility known as "The Farm", which is used to train officers of the CIA's Directorate of Operations, as well as those of the DIA's Defense Clandestine Service, among other intelligence entities. Camp Peary has a sister facility, "The Point", located in Hertford, North Carolina.


title: Camp Peary

text: Camp Peary is named for Arctic explorer Rear Admiral Robert E. Peary. Porto Bello, the historic hunting lodge of Lord Dunmore, last royal governor of Virginia, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is located on the grounds of Camp Peary.


title: Camp Peary

text: Comprising of land, of which about are unimproved or only partially improved. The Biglers Millpond occupies the site adjacent to the York River.


title: Camp Peary

text: The majority of Camp Peary falls within York County, though a small portion of the reservation near Skimino Creek at the western edge is located in James City County.


title: Camp Peary

text: During World War II, beginning in 1942, the United States Navy took over a large area on the north side of the Virginia Peninsula in York County, Virginia which became known as Camp Peary, initially for use as a Seabee training base. The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) extended a spur track from its Richmond-Newport News main line tracks to the site from nearby Williamsburg, and established Magruder Station near the former unincorporated town of Magruder. As part of the process of converting the property to a military reservation, all residents of the entire towns of Magruder and Bigler's Mill had to vacate. The town of Magruder was a traditionally African-American community, established for freedmen after the American Civil War. It had been named for Confederate General John B. Magruder. A Civil War field hospital had occupied the site of Bigler's Mill near the York River. Although the graves in the church cemetery were not moved, many of the residents and the local Mount Gilead Baptist Church were relocated to the Grove community, located on U.S. Route 60 in adjacent James City County a few miles away, where a number of displaced residents from an area near Lackey known simply as "the Reservation" had earlier relocated under similar circumstances during World War I when what is now the Naval Weapons Station Yorktown was created.


title: Camp Peary

text: At the outset of the War, the preliminary training of the Seabees had been carried out at Naval Training Stations across the country. That lasted a short period until boot training was consolidated at Camp Allen Virginia. Camp Allen was replaced by Camp Bradford which in turn was replaced by Camp Peary. The initial Seabee recruits of WWII were men who built Boulder Dam, America's highways and New York City skyscrapers. At Naval Construction Training Center Peary, Seabees were taught basic military order, discipline, weaponry, stevedoring, and construction trades. The Camp opened in November 3rd of 1942 with the 36th CB the first to train there while the first organized there was the 61st CB. Another 100,000 men would go through the camp before training there ceased in June of 1944. During that period the Seabees established over 60 trade schools on the base. In June of 1943 the dynamite and demolition school opened. Some of its first graduates included the first six classes of Seabee volunteers for the Naval Combat Demolition Units. After June 1944 Seabee boot camp was moved to Camp Endicott, Quonset Point, Rhode Island.


title: Camp Peary

text: Base commander Capt. J.G. Ware had the idea to raise hogs on base so the recruits called the place Capt. Wares hog farm. Originally the hog yard was in the center of the camp, but the enlisted complained that the pigs were on high ground while they were in the mud. This got the hogs moved to a more obscure location, but still within the limits of the military reservation. A bulldozer was used for clearing the feed troughs and transporting slop from the galley to the hog yard. Eventually the farming enterprise made the news and it is from this history that base derives "The Farm" moniker used today.


title: Camp Peary

text: Camp Peary's mission changed when a new need presented itself to the Navy. A portion of the land became a detention center for German prisoners of war in the United States (POWs). Many of them were Kriegsmarine crewmen from captured German U-boats and from ships the Germans thought lost at sea with crews presumed dead. It was important to keep the German authorities unaware of their capture, since knowledge that they had survived would mean that secret code books and Enigma machines thought lost at sea could also have been compromised. Learning that these men were being held as POWs, would almost certainly have caused the Germans to change the secret codes that had been broken by Allied codebreakers, thus, extra secrecy was necessary. There is information about life at the Camp and the German PoWs in the Herman Recht papers held by the College of William and Mary, a set of letters written by a clerk at the Camp.


title: Camp Peary

text: Many of the former POWs stayed in Virginia and the United States after the war, and became naturalized as U.S. citizens.


title: Camp Peary

text: Vacated by the Navy in 1946, Camp Peary became a Virginia state forestry and game reserve for five years. A reservoir that had been built on the upper reaches of Queen's Creek to supply the substantial fresh water needs of Camp Peary when it was a Seabee base was divested to the City of Williamsburg. The Waller Mill Reservoir formed the basis for the city's Waller Mill Park, although the park is located north of the city limits in York County. A portion of the abandoned Chesapeake and Ohio Railway spur from the Peninsula Extension main line just east of near Ewell Station to the base (also built during World War II) is now a recreational rail trail.


title: Camp Peary

text: Then, in 1951, the U.S. Navy returned to the property, securing the portion north of the highway, which was State Route 168 at the time, and announced it closed to the public; it has been that way ever since. In June 1961, two months after the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Navy announced it was officially opening a new facility at Harvey Point base, in Hertford, North Carolina. A spokesman said that all four branches of the military would conduct "testing and evaluation of various classified materials and equipment" at the new site. He added that some of the training "now being done at Camp Peary, Va., will be transferred to Harvey Point."


title: Camp Peary

text: Camp Peary is known as "The Farm", a training facility run by the Central Intelligence Agency for the purpose of training CIA's clandestine officers, as well as officers of other organizations specializing in clandestine activities, such as the Defense Intelligence Agency. The existence of this facility is widely known but has never been formally acknowledged by the U.S. government. Access to Camp Peary is strictly controlled, and visitors to the installation are escorted at all times. The portion of the original World War II Seabee base north of Interstate 64 has been closed to the public since 1951. However, the roads and many structures of Magruder and Bigler's Mill are still there and many are occupied. An airport with a runway was added to the facility near the site of Bigler's Mill. Flight records show that at least 11 aircraft that appear to be owned by CIA front companies, and are believed to have been used as rendition aircraft by the CIA under the guise of charter flights, have landed on this runway.


title: Camp Peary

text: Former CIA officer Bill Wagner attended a three-week interrogation course at The Farm in 1970. He claims it was the agency's "premier course", and that volunteers played the role of interrogation subjects in order to be guaranteed seats in future classes. Interrogators-in-training practiced techniques such as sleep deprivation, deliberately tainted food, and mock executions. According to Wagner, the course was dropped from the CIA training curriculum after the Watergate scandal, due to increased attention being paid to CIA practices.


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: The first season of the American television series "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.", based on the Marvel Comics organization S.H.I.E.L.D., follows Phil Coulson and his team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents on several dangerous cases revolving around Project Centipede and Coulson's mysterious resurrection following his death in the film "The Avengers" (2012). The season is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and acknowledges the continuity of the franchise's films. It was produced by ABC Studios, Marvel Television, and Mutant Enemy Productions, with Jed Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen, and Jeffrey Bell serving as showrunners.


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: Clark Gregg reprises his role as Coulson from the film series, and is joined by series regulars Ming-Na Wen, Brett Dalton, Chloe Bennet, Iain De Caestecker, and Elizabeth Henstridge. "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." was picked up for a full season by ABC in May 2013, and filming took place primarily in Los Angeles. The main recurring setting of the season is the "Bus", a retrofitted Boeing C-17 Globemaster III plane that was designed by visual effects company FuseFX, and created with CGI. Some episodes of the season directly crossover with the films "" (2013) and "" (2014), with the latter causing a major retooling of the season for its final six episodes. Several other actors also reprise their MCU roles in the season for guest appearances.


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: The season aired on ABC from September 24, 2013, to May 13, 2014, and consists of 22 episodes. Its pilot episode was watched by 12.12 million viewers, the highest ratings received by the first episode of a drama series since 2009, but ratings decreased as the season progressed. The critical reception was initially mixed, but grew more positive in the second half of the season and particularly after the crossover with "The Winter Soldier". The series was renewed for a second season in May 2014.


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: In August 2012, it was announced that "Marvel's The Avengers" director Joss Whedon would be involved in an upcoming project for ABC, set within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A few weeks later, ABC ordered a pilot for a show called "S.H.I.E.L.D.", to be written by Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon, and Maurissa Tancharoen, directed by Joss Whedon, and executive produced by Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon, Tancharoen, Jeffrey Bell, and Jeph Loeb. Jed Whedon, Tancharoen and Bell were slated to serve as the series' showrunners. Joe Quesada, Alan Fine, and Stan Lee also executive produce. In April 2013, ABC announced that the show would be titled "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.", and it was officially picked up to series in May. In October, ABC announced that it had ordered a full season of 22 episodes. After the ratings for the early episodes were not to the liking of ABC, Marvel's Dan Buckley went to the network to request they allow the creatives to create the show they wanted, rather than try to work with notes from the network that asked the series to appeal to their main audience demographic, "upscale women".


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: In July 2013, Tancharoen revealed that alongside Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon, Jeff Bell, and herself, the writers for the season would include Paul Zbyszewski, Monica Owusu-Breen, Brent Fletcher, Lauren LeFranc, Rafe Judkins, and Shalisha Francis.


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: The character arcs were laid out by the series' creative team, with Marvel's only guidelines being to work around "Captain America: The Winter Soldier", which sees S.H.I.E.L.D. destroyed. Jed Whedon said on this, "if someone told you that concept, you'd think it was a great thing to have happen at the beginning of the show or the end of Season 3. To have it happen in the middle of your first season is an interesting kind of riddle". The writers worked to establish a "regular day at S.H.I.E.L.D." and the existing hierarchy, and then "to blow that up, we knew the way to best illustrate that was by putting it on a personal level with our main man Coulson". Leading up to the "Winter Soldier" tie-in, the writers avoided talking about Hydra except in terms of their history in the MCU in order to avoid spoiling the film. Tancharoen elaborated that "We see what it actually looks like for S.H.I.E.L.D. to crumble in "Captain America 2", we see the Helicarriers literally barreling through the Triskelion, we see the massive destruction throughout the city, but the benefit of our show is we get to dive into the emotional toll of that." Therefore, it was decided at the beginning of the series that one of the main characters would be a traitor, with Jed Whedon saying "since this is an infiltration based on betrayal on a massive scale, we wanted to have it on the small scale, and have it be a really personal dagger to the heart." Executives at ABC did not believe having Grant Ward be the traitor would work, because they felt Dalton was too handsome for the audience to believe it to be real. They felt the creatives should change their choice, and were keen on Jemma Simmons being the traitor, since it would have been unexpected given she was "so sweet". After dealing with the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D., the writers were able to "put the pedal to the metal" and shift from the standalone stories preceding it to more serialized episodes. Whedon would later say this shift was where "we found our voice in the series after a rocky start". Zbyszewski added that there had been resistance early in the season from the network to have serialized episodes, over single mysteries per episode.


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: On whether it was Marvel's idea or the showrunner's to have Coulson promoted to Director and tasked with rebuilding S.H.I.E.L.D. at the end of the season, Jed Whedon said "They're the same. They have plans for films, and we have plans to intermingle with them, and it's the name of our show. The second to last episode is called "Ragtag", and that's a term we've used; we wanted to create this ragtag group, but within this giant organization with billions of dollars and support all over the globe and satellite feeds on their luxurious plane. Now we have a chance to start them over and figure out what it's like to really be a secret again."


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: The main cast for the season includes Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson, reprising his role from the film series, Ming-Na Wen as Melinda May, Brett Dalton as Grant Ward, Chloe Bennet as Skye, Iain De Caestecker as Leo Fitz, and Elizabeth Henstridge as Jemma Simmons.


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: In April 2013, J. August Richards, one of the stars of the earlier Joss Whedon series "Angel", was cast in the pilot in an unspecified role, later revealed to be Mike Peterson, the first live-action portrayal of Deathlok and a recurring character throughout the season. Nicholas Brendon, another Whedon collaborator, was also reportedly considered for Richards' role. In December, two recurring characters were set to be added to the series with the episode "T.A.H.I.T.I." They were described as "an African-American agent who specializes in combat/weapons, and a high-level S.H.I.E.L.D. agent/munitions expert who has past ties to both Coulson and Ward." In January 2014, Bill Paxton was cast as Agent John Garrett, "a rough-and-tumble former cohort of Agent Coulson with a little bit of attitude and cigar-smoking swagger", for at least four episodes of the season. Jed Whedon said that "We actually discussed Bill Paxton in the room, when we were talking about the character ... Then when he came up as an actual possibility, we couldn't believe it." The next month, B. J. Britt was cast as Agent Antoine Triplett, an associate of Garrett. Other recurring guests in the season include Saffron Burrows as Victoria Hand, David Conrad as Ian Quinn, and Ruth Negga as Raina.


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: In January 2013, Cobie Smulders, who played agent Maria Hill in "The Avengers", said that her character may make an appearance in the show and that her commitment to "How I Met Your Mother" would not prevent her from participating. Smulders reprised the role of Hill in the pilot, with Joss Whedon saying, "I wanted very much to have Cobie in the pilot because as much as anyone else, she S.H.I.E.L.D." Smulders returned once again in the episode "Nothing Personal". In June 2013, Samuel L. Jackson expressed interest in guest starring as S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury, and subsequently appeared in the second episode "0-8-4". Jackson makes a second appearance in the season finale. During the episode "The Well", Chris Hemsworth appears as Thor via archival footage from "". Maximiliano Hernández and Jaimie Alexander also reprise their film roles, Jasper Sitwell and Sif, respectively. Titus Welliver reprises the role of Felix Blake from the Marvel One-Shots short films.


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: Storyboards were used throughout the season, to "put the director, stunts, camera, FX and the crew on the same page", though Joss Whedon did not use them for the pilot. One of the storyboard artists, Warren Drummond, noted the process was different to that on films, because there was limited time to complete the work, and because the storyboard artists were often working with different directors for each episode. Most of the sequences storyboarded were action or science fiction sequences.


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: The main recurring setting for the season is the "Bus", a retrofitted Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, that serves as both the transportation and headquarters of the titular team. The "Bus" includes such features as a soundproof interrogation room, a forensics and research lab located on the lower deck, where Fitz and Simmons work, and a cargo hold directly outside the lab where the team parks its SUV and Lola (which stands for Levitating Over Land Automobile), Coulson's prized 1962 Corvette. When designing the "Bus", production designer Gregory Melton began with the basic design and shape of a C-17, before adjusting it to serve the needs of the season. The main interior set does not have many obtrusions, allowing it to be seen completely at either end of the set; this was requested by Joss Whedon, which Melton called "a tall order" given it needed to include the command center, lounge, crew quarters and galley. Construction on the sets for the "Bus"s interior, interrogation room, and Fitz and Simmons' lab, which first appeared in the pilot and throughout the season, began on December 6, 2012.


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: Between the filming of the pilot and the start of the season filming, Melton was able to modify the sets, such as new flooring and equipment to the lab and additional lighting fixtures in the command center. Melton explained that because of the quick turnaround needed for the pilot, some details had to be sacrificed until the series was picked up for the season. Coulson's office set was also constructed, first appearing in "0-8-4", which was envisioned as a crow's nest, giving it Captain Nemo vibes. The lower level of the "Bus" is first seen in "Repairs", which Melton designed to be "a modular area of the plane that is full of pods... [that] we can do anything with", changing based on the episode's needs.


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: According to costume designer Ann Foley, Coulson's suits, which she called "his armor", were more "streamlined" and a different cut than the ones he wore in the films, along with custom shirts and "slicker" ties. James Bond served as an early inspiration for Coulson's suits in the early part of the season, eventually shifting to a slim-cut suit. Additionally, Foley chose to avoid black suits and used solid shirts, another difference from the suits he wore in the films. Conversely to Coulson, Ward always wore black in order to look "leading-man sexy" according to Foley. May's flight suit was based on similar ones in the Air Force and featured "a tiny Y" 3D printed pattern that was the same used for Maria Hill's costume in "The Avengers". For Skye, Foley wanted to set her apart from the other characters and looked to street-style blogs for design ideas. Skye's wardrobe was bright and vibrant at the start of the season, and slowly became more muted as the season went on to reflect her S.H.I.E.L.D. training and the season's darker tone. Foley tried to complement the styles for Fitz and Simmons, while not dressing them alike. Foley liked "to mix feminine elements with some masculine" such as floral prints "and the Peter-Pan collars with a tie and blazer". Simmons is also seen in her lab coat more than Fitz, since she is the biochemist. With Fitz, his costumes have "a little more heritage", wearing vests, cardigans, ties, plaid shirts, and jackets with patches on the elbows.


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: The pilot was produced almost entirely in Los Angeles to accommodate Joss Whedon's busy schedule, occurring from January 22 to February 11, 2013. The season resumed filming on July 17, also being produced in Los Angeles, as well as Culver City, California. Additional filming took place around the world, including in Paris, France, for "Pilot", Peru for "0-8-4", and in Stockholm, Sweden, for "Eye Spy".


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: The stunt coordinator for the season was Tanner Gill. In September 2013, Ming-Na Wen talked about stunts and action scenes on the series, saying "I have great stunt coordinators and choreographers to help me through every step and with the magic of filmmaking and editing, it all brings about her skills, to another level. That has to be very believable ... I think the hardest part is doing the actual stunts, the stunt-fighting. That's a whole other thing. I'm not really punching out the stunt guy, nor are they hitting me, so it's learning this dance, really, within the fight. It's how to pull back, how to take a hit and make it look real.


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: As with many Marvel projects, secrecy was a big issue. For instance, it was a challenge keeping Samuel L. Jackson's cameo in "0-8-4" a surprise due to "this age of tweets and spoilers". The showrunners had been exposed to this while working on "The Avengers", but with their own series they were able to see "all the details that go into keeping everything under lock and key". Filming for the season concluded on April 9, 2014.


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: The visual effects supervisor for the season was Mark Kolpack, with Los Angeles-based visual effects company FuseFX the main visual effects vendor. Kevin Lingenfelser started the season focused on 2D supervising, but took over as lead in-house visual effects supervisor after episode eight from David Altenau. Two separate production management and creative teams were established to work on the show, with most of the episodes being worked on concurrently, either two or three at a time.


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: For the "Bus", Altenau explained that it "has all kinds of S.H.I.E.L.D. technology that is revealed over time as the series progresses. This includes an extra wing and engines in the rear giving the plane the ability to operate vertically for take-offs and landings, and even mid-flight u-turns ... FuseFX was given the opportunity to design the "Bus". The design included many features from the start, such as the ability to do vertical take-offs and landing". FuseFX designed the "Bus", and "Extreme attention was paid when designing the textures and rigging for this asset. Half a dozen 8k maps make up the details on the plane which allows the camera to get right up to the surface of the plane without any loss of detail. A very complex rig controls every aspect of the plane from the landing gear, engine transformation, doors opening, lighting and even the wings have flex controls for the animators to sell the weight of this massive aircraft. When the engines are in vertical flight mode they have several degrees of rotation which gives the jet a lot of maneuvering ability."


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: FuseFX also worked on Lola, Coulson's "vintage 1962 Corvette" which was described as "a classic car and beautiful in its own right, but through digital effects, Fuse has added hovercraft capabilities. When Coulson needs it, the wheel's rotate into a horizontal position, exposing hidden jet engine ducts that create lifting thrust through the rims of the tires, which double as turbo-fan blades. We worked closely with production to help design the mechanism and the look of the hovercraft engines. It's Stark technology designed to be consistent with the period aspect of the car." When the real Corvette is shown transitioning to its hover mode, volumetric dust, exhaust, and particle effects are added. Occasionally, FuseFX was required to use a fully digital model of the car, which matches the real vehicle precisely.


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: In addition to the series' main theme for Coulson, Bear McCreary composed several other themes that he used throughout the season: themes for Mike Peterson and Project: Centipede were introduced in "Pilot", with Peterson's theme becoming "a distorted, metallic, angsty version" when he becomes Deathlok; a theme for the agents as a team was introduced in "0-8-4"; the Skye theme was introduced in "The Asset", which over the season changes from something "sentimental and emotional" into something "really bittersweet... tragic", and heroic; a theme for both Fitz and Simmons together was introduced in "FZZT"; a theme for Victoria Hand and The Hub, which served as the theme for 'Big S.H.I.E.L.D.', as opposed to Coulson's 'little S.H.I.E.L.D.' team, was introduced in "The Hub"; and individual themes for each of member of Coulson's team and "the Clairvoyant", which shifts to John Garrett when he is revealed to be "the Clairvoyant". McCreary felt the themes were not "just for specific characters" but a way to help "follow the narrative thread as the themes are transposed from one person to another". McCreary opted not to reprise any themes from the films during the season, notably composing his own themes for the Tesseract and Asgard, which he acknowledged had already appeared in several films. The soundtrack titled "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Original Soundtrack Album)" featuring music from the first and second seasons, was released by Marvel Music digitally on September 4, 2015, and on CD in October 2015.


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: In June 2013, Clark Gregg explained how the series would tie into the Marvel Cinematic Universe films: "...the exciting part is going to be seeing the way that "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." interacts with the S.H.I.E.L.D. component in "", and the other movies, and whether those movies will then affect our show." Joss Whedon did state that the show would be autonomous from "The Avengers", saying "It's gotta be a show that works for people who haven't seen the Marvel movies. It will please Marvel fans, I think." He reiterated that sentiment in an interview at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival, explaining "It's new characters. It needs to be its own thing. It needs to be adjacent [to "The Avengers"]... What does S.H.I.E.L.D. have that the other superheroes don't? And that, to me, is that they're not superheroes, but they live in that universe. Even though they're a big organization, that [lack of powers] makes them underdogs, and that's interesting to me."


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: Ultimately, the season featured several tie-in episodes with Marvel Cinematic Universe films: the episode "The Well" takes place directly after the events of ""; the episode "T.A.H.I.T.I." introduces the alien race the Kree to the MCU (confirmed as such in the second season), members of which play a significant role in "Guardians of the Galaxy"; and the episodes "End of the Beginning" and "Turn, Turn, Turn" revolve around the events of "Captain America: The Winter Soldier". Due to "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" revealing that Hydra had infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. with sleeper agents, the season sees a retooling for the final six episodes. Regarding the synergy the show has with addressing events from the films, Loeb said "It's an extremely unique experience that doesn't exist anywhere else out there in the entertainment business". The characters simultaneously face Hydra and a power struggle within S.H.I.E.L.D., and trust issues with each other. Jed Whedon added that that Hydra sleeper agents, which the show could not address until after the release of "The Winter Soldier", was an attempt to address the lack of characters from the comics, a complaint fans had throughout the season.


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: Three episodes were screened before their initial air dates: "Pilot" at San Diego Comic-Con International on July 19, 2013, "Eye Spy" at New York Comic Con on October 12, 2013, and "End of the Beginning" at Marvel's PaleyFest panel for the series on March 23, 2014. Beginning with "T.A.H.I.T.I.", all episodes leading up to "The Winter Soldier" crossover were marketed as "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Uprising". On March 18, 2014, ABC aired a one-hour television special titled "" in the place of an "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." episode. The special included promotional footage for then unaired episodes of the season.


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: For the final six episodes, Marvel began the ""Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.": The Art of Level Seven" initiative, in which a different image was released each Thursday before a new episode, depicting a first look at a key event from the upcoming episode. Bell stated that the initiative was a way to tie the series back to its comics roots, and was thought of at the beginning of the season. The production team tried to pair specific artists to the teaser posters based on their previous work and how it connected to the themes and emotion of the intended episode. The art also appeared as variant covers to select titles published by Marvel Comics in August 2014. Jeph Loeb stated, "It's exciting to bring this art to life once more, exclusively at comic book stores, and to give fans a chance to own the "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." art in a different format."


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: The poster for "Turn, Turn, Turn", created by Mike Del Mundo, depicts a maze forming the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo and show title, with a rat inside. The poster for "Providence", created by Paolo Rivera, highlights the rise of Hydra by showing a melded Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D. logo, and depicts the team divided by Coulson, Raina, and Ward. The poster for "The Only Light in the Darkness", created by Pascal Campion, focuses on Coulson and his cellist lover, Audrey, while also hinting at the villain for the episode, Marcus Daniels. The poster for "Nothing Personal", created by Stephanie Hans, shows Skye and Ward with Deathlok above them and the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo in the background. The poster for "Ragtag" was created by Emma Ríos is an amalgamation of Ward's life, Fitz–Simmons in danger, and Skye behind the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo. The poster for "Beginning of the End", created by Phantom City Creative, recalls the first, official poster, but changes the order of the characters, their clothing, and palette. Above them is a broken S.H.I.E.L.D. logo that reveal's Hydra's, which emits light that reflects onto Ward.


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: Along with the premiere in the United States on ABC, the season began airing in Canada on CTV on September 24, 2013. In the United Kingdom, the season debuted three days later on Channel 4, while it began airing on the Seven Network in Australia on October 2, 2013, and in New Zealand on TV2 on February 16, 2014.


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: The season was released on September 9, 2014, on Blu-ray and DVD. Bonus features included behind-the-scenes featurettes, audio commentary, deleted scenes, a blooper reel, as well as the television special, "". On November 20, 2014, the season became available for streaming on Netflix in the United States, and was available until February 28, 2022. It became available on Disney+ in the United States on March 16, 2022, joining other territories where it was already available on the service.


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: As of September 30, 2013, an estimated 22.1 million viewers have watched the premiere episode in the US through live, DVR, encore, and online viewing. In Canada, the premiere saw 2.706 million viewers, the third highest viewership for the week on the network. In the United Kingdom, the episode debuted as the highest rated drama launch of the year, averaging 3.23 million viewers including the +1 channel and recordings viewed the same night, a share of 14.8 percent of people watching TV in the UK at the time. The premiere in Australia was watched by 1.3 million viewers, the top show of the night. In New Zealand, the episode premiered to 326,790 viewers, the fourth highest show of the night, and the most watched show on TV2. By the time the full season was picked up by ABC it ranked as the number one new series of the 2013–14 television season among adults 18–49. The season averaged 8.31 million total viewers, ranking 43rd among network series. It also had an average total 18-49 rating of 3.0, which was 20th.


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports an 88% approval rating with an average score of 7.83/10, based on 72 reviews. The website's consensus reads, ""Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." is sure to please comic book fans, but the strong ensemble and brisk pacing help to make this better-than-average superhero show accessible to non-fanboys as well." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 74 out of 100 based on 33 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews."


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: The early screening of the pilot at San Diego Comic-Con International was met with a very positive reaction from the crowd. Critically, the initial screening of the pilot was met with mostly positive reviews, though "The New York Times" Brooks Barnes noted that "what goes over well at Comic-Con does not necessarily work in the real world," especially on a network with ""Scandal" moms and "Dancing with the Stars" grandparents". "Entertainment Weekly"s initial reactions were that if everything that made the show appealing— its continuity with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, its continuance of "The Avengers" storyline, and Whedon's return to television, were stripped from it, the show would still work. However, they also questioned whether the show was accessible enough to attract a wider audience.


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: Evan Valentine, writing for Collider, divided the season into highs and lows: highs included the "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" crossover, with Valentine noting that "The creators had clearly known this moment was coming ... and did a great job of capitalizing [on] it," as well as other tie-ins with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and he praised Gregg's performance, stating "What made us fall in love with the character from the first "Iron Man" to his death in "The Avengers" is still alive and kicking"; lows of the season included the episodes before the "Winter Soldier" tie-in, with Valentine feeling that the series "became the show that had to stall its developments and character building to make way for the [tie-in]." He also criticized the rest of the main cast, though he did approve of the guest and supporting cast members, and he criticized the series' use of minor comic book characters and concepts, singling out the costume design for Deathlok as "horrid" and not scary. Eric Goldman of IGN gave the season a 7.5 out of 10, calling it "a fun, lighthearted, but fairly disposable piece of entertainment", noting that it improved through the season, especially following the "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" tie-in, and that by the end of the season, the series "was starting to come into its own". Though he found the main cast's performances to all be good, and praised the strong guest and recurring stars, Goldman found the main characterizations to be weak during the first half of the season, and he also criticized the pacing of certain overarching plotlines, noting "the mystery of Coulson's return, Skye's parentage, etc. – moved far too slow, with relatively minor revelations treated as though they were big reveals".


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: Jim Steranko, an artist and writer who worked on the "Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." comic between 1966 and 1968, was critical of the pilot episode, lamenting that "the show had no menace, no tension." For the second episode, Steranko said that it was "too unfocused to be satisfying," but praised Jackson's cameo as Nick Fury as "an electrifying reminder of what the series could and should be." In contrast, Steranko's opinion of some later episodes in the first season were more positive, congratulating the writer and director of "The End of the Beginning" for "finding an entertaining, bravura groove that finally brings the concept to life", and saying of the next episode "I was concerned that last week's bravura transformation was only a fluke, but it was apparent from the opening moments that the exec lineup's new image-and-edit policy was in play." Overall, however, he found season one to be "22 episodes of 'sanctified' plot and character crumbs being salted with terminally-sluggish velocity (into anemic 'standalone' stories)".


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: Both the way the series was affected by the destruction of S.H.I.E.L.D. in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" and the way its characters are depicted rebuilding the organization have been noted by some:


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: Terri Schwartz, writing for Zap2it following the airing of "Nothing Personal", called the series "incredible", stating that it "got off to a rocky start", but that changed once the "Winter Soldier" tie-in took place. Schwartz felt that the season earned many of its early criticisms from having to "bide time" until the crossover, but "Now that it has the freedom to be the series it was always intended to, "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." has turned into a fantastic show. Its connection to Marvel's Cinematic Universe is clear: This is where viewers get to see the fallout of Hydra's S.H.I.E.L.D. infiltration. And the fact that the movie so influenced the show is game-changing in terms of how the mediums of film and television can be interwoven."


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: Merrill Barr, reviewing "Beginning of the End" for "Forbes", reiterated this sentiment, stating that "the series finally stands its ground and stakes its claim as a member of the Marvel Cinematic Universe ... By establishing world changing consequences that don't just affect one MCU franchise, but all of them." He continues saying that "what Marvel's daring to say with this season finale is "everything we do matters, and you need to pay attention to all of it." ... It's been a long journey, and there's no question many viewers' patience wore thin toward the end, but that never stopped Marvel from pushing forward to one of the most entertaining hours of television this season and finally cementing a deserved place on the small screen."


title: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 1)

text: Mary McNamara of the "Los Angeles Times" felt that the series "created a whole new sort of television show: One that must support, and change with, the plot twists of its film family ... never before has television been literally married to film, charged with filling in the back story and creating the connective tissue of an ongoing film franchise." She stated that the "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" crossover "infused "S.H.I.E.L.D." with a new energy, and helped explain, perhaps, why the show took so long to find its footing—in the writers' room at least ... That "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." was able to succeed as a story both independent and ancillary is all but miraculous." She concluded that the series "is now not only a very good show in its own right, it's part of Marvel's multiplatform city-state. It faces a future of perpetual re-invention, and that puts it in the exhilarating first car of television's roller-coaster ride toward possible world domination."


title: French battleship Richelieu

text: Richelieu was a French fast battleship, the lead ship of the . Built as a response to the Italian , the "Richelieu"s were based on their immediate predecessors of the with the same unconventional arrangement that grouped their main battery forward in two quadruple gun turrets. They were scaled up to accommodate a much more powerful main battery of eight guns (compared to the guns of the "Dunkerque"s), with increased armor to protect them from guns of the same caliber. "Richelieu" was laid down in 1935 and was launched in 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II in Europe. As war with Germany became increasingly likely, work on the ship was rushed to prepare her for commissioning in April 1940.


title: French battleship Richelieu

text: Completed just days before the Germans won the Battle of France in June, "Richelieu" fled to Dakar in French West Africa to keep her under French control. There, she came under repeated British attacks that had been intended to either compel the battleship to join the Free French Naval Forces or sink her; these included during Operation Catapult in July 1940 and the Battle of Dakar in September. Damaged in both attacks, the ship was slowly repaired before eventually being turned over to Free French control after the Allied invasion of North Africa in November 1942. After being sent to the United States for repairs and an extensive modernization, the ship served with the British Home Fleet in early 1944 before being deployed to the Eastern Fleet for operations against the Japanese in the Indian Ocean. These included several bombardment operations and in May 1945 she was present during the Battle of the Malacca Strait, though she was too far away to engage the Japanese ships before they were sunk.


title: French battleship Richelieu

text: "Richelieu" was part of the force that liberated Singapore after the Japanese surrender in September, and she later operated in French Indochina as part of the initial effort to restore French colonial rule. Recalled to France in December 1945, she was repaired and modernized slightly in 1946. The ship saw relatively limited training in the immediate postwar years and, in 1952, she was removed from active service for use as a gunnery training ship. In 1956, she was placed in reserve and was thereafter used as a stationary training vessel and barracks ship until 1967, when the French Navy decided to discard her. She was sold for scrap in 1968, and broken up in Italy from 1968 to 1969.


title: French battleship Richelieu

text: When in 1934 Italy announced that it would begin building two s armed with guns, the French Navy immediately began preparations to counter them. The small s that had been ordered provided the template for the next French battleship design, but it needed to be scaled up to match the new Italian vessels, both in terms of offensive and defensive characteristics. The design staff considered 380 and guns, but the latter could not be incorporated in a design that remained within the limit imposed by the Washington Naval Treaty and was quickly discarded. The "Dunkerque"s carried their armament in two quadruple gun turrets arrayed in a superfiring pair forward of the superstructure, and the designers experimented with other arrangements, including combinations of triple and twin turrets, but the need to minimize the length of the armor belt (and thus its weight) necessitated the "Dunkerque" layout.


title: French battleship Richelieu

text: "Richelieu" displaced standard and fully loaded, with an overall length of , a beam of and a maximum draft of . She was powered by four Parsons geared steam turbines and six oil-fired Sural water-tube boilers, which developed a total of and yielded a maximum speed of . At a cruising speed of , the ship could steam for . Her crew numbered 1,569 officers and men. The ship carried four Loire 130 seaplanes on the quarterdeck, and the aircraft facilities consisted of a steam catapult and a crane to handle the floatplanes.


title: French battleship Richelieu

text: She was armed with eight 380 mm/45 Modèle (Mle) 1935 guns arranged in two quadruple gun turrets, both of which were placed in a superfiring pair forward of the superstructure. Her secondary armament consisted of nine /55 Mle 1930 guns mounted in three triple turrets, arranged on the rear superstructure. Heavy anti-aircraft (AA) defense consisted of twelve /45 Mle 1930 anti-aircraft guns in twin turrets. Close range anti-aircraft defense was provided by a battery of eight guns in twin mounts and twenty machine guns in four quadruple and two twin mounts. The ship's belt armor was thick amidships, and the main battery turrets were protected by of armor plate on the faces. The main armored deck was thick, and the conning tower had thick sides.


title: French battleship Richelieu

text: The contract for "Richelieu" was awarded to the Arsenal de Brest on 31 August 1935, and the keel for the new ship was laid down on 22 October in the No. 4 dock that had recently built . The slipway was not long enough to accommodate the entire length of the new battleship, and so the hull had to be built in pieces. The main section of the hull, which amounted to , was built on the slipway, while a length of the bow and an length of her stern were built elsewhere and attached after the rest of the ship was launched on 17 January 1939. The French decision to lay down "Richelieu" in 1935 put the country in violation of the Washington Treaty, which was to expire on 31 December 1936, as the combined tonnage of the two "Dunkerque"s and "Richelieu" exceeded the that had been allotted to France during the moratorium on new battleship construction. France used the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, which Britain had unilaterally signed with Germany in June 1935 to dismiss British objections to the new ship, though they nevertheless slowed construction of "Richelieu" to ease British concerns. Work was also slowed by strikes in the shipyards for better pay and working conditions.


title: French battleship Richelieu

text: By the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, the hull had been assembled; the start of the war led the naval command to decide to slow work on other, less complete vessels to focus efforts on "Richelieu" and her sister ship . The ship began initial testing on 15 October while still fitting-out in an effort to rush the ship into service; the same day, the ship's first commander, "Capitaine de vaisseau" ("CV"—Ship-of-the-line captain) Marzin came aboard. Engine testing began on 14 January 1940, and a week later her main battery was completed when the last barrel was installed. Further engine testing was carried out between 31 March and 7 April; during this period, she was commissioned on 1 April. Formal acceptance trials began on 14 April. Repair work was conducted in Brest from 19 to 27 May, and fire control equipment for the main and secondary batteries were installed. "Richelieu" conducted full-power trials on 13 June, reaching from , exceeding her design performance. Test firings of the guns were conducted on 13 and 14 June. Work on the ship was completed on 15 June 1940, days before France surrendered to Germany after the Battle of France.


title: French battleship Richelieu

text: With German troops advancing across France by mid-June, the Navy decided to evacuate "Richelieu" to Dakar in French West Africa; while earlier plans had been to send the fleet to British ports to continue the war, when the possibility of a negotiated armistice arose, the government decided that the fleet would be a useful bargaining chip. As a result, vessels should be preserved under French control, away from German occupation. At 06:45, the ship took on a load of ammunition and fuel, though she received only 198 quarter charges of propellant for her main battery, which amounted to powder sufficient for 49 shots. Material that had not yet been installed was also hastily loaded onto the ship, to be fitted once "Richelieu" reached the safety of Dakar. She also took aboard gold reserves from the Bank of France and 250 cadets from the "École Navale" (Naval Academy). There was insufficient time to allow the full complement to assemble and board the ship, and at 04:00 the next morning, "Richelieu" got underway while German troops approached Brest. "Richelieu" steamed in company with the destroyers and while German aircraft made several ineffective attacks against the ships. The battleship's anti-aircraft guns returned fire without success. Initially cruising at a speed of , boiler trouble forced the ships to decrease speed to . The motors for her rudder also repeatedly broke down on the voyage, though the crew was able to repair them. While cruising off Casablanca, French Morocco at 17:00 on 20 June, the torpedo boats were detached to refuel, their place being taken by the new destroyer . The two vessels then proceeded on to Dakar, where they arrived at 17:44 on 23 June.


title: French battleship Richelieu

text: On arriving in Dakar, an uneasy situation confronted "Richelieu" while armistice negotiations were still underway. The commander of French naval forces in the region, "Contre-amiral" ("CA"—Rear Admiral) Plançon and the governor-general of French West Africa, , were inclined to remain in the war against Germany. Also, significant British naval units were in the area, including the aircraft carrier moored in Dakar and the British South Atlantic Squadron, which was nearby. At the same time, "Richelieu" had used half of her fuel to escape Brest, and she could perform little sustained firing of her main or secondary guns. Admiral François Darlan, the Chief of Staff of the French Navy, sent a telegraph on the night of 23–24 June to warn Marzin that the British might attack the vessel to neutralize it in the event of a French surrender, and ordered him to begin preparations to scuttle the ship if the need arose. Meanwhile, on 23 June, the British heavy cruiser departed Freetown to observe "Richelieu"s activities in Dakar.


title: French battleship Richelieu

text: On 25 June, Marzin received word that the French government had signed the Armistice with Germany. Darlan instructed him that the ship was to remain under French control, and if that proved to be impossible, he was to scuttle the ship or attempt to escape to the then-neutral United States. Marzin decided that, given the threat of British warships in the area, the best course of action was to try to escape to Casablanca and join the French fleet there, and so at 14:30 "Richelieu" got underway in company with "Fleuret". "Hermes" raised anchor as well and began to follow "Richelieu" with her Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers on her flight deck, but the coastal artillery trained their guns on the ship, convincing "Hermes" commander to return to port. "Dorsetshire" nevertheless shadowed "Richelieu" while she was at sea. The next morning, Darlan, who feared that Marzin was trying to defect to the Free French forces, ordered him to return to Dakar. Marzin complied and turned the ships back to port, but while on the way, he received amended orders instructing him to wait some north of Cape Verde to escort the 1st Division of Armed Merchant Cruisers to Dakar, as they were carrying another load of gold reserves from the Bank of France. "Richelieu" failed to make contact at the prescribed rendezvous point, and since she had not embarked any of her floatplanes before fleeing Brest, she could not conduct an aerial search. Marzin instead returned to Dakar on 28 June; the convoy arrived, having been significantly delayed, on 4 July.


title: French battleship Richelieu

text: After returning to port, work began to prepare the ship for action as quickly as possible. Marzin ordered that a stockpile of 330 mm propellant charges that had been stocked for the battleship before France's surrender to be converted into charges that were usable by "Richelieu". The secondary guns were readied for action ten days later, but they lacked a director capable of tracking aerial targets, so they could be used against surface ships only. Under the terms of the armistice, "Richelieu" was to be returned to Toulon, where she would be demobilized, though the Germans later decided against permitting the move, as they feared the British would try to seize the ship during the passage through the Strait of Gibraltar; the British, meanwhile, were under the mistaken impression that the Germans sought to seize the French fleet for their own use. This led to Operation Catapult, a series of attacks on French warships to neutralize vessels that would not defect to the Free French.


title: French battleship Richelieu

text: The component of Catapult that targeted "Richelieu" consisted of the carrier "Hermes", which joined the cruisers and "Dorsetshire" off Dakar. On 4 July, the day after the British had attacked Mers-el-Kébir, Plançon ordered the submarines and to attack "Dorsetshire" while it cruised off the port. He also instructed the coastal batteries to open fire if she closed to within , though "Dorsetshire" remained at a distance. Marzin moved "Richelieu" to a position near the island of Gorée, pointed south so that the ship's main battery could aim at any vessels that approached Dakar. The British had intended to send Force H to Dakar after the attack on Mers-el-Kébir, but the need to return to destroy "Dunkerque" forced the British to resort to "Hermes"; on 7 July, the sloop was sent to contact Plançon and issue the ultimatum to either surrender his ship to British control or be sunk.


title: French battleship Richelieu

text: Marzin prepared his ship to sortie the next morning; he intended to use the eight rounds loaded in his main guns to attack "Hermes". Other forces in Dakar were put on alert and "Le Héros" again sortied to assist in the attack. While the French preparations were ongoing, the British sent a motorboat from "Milford" to drop four depth charges under "Richelieu"s stern to disable her screws, though this attempt failed. At 04:15, a group of Swordfish launched from "Hermes" as "Richelieu" was about to get underway. One of their torpedoes struck the ship aft on the starboard side and tore a hole that was between the propeller shafts. The resulting shock disabled many of the ship's systems. Two of her fire control directors were knocked off their tracks, the starboard propeller shafts were bent, and the blast caused significant flooding. Damage control teams pumped fuel out of the bunkers to counteract the loss of buoyancy aft and the ship was towed into port for repairs. Anti-torpedo nets were set up around the vessel, which had taken on some of water and at low tide rested on the harbor bottom.


title: French battleship Richelieu

text: Later that afternoon, tankers came alongside and began pumping oil out of the ship's bunkers to reduce her draft, but water continued to leak into the hull through the cable tunnels. Pumps attached to the ship helped to control the flooding, but the hoses repeatedly pulled loose as "Richelieu" rose and fell with the waves. To further complicate the effort to repair the ship, Dakar lacked a dry dock sufficient to accommodate "Richelieu"; the battleship could not simply be drained and plated over. Instead, damaged bulkheads had to be patched and pumped out individually; by 28 August, some of water remained aboard the ship. Heavy use of the pumps caused frequent breakdowns, which further slowed work. In his report on the attack and subsequent repairs, Marzin criticized faulty design and construction practices that hindered damage control efforts, including insufficient pumping equipment, poor quality control for the welding of bulkheads, and a failure to ensure that critical components like the turret trunks were watertight.


title: French battleship Richelieu

text: While work to control and reverse the flooding was ongoing, other repairs were necessary to return the ship to operational status. The fire-control directors needed to be re-seated in their tracks, wiring that had been damaged by flooding or leaking fuel oil had to be replaced, and several of the electrical generators, which had been badly shaken by the blast, needed to be rebuilt. Given the limited ability to repair the damage to the ship, Marzin focused efforts on ensuring that the main and secondary batteries could be effectively used, even if the ship could only be employed as a static floating battery against an expected second attack from British forces. "Amiral" (Admiral) Jean de Laborde flew to Dakar to conduct an inspection and help to organize the defenses. As part of these preparations, both Plançon and Cayla, who were suspected of being pro-British, were removed from their posts, with Plançon's place taken by "CA" Platon and then "CA" Landriau.


title: French battleship Richelieu

text: Workers in the local shipyard scavenged metal from other ships in the harbor to fabricate an square patch to cover the torpedo hole, which was planned to be installed by 10 September. This would allow the rear magazines for the 152 mm and 37 mm guns to be drained. At the same time, the shipyard began building a steel cofferdam around the ship that was to have been completed by late October, which would allow the rest of the hull to be pumped dry. With the hull pumped out, permanent repairs were to have been completed by January 1941. While this work was being carried out, the crew cleaned and painted the ship and continued to work on readying the armament. A total of 150 complete charges for the main battery were created by remanufacturing the stockpile intended for "Strasbourg". Parts of the crew were dispersed for other tasks: 106 were sent to man the armed merchant cruisers in the harbor, whose reservist crews had to be demobilized, and the 64-man crew of the forward gun turret were sent to man the coastal battery at Cap Manuel. After another 132 reservists from "Richelieu" were demobilized, a total of 1,039 officers and men were left aboard the ship. The 100-, 37-, and 13.2 mm guns were kept manned continuously given the threat of further British air attacks.


title: French battleship Richelieu

text: While repairs were being carried out in August, the British began preparations for another attack, code-named Operation Menace. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill sought to use a contingent of Free French forces led by Charles de Gaulle to invade the colony and seize the ship for use against Germany. By late August, a convoy had been assembled with five ships carrying weapons and supplies got underway, later rendezvousing with a second convoy of six troop ships carrying some 2,400 Free French soldiers and 4,270 British soldiers. The naval support force consisted of the aircraft carrier and the battleships and , along with four cruisers and numerous other warships. The plan called for de Gaulle to use his French forces to attempt to secure the colony, only calling on British support if the Vichy forces resisted him. At the same time, several French colonies in Africa defected to Free France, prompting the Vichy government to secure authorization from the German Armistice Commission to send several light cruisers and destroyers to reinforce their holdings in Africa, designated Force Y. Owing to the risk of encountering British vessels on the passage, the destroyers were temporarily left in Casablanca while the three cruisers, carrying supplies and additional men to crew the coastal batteries, raced south at high speed. They reached Dakar on 14 September, and after disembarking the men and supplies, continued on south to French Equatorial Africa (in what is now present-day Gabon).