title: Torpedo bomber

text: The United States Navy's standard torpedo bomber in 1942 was the Douglas TBD Devastator, first flown in 1935 and embarked on carriers of the Pacific Fleet in 1937. On 7 May 1942, Devastators sank the Japanese aircraft carrier "Shōhō" in the Battle of the Coral Sea, but failed to sink the aircraft carrier "Shōkaku" the next day.


title: Torpedo bomber

text: At the Battle of Midway on 4 June 1942, 41 Devastators launched from three American carriers failed to score a single torpedo hit, and only six aircraft returned, as the rest fell to the Mitsubishi A6M Zero combat air patrols and ships' anti-aircraft fire. The attacks had been poorly coordinated, but the Devastator sorties were credited with pulling the defending A6M Zeros out of position, as well as preventing the Japanese carriers from launching their aircraft, so three of the four carriers were caught with their hangar decks full of fueled and armed planes when the American dive bombers struck by surprise. Nonetheless, the Devastator was immediately withdrawn from front-line service. The successor to the Devastator, the Grumman TBF Avenger, arrived too late at Pearl Harbor to be loaded onto carriers for the Battle of Midway. However, six were flown from Midway Island. They fared no better, with five lost without a single hit.


title: Torpedo bomber

text: Avengers became more successful as tactics improved and crews became more skilled. On 24 August 1942, 24 Avengers sank the light carrier "Ryūjō" at the Battle of the Eastern Solomons. At Guadalcanal, Avengers from the Navy and Marine Corps helped to finish off the battleship "Hiei", which had lost steering after being damaged the prior night.


title: Torpedo bomber

text: Beauforts also had more success when they moved to Malta to attack Italian warships and transport. Flying Officer Arthur Aldridge discovered a convoy guarded by the heavy cruiser "Trento" early on 14 June 1942 some east of Malta. As in the attack on "Lützow", the Beaufort was mistaken for a Junkers Ju 88, and Aldridge hit "Trento" with his torpedo; the ship was eventually finished off by the submarine , which was close by.


title: Torpedo bomber

text: At the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea, with little or no Japanese air cover opposing them, US carrier aircraft concentrated most of their attacks against "Musashi", sinking her with about 19 torpedoes that caused heavy flooding which disabled her engineering (dive bombers also scored around 17 bomb hits), while an aerial torpedo crippled the heavy cruiser Myōkō, which was never repaired for the remainder of the war.


title: Torpedo bomber

text: Action continued in the Pacific, where the last notable torpedo bomber attack took place on 7 April 1945. Avengers from "Yorktown" were searching between Okinawa and Honshu for the Japanese battleship "Yamato", which was escorted by cruisers and destroyers. Her mission was to run aground on Okinawa to provide floating heavy artillery for the defending troops in the expected Allied seaborne invasion. Her 18.1 inch guns could have created havoc among frail landing craft. "Yamato" and her sister the "Musashi" were the largest, most powerful battleships in the world. The squadron led by Lieutenant Tom Stetson found the cruiser, which was the prime target, already sinking, so six planes were detached to attack the "Yamato" instead. One in which Frederick E. Wicklund was the tail gunner and radar/radio operator became detached from the formation whilst climbing in heavy cloud cover. The pilot, Lieutenant Grady Jean, asked each crewman in turn if they wished to make a solo attack, which was likely to prove suicidal. The crew referred the decision to the skipper, who deftly dodged anti-aircraft fire and 18-inch shell splashes from the "Yamato"s big guns to release their torpedo. Wicklund had recalled from a briefing that the "Yamato" had torpedo blisters to a depth of , so he crawled back in the fuselage to reset the torpedo's running depth from the preset for the cruiser to . He later explained that he heard no command to do this and doubted whether the other five planes had done so. In their case, their torpedoes would have exploded harmlessly against the blisters. A crewman photographed the explosion, in which debris rose to their altitude of . Possibly a torpedo had hit the fuel storage. The "Yamato" rolled over and sank, with the loss of 90 percent of the crew. The "Yorktown" lost ten planes and twelve aircrew. All pilots involved in the attack were awarded the Navy Medal and every crewman the Distinguished Flying Cross.


title: Torpedo bomber

text: The torpedoes in use during the early 20th century travelled under water at about – a speed easily matched by destroyers and even fast battleships which could make . Consequently, a skillful captain could often evade torpedoes. For instance, when came under attack on 10 December 1941, she avoided 19 torpedoes, before Japanese aircraft attacked simultaneously from both forward quarters.


title: Torpedo bomber

text: Caltech developed the "Holy Moses" High Velocity Aircraft Rocket, with a warhead for the US Navy. It was rushed to Europe for use on D-Day and later used by Navy aircraft in the Pacific.


title: Torpedo bomber

text: By the beginning of the Second World War, aircraft technology had increased to the extent that specialised torpedo bombers were no longer necessary.


title: Torpedo bomber

text: Multi-role designs were often adapted from either: single-engined, carrier-based dive-bombers like the Aichi B7A "Ryusei", Curtiss SB2C Helldiver and Fairey Barracuda, or; land-based twin-engined light bombers/attack aircraft, such as the Bristol Beaufighter, Douglas A-20C (Boston IIIA), Junkers Ju 88, and Tupolev Tu-2.


title: Torpedo bomber

text: As the war progressed, single-seat designs also emerged – omitting the roles of gunner, bombardier/bomb-aimer and/or observer. This configuration was favoured by the US Navy, in particular, and included the Martin AM Mauler and Douglas A-1 Skyraider, both of which could carry up to three torpedoes.


title: Torpedo bomber

text: Another concept, the torpedo fighter, also known as the strike fighter, was intended to also have air superiority capabilities – when it was not carrying or had dropped its torpedo. However, the radically differing requirements of these two roles created design constraints that made it difficult for a single design to excel at both. While some torpedo fighters were put into production, such as the Fiat G.55S and Blackburn Firebrand, they seldom launched torpedoes at enemy ships.


title: Torpedo bomber

text: From 1946, the US Navy officially discarded its separate designations for dive and torpedo bombers, and introduced a single "Attack" designation, similar to that already used by the USAAF. Conversely, the naval air services of the UK and other Commonwealth countries, persisted with specialised torpedo bombers such as the Grumman Avenger until the early 1960s.


title: Torpedo bomber

text: While the importance of air-launched torpedoes declined, relative to antiship missiles, during the Cold War and subsequently, they were retained by many air services and are now generally delivered by anti-submarine warfare and maritime patrol aircraft.


title: Torpedo bomber

text: One crucial limitation of a torpedo bomber was that it had to fly a long, straight course at a constant altitude of toward the target ship before launching its torpedo. Torpedoes were very complicated weapons and were prone to damage when landing on water, especially on a wave; they were ideally aimed at the bottom of a wave, but this was difficult to achieve in practice.


title: Torpedo bomber

text: During a torpedo run, the attacking aircraft were easy targets for defending combat air patrol fighters. Furthermore, torpedo planes were also highly vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire.


title: Torpedo bomber

text: In the 1930s, the Imperial Japanese Navy developed the best way for torpedo bombers to achieve a hit. They used an "anvil attack", in which two groups of torpedo planes approached the target ship's bow from behind at an angle of about 45 degrees, one on each side of the ship. The torpedoes were to be launched at the same distance from the ship; this would have ensured a hit no matter where the ship tried to maneuver. In practice, this kind of attack was difficult to coordinate and therefore extremely rare. Usually, combat air patrols and anti-aircraft fire quickly broke up approaching plane formations, forcing each aircraft to attack on its own. At Pearl Harbor, the ships were lined up and basically stationary, so the first attack wave of 40 torpedo bombers armed with Type 91 torpedoes, out of 183 planes, were able to hit the ships broadside, as the defenders were caught by surprise.


title: Torpedo bomber

text: Torpedo bombers were best used as part of a coordinated attack with other types of aircraft. For instance, during the attack on the battleship "Yamato", fighter planes strafed the ship with machine guns to suppress its anti-aircraft gun fire, while dive bombers tried to cause havoc and inflict topside damage, thus leaving the torpedo bombers unmolested in their attack runs.


title: Torpedo bomber

text: However, if the attackers failed to achieve air superiority or surprise, torpedo bombers suffered heavy losses, regardless of whether the type was obsolete or not. This is best exemplified at the Battle of Midway, where Air Group Eight's dive bombers missed the Japanese carriers. Torpedo Squadron 8 (VT-8, from "Hornet"), led by Lieutenant Commander John C. Waldron, sighted the enemy carriers and attacked without any coordination with dive bombers or fighter cover. Without fighter escort, every TBD Devastator of VT-8 was shot down without inflicting any damage, with Ensign George H. Gay, Jr. being the only survivor. VT-8 was followed by Torpedo Squadron 6 (VT-6, from "Enterprise"). VT-6 met nearly the same fate, with no hits to show for its effort. Torpedo Squadron 3 (from "Yorktown") then followed the same routine, despite VT-3 having six Grumman F4F Wildcat fighter escorts. The Japanese combat air patrol, flying the much faster Mitsubishi A6M2 "Zeros", made short work of the unescorted, slow, under-armed TBD torpedo bombers. A few TBDs managed get within a few ship-lengths range of their targets before dropping their torpedoes.


title: Torpedo bomber

text: At the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands in 1942, the Nakajima B5N "Kate", despite being in service since 1935, played a key role in sinking USS "Hornet", while the new Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers failed to hit a fleet carrier.


title: Torpedo bomber

text: When the targets were ships able to maneuver at high speed and hence much harder to hit, torpedoes proved less effective, except in cases when the crews launching them were especially well trained. Still, even a single torpedo hit on an enemy warship could cripple it decisively, especially in the case of vessels without an armored belt (cruisers and aircraft carriers often had torpedo blisters, but these were not as extensive as those of battleships). Even on heavily armored battleships, there was nothing to protect the rudder and propellers at the stern, as was demonstrated in the cases of the "Bismarck" and "Prince of Wales" and "Repulse", and few had their protective belt extend to the extremities, and a hole made in the bow could be forced wider from the pressure of the water which could buckle and crush unarmored internal bulkheads, which worked against "Yamato".


title: Gang Related

text: Gang Related, alternatively known as Criminal Intent, is a 1997 American action crime thriller film written and directed by Jim Kouf starring James Belushi, Tupac Shakur, Dennis Quaid, Lela Rochon, David Paymer and James Earl Jones. The film revolves around two corrupt cops (Belushi and Shakur) who attempt to frame a homeless man (Quaid) for the murder of an undercover DEA agent that they themselves had actually killed.


title: Gang Related

text: The film was shot over a period of a month in August 1996 and wrapped filming just two weeks before Tupac Shakur’s death on September 13, 1996. It marked his final film appearance and was released a year after his death.


title: Gang Related

text: Vice squad detectives Frank Divinci and Jake Rodriguez set up narcotics runner Lionel Hudd in a bogus drug trafficking deal; they execute Hudd and pocket his money. Having recovered the cocaine Hudd purchased from them, the detectives return that to the evidence room at their headquarters. When Divinci and Rodriguez find out Hudd was actually a "deep cover" DEA agent — because Hudd's partner, Richard Simms, drops by their precinct for help sniffing out the killers — they resolve to pin the murder on any likely suspect they can find.


title: Gang Related

text: The detectives finally frame a homeless drunk named "Joe Doe", by tricking him into confessing to the crime. Needing a witness, Divinci and Rodriguez press stripper Cynthia Webb — with whom Divinci has been cheating on his wife — into picking Joe out of a police lineup. It turns out Joe is actually William Dane McCall, a physician hailing from a wealthy family, who has been missing and presumed dead for years; the family's lawyer, Arthur Baylor, is brought in to defend him. At McCall's trial, he is promptly shown to be innocent. The case falls apart and McCall is released.


title: Gang Related

text: Rodriguez records a conversation with Divinci in which the latter admits to Hudd's killing and McCall's setup. In response, Divinci forces Rodriguez out of the car at gunpoint. Returning to his apartment, Rodriguez is met by his bookie Vic, and by Vic's bodyguard, "Mr. Cutlass Supreme". They murder Rodriguez over an outstanding gambling debt. Investigating Rodriguez's death, the police find the damaged tape which contains Divinci's confession. Baylor questions Webb about Hudd's murder, playing back the plan by Divinci to kill her as a loose end. Webb tells Baylor everything she knows about Divinci's crimes. Divinci hides out in Webb's apartment and shoots her for betraying him. Webb is rushed to the hospital; her gurney is wheeled past "Doctor" McCall. Divinci arranges for a limousine ride to the airport. The driver is revealed to be recently-acquitted serial killer Clyde David Dunner, who murders Divinci and abandons the limousine in an alley.


title: Gang Related

text: "Gang Related" opened in North America on October 8, 1997 in 1,260 theaters. It made $2,443,237 on its opening weekend with an average of $1,939 per theater, ranking at No. 10 at the box office. The film ended up earning $5,906,773. The film received mixed reviews, and has the rating of 53% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on seventeen reviews, with an average rating of 5.4 out of 10. On Metacritic — which assigns a weighted mean score — the film has a score of 49 out of 100 based on 28 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Gang Related

text: The film was released in the United Kingdom on August 14, 1998, and opened on #11. Roger Ebert appraised the film more positively in an episode of "At the Movies":


title: Gang Related

text: About the movie's reception and box office results, Jim Belushi said: "Right around that time, when that movie came out, there was a gang related shooting at a movie theater in Los Angeles. That just ruined the opening of that movie. Everyone was afraid to go to the movie theatre, especially with the title Gang Related. Nobody went. Regardless, it’s become kind of a cult film since its release."


title: Primate (bishop)

text: Primate () is a title or rank bestowed on some important archbishops in certain Christian churches. Depending on the particular tradition, it can denote either jurisdictional authority (title of authority) or (usually) ceremonial precedence (title of honour).


title: Primate (bishop)

text: In the Western Church, a primate is an archbishop—or, rarely, a suffragan or exempt bishop—of a specific (mostly metropolitan) episcopal see (called a "primatial see") who has precedence over the bishoprics of one or more ecclesiastical provinces of a particular historical, political or cultural area. Historically, primates of particular sees were granted privileges including the authority to call and preside at national synods, jurisdiction to hear appeals from metropolitan tribunals, the right to crown the sovereign of the nation, and presiding at the investiture (installation) of archbishops in their sees.


title: Primate (bishop)

text: The office is generally found only in older Catholic countries, and is now purely honorific, enjoying no effective powers under canon law—except for the archbishop of Esztergom (Gran) in Hungary. Thus, e.g., the primate of Poland holds no jurisdictional authority over other Polish bishops or their dioceses, but is "durante munere" a member of the standing committee of the episcopal conference and has honorary precedence among Polish bishops (e.g., in liturgical ceremonies). The Holy See has also granted Polish primates the privilege of wearing cardinal's crimson attire, except for the skullcap and biretta, even if they have not been made cardinals.


title: Primate (bishop)

text: Where the title of primate exists, it may be vested in one of the oldest archdioceses in a country, often based in a city other than the present capital, but which was the capital when the country was first Christianized. The city may no longer have the prominence it had when the title was granted. The political area over which primacy was originally granted may no longer exist: for example, the Archbishop of Toledo was designated "Primate of the Visigothic Kingdom", and the Archbishop of Lyon is the "Primate of the Gauls".


title: Primate (bishop)

text: Some of the leadership functions once exercised by Primates, specifically presiding at meetings of the bishops of a nation or region, are now exercised by the president of the conference of bishops: "The president of the Conference or, when he is lawfully impeded, the vice-president, presides not only over the general meetings of the Conference but also over the permanent committee." The president is generally elected by the conference, but by exception the President of the Italian Episcopal Conference is appointed by the Pope, and the Irish Catholic Bishops' Conference has the Primate of All Ireland as President and the Primate of Ireland as Vice-President. Other former functions of primates, such as hearing appeals from metropolitan tribunals, were reserved to the Holy See by the early 20th century. Soon after, by the norm of the Code of Canon Law of 1917, confirmed in the 1983 Code, the tribunal of second instance for appeals from a metropolitan tribunal is "the tribunal which the metropolitan has designated in a stable manner with the approval of the Apostolic See".


title: Primate (bishop)

text: The Holy See has continued in modern times to grant the title of Primate. With the papal decree "Sollicitae Romanis Pontificibus" of 24 January 1956 it granted the title of Primate of Canada to the Archbishop of Quebec. As stated above, this is merely an honorary title involving no additional power.


title: Primate (bishop)

text: A right of precedence over other bishops and similar privileges can be granted even to a bishop who is not a Primate. Thus, in 1858, the Holy See granted the Archbishop of Baltimore precedence in meetings of the United States bishops. The Archbishop of Westminster has not been granted the title of Primate of England and Wales, which is sometimes applied to him, but his position has been described as that of "Chief Metropolitan" and as "similar to" that of the Archbishop of Canterbury.


title: Primate (bishop)

text: The title of Primate is sometimes applied loosely to the Archbishop of a country's capital, as in the case of the Archbishops of Seoul in South Korea and of Edinburgh in Scotland. Functions can sometimes be exercised in practice ("de facto"), as by a "de facto" government, without having been granted by law; but since "Primate" is today a title, not a function, there is no such thing as a ""de facto"" primate.


title: Primate (bishop)

text: The pre-reformation Metropolitan Archbishop of Nidaros was sometimes referred to as Primate of Norway, even though it is unlikely that this title ever was officially granted to him by the Holy See.


title: Primate (bishop)

text: In the modern confederation of the Benedictine Order, all the Black Monks of St. Benedict were united under the presidency of an Abbot Primate (Leo XIII, "Summum semper", 12 July 1893); but the unification, fraternal in its nature, brought no modification to the abbatial dignity, and the various congregations preserved their autonomy intact. The loose structure of the Benedictine Confederation is claimed to have made Pope Leo XIII exclaim that the Benedictines were "ordo sine ordine" ("an order without order"). The powers of the Abbot Primate are specified, and his position defined, in a decree of the Sacred Congregation of Bishops and Regulars dated 16 September 1893. The primacy is attached to the global Benedictine Confederation whose Primate resides at Sant'Anselmo in Rome. He takes precedence of all other abbots, is empowered to pronounce on all doubtful matters of discipline, to settle difficulties arising between monasteries, to hold a canonical visitation, if necessary, in any congregation of the order, and to exercise a general supervision for the regular observance of monastic discipline. The Primatial powers are only vested in the Abbot Primate to act by virtue of the proper law of its autonomous Benedictine congregation, which at the present is minimal to none. However, certain branches of the Benedictine Order seem to have lost their original autonomy to some extent.


title: Primate (bishop)

text: In a similar way the Confederation of Canons Regular of St. Augustine, elects an Abbot Primate as figurehead of the Confederation and indeed the whole Canonical Order. The Abbots and Superiors General of the nine congregations of confederated congregations of Canons Regular elect a new Abbot Primate for a term of office lasting six years. The Current Abbot Primate is Rt Rev. Fr Jean-Michel Girard, CRB, Abbot General of the Canons Regular of the Grand St Bernard.


title: Primate (bishop)

text: Anglican usage styles the bishop who heads an independent church as its "primate", though commonly they hold some other title (e.g. archbishop, presiding bishop, or moderator). The primates' authority within their churches varies considerably: some churches give the primate some executive authority, while in others they may do no more than preside over church councils and represent the church ceremonially.


title: Primate (bishop)

text: In the context of the Anglican Communion Primates' Meeting, the chief bishop of each of the thirty-nine churches (also known as provinces) that compose the Anglican Communion acts as its primate, though this title may not necessarily be used within their own provinces. Thus the United Churches of Bangladesh, of North India, of Pakistan and of South India, which are united with other originally non-Anglican churches, are represented at the meetings by their moderators.


title: Primate (bishop)

text: In both the Church of England and the Church of Ireland, two bishops have the title of primate: the archbishops of Canterbury and York in England and of Armagh and Dublin in Ireland. Only the bishop of the senior primatial see of each of these two churches participates in the meetings.


title: Primate (bishop)

text: The Archbishop of Canterbury, who is considered "primus inter pares" of all the participants, convokes the meetings and issues the invitations.


title: Primate (bishop)

text: Primates and archbishops are styled "The Most Reverend". All other bishops are styled "The Right Reverend".


title: Primate (bishop)

text: Historically, the primatial title in Western Christianity corresponded to the title and office of supra-metropolitan exarch in Eastern Christianity. Such exarchs, or primates, were archbishops of Ephesus (for the Diocese of Asia), Heraclea (for the Diocese of Thrace) and Caesarea (for the Diocese of Pontus).


title: Clifford the Big Red Dog (2019 TV series)

text: Clifford the Big Red Dog is an animated children's television series which is a reboot to the book series of the same name written by Norman Bridwell, and the 2000 original series created by Deborah Forte and produced by Mike Young Productions, and is the third series in the franchise after the prequel spin-off "Clifford's Puppy Days," which was also produced by Mike Young Productions.


text: It was released on December 6, 2019, on Amazon Prime Video, and premiered a day later on PBS Kids. Unlike the original TV series, the reboot has not yet aired in the UK, and it is unknown whether or not it will be dubbed for the British audiences if it ever premieres in the UK. The second part of season 1 was released on February 7, 2020. The executive producers of the show include Jennifer Oxley, best known for co-creating "Peg + Cat", and Vince Commisso of 9 Story Media Group.


text: The series revolves around Emily Elizabeth Howard, a young girl who owns Clifford, a big red dog who can speak to her for the first time since the late 1980s-early 1990s direct-to-video series. Together the two friends explore their island home, Birdwell Island, and embark on adventures.


text: A reboot of "Clifford the Big Red Dog" was announced on May 16, 2018, by Scholastic, and released in late 2019. Scholastic and 100 Chickens Productions in the United States, and 9 Story Media Group in Canada produce the series.


text: In preparing for the role of the voice of Clifford, Adam Sanders stated that he watched episodes of the 2000s television series and studied John Ritter's performance as Clifford, stating that Ritter portrayed the character as very optimistic, very youthful and compassionate.


text: "Clifford the Big Red Dog" received generally mixed reviews from critics, with parents praising it for its songs, morals, and format; but older fans of the original disagreed, responding with negative reviews. Reasons for criticism included the removal of all the previous characters, switch of format and the inclusion of the LGBT parenting, among other reasons.


text: The first seven episodes of "Clifford the Big Red Dog" were released on Amazon Prime Video on December 6, 2019, while PBS Kids began airing the series the next day.


title: FirstEnergy

text: FirstEnergy Corp is an electric utility headquartered in Akron, Ohio. It was established when Ohio Edison acquired Centerior Energy in 1997. Its subsidiaries and affiliates are involved in the distribution, transmission, and generation of electricity, as well as energy management and other energy-related services. Its ten electric utility operating companies comprise one of the United States' largest investor-owned utilities, based on serving 6 million customers within a area of Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey and New York. Its generation subsidiaries control more than 16,000 megawatts of capacity, and its distribution lines span over 194,000 miles. In 2018, FirstEnergy ranked 219 on the Fortune 500 list of the largest public corporations in the United States by revenue.


title: FirstEnergy

text: In November 2016, FirstEnergy made the decision to exit the competitive power business, and become a fully regulated company.


title: FirstEnergy

text: On July 21, 2020, Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, Larry Householder, former Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges, and three others were accused of accepting $60 million in bribes from FirstEnergy in exchange for $1.3 billion worth of benefits in the form of Ohio House Bill 6, as part of what became known as the Ohio nuclear bribery scandal. The stock price of the company plummeted within hours of the arrests being made. On July 22, 2021, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio announced that FirstEnergy would be fined $230 million for their part in the scandal. Vipal Patel, the acting U.S. Attorney, said that this was the largest criminal fine ever collected by the Southern District.


title: FirstEnergy

text: Ohio Edison Company (formerly OEC on the NYSE) was a publicly traded holding company that began in 1930 from the consolidation of 200 electric companies. By 1950, it ended up with two utility operating companies, Pennsylvania Power and Ohio Edison. It continued in existence until 1997, when its merger with Centerior formed FirstEnergy.


title: FirstEnergy

text: Centerior Energy Corporation (formerly CX on the NYSE) was formed in 1986 from the merger of two old operating companies. Centerior was based in Independence, Ohio, and existed as a publicly traded holding company for ten years, until its merger with Ohio Edison formed FirstEnergy in 1997:


title: FirstEnergy

text: General Public Utilities (formerly GPU on the NYSE) was a publicly traded utility holding company in Parsippany, New Jersey. In 1996, the company was reorganized and renamed GPU, Inc. In 1996, it formed a new division as well, GPU Energy, which became the holding company for its three utility operating companies:


title: FirstEnergy

text: In 2001, FirstEnergy Corporation, with its four utility operating companies, merged with GPU, Inc., bringing GPU's three additional operating companies into FirstEnergy as well.


title: FirstEnergy

text: GPU is best known as the former owner of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. In 1989, Standley H. Hoch, a former executive with General Dynamics, became the CEO of GPU. Hoch had two main goals: cut costs; and fight to repeal the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, which made it difficult for utilities to operate across state lines.


title: FirstEnergy

text: Allegheny Energy was an electric utility serving customers in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland. Its regulated subsidiaries are West Penn Power (serving Southwestern and Central Pennsylvania), Monongahela Power (a.k.a. "Mon Power", serving Northern and Southern West Virginia), and The Potomac Edison Company (western and central Maryland, parts of eastern West Virginia, and northern Virginia). The electric generating plants are operated by subsidiary Allegheny Energy Supply Company and Monongahela Power.


title: FirstEnergy

text: Before the formation of Allegheny Energy, the holding company was known as Allegheny Power System which had the three utility operating units. The brand name Allegheny Power was used on customer bills, trucks and company equipment starting in 1996. In 1997, the company attempted to merge with Pittsburgh-based Duquesne Light Company. The merger was withdrawn by both parties and both companies did not merge. In 1999, Allegheny Power purchased the West Virginia operations of UtiliCorp United's West Virginia Power. UtiliCorp purchased Virginia Electric and Power Company's (present day Dominion Resources) West Virginia service area in 1986 and renamed the acquired service area West Virginia Power.


title: FirstEnergy

text: In February 2010, Allegheny Energy announced plans to merge with FirstEnergy. The merger was approved by stockholders of both companies, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and regulatory commissions in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. It was finalized when the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission approved the merger on February 24, 2011; the merger closed on February 25, 2011. The merger does not include Allegheny's service area in Virginia, which was purchased in 2010 by the Shenandoah Valley Electric Cooperative and the Rappahannock Electric Cooperative.


title: FirstEnergy

text: After the merger with Allegheny Energy, FirstEnergy was the largest investor-owned electric utility in the country (based on customers served) for a short period, before the Exelon/Constellation and Duke Energy/Progress Energy mergers.


title: FirstEnergy

text: FirstEnergy was formed on November 7, 1997, when Ohio Edison acquired Centerior Energy and its subsidiaries for $1.6 billion in stock. The company was acquired with plans for a restructuring and layoffs to cut costs. That same month the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) initiated an investigation into the reliability of FirstEnergy's energy transmission in the context of possible plant shutdowns and prior problems with Centerior.


title: FirstEnergy

text: In 2001, FirstEnergy merged with GPU, Inc., the owner of Jersey Central Power & Light Company, Pennsylvania Electric Company (Penelec), and Metropolitan Edison Company (Met-Ed).


title: FirstEnergy

text: On March 31, 2018, FirstEnergy Solutions filed for bankruptcy. FirstEnergy Solutions was a generation subsidiary, and FirstEnergy itself remains solvent. The case is being closely watched as it could have significant implications for the U.S. power sector, as the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Ohio has asserted its primacy over the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) relating to certain FirstEnergy Solutions FERC-regulated power purchase agreements.


title: FirstEnergy

text: The Company filed its eighth amended bankruptcy plan on October 14, 2019. In 2020, it emerged from bankruptcy, becoming Energy Harbor Corp.


title: FirstEnergy

text: In March, 2018, FirstEnergy announced it is closing the Perry Nuclear Generating Station and Davis–Besse Nuclear Power Station, both in Ohio, and Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station in Pennsylvania. This was followed in August 2018 with the announcement of the closure of two coal-fired plants, the W.H. Sammis Power Plant in Stratton, Ohio and the Bruce Mansfield Power Plant in Shippingport, Pennsylvania by June 2022.


title: FirstEnergy

text: However, the closure of the Perry, Davis–Besse, and Sammis plants were rescinded in July 2019 when the State of Ohio passed and signed into law a subsidy to support the Perry and Davis–Besse nuclear plants.


title: FirstEnergy

text: On July 21, 2020, Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, Larry Householder, former Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges, and three others were accused of accepting $60 million in bribes from FirstEnergy in exchange for $1.3 billion worth of benefits in the form of Ohio House Bill 6, which increased electricity rates and provided that money as a $150 million per year bailout for the two above-mentioned nuclear plants (Perry and Davis–Besse). The stock price of the company plummetted within hours of the arrests being made. First Energy denied involvement in the charges. State legislators quickly announced plans for a bill to repeal H.B. 6.


title: FirstEnergy

text: On October 19, 2020, The Independent Review Committee of the Board of Directors of FirstEnergy Corp. announced a leadership transition, including the termination of the company's Chief Executive Officer, Charles E. Jones, effective immediately. FirstEnergy today also announced the termination of two other executives: its Senior Vice President of Product Development, Marketing, and Branding; and its Senior Vice President of External Affairs, effective immediately. During the course of the company's previously disclosed internal review related to the government investigations, the Independent Review Committee of the Board determined that these executives violated certain FirstEnergy policies and its code of conduct.


title: FirstEnergy

text: Concurrently, Steven E. Strah, President of FirstEnergy, has been appointed Acting Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately.


title: FirstEnergy

text: On July 22, 2021, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio announced that FirstEnergy would be fined $230 million for their part in the scandal.


title: FirstEnergy

text: During the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the company stopped power shutoffs and restored connections for those whose power had been terminated because of non-payment. They also requested that customers who were facing hardship paying their utility bills contact the company to set up alternate payment programs, energy assistance programs or other energy arrangements, based on the customer's ability to pay. This included customers of all ten First Energy utility companies in six states.


title: FirstEnergy

text: FirstEnergy announced its intent in November 2016 to exit the competitive businesses while staying in the regulated businesses and become a fully regulated company during the next 18 months. FirstEnergy Solutions, the company's competitive subsidiary, manages 13,000 MW of generating capacity and is a leading energy supplier serving residential, commercial and industrial customers in the Northeast, Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions. It was anticipated that some generating units would be sold, and some would be shut down. Robert E. Murray, CEO of Murray Energy, warned in August 2017 that FirstEnergy Solutions was in danger of bankruptcy if an emergency order to open coal-fired plants was not issued by the White House. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) unanimously rejected a United States Department of Energy (DOE) Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) to subsidize coal and nuclear plants in January 2018. FirstEnergy Solutions filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on March 31, 2018. As a result of the bankruptcy, FirstEnergy Solutions sought federal intervention of invoking Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act to keep their power plants operating.


title: FirstEnergy

text: In February 2018, FirstEnergy announced plans to deactivate or sell Pleasants Power Station in West Virginia. In March 2018, FirstEnergy announced plans to deactivate or sell the Beaver Valley, Davis-Besse, and Perry nuclear power plants, which are in the Ohio and Pennsylvania deregulated electricity market, during the next three years.


title: FirstEnergy

text: FirstEnergy's electric generation is primarily from coal and nuclear power plants, but also includes natural gas, oil, and hydroelectric power plants.


title: FirstEnergy

text: A 2017 report conducted by the University of Massachusetts Amherst placed FirstEnergy 9 out of the top 100 of the country's largest greenhouse polluters.


title: FirstEnergy

text: FirstEnergy was required to pay $1.5 billion by 2011 as part of a settlement to end a lawsuit filed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. This lawsuit alleged that the company failed to install pollution control equipment when upgrading its coal burning plants. Also as part of the settlement, major pollution control equipment is now being installed at the FirstEnergy Sammis site and others. This lawsuit was one of the New Source Review lawsuits filed in the 1990s.


title: FirstEnergy

text: To provide cleaner energy to its customers, FirstEnergy took several important steps in 2009. First, the company announced plans in April to repower Units 4 and 5 at its R.E. Burger Power Station in Shadyside, Ohio, to generate electricity principally with biomass, the only base load renewable source that can displace coal emissions. Furthermore, FirstEnergy hosted a 1 MW pilot plant test of carbon capture retrofit equipment for carbon sequestration on one of the remaining coal units at the R.E. Burger. In September, FirstEnergy decided to complete construction on the Fremont Energy Center, a 707-MW natural-gas-fired peaking plant by the end of 2010. And finally in November, FirstEnergy purchased the rights to develop a compressed-air electric generating plant in Norton, Ohio, which Ohio Governor Ted Strickland praised as "an example of how we can leverage technology and our natural resources to grow our economy and ensure our energy future." The Norton project, part of the company's overall climate change strategy, has the potential to be expanded to up to 2,700 MW of capacity—the largest in the world by far. According to the Electric Power Research Institute, "a compressed-air energy storage project of this size...could be a key component in integrating large-scale intermittent renewables (such as wind) onto the nation's grid system." Together, these projects, when completed, will further reduce the utility's emissions of , which already is about one-third below the regional average.


title: FirstEnergy

text: FirstEnergy Solutions Corp. has also given renewable energy certificates to help balance out the amount of electricity used in Earth Day events that were held at nine post-secondary education locations in Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Each of the schools received five SmartWind REC's, enough energy to light a large building for the entire day.


title: FirstEnergy

text: Energy efficiency became a state mandate in 2008 when lawmakers agreed with former Gov. Ted Strickland after months of debate to pass a law requiring electric utilities to help customers use less electricity every year—22 percent less by 2025 than they did in 2009. Under the 2008 law, FirstEnergy slaps companies that do not invest in energy efficiency with higher rates. But industries that use their waste heat to make power could escape that rate increase.


title: FirstEnergy

text: As of November 29, 2012 FirstEnergy Corp. has abandoned its behind-the-scene lobbying campaign to persuade lawmakers to gut a four-year-old law requiring utilities to help customers use less electricity by switching to energy efficient equipment and lighting.


title: FirstEnergy

text: Several cases have been brought against FirstEnergy for its dumping of coal waste into Little Blue Run Lake in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. FirstEnergy has dumped more than 20 billion gallons of coal ash and smokestack scrubber waste into the body of water which has contaminated local water supplies with arsenic, sulfates, sodium, calcium, magnesium and chloride.


title: FirstEnergy

text: A July 2012 consent decree from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection is forcing FirstEnergy to close the Little Blue Run Lake, an unlined waste impoundment in Beaver County, Pennsylvania and Hancock County, West Virginia. Coal ash waste slurry has been piped there from FirstEnergy's Bruce Mansfield Power Plant since 1974. The reservoir at Little Blue Run is the country's largest coal ash impoundment. Pollutants including sulfates, chlorides, and arsenic have been found in groundwater nearby. FirstEnergy must stop dumping coal ash at the site by 2016, pay a penalty of $800,000, provide clean water to local residents, and do environmental monitoring of seeps for toxic pollutants including selenium, boron, and arsenic.


title: FirstEnergy

text: Charles E. Jones was the president and chief executive officer of FirstEnergy from 2015 until his termination on October 29, 2020.


title: FirstEnergy

text: Steven E. Strah was named acting chief executive officer of FirstEnergy on October 29, 2020. Steven E. Strah decided to retire on September 16, 2022.


title: Unlimited company

text: An unlimited company or private unlimited company is a hybrid company (corporation) incorporated with or without a share capital (and similar to its limited company counterpart) but where the legal liability of the members or shareholders is not limited: that is, its members or shareholders have a joint and several non-limited obligation to meet any insufficiency in the assets of the company to enable settlement of any outstanding financial liability in the event of the company's formal liquidation.


title: Unlimited company

text: The joint and several non-limited liability of the members or shareholders of such an unlimited company to meet any insufficiency in the assets of the company (to settle its outstanding liabilities if any exist) applies only upon the formal liquidation of the company. Therefore, prior to any such formal liquidation of the company, any creditors or security holders of the company may have recourse only to the assets of the company, not those of its members or shareholders.


title: Unlimited company

text: Until such an event occurs (formal liquidation), an unlimited company is similar to its counterpart—the limited company, in which its members or shareholders have no direct liability to the creditors or security holders of the company during its normal course of business or existence.


title: Unlimited company

text: Unlimited companies are found in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Hong Kong, Pakistan, Nigeria, India, Australia, New Zealand and other jurisdictions where the company law is derived from English law. They can also be found in Germany, France, Macao, Czech Republic and in three jurisdictions in Canada (Alberta, British Columbia, and Nova Scotia), where they are called unlimited liability corporations. In the United Kingdom, the "private unlimited company" is formed or incorporated by registration under the Companies Act 2006, of which there are a few thousand such companies on the register, similar in volume to the public limited company, but in contrast to the millions of private limited companies registered.


title: Unlimited company

text: An unlimited company has the benefit and status of incorporation, the same as its limited company counterpart. Situations for which an unlimited company will be preferred to an alternative business model or its limited company counterpart include these:


title: Unlimited company

text: Once formed or incorporated, an unlimited company can, in some jurisdictions, also re-register and designate itself to limited company status at any time with few formalities, the same also extending to a limited company, which may at any time re-register and designate itself to unlimited company status.


title: Unlimited company

text: An unlimited company in most jurisdictions is not required under company law to add or state the word Unlimited or its abbreviations (Unltd., Ultd., UC or ULC) at the ending of its legal company name, making its formation status not easily recognisable without first reviewing its certificate of incorporation or government registry status. , 10,890 unlimited companies were incorporated in the UK and listed in the publicly available Companies House database.


title: Unlimited company

text: In the Republic of Ireland, local subsidiaries of a number of American companies have registered as private unlimited companies, enabling them to shield their finances from public disclosure, media and competitor analysis. Janssen Pharmaceutical, a subsidiary of its US parent company Johnson & Johnson, re-registered as an unlimited company to avoid the requirement to file annual financial accounts at the Companies Registration Office (CRO) of Ireland, thereby effectively also protecting a portion of Johnson & Johnson's financial information. A number of Irish European Union subsidiaries of Apple Inc. did the same, such as Apple Sales International and Apple Retail Europe, as have a number of other Irish European Union subsidiaries of American companies, such as Etsy, Google, Dropbox, LinkedIn and Airbnb Ireland UC.


title: Unlimited company

text: Some other global trading companies such as Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited (a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil) and Texaco Overseas (Nigeria) Petroleum Company Unlimited (part of the merged Chevron and Texaco petroleum conglomerates) exist in Nigeria, amongst others. In the USA, another example is the American Express Company, which once was a publicly traded unlimited liability company, re-incorporating itself with limited liability company status only in 1965.


title: Latin square

text: In combinatorics and in experimental design, a Latin square is an "n" × "n" array filled with "n" different symbols, each occurring exactly once in each row and exactly once in each column. An example of a 3×3 Latin square is


title: Latin square

text: The name "Latin square" was inspired by mathematical papers by Leonhard Euler (1707–1783), who used Latin characters as symbols, but any set of symbols can be used: in the above example, the alphabetic sequence A, B, C can be replaced by the integer sequence 1, 2, 3. Euler began the general theory of Latin squares.


title: Latin square

text: The Korean mathematician Choi Seok-jeong was the first to publish an example of Latin squares of order nine, in order to construct a magic square in 1700, predating Leonhard Euler by 67 years.


title: Latin square

text: A Latin square is said to be "reduced" (also, "normalized" or "in standard form") if both its first row and its first column are in their natural order. For example, the Latin square above is not reduced because its first column is A, C, B rather than A, B, C.


title: Latin square

text: Any Latin square can be reduced by permuting (that is, reordering) the rows and columns. Here switching the above matrix's second and third rows yields the following square:


title: Latin square

text: This Latin square is reduced; both its first row and its first column are alphabetically ordered A, B, C.


title: Latin square

text: If each entry of an "n" × "n" Latin square is written as a triple ("r","c","s"), where "r" is the row, "c" is the column, and "s" is the symbol, we obtain a set of "n" triples called the orthogonal array representation of the square. For example, the orthogonal array representation of the Latin square


title: Latin square

text: where for example the triple (2, 3, 1) means that in row 2 and column 3 there is the symbol 1. Orthogonal arrays are usually written in array form where the triples are the rows, such as:


title: Latin square

text: This means that the "n" ordered pairs ("r", "c") are all the pairs ("i", "j") with 1 ≤ "i", "j" ≤ "n", once each. The same is true of the ordered pairs ("r", "s") and the ordered pairs ("c", "s").


title: Latin square

text: The orthogonal array representation shows that rows, columns and symbols play rather similar roles, as will be made clear below.


title: Latin square

text: Many operations on a Latin square produce another Latin square (for example, turning it upside down).


title: Latin square

text: If we permute the rows, permute the columns, and permute the names of the symbols of a Latin square, we obtain a new Latin square said to be "isotopic" to the first. Isotopism is an equivalence relation, so the set of all Latin squares is divided into subsets, called "isotopy classes", such that two squares in the same class are isotopic and two squares in different classes are not isotopic.


title: Latin square

text: Another type of operation is easiest to explain using the orthogonal array representation of the Latin square. If we systematically and consistently reorder the three items in each triple (that is, permute the three columns in the array form), another orthogonal array (and, thus, another Latin square) is obtained. For example, we can replace each triple ("r","c","s") by ("c","r","s") which corresponds to transposing the square (reflecting about its main diagonal), or we could replace each triple ("r","c","s") by ("c","s","r"), which is a more complicated operation. Altogether there are 6 possibilities including "do nothing", giving us 6 Latin squares called the conjugates (also parastrophes) of the original square.


title: Latin square

text: Finally, we can combine these two equivalence operations: two Latin squares are said to be "paratopic", also "main class isotopic", if one of them is isotopic to a conjugate of the other. This is again an equivalence relation, with the equivalence classes called "main classes", "species", or "paratopy classes". Each main class contains up to six isotopy classes.


title: Latin square

text: There is no known easily computable formula for the number of Latin squares with symbols . The most accurate upper and lower bounds known for large are far apart. One classic result is that


title: Latin square

text: A simple and explicit formula for the number of Latin squares was published in 1992, but it is still not easily computable due to the exponential increase in the number of terms. This formula for the number of Latin squares is


title: Latin square

text: where is the set of all {0, 1}-matrices, is the number of zero entries in matrix , and is the permanent of matrix .


title: Latin square

text: The table below contains all known exact values. It can be seen that the numbers grow exceedingly quickly. For each , the number of Latin squares altogether is times the number of reduced Latin squares .


title: Latin square

text: For each , each isotopy class contains up to Latin squares (the exact number varies), while each main class contains either 1, 2, 3 or 6 isotopy classes.


title: Latin square

text: The number of structurally distinct Latin squares (i.e. the squares cannot be made identical by means of rotation, reflection, and/or permutation of the symbols) for = 1 up to 7 is 1, 1, 1, 12, 192, 145164, 1524901344 respectively .


title: Latin square

text: A transversal in a Latin square is a choice of "n" cells, where each row contains one cell, each column contains one cell, and there is one cell containing each symbol.


title: Latin square

text: One can consider a Latin square as a complete bipartite graph in which the rows are vertices of one part, the columns are vertices of the other part, each cell is an edge (between its row and its column), and the symbols are colors. The rules of the Latin squares imply that this is a proper edge coloring. With this definition, a Latin transversal is a matching in which each edge has a different color; such a matching is called a rainbow matching.


title: Latin square

text: Therefore, many results on Latin squares/rectangles are contained in papers with the term "rainbow matching" in their title, and vice versa.


title: Latin square

text: Some Latin squares have no transversal. For example, when "n" is even, an "n"-by-"n" Latin square in which the value of cell "i","j" is ("i"+"j") mod "n" has no transversal. Here are two examples:formula_8In 1967, H. J. Ryser conjectured that, when "n" is odd, every "n"-by-"n" Latin square has a transversal.


title: Latin square

text: In 1975, S. K. Stein and Brualdi conjectured that, when "n" is even, every "n"-by-"n" Latin square has a partial transversal of size "n"−1.


title: Latin square

text: A more general conjecture of Stein is that a transversal of size "n"−1 exists not only in Latin squares but also in any "n"-by-"n" array of "n" symbols, as long as each symbol appears exactly "n" times.


title: Latin square

text: For small squares it is possible to generate permutations and test whether the Latin square property is met. For larger squares, Jacobson and Matthews' algorithm allows sampling from a uniform distribution over the space of "n" × "n" Latin squares.


title: Latin square

text: Sets of Latin squares that are orthogonal to each other have found an application as error correcting codes in situations where communication is disturbed by more types of noise than simple white noise, such as when attempting to transmit broadband Internet over powerlines.


title: Latin square

text: Firstly, the message is sent by using several frequencies, or channels, a common method that makes the signal less vulnerable to noise at any one specific frequency. A letter in the message to be sent is encoded by sending a series of signals at different frequencies at successive time intervals. In the example below, the letters A to L are encoded by sending signals at four different frequencies, in four time slots. The letter C, for instance, is encoded by first sending at frequency 3, then 4, 1 and 2.


title: Latin square

text: The encoding of the twelve letters are formed from three Latin squares that are orthogonal to each other. Now imagine that there's added noise in channels 1 and 2 during the whole transmission. The letter A would then be picked up as:


title: Latin square

text: In other words, in the first slot we receive signals from both frequency 1 and frequency 2; while the third slot has signals from frequencies 1, 2 and 3. Because of the noise, we can no longer tell if the first two slots were 1,1 or 1,2 or 2,1 or 2,2. But the 1,2 case is the only one that yields a sequence matching a letter in the above table, the letter A.


title: Latin square

text: Again, we are able to infer from the table of encodings that it must have been the letter A being transmitted. The number of errors this code can spot is one less than the number of time slots. It has also been proven that if the number of frequencies is a prime or a power of a prime, the orthogonal Latin squares produce error detecting codes that are as efficient as possible.


title: Latin square

text: The problem of determining if a partially filled square can be completed to form a Latin square is NP-complete.


title: Latin square

text: The popular Sudoku puzzles are a special case of Latin squares; any solution to a Sudoku puzzle is a Latin square. Sudoku imposes the additional restriction that nine particular 3×3 adjacent subsquares must also contain the digits 1–9 (in the standard version). See also Mathematics of Sudoku.


title: Latin square

text: Latin squares have been used as the basis for several board games, notably the popular abstract strategy game Kamisado.


title: Latin square

text: Latin squares are used in the design of agronomic research experiments to minimise experimental errors.


title: Latin square

text: The Latin square also figures in the arms of the Statistical Society of Canada, being specifically mentioned in its blazon. Also, it appears in the logo of the International Biometric Society.


title: WWE 2K17

text: WWE 2K17 is a professional wrestling video game developed by Yuke's and published by 2K Sports for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows. It is the eighteenth game in the "WWE" game series (fourth under the "WWE 2K" banner), serving as the following from their previous game "WWE 2K16" (released in 2015), and followed by "WWE 2K18" (released in 2017). This is the fourth and final installment released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 platforms and on those platforms still follows the gameplay blueprint of "WWE 2K14".


title: WWE 2K17

text: On May 31, 2016, "WWE 2K17" was officially announced by WWE and 2K, when they revealed Goldberg as the pre-order bonus character accompanied by the debut trailer featuring Goldberg. 2K also announced that the game would include the two versions of Goldberg (WCW and WWE), along with two playable arenas (Halloween Havoc and "WCW Monday Nitro"). On June 27, 2016, a reveal trailer was released announcing that Brock Lesnar would be the cover star for "WWE 2K17". On July 14, 2016, WWE announced an NXT Collector's Edition. The set includes NXT wrestlers such as Apollo Crews, Nia Jax and Shinsuke Nakamura as playable characters as part of the NXT Enhancement Pack, a lithograph designed by Rob Schamberger and signed by Shinsuke Nakamura, an 8-inch collectable action figure of "The Demon" Finn Bálor, trading cards, actual ring canvas from the event, 50% more points in NXT for MyCareer Mode, as well as the Goldberg Pre-Order Pack. On August 8, 2016, 2K revealed the official soundtrack for "WWE 2K17", which features thirteen songs from a variety of genres, curated by Sean Combs.


title: WWE 2K17

text: On June 15, 2016, WWE announced that at E3 2016, the first roster reveal would be announced at 2K's booth by portrait artist Rob Schamberger. At the event, John Cena, The Ultimate Warrior, and Sasha Banks were the first three names revealed. On July 26, 2016, IGN announced that the McMahon family will be playable characters, which will include Stephanie McMahon, Shane McMahon, and Vince McMahon. On August 2, 2016, IGN announced the roster would be revealed every Tuesday for 5 weeks, along with in-game videos and screenshots, concluding on August 30. On August 10, the WWE 2K official site released a minigame that consisted of spotting the announced superstars of the "WWE 2K17" game on a picture of Brock Lesnar's Suplex City. The game revealed a roster of 136 superstars consisting of current superstars, legends and NXT superstars. 2K later revealed that there would be more than 11 extra DLC playable superstars. "WWE 2K17" marks the video game debut of 26 superstars.


title: WWE 2K17

text: There are a variety of different game modes in "WWE 2K17". Unlike previous entries in the 2K series, "WWE 2K17" initially didn't feature a single-player story mode in the base game (The Hall of Fame showcase was later added as DLC).


title: WWE 2K17

text: Play mode allows the player to jump into a quick match with their own custom settings like match types, participants, etc.


title: WWE 2K17

text: MyCareer mode allows the player to create their own superstar to compete for championships on the main roster and/or in NXT. MyCareer mode is exclusive to PlayStation 4, PC and Xbox One.


title: WWE 2K17

text: The mode also incorporated the new Promo Engine, so Superstars can express themselves to the WWE Universe and also call out or respond to other WWE Superstars. Backstage interviews with Renee Young take on a whole new dimension with the new backstage brawling gameplay. Now more than ever, how a player competes, reacts, what is said and even what attire is worn can make a difference in a Superstar's journey through the WWE. At some point, players are also likely to come face to face with Brock Lesnar and his advocate, Paul Heyman.


title: WWE 2K17

text: WWE Universe mode allows the player to create their own WWE shows and pay-per-view events, allowing them to create rivalries, promos (a new feature) and feuds for singles wrestlers and/or tag team wrestlers, and will let them create custom arenas and championship titles.


title: WWE 2K17

text: The creation suite allows players to make their own characters, arenas, titles, and more that can be uploaded for other players to download.


title: WWE 2K17

text: "GameSpot" criticized the game for the lack of a 2K Showcase mode, which was left out in favor of improving the "MyCareer" mode, which itself was criticized for a lack of much improvement.


title: WWE 2K17

text: IGN gave the game a 8.2 out of 10, writing, "The loss of the 2K Showcase is unfortunate, but WWE 2K17s gameplay tweaks, and already strong feature-set save the day."


title: WWE 2K17

text: "PC Gamer" gave the Windows version a 45 out of 100, complimenting the gameplay but criticizing performance and presentation.


title: David Ball (electronic musician)

text: David James Ball (born 3 May 1959) is an English producer and electronic musician, who has played in bands such as Soft Cell and The Grid, and collaborated with other producers including Ingo Vauk and Chris Braide. He is usually called Dave Ball on record sleeves.


title: David Ball (electronic musician)

text: Ball was born in Chester, Cheshire, England, later adopted and brought up in Blackpool. He studied at Arnold School before studying art at Leeds Polytechnic, where he met Marc Almond; they formed the synthpop duo Soft Cell in 1978, the band lasting until 1984. In 1983, while with the group, he released a solo album, "In Strict Tempo", which featured Gavin Friday, Genesis P-Orridge and Virginia Astley. Later he collaborated with P-Orridge on the soundtrack for the West German film "Decoder", which also featured other Some Bizzare artists.


title: David Ball (electronic musician)

text: After Soft Cell disbanded, Ball formed a new band, Other People with his then-wife Gini Hewes (who previously worked with Almond in Marc and the Mambas) and Andy Astle, but they released only one single, "Have a Nice Day". In the late 1980s, he formed another short-lived band, English Boy on the Loveranch, with Nick Sanderson and Jamie Jones, releasing two hi-NRG singles, "The Man in Your Life" and "Sex Vigilante". He also was part of Psychic TV, working on the compilation albums "Jack the Tab" and "Tekno Acid Beat", where he met Richard Norris (they recorded the track "Meet Every Situation Head On" together as M.E.S.H.) and with whom he later formed the Grid.


title: David Ball (electronic musician)

text: Ball reunited with Almond in Soft Cell in 2001, releasing new album "Cruelty Without Beauty". In 2010, he formed the band Nitewreckage with Celine Hispiche, Rick Mulhall and Terry Neale. Their debut album, "Take Your Money and Run", was released on Alaska Sounds on 6 June 2011, with the single "Solarcoaster" preceding it. The album was co-produced and mixed by Martin Rushent. In 2016, Ball and classical pianist Jon Savage collaborated on the experimental electronic album "Photosynthesis". In 2018, Soft Cell saw another reunion for a final live show, celebrating their 40th anniversary since the duo was formed.


title: David Ball (electronic musician)

text: Ball also worked as a producer, with Vicious Pink Phenomena (who started as a backing duo for early Soft Cell), the Virgin Prunes and the Rose McDowall side-project Ornamental in the 1980s, and later with Kylie Minogue, Gavin Friday and Anni Hogan. He also remixed for artists and bands such as David Bowie, Vanessa-Mae and Erasure (many remixes were also made with Norris as The Grid). Ball also worked with Friday on a cover of Suicide's "Ghost Rider" for the "Alan Vega 70th Birthday Limited Edition EP Series".


title: Bastard feudalism

text: "Bastard feudalism" is a somewhat controversial term invented by 19th century historians to characterise the form feudalism took in the Late Middle Ages, primarily in England in the Late Middle Ages. Its distinctive feature is that middle-ranking figures rendered military, political, legal, or domestic service in return for money, office, or influence. As a result, the gentry began to think of themselves as the men of their lord rather than of the king. Individually, they are known as retainers, and collectively as the "affinity" of the lord, among other terms.


title: Bastard feudalism

text: The historian Charles Plummer coined the term "bastard feudalism" in 1885. Plummer blamed bastard feudalism for the disorder and instability of the Wars of the Roses in the fifteenth century. However, "bastard feudalism" as a concept is primarily associated with Plummer's contemporary William Stubbs (1825–1901).


title: Bastard feudalism

text: According to Stubbs, a shift in English history took place under Edward I (reigned 1272–1307) when the feudal levy was replaced with royal payment in return for military service by the great magnates who willingly served the king. Thus, instead of vassals rendering military service when required by the lord, they paid a portion of their income into the lord's treasury. In turn the lord would supplement the owed military service with hired retainers, a sort of private army in full-time service to the lord.


title: Bastard feudalism

text: In the 1940s K. B. McFarlane presented a strong challenge to the ideas of Stubbs. McFarlane stripped the term "bastard feudalism" of any negative connotation. To him, bastard feudalism centred not on the financial aspect (the sums involved were mostly negligible) but on the concept of service in exchange for good favour. In a society governed on a personal basis, service to a lord was the best way to obtain favour in the form of offices, grants, etc. Lords would retain administrators and lawyers, as well as recruiting local gentry into their affinities. By offering money instead of land, lords could afford to retain more followers.


title: Bastard feudalism

text: In return for becoming retainers, the gentry would expect to rely on their lord's influence in local and national politics. This practice was known as "maintenance". The retainer might wear his lord's livery badge or the grander form, a livery collar, which could be very useful in a courtroom. Under a weak king, such as Henry VI (reigned 1422–1461 and 1470–1471), the rivalries of magnates might spill over from the courtroom to armed confrontations, thereby perverting justice.


title: Bastard feudalism

text: Because they were rarely kept under arms for long periods, noble retinues were not private armies. Lacking standing armies, kings relied on noble retinues for the military forces they required to conduct wars or to crush internal rebellions. Under an inadequate king like Henry VI, ambitious or disaffected magnates such as Richard Duke of York (1411–1460) or Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick (1428–1471) could use their network of servants and retainers to defy or even control the crown. Groups of gentry, already coming to blows over local issues, inevitably attached themselves to different patrons. Their private feuds continued under their leaders' banners and transferred to the battlefields of the Wars of the Roses; for example, the tenants and retainers who fought for Richard, Earl of Salisbury during his feud with the Percy family in the early 1450s were raised by him again to march against their King in 1459.


title: Bastard feudalism

text: Although Edward IV (reigned 1461–1470 and 1471–1483) attempted to limit "retaining", he generally did not succeed. However, Henry VII (reigned 1485–1509) managed to largely overcome bastard feudalism by imposing financial sanctions on unruly nobles. Furthermore, Henry passed a statute in 1504 that allowed only the King to have retainers – nobles had to apply and pay for a licence. Overall, bastard feudalism had vanished by the early seventeenth century.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: The Battle of Mobile Bay of August 5, 1864, was a naval and land engagement of the American Civil War in which a Union fleet commanded by Rear Admiral David G. Farragut, assisted by a contingent of soldiers, attacked a smaller Confederate fleet led by Admiral Franklin Buchanan and three forts that guarded the entrance to Mobile Bay: Morgan, Gaines and Powell. Farragut's order of "Damn the torpedoes! Four bells. Captain Drayton, go ahead! Jouett, full speed!" became famous in paraphrase, as "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: The battle was marked by Farragut's seemingly-rash but successful run through a minefield that had just claimed one of his ironclad monitors, enabling his fleet to get beyond the range of the shore-based guns. This was followed by a reduction of the Confederate fleet to a single vessel, ironclad CSS "Tennessee".


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: "Tennessee" did not then retire, but engaged the entire Northern fleet. "Tennessee"s armor enabled her to inflict more injury than she received, but she could not overcome the imbalance in numbers. She was eventually reduced to a motionless hulk and surrendered, ending the battle. With no Navy to support them, the three forts also surrendered within days. Complete control of lower Mobile Bay thus passed to the Union forces.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: Mobile had been the last important port on the Gulf of Mexico east of the Mississippi River remaining in Confederate possession, so its closure was the final step in completing the blockade in that region.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: This Union victory, together with the capture of Atlanta, was extensively covered by Union newspapers and was a significant boost for Abraham Lincoln's bid for re-election three months after the battle. This battle concluded as being the last naval engagement in the state of Alabama in the war. It would also be Admiral Farragut's last known engagement.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: The city of Mobile is situated near the head of Mobile Bay, where a natural harbor is formed by the meeting of the Mobile and Tensaw rivers. The bay is about long; the lower bay is about at its greatest width. It is deep enough to accommodate ocean-going vessels in the lower half without dredging; above the mouth of Dog River the water becomes shoal, preventing deep-draft vessels from approaching the city.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: The mouth of the bay is marked on the east by a long narrow peninsula of sand, Mobile Point, that separates Bon Secour Bay, where the Bon Secour River enters the larger bay, from the gulf. The point ends at the main channel into Mobile Bay, and here the United States government erected a pre-war fort to shield Mobile from enemy fleets.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: Across the entrance, the line of the peninsula is continued in a series of barrier islands, beginning with Dauphin Island. Northwest of Dauphin Island is Little Dauphin Island, then a series of minor islands that are interrupted by a secondary entrance to the bay, Grant's Pass. A few other small islands and shoals lie to the south of Dauphin Island, defining the main channel for as much as south of the entrance.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: Rather early in the war, the Confederate government decided not to defend its entire coastline, but rather to concentrate its efforts on a few of its most important ports and harbors. Following the loss of New Orleans in April 1862, Mobile became the only major port in the eastern Gulf of Mexico that needed to be defended.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: The city subsequently became the center for blockade running on the gulf. Most of the trade between the Confederacy, Havana, and other Caribbean ports passed through Mobile. A few attempts were mounted to break the blockade, but they were not large enough to have lasting impact. Among the most embarrassing episodes of the war for the U.S. Navy was the passage of the raider CSS "Florida" through the blockade into Mobile Bay on September 4, 1862; this was followed by her later escape through the same blockade on January 15, 1863.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: Although the orders given to Flag Officer David G. Farragut when he was assigned to command of the West Gulf Blockading Squadron had included instructions to capture Mobile as well as New Orleans, the early diversion of the squadron into the campaign for the lower Mississippi meant that the city and its harbor would not receive full attention until after the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: Given respite by the Union strategy, the Confederate Army improved the defenses of Mobile Bay by strengthening Fort Morgan and Fort Gaines at the entrance to the bay. In addition, they set up Fort Powell, a smaller work that guarded the Grant's Pass channel. Grant's Pass was also obstructed by a set of piles and other impediments, which had the effect of diverting the tidal flow to Heron Pass.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: Mobile and Mobile Bay were within the Department of Alabama, Mississippi and East Louisiana, led by Major General Dabney H. Maury. Although Mobile was the site of the department headquarters, Maury did not exercise immediate command of the forts at the entrance to the bay, and he was not present during the battle and ensuing siege. Local command was entrusted to Brigadier General Richard L. Page.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: The primary contribution of the Confederate Army to the defense of Mobile Bay was the three forts. Fort Morgan was a masonry structure dating from 1834. The fort mounted 46 guns, of which 11 were rifled. Its garrison numbered about 600.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: Across the main channel from Fort Morgan on Dauphin Island was Fort Gaines, containing 26 guns, and with a garrison of about 600. When Page was not present, command of the fort fell to Colonel Charles D. Anderson.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: At the western end of the bay was Fort Powell, smallest of the three, with 18 guns and about 140 men. It was commanded in Page's absence by Lieutenant Colonel James M. Williams. All three forts were flawed in that their guns were unprotected against fire from the rear; in addition, forts Powell and Gaines lacked adequate traverses.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: The raw numbers of troops available do not indicate how effectively they would fight. The war was already winding down, and assertions were made that the morale of the soldiers was bad. The judgment is hard to quantify, but it would explain at least in part the poor performance of the defenders.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: The Confederate Torpedo Bureau, directed by Major General Gabriel J. Rains, contributed a passive weapon to the defense. Men of the bureau had planted 67 "torpedoes" (naval mines) across the entrance, leaving a gap on the eastern side of the channel so blockade runners and other friendly vessels could enter or leave the harbor. The minefield was well marked by buoys, which Farragut knew well. Its purpose was not necessarily to sink enemy vessels trying to enter, but rather to force them to steer close to Fort Morgan and its guns.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: The Confederate Navy likewise used the time they were given to improve the defense. Three small sidewheel gunboats of traditional type were stationed in the bay: CSS "Selma", carrying four guns; "Morgan", with six guns; and "Gaines", also with six guns. In addition to these was the ironclad ram CSS "Tennessee", which, though carrying only six guns, was a far more impressive fighting machine by virtue of her armor.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: "Tennessee" had been built on the Alabama River near the town of Selma. Her guns were prepared under the direction of Commander Catesby ap Roger Jones, who had commanded CSS "Virginia" (ex-USS "Merrimack") in her famous duel with on March 9, 1862, the second day of the Battle of Hampton Roads. Jones succeeded to command of "Virginia" after her original commander, Franklin Buchanan, was wounded the previous day. Buchanan had been promoted to the rank of admiral for his exploits that day, the first admiral in the Confederacy. Admiral Buchanan was now in command of the small Confederate flotilla at Mobile.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: Launched before her machinery and guns were in place, "Tennessee" was towed down to Mobile Bay for completion. Once that was done she had to cross the Dog River Bar to get into the lower bay. "Tennessee" drew , but the bar had only of water at high tide. To get her across, workers had to build a set of caissons, called "camels" by shipbuilders. These were fitted to her sides and pumped out, and barely lifted the ship enough to clear the bar. On May 18, 1864, she finally entered the lower bay.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: "Tennessee" was the only armored vessel that the Confederate Navy put into lower Mobile Bay, but there were plans for others. Buchanan hoped that he would have as many as eight, including a pair of floating batteries, with which he could challenge the Union blockade, attack Pensacola and perhaps even recapture New Orleans. The manufacturing and transportation facilities of the South were not capable of this ambitious program, however, some of the projected fleet were completed in time to defend Mobile after the lower bay had been lost, but they were not there when most needed. Nevertheless, they imparted some urgency to Farragut's plans to maintain the blockade.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: The man who led the Union fleet at Mobile Bay was Rear Admiral David G. Farragut, no longer Flag Officer Farragut. The U.S. Navy had undergone an organizational change in the second year of the war, one feature of which was the creation of the rank of rear admiral. The new rank implied that the ships of the navy would be employed as members of a fleet, not simply as collections of vessels with a common purpose.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: The ships that made up his attacking fleet were of several distinct types, including some that had not even existed when the war began. Of the 18 vessels selected, eight were conventional wooden-hulled ships carrying large numbers of guns that fired broadside. Four of these had been with the West Gulf Blockading Squadron from the start (flagship , , , and ) and had fought in its battles on the Mississippi. Two smaller gunboats had likewise been with Farragut since the capture of New Orleans: and .


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: Army cooperation was needed to take and hold the enemy forts. The commander of the Military Division of West Mississippi was Major General Edward Richard Sprigg Canby, a career soldier with whom Farragut worked in planning the attack on Mobile. He calculated that 5,000 soldiers could be taken from other responsibilities in the division, enough to effect a landing behind Fort Morgan and cut it off from communication with Mobile. Their plans were undercut, however, when General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant made an urgent call for troops to be sent to the Virginia theater, then entering its critical phase.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: Canby then believed that he could spare no more than 2,000, not enough to invest the largest fort but enough to take Dauphin Island and thereby secure contact between the fleet inside the bay and their support in the gulf. Canby and Farragut recognized that they would not be able to threaten Mobile, but possession of the lower bay would be of great enough use to the blockading fleet that the projected attack should not be canceled.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: Communication would be necessary between the fleet and the landing force, so Canby suggested that a contingent of his signal corpsmen be distributed among the major ships of Farragut's attacking force. Farragut accepted the offer. This almost casual mingling of the services was found quite useful during the battle.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: On August 3, 1864, 1,500 men were landed approximately 15 miles west of the fort in preparation for the Siege of Fort Gaines, while under protection from one of Farragut's flotillas. The troops consisted of infantry detachments from the 77th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 34th Iowa Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 96th Ohio Infantry, and 3rd Maryland Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, with General Gordon Granger as commander. The troops then marched toward Fort Gaines. On the evening of August 4, they entrenched and formed their skirmish line less than a half mile away.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: The army landing force under Granger was ready to launch the attack on August 3, but Farragut wanted to wait for his fourth monitor USS "Tecumseh", expected at any moment but delayed at Pensacola. The admiral almost decided to proceed with only three monitors, and the army went ashore on Dauphin Island, acting under a misapprehension of naval intentions. The fleet was not ready to move yet, so the defenders were able to rush additional forces to Fort Gaines. After the battle, Farragut concluded that the delay had actually worked to the advantage of the Federal forces, as the reinforcements were not great enough to have any effect on the battle, but they were included in the surrender.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: While the army was going ashore, "Tecumseh" made her belated appearance and Farragut made his final dispositions for the fleet. The 14 wooden-hulled vessels would be lashed together in pairs, in a reprise of a tactic that the admiral had used earlier at the Battle of Port Hudson at Port Hudson, Louisiana. The intent was that, if a ship were to be disabled by battle damage to her engines, her partner would be able to keep her moving.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: The monitors would form a column and lead the way into the bay, moving in close to Fort Morgan on the right side of the channel as they went in. The other ships would form a separate double column and pass on the port side of the monitors, so that the armored ships would shield their wooden sisters from the guns of the fort. When the Confederate fleet made its expected appearance, the monitors would move to attack the armored "Tennessee", while the rest of the fleet would fight the faster gunboats.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: At dawn on August 5, conditions were nearly ideal for the attack. The tide was running in, so Farragut had his ships reduce steam pressure in order to minimize damage if their boilers were hit; he relied on the current to give them speed. The southwest breeze that sprang up would carry smoke from the guns away from the fleet and into the faces of the artillerymen in Fort Morgan.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: The fleet approached the fort with "Tecumseh", "Manhattan", "Winnebago", and "Chickasaw" in order leading the way. The second column was led by "Brooklyn" lashed to "Octorara". "Brooklyn" had the lead because she carried four chase guns that could fire forward, while the other large ships had only two. She was also fitted with a device for removing mines, referred to as a "cowcatcher" by Farragut in his reports. Following were "Hartford" and "Metacomet", "Richmond" and "Port Royal", "Lackawanna" and "Seminole", "Monongahela" and "Kennebec", "Ossipee" and "Itasca", and "Oneida" and "Galena".


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: The Confederate ships were ready for the attack, and they moved into position to intercept the Union fleet just beyond the minefield. At 6:47 a.m., "Tecumseh" fired the first shot, the forts replied, and the action became general. The ships in the second column (except for "Brooklyn") could not reply to the guns of the Confederate vessels, so they had to concentrate on the fort. Much of the damage done to the Federal fleet was caused by the enemy ships, perhaps because the fire from the fort was suppressed.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: Shortly after the start of the action, monitor "Tecumseh" moved past the fort and toward "Tennessee", apparently in obedience to that part of her orders. Commander Tunis A. M. Craven either disregarded or forgot the instruction to stay to the east of the minefield, so he took his ship directly across. Almost immediately, a torpedo went off under her hull, and she filled with water and sank in two or three minutes. Only 21 of her crew of 114 were saved. Craven was among those lost, so he could not explain his decisions.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: Captain James Alden of "Brooklyn" was apparently confused by conflicting orders, to stay on the port side of the monitors and to stay to the right of the minefield, so he stopped his ship and signaled Farragut for instructions. Farragut would not stop the flagship; he ordered Captain Percival Drayton to send "Hartford" around "Brooklyn" and into the lead of the column. Recognizing hesitation from his subordinate commanders, he took the bold action by ordering Captain Percival Drayton to send "Hartford" around "Brooklyn" and into the lead of the column and giving the order, “Damn the torpedoes, Full speed ahead!”. This took the ship into the torpedoes that had just sunk "Tecumseh", but Farragut was confident that most of them had been submerged too long to be effective. His gamble paid off, and the entire column of 14 warships passed through unharmed. Several Union sailors reported hearing clicks of torpedo detonators when passing through.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: "Tennessee" lacked the speed needed to ram the Union vessels as they passed, allowing Farragut to order some of his small, faster gunboats to attack the three Confederate gunboats. "Metacomet", unleashed from "Hartford", captured "Selma". Fire from the gunboats holed "Gaines", and she would have sunk had she not been beached; she was then burned by her crew. "Morgan" put up no resistance, but fled to the protection of the guns of Fort Morgan; next night she crept through the anchored Union fleet and escaped to Mobile.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: Farragut expected "Tennessee" to take shelter under the guns of Fort Morgan while he rested his ships and assessed battle damage in the middle of the bay, but Buchanan instead decided to take on the entire Federal fleet single-handed. Possibly he hoped to repeat the ramming tactics that had been so successful at Hampton Roads two years earlier; Buchanan did not explain his reasoning.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: This time, the ships that he was facing were in motion, and he had to contend with three monitors, not one. "Tennessee" was so slow that she became the target of ramming rather than her opponents. Several of the Federal sloops managed to ram, including "Monongahela", which had been fitted with an iron shield on her bow for just this purpose. None of the collisions harmed the ironclad; in every case, the ramming vessel suffered more. Shots from Farragut's fleet bounced off "Tennessee"s armor, but "Tennessee"s fire was ineffective due to inferior powder and multiple misfires.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: The balance was tilted finally when two monitors arrived. "Tennessee" was already almost motionless, her smokestack shot away and so unable to build up boiler pressure. Her rudder chains were parted so that she could not steer. Furthermore, some of the shutters on her gun ports were jammed, rendering the guns behind them useless. "Chickasaw" took up position at her stern, and "Manhattan" began to pummel the ram with her guns. The heavy shot bent in the iron shield and shattered its oak backing.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: Fragments killed or wounded some of the crew; one of the casualties was Admiral Buchanan himself, who suffered a badly broken leg. No longer able to fight, Commander James D. Johnston, captain of "Tennessee", requested and received permission from the wounded admiral to surrender. A little more than three hours had elapsed since "Tecumseh" had fired the first shot.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: With the fleet no longer facing opposition from the Confederate Navy, Farragut could pay some attention to the forts. He dispatched monitor "Chickasaw" to throw a few shells at Fort Powell and then to assist the troops ashore at Fort Gaines. Although neither fort suffered significant casualties or damage, the bombardment was sufficient to reveal the vulnerability of each to fire from the rear.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: At Fort Powell, Lt. Col. Williams asked for instructions from Brig. Gen. Page. Page responded with ambiguous orders that may have been appropriate for spirited troops, but were disastrous when issued to men as seemingly demoralized as those at Fort Powell: "When no longer tenable, save your garrison. Hold out as long as you can." Williams was convinced that resistance was futile, so he spiked his guns and blew up his magazines; then he and his garrison waded to the mainland and made their way to Mobile.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: Col. Anderson at Fort Gaines held out longer, although he faced a more formidable foe. Granger's soldiers vastly outnumbered his own, no matter whose figures for the garrison are accepted. The Union troops could bring their artillery up to close range with impunity, being shielded behind the sand dunes of Dauphin Island. In position, they were able to take in reverse two guns that fired on Farragut's fleet when it was entering the bay.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: In the judgment of an engineering officer who inspected the fort after the Union army had taken possession, "It was utterly weak and inefficient against our attack (land and naval), which would have taken all its fronts in front, enfilade, and reverse." Recognizing that his situation was hopeless, Anderson opened communication with Granger and Farragut under a flag of truce; ignoring orders from Page forbidding him to do so (and eventually removing him from command), he surrendered the fort on August 8.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: As soon as the surrender of Fort Gaines was completed, Granger moved his force from Dauphin Island to the narrow strip of mainland behind Fort Morgan, where they were landed without opposition about away, well out of range of its guns. The fort was thus immediately invested, cut off from all communication with Mobile.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: Granger set about taking the fort by regular approaches — that is, establishing a sequence of trenches or other protective lines drawn ever closer to the objective, until finally its walls could be breached and it could be taken by assault. His first line was a gift, a line of trenches from the fort that had been prepared by the garrison of the fort and then for some reason abandoned. It was a little farther than he would have liked, but it served quite well. Additional parallels were built with little interference, as the laborers could work behind the sand dunes.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: While this was going on, monitors "Winnebago", "Chickasaw", and "Manhattan" were engaging in occasional bombardment. They were later joined by the former CSS "Tennessee", captured on August 5, since repaired, and now renamed USS "Tennessee". The most serious hindrance to the advance in this period was the weather; a storm on August 20 halted work for a while, and left standing water in low places. The fort was subjected to a day-long bombardment on August 22 from 16 siege mortars, 18 guns of various sizes, and the fleet, the monitors and "Tennessee" at short range and the rest of the ships at long range.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: Inside the fort, Brig. Gen. Page feared that the bombardment would endanger his magazines, which contained of powder. To avoid the risk, he had the powder brought out and flooded. That night, the magazines were indeed threatened when the woodwork of the citadel caught fire. The fire brought an increase in the rate of bombardment, and was extinguished only with great effort.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: Feeling now that further resistance was useless, on August 23 Page ordered his remaining guns spiked or otherwise destroyed as far as possible. At 6 AM, he ordered the white flag raised, and the siege was over.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: An anecdote of the battle that has some dramatic interest has it that Farragut was lashed to the mast during the passage of Fort Morgan. This event came about after the battle had opened and smoke from the guns had clouded the air. In order to get a better view of the action, Farragut climbed into "Hartford"s rigging and soon was high enough that a fall would certainly incapacitate him and could have killed him. Seeing this, Captain Drayton sent a seaman aloft with a piece of line to secure the admiral. He demurred, saying, "Never mind, I am all right," but the sailor obeyed his captain's orders, tying one end of the line to a forward shroud, then around the admiral and to the after shroud.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: Later, when CSS "Tennessee" made her unsupported attack on the Federal fleet, Farragut climbed into the mizzen rigging. Still concerned for his safety, Captain Drayton had Flag Lieutenant J. Crittenden Watson tie him to the rigging again. Thus, the admiral had been tied to the rigging twice in the course of the battle.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: Most popular accounts of the battle relate that "Brooklyn" slowed when "Tecumseh" crossed her path, and Farragut asked why she was not moving ahead. The reply came back that naval mines (then called "torpedoes") were in her path—to which he allegedly replied, "Damn the torpedoes." The story did not appear in print until several years later, and some historians question whether it happened at all.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: Some forms of the story are highly unlikely; the most widespread is that he shouted to "Brooklyn", "Damn the torpedoes! Go ahead!" Men present at the battle doubted that any such verbal communication could be heard above the din of the guns. More likely, if it happened, is that he said to the captain of "Hartford", "Damn the torpedoes. Four bells, Captain Drayton." Then he shouted to the commander of "Metacomet", lashed to "Hartford"s side, "Go ahead, Jouett, full speed." The words have been altered in time to the more familiar, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: Prior to the battle, the Army and Navy used completely different signals. The Navy used a cumbersome system of colored flags that would impart messages that had to be decoded, whereas the Army was experimenting with a far simpler wigwag system, recently developed by Col. Albert J. Myer. In order to communicate with Army forces ashore after the fleet was safely inside Mobile Bay, several members of the fledgling Signal Corps were put on the major ships of Farragut's fleet. They were expected to stay out of the way until they were needed; those on "Hartford", for example, were assigned to assist the surgeon, so they were stationed below decks.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: When "Brooklyn" encountered her difficulties with "Tecumseh" and the minefield, Captain Avery of "Brooklyn" wanted clarification of his orders more rapidly than could be done with navy signals, so he asked his army representatives to relay his question to the flagship. In order to read the message, the signal corpsmen on "Hartford" were brought up from below, and they stayed up through the rest of the fight. Their contribution was acknowledged by Farragut.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: After General Page surrendered Fort Morgan, the victors found that all of the fort's guns had been spiked, and gun carriages and other supplies destroyed. Some believed that much of the damage had been done while the white flag was flying, in violation of the rules of war as they were then understood. The belief was so strong that Canby made a formal accusation, and Page was tried in New Orleans by a three-man council of war to consider the charges. After reviewing the evidence, the court found him not guilty of the charges.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: The Battle of Mobile Bay was not bloody by standards set by the armies of the Civil War, but it was by naval standards. It was only marginally, if at all, less bloody than the Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip and the Battle of Hampton Roads. The Federal fleet had lost 150 men killed and 170 wounded; on the Confederate ships, only 12 were dead and 19 wounded. Union Army losses were very light; in the siege of Fort Morgan, only one man was killed and seven wounded. Confederate losses, though not stated explicitly, seem to have been only slightly greater.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: The continued presence of a Union Army force near Mobile constrained the Confederate Army in its last desperate campaigns. Maury realized that the numbers opposite him were inadequate for an attack, but the loss of Mobile would have been such a severe blow to the public mood that he would not send his guns or spare troops to support other missions.


title: Battle of Mobile Bay

text: This was particularly important to Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, who was at that time engaged in the Atlanta campaign. Because Mobile remained unconquered the significance of Farragut's victory initially had little effect on Northern public opinion. As time passed and a sequence of other Union victories seemed to show that the war was winding down, the battle began to loom larger.