'Their priority is ammunition depots and air defence positions. He complained: 'The Ukrainians are strictly consistent in their primary interests. The blasts at Novaya Kakhovka show how Ukrainian forces 'are busily destroying everything they manage to reach with the help of HIMARS, 'Three Axes and Caesars '. He is seen as speaking for hardliners including field commanders who are furious about Russian tactics, want to decimate Ukraine to win the war. The strike brought a furious reaction from Igor 'Strelkov' Girkin, an intelligence and army veteran, formerly a staunchly pro-Putin commander. 'The nature of the explosion in Nova Kakhovka and its intensity point to the explosion of an ammunition depot, detonated as a result of a Ukrainian rocket.' Leontyev compared the blasts to the explosion in Beirut in 2020 when hundreds were killed when ammonium nitrate exploded.Ī Russian report by Readovka stated: 'An allegedly powerful explosion in Novaya Kakhovka was the result of a hit by artillery of the armed forces of Ukraine on an ammunition depot.
'A hospital, a marketplace and residential houses within a two-kilometre radius were damaged.' 'A strike by the Ukrainian army at Novaya Kakhovka was followed by explosions at storage facilities holding mineral fertilisers and saltpeter,' claimed Leontyev. It was also used in an earlier attack near Kherson in which a total of 12 Russian officers, including a colonel, were also said to have been killed when the US-supplied missiles hit their command post. In footage released by Ukraine, the US-donated High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems - which can hit targets up to 50 miles away - can be seen striking near Nova Kakhovka power plant.īefore the light multiple rocket launcher arrived, the Russian-occupied southern city of Kherson was out of range for Ukrainian forces. The hits are on a region where Russia is handing out its passports to locals and seeks to incorporate the region under permanent Kremlin control, but which Ukraine is vowing to take back. Russia has acknowledged the strikes, with Vladimir Leontyev, an appointee of the military-civilian administration of the occupying forces, saying it was carried out was by HIMARS missiles, with dozens injured. These photos are provided courtesy of Bin Shih.Ukraine has blitzed a Russian ammunition depot using US-donated HIMARS missiles, sending the warehouse into a huge fireball in the latest hammer blow to Putin's war campaign.Īt least seven people were killed in the deadly strikes, including Chief of Staff for the 22nd Army Corps of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Major General Artem Nasbulin, another high-profile Kremlin casualty.ĭramatic footage shows a fireball eruption and mushroom cloud in Novaya Kakhovka in the occupied Kherson region after the rockets blasted into the depot where saltpeter is stored for fertiliser and explosives. (1916) Hanyang Arsenal report on the General Liu rifle (English translation) (1916) Hanyang Arsenal report on the General Liu rifle (Chinese) The tools were eventually sent to an arsenal and repurposed for producing other guns. Unfortunately, General Liu died before the tooling arrived, and it ended up sitting on the docks for about 2 years, as the rifle project foundered and never cam to fruition without Liu’s supervision. They were tested in China and met with general approval, and the machinery was loaded up and shipped to Shanghai.
The Pratt & Whitney company of Hartford was contracted to supply the machinery to mass-produce the rifle, and about a dozen sample rifles were built in Connecticut. Mechanically it used the same principles as the Danish Bang rifle – a muzzle cup captured some of the gases from firing and was pulled forward, moving a cam and lever that cycled the bolt. The General Liu rifle (named for its designer – it never received an official designation that we know of) was China’s closest approach to an indigenous self-loading infantry rifle before World War II.