Today’s piece comes from the South China Morning Post. It looks at the Chinese government’s efforts to connect China to trade partners via a maritime route. This is conjunction with efforts to build a railway intended to connect Europe and China via Russia.
Credit for the piece goes to Lau Ka-kuen.
Yesterday I mentioned the cost of the conflict in and around Gaza and we looked at a map of damage. Today, we look at a daily-updated graphic from the Washington Post that counts the human cost—the number of dead.
Credit for the piece goes to Lazaro Gamio and Richard Johnson.
The Boeing 777 jetliner was not the first nor even at this point the latest aircraft shot down over eastern Ukraine. Just yesterday, two Sukhoi Su-25 aircraft were shot down—the Ukrainian government claims from medium-altitude surface-to-air missiles fired from within Russia. While I was working on drawing something up to catalogue just what has been shot down, I stumbled upon this piece from the Washington Post that does just that.
Credit for the piece goes to Gene Thorp.
Last week, separatists in eastern Ukraine shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 with what appears to have been an SA-11 Gadfly missile. Separatists had previously claimed to have had this system in operation and days earlier shot down a high-altitude Ukrainian military aircraft—though not necessarily with the SA-11. How much more powerful is the SA-11 than the other two known surface-to-air missile systems the separatists have used to shoot down Ukrainian military helicopter and aircraft? Well, I decided to create a small graphic to show you that the SA-11 is a significant advancement over the shorter range systems in use up to now.
In what I think is the last set of diagrams and illustrations describing the fortifications of Ville de Québec, we have the reason why the overall design and construction were so difficult as well as why there are so many star-like bastions pointing out of the walls.
The difficulty comes from the topography. Québec was, as I mentioned earlier, described by Charles Dickens as the Gibraltar of North America. It features a high, defensible cliff and then a city on the lowlands below it. But building a wall that defends it from the cliffs to the river is not easy. Especially because the angles and slopes of the walls have to account for the fact that enemy cannon near Cap Diamant could otherwise see very well into the city below. And therefore target the city. But how drastic was the descent?
And then to point the second, why so many stars? Well, the problem with straight walls is that if you manage to get beneath the firing range of the cannon along the wall, the defenders really cannot fire at you. And that gives you all the time to plant explosives and blow a massive hole in the fortifications. So the stars actually give the defenders nearly a complete field of fire along the entirety of the city walls.
Credit for the pieces go to the graphics department of Parks Canada.
Today I have a little bit more about the fortifications near Artillery Park. The original fortifications were not massive stone works, because those take time. Instead, a lot of the original defences of the town were wooden palisades and earthworks. The following illustration shows the wooden defences of 1690.
The woodworks were more than just timber inserted into the ground. It involved some earthworks to support the wooden posts, but also to give the defenders a better view of the approaches. And a better firing position.
The palisades were divided into sections by redoubts. These were the strongpoints along the town walls.
But due to the ever-present fear of an amphibious invasion, the palisades were eventually replaced with an earthwork fortification. Trees were planted along the walls and they served as spikes to deter forces from scaling the walls.
Credit for the piece goes to the Parks Canada graphics department.
Taking a Friday’s break from diagrams and graphics from Québec, because it’s really just a small part of space. Space, which is presented below.
Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
Beyond la Citadelle, Québec also enjoys a defensive wall that nearly surrounds Vieux-Québec, or Old Québec. These graphics come from the Barracks Sector, which used to house the Royal Artillery during the British period.
The walls in this section of the city date to 1745, but the redoubt in this area goes back to 1712, you can see that as the orange rectangle.
Credit for the pieces go to the graphics department of Parks Canada.
La Citadelle de Québec consists of several layers of fortifications that are not discernible to an eye outside the fortification. This has to do with the well-planned angle of the tops of the fortifications. Thankfully, designers said about explaining this through some graphics. While I do not have a great shot from outside the fortress of the angle, you can see some of the even slope in this photo from the top of the wall looking out towards Ville de Québec outside the city walls.
The fortification is composed of several different layers. This graphic colour codes them. For reference to the photo above, I am not standing “vous étes ici.” Rather, I am at the tip of bastion in the upper left of the diagram, just behind the pink—not red—line.
This graphic shows how la Citadelle would have been defended back in the 19th century. Note the lack of armoured vehicles as seen in the above photograph.
Credit for the piece goes to the design team behind the graphics.
Part of my trip to la Citadelle de Québec involved a visit to the Bastion du Roi, which features one of the oldest parts of the fortress: Cap aux Diamant Redoubt. A redoubt is a hardened fortification completely enclosed and separate from larger fortifications. Often it serves as a place of last retreat. In Québec, the redoubt is one of the surviving original French-era fortifications, albeit heavily modified by the British in the 19th century. These graphics illustrate some of those changes.
By 1783, the original French fortification existed outside the growing defensive works of the British. In this map, you can see the notably square shape of the redoubt as the pink square on the right side of the map near the cliff.
In 1823, the British decided to modify the square-shaped redoubt and undertook extensive modifications. The graphic below shows the original redoubt, the square, with the new plan, the hatched work.
The new plan simplified the structure.
But eventually, the redoubt was entirely enclosed by the growing fortifications. This shows its location in Bastion du Roi along with the construction of a block house to further fortify the bastion.
Credit for the piece goes to the designers of the various graphics.
