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:''"Wagenburg" redirects here. For trailer park Wagenburg, see trailer park. For the museum in Vienna, see Wagenburg (museum).'' A laager, ((英語:leaguer))〔wikisource:1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Laager〕 also known as a wagon fort, is a mobile fortification made of wagons arranged into a rectangle, a circle or other shape and possibly joined with each other, an improvised military camp. Ammianus Marcellinus, a Roman army officer and historian of the 4th century, describes a Roman army approaching "ad carraginem" as they approach a Gothic camp.〔Ammianus Marcellinus, book 31, chapter 7, in the Latin.〕 Historians interpret this as a wagon-fort.〔Ammianus Marcellinus, ''The Later Roman Empire'', Translated by Walter Hamilton, ''Penguin Classics'' (1986) ISBN 0-14-044406-8, ( p. 423 ); Hamilton translates "ad carraginem quam ita ipsi appellant" as "to what they call their wagon-fort"〕 Notable historical examples include Hussites, which called it ''vozová hradba'' ("wagon wall"), known under the German word ''Wagenburg'' ("wagon castle"), ''tabors'' in the armies of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Cossacks, the ''Laager'' of the settlers in South Africa. Similar ad hoc defense formations were used in the United States, and were sometimes called corrals. These were traditionally used by 19th century American settlers traveling to the West in convoys of Conestoga wagons. When faced with attack, such as by hostile Native American tribes, the travelers would rapidly form a circle out of their wagons, bringing the draft animals (sometimes horses, but more commonly oxen) and women and children to the center of the circle. The armed men would then man the perimeter, the circled wagons serving to break up the enemy charge, to create a certain amount of concealment from observation and shelter from enemy firearms fire. They would also slow down and separate any warriors who attempted to get past the wagons into the circle, making them easier to dispatch, although they never formed a perfect barricade as a true wall would. This tactic was popularly know as "''circling up the wagons''", and survives into the modern day as a idiom describing a person or group preparing to defend themselves from attack or criticism.〔''Random House Unabridged Dictionary'': ''"Corral: a circular enclosure formed by wagons during an encampment, as by covered wagons crossing the North American plains in the 19th century, for defense against attack"''〕 From Second World War armoured warfare, a ''laager'' is a defensive formation of tanks (sometimes other armoured vehicles, such as assault guns) formed by backing all of the vehicles into a circle with their strong frontal armor and main guns facing outward. More vulnerable support and reconnaissance vehicles and personnel would be stationed in the center of the circle, where they would be protected by the tanks armor. This formation was mostly used for quick resupply or refueling, or for bivouacking at night, and was only to protect against sudden ambush, never as an active combat tactic (except when forced to refuel in the middle of a fluid battle zone). It was particularly popular with German forces on the Eastern Front before the Soviets managed to get effective attack aircraft into service, and was meant to protect against sudden armored or infantry attack from any direction, a real possibility in the highly mobile warfare on the Russian steppes. It also served to protect the crews maintaining, refueling or resupplying the vehicles by putting the armored tanks between them and enemy infantry, snipers or mortar/artillery fire landing outside the laager. While bivouacking, it was common for crewmen to dig foxholes underneath their tanks, to provide an additional measure of protection in case of sudden artillery barrage. Most tanks provided a belly escape hatch, making it easy to re-enter the vehicle. Parking the tanks in a circle also meant that no matter what direction the enemy attacked from, it would face thick frontal armor and at least several main guns pointing in their direction. This was important, as a tank had much thinner armor and very little visibility to the rear; an ideal anti-tank ambush involved maneuvering into position behind an unaware enemy and dispatching him with a shot in the rear of the hull. Tanks were also vulnerable to infantry approaching the tank unseen from the rear, and dispatching it with a satchel charge, Molotov cocktail, or similar weapon. While tank crew were originally taught to always seek a solid position (such as a wall) that they could reverse up to to protect their rear armor if they planned to stop for more than a few minutes, they found that it worked even better to back up to several other tanks to provide mutual protection and 360 degree defense (although when forming a defense line against an advancing enemy, it was necessary to revert to the older method of backing up to an obstacle or digging into a hillside; this allowed the whole force to concentrate fire on the expected enemy advance, while maintaining protection against any attacks from the rear). Although this tactic worked well on the Eastern Front, especially in the early days, it proved highly dangerous in the presence of aircraft, which were extremely lethal to concentrated formations of armor. The only defense against a rocket-firing Il-2 or bomb-laden P-47 was to keep dispersed as possible, to minimize losses and to make a smaller target. Thus, its popularity dwindled on the Eastern Front, and it never gained the same popularity on the Western Front, where the German forces operated under almost constant Allied air superiority, and aircraft proved to be the greatest threat to their armored divisions. However, it continued in use as a protective formation during bivouac under the cover of darkness, since a crew couldn't easily sleep inside a cramped tank hull, and the unarmored elements of an armored division required some form of protection against infiltrating enemy units. The laager formation was also employed by the Allies, who had little to fear from the Luftwaffe after the first half of the war. ==History== One of the earliest examples of using conjoined wagons as fortification is described in the Chinese historical record ''Book of Han''. During the 119 BC Battle of Mobei of the Han–Xiongnu War, the famous Han general Wei Qing used armored wagons known as "Wu Gang Wagon" (武剛車) in ring formations to neutralise the Xiongnu's cavalry charges, before launching a counteroffensive which overran the nomads.〔''The Book of Han'', Ban Gu, 111 CE〕 In the 13th century the armies of Kievan Rus used the tabors in the Battle of Kalka to defend themselves from Mongol forces. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Laager」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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