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River monitors were heavily armored, and normally mounted the largest guns of all riverine warships. The name originated from the US Navy's , which made her first appearance in the American Civil War, and being distinguished by the use of revolving gun turrets. On 18 December 1965, the US Navy, for the second time in one hundred years, authorized the reactivation of a brown-water navy for riparian operations in South Vietnam. In July 1966, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara authorized the formation of a Mobile Riverine Force (MRF);〔Carrico, p. 11〕 a force, that would bring back the heavily armored single-turret river monitor. River monitors were used on inland waterways such as rivers, estuaries, deltas and lakes. Usually they had a shallow draft which was necessary for them to be able to operate in enclosed waters; but their displacement, size and draft varied depending on where they were used. Most river monitors were lightly armored although this varied, with some carrying more armor. Exceptional examples, however, most notably the Royal Navy's s, which could operate in coastal or certain riparian/estuarine situations, bore extra-thick armor plating and heavy shore-bombardment guns, up to a massive 18-inches (457 mm) in size. Typically, however, river monitors displayed a mixture of gun sizes from 3-inch (75 mm) to 6-inch (152 mm), plus machine guns. This type of vessel overlaps with the river gunboat. ==Asia== On Asian rivers, the Amur Military Flotilla on the Amur used large ''Taifun''-class river monitors of the Imperial Russian Navy from around 1907; the Imperial Japanese Navy captured some of these ships in 1918.〔See (''Soviet Union Monitors'' ) Warships of World War II. Retrieved 25 August 2015.〕〔( ''Tayfun river gunboats (monitors) (1910)'' ). Navypedia. Retrieved 25 August 2015.〕 They were up to 1,000 tons displacement, armed with 130 mm guns. Some of these Russian monitors, such as the recommissioned ''Sverdlov'', were still in use by the Soviet Navy in the 1945 Soviet invasion of Manchuria.〔Glantz, David (2004) (Soviet Operational and Tactical Combat in Manchuria, 1945: 'August Storm' ). Routledge, p. 222. ISBN 9781135774783〕 During the Vietnam War, the United States Navy, in conjunction with other riverine craft, commissioned 24 ''Monitors'', ten of which mounted a single 40mm cannon in a Mk 52 turret, eight which mounted an M49 105mm Howitzer within a T172 turret,〔Carrico, p. 27〕 and six ''Monitors'' which mounted two M10-8 Flamethrowers from two M8 turrets located on either side of the vessel's 40mm cannon. Referred to as "River Battleships"〔Carrico, p. 20, 21, 63〕 by their men, they provided the firepower of the Brown-water navy. 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「River monitor」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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