[
    {
        "id": 214468,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1998",
        "page_number": 326,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "294\n\nMr Read is therefore of opinion that as the two bronze guns are practically identical, and as the iron ones are of more interest as ordnance than from the ethnographical point of view, the three objects forming the first consignment might be more appropriately deposited at the Tower.\n\nHe has consulted Major Gallwey who agrees to this disposal of the guns, but he (Mr Read) would propose to write to Sir Ralph Moor to explain what has been done.\n\nFrom the above we see that the four cannon were offered by Sir Ralph Moor, at that time Commissioner and Consul-General of the Niger Coast Protectorate, to the British Museum in 1899, and that Charles H. Read (then Keeper of the Department of British and Mediaeval Antiquities and Ethnography) in consultation with Lord Dillion (then Keeper of the Armouries of the Tower of London) proposed to keep one of the cannon for the ethnographical collection of the British Museum, and to pass the other three cannons to the Tower of London.\n\nIn the Central Archives of the British Museum, in the \"Report of Donations\" (of the cited department) there is a register of Charles H. Read dated 9 June 1899 stating that Sir Ralph Moor, K.C.M.G., H.M. Commissioner for the Niger Coast Protectorate, donated to the Museum a bronze gun and a modern bronze plaque. It reads as follows.\n\nA bronze gun with the arms of Portugal probably made in Benin, and a bronze plaque, a specimen of modern Benin casting.\n\n(The accession numbers of the two objects, by which they are identified today, are respectively 1899, 6-10, 1 and 1899, 6-10, 2.)\n\nThe two documents from which I quote above have been located for me by Christopher Date, Assistant Museum Archivist, at the Central Archives of the British Museum. To Mr Date I heartily extend my thanks.\n\nAt my request Mr Date has also located for me what I believe is the only published reference to the British Museum cannon before 1995.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215820,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2002",
        "page_number": 119,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "52\n\nthan the US$2 billion Manhattan Project that built the atom bomb - and its total production run stopped just short of 4,000. (In comparison, the combined production run for its predecessors - the B-17 and B-24 - surpassed 30,000.) As previously mentioned, the B-29's novelty was enough to render some of its numbers unserviceable due to mechanical failures. But a low production rate and a shortage of trained air crews and fuel also contributed to its meagre deployment when it first went into action in 1944. In a place like Hong Kong, bad weather could reduce the number of operational B-29s even further.\n\nThe fuel shortage problem was exacerbated when the JCS ordered that bombing operations against Japan commence before Hong Kong's recapture.48 Thus, the B-29s began bombing Japan from bases in Central China. Such extreme distances for the time - about 1,600 miles (2,575 km) from their targets - increased the fuel consumption of each aircraft and reduced its bomb load to two tons. As a land or sea route into China had not yet been reopened, all supplies had to be flown in over the Hump by the B-29s themselves (sometimes supplemented by B-24s), which was a wasteful task because each B-29 had to expend two tons of fuel to haul one ton of supplies.49 These early bombing missions were inauspicious, with a good raid numbering only about 100 unescorted B-29s (compared to the 1,000-plane raids the Allies were by then routinely making against Germany), and usually less. The primitive airfields of Central China were not all-weather; although the runways would be painstakingly constructed to such standards, and a few B-29s would sometimes be mired in mud after heavy rains and therefore written off for a mission,50\n\nTokyo (enemy capitals were used as benchmarks), however, lay beyond the range of a B-29 operating out of Central China. If B-29s were to operate from Hong Kong, which was about 1,800 miles (2,897 km) from Tokyo, each bomber would theoretically be able to carry only about 20 percent of its maximum 10-ton bomb load. This doesn't take into account other factors, like the need to fly off course and make evasive manoeuvres during combat, and obviously the weather. This would necessitate cutting back even further on bombs in favour of more fuel. While B-29s based in Hong Kong could bomb other areas of Japan that were closer, the Allies knew that only an ability to get off consistent and heavy strikes at the Japanese capital would have the desired political, if not military, effect on the enemy. Hence, a bomber",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    }
]