Bantam

Bantam may refer to:

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Bantam (military)

A bantam, in British Army usage, was a soldier of below the British Army's minimum regulation height of 5 ft 3 in (160 cm).

During the First World War, the British Army raised battalions in which the normal minimum height requirement for recruits was reduced from 5 ft 3 in (160 cm) to 5 ft (150 cm). This enabled otherwise healthy young men to enlist.

Bantam units enlisted from industrial and coal-mining areas where short stature was no sign of weakness. The name derives from the former town of Bantam in Indonesia, from which a breed of small domestic fowl allegedly originated. Bantamweight was a weight category in boxing that had originated in the 1880s and had produced many notable boxers.

The first bantam battalions were recruited in Birkenhead, Cheshire, after Alfred Bigland, MP, heard of a group of miners who, rejected from every recruiting office, had made their way to the town. One of the miners, rejected on account of his size, offered to fight any man there as proof of his suitability as a soldier, and six men were eventually called upon to remove him. Bantam applicants were men used to physical hard work, and Bigland was so incensed at what he saw as the needless rejection of spirited healthy men that he petitioned the War Office for permission to establish an undersized fighting unit.

Bantam (missile)

The Bantam (Bofors ANti-TAnk Missile) or Robot 53 (Rb 53) was a Swedish wire-guided anti-tank missile developed in the late 1950s. It served with the Swedish and Swiss armies from 1963 and 1967 respectively. It can either be deployed by a single man carrying a missile and control equipment or from a vehicle. It has been fitted to the Volvo L3314 and the Scottish Aviation Bulldog. In the Swiss Army, it was mounted on Steyr-Daimler-Puch Haflinger light wheeled vehicles.

Description

The missile is carried in a rectangular launcher box, which is connected to a control box by a 20-meter cable, allowing for a degree of separation from the operator. The missile can be set up in around 30 seconds by a single man. The transporter/launcher box is pointed toward the expected direction of the enemy and the control box is attached to it using the cable. The control box consists of an optical sighting device and a joystick, which transmits commands to the missile via two thin cables that are trailed behind the missile.