Word: battleships
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...Narrows of New York Harbor one drizzly morning this week stood a hulking grey battleship. Convoyed by Coast Guard craft, she cast anchor at the Government Anchorage, hard by the Staten Island ferry pier. Palm Sunday passengers noted the flag fluttering at her stern: the British ensign. Around 11 o'clock, half her crew went ashore for liberty, and Manhattanites soon knew what ship she was. On the seamen's flat-cap ribbons was the gilded legend: "H.M.S. Malaya...
...Britain's War Cabinet. Thus he appeared to U. S. citizens like the hero of one of those old-fashioned silent movies, where one man played two parts and was always capturing himself. He arrived dramatically, as Ambassador to the U. S., on Britain's biggest battleship, dropped after his first visits into diplomatic obscurity while the Lend-Lease Bill was being argued. Last week Lord Halifax came out of that obscurity, visited Manhattan, made his first public U. S. speech, gave the U. S. a slightly better idea of what kind of human being...
This morning the cruiser Orion (7,215 tons, 6-in. armament) had broached into the expected path of the enemy fleet, reported by air reconnaissance to have divided into a northern squadron-two battleships covered by cruisers and destroyers -and a southern squadron-one battleship similarly covered. The Orion was to try to decoy the southern squadron into a night trap. Toward evening the main British force followed the flagship Warspite into the Ionian Sea between Sicily and Greece toward the hoped-for area of conflict. A few light Greek vessels put out to join them...
...already the Italians had been attacked. Bombers and torpedo planes from a British carrier (probably the brand-new Formidable, whose presence in the Eastern Mediterranean was confirmed last week) buzzed around the southern squadron. They concentrated on the battleship, later identified as the Vittorio Veneto (35,000 tons, 15-inchers), which was hurt in the Taranto raid on Nov. 11 but had been repaired. Three torpedoes found the Vittorio Veneto's hull, probably in the stern works, and cut her speed from 32 to 15 knots...
...claims of sinkings, which the sinker can seldom confirm. But when the German High Command announced at week's end that 224,000 tons had been sunk on, over, and under the sea, and that of them 22 ships of 116,000 tons had been sunk by "a battleship unit" in the North Atlantic, it was obvious that the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were up to dirty work...