Word: crafts
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Princess Elizabeth, 18, heiress presumptive to the throne of England, christened her first battleship, the mightiest ever built in the British Isles. The craft (name unrevealed, but "an honored one in British naval tradition") is supposed to be about the size of the U.S.'s new Iowa class battleships (world's largest), is expected to cut its teeth on the Japanese in the Pacific...
...Price. Dozens of Allied craft slewed in the water, holed, burning, sinking, their decks littered with crumpled men and running with blood. One turned away with a splintered superstructure, with no one visible aboard except a single officer on the bridge. But the craft that were not hit bored on for the shore, throwing their rockets and small-caliber shells at the stout German casemates. A few LCTs sailed right through the breaches previously blown in the dikes by the R.A.F., before launching their amphibious vehicles...
...after four hours, the proud, tradition-conscious British "Jollies" beat the Germans down, swarmed up the dikes, and put the German guns out of action with grenades and flamethrowers. Four days later the Admiralty disclosed that of 25 gunships all but five had been lost. Many ordinary troop-landing craft had also been destroyed and casualties were "severe." Westkapelle would go down in history with Dieppe and Tarawa...
...story on the forgotten front in Italy, and one that weary, haggard soldiers had intimately known for over a year-rain, mud, wind, high rivers, all but impassable roads and mountains. And always there were the determined, skillful Germans, fighting with professional craft...
...Sunk 282 merchant craft, probably sunk 78, damaged 233 - total...