Word: crete
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...breakdown of casualties showed that relative to the number of men employed in the three services the Army was the safest place to be: Army: 7,879 killed, 19,610 wounded, 743 missing, 5,482 died of wounds or diseases, 40,450 captured (not including Crete -perhaps 10,000 captured, perhaps 5,000 killed...
...long-standing controversy of sea power v. air power was settled once and for all by the Hood-Bismarck affair and by the battle for Crete. The answer was not that air power had proved indisputably superior to sea power. The answer was rather that the whole controversy was meaningless. Any sea power worthy of the name must work with air power; air power over the sea is in fact sea power. The lessons of the Hood-Bismarck chase and of Crete, therefore, were lessons in the balance of these two powers as they team up to fight an opposing...
Therefore, as the Bismarck and Crete demonstrated, British sea-air power becomes progressively effective as it moves away from shore. Two aircraft carriers, the brand-new Victorious and the still unsunk Ark Royal, were able to cripple the most powerful battleship in the world just before it came within danger range of land air bases in France. Conversely, the British did not dare expose vulnerable aircraft carriers, which they call "floating blocks of flats," in the confined waters of the Aegean; and ships without planes consequently took an unmerciful beating...
...main lesson was the need for coordination of all the weapons of sea warfare. Near Crete neither side was properly coordinated: Britain, lacking aircraft, lost ships, and Germany, lacking ships, lost men. But in holing the Bismarck the British used almost uncanny coordination. And the Bismarck, without planes to scout and destroyers to screen, was helpless once she was caught. British coordination was almost too keen. In its determination to catch the fat prize, the Royal Navy took a long risk - neglected convoys, deserted Gibraltar, sent out the Home Fleet, left Britain's normal supply lines and normal defenses...
Commanding the destroyer Kelly in battle off the coast of Crete, lean, handsome Lord Louis Mountbatten made a safe escape as the ship rolled over and sank within 70 seconds of a direct hit by a German dive bomber. (The Germans had reported the Kelly officially sunk once before.) Cousin of King George and husband of famously wealthy Edwina Cynthia Ashley, Lord Louis had already had a narrow escape last year when his ship, the Javelin, was torpedoed in a Channel battle but limped safely to port. . . . Ferrying planes from factory to field in Britain was Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek...