Word: crete
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Italy the campaign was vital. Italian bases in Greece could neutralize the Dardanelles and negate Turkey's British sympathies. An Italian Crete would make the eastern Mediterranean very hot water against the plates of British vessels. An Italian victory would eventually mean a Greater Albania which would sew up Italian domination of the western Balkans...
...been a pawn in all great struggles for power. Salonika is a back door to Central Europe, a jumping-off place to the Dardanelles and the Black Sea. Rocky Greek islands straggle across the Aegean to the shores of Turkey. The Peloponnesian Peninsula lies close to Italy; Crete, halfway to Africa. In this war Greece's fate was settled at Brennero on Oct. 4, when Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini planned their drive to the east. For Greece is the key to control of two of the three routes to the east : by land and sea through Turkey...
...North of Crete-the island where the Minotaur in his labyrinth used to devour sacrificial Greek virgins-6-inch naval gunfire bellowed over the blue Mediterranean one morning last week. The 6,830-ton Australian cruiser Sydney had engaged two Italian cruisers of the 5,06g-ton Condottieri class-the Bartolomeo Colleoni and the Giovanni delle Bande Nere.* These ships can make 38 knots to the Sydney'?, 32.5. They have the same fire power (eight 6-inch guns each) but the Italians are lightly armored, designed especially to catch and destroy destroyers. Two British destroyers spotted them first...
...British supply ship bound for Malta, and to have bombed out the Malta torpedo factory. Italy boasted: "Great Britain's naval domination of the Mediterranean has been replaced by Italian air supremacy in this sphere." Meantime, British communiques clarified what happened last fortnight south of Crete where Italian airmen claimed they sank a British cruiser on July 8. The cruiser was the Gloucester (9,300 tons) and her commander, Captain Frederick Rodney Garside, was killed, but she was able to join next day in the Ionian Sea "boat race...
...sister battleships on a full-speed dash westward. To scour the sea carefully and not reveal his full force, it was natural for Sir Andrew to split his command into two or more columns, one of which was the force seen by the Italian scout south of Crete. In the night the columns made rendezvous. Off Cape Spartivento next day Sir Andrew encountered the Italians, who had ventured out with two of their six battleships, the fast but thin-skinned Giulio Cesare and Conte di Cavour, together with some heavy (10,000-ton) cruisers and usual destroyer and submarine auxiliaries...