Word: cunningham
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...morning of June 11 Admiral Pavesi sent a message to an American air base: "Beg surrender through lack of water." At 11:40 a.m. planes over the island and lookouts aboard cruisers and destroyers offshore (General Dwight Eisenhower and Admiral Sir Andrew Browne Cunningham were aboard the British cruiser Aurora) spotted two signals : a white cross on the airfield, a white flag on the wrecked harbor installations. By 12:22 p.m. British landing parties had scrambled ashore, mopped up a few troops who had either not been informed of the surrender or could not see their own signals through Pantelleria...
...Admiral Cunningham first fought as a midshipman in the Boer War. In World War I he was at Gallipoli, and assisted in one of the great exploits of naval history, the bloody blocking of the Zeebrugge canal. Two other assignments in the Mediterranean, between World Wars I and II, taught him the capes and caprices of that...
Matapan (March 28, 1941), a night action south of Greece, was Cunningham's greatest pitched battle with the Italians-because he was able to ambush them and force a fight. Just before the action he flashed to his ships: "We are going to have some fun." They did. They sank three cruisers and two destroyers...
Through all this, Cunningham never lost his nerve. He announced that if Bengasi fell to Rommel he would no longer be able to take convoys through to Malta. Bengasi fell. He called his staff together and said: "Gentlemen, you have just heard that the Germans have taken Bengasi. We'll run a convoy next week." When Rommel crept within 65 miles of Alexandria, reporters asked A.B.C. what its loss would mean. He said: "Oh, I don't think we are getting...
...such spirit, the lanes of the "sea in the middle of the land" have been cleared as much as sea power can clear them. Now it remains to finish the job by land-sea-air power, which must drive enemy planes from the islands of the sea. For Admiral Cunningham's naval forces, the job will not be inexpensive, for there will be many operations under the shadow of Axis air power. But it is a job which will be done-partly because the British Navy in the Mediterranean is imbued with the idea in a stanza by A.B.C...