Word: diez
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...night last week the 1,650-ton Spanish Loyalist destroyer Jose Luis Diez got up steam, weighed anchor, laid down a smoke screen and left Admiralty Harbor, on the Atlantic side of Gibraltar. Scarcely had she moved from the British-protected waters before her crew saw rockets flare from a housetop on the Rock. No one needed to tell them what those flares meant: they were signals from Rebel watchers notifying Rebel warships patrolling the Straits of Gibraltar that the Jose Luis Diez, having waited for weeks to make her getaway, was trying a second time to run the blockade...
...cruisers, destroyers, minelayers soon joined the chase. Guns from the 10,000-ton cruiser Carnarias, pride of the Rebel fleet, boomed. Batteries from Ceuta. in Rebel-held Spanish Morocco, some 15 miles across the Straits, bellowed. The destroyer, outclassed, nonetheless elected to fight. A shell struck the Jose Luis Diez's forecastle, killed four men. One of her own guns exploded and killed more of her crew...
Year ago, the 1,650-ton Spanish Leftist destroyer José Luis Diez limped into Falmouth, England, seriously damaged by Rightist air bombs. Most of her crew of 60 left the ship, claiming that they would be shot as "Reds" if they returned to Rightist Spain, as "deserters" if taken back to Leftist Spain. A loyal skeleton crew took her to France for repairs, and fortnight ago the José Luis Diez was again ready for action...
...Mediterranean. Meanwhile, Rightist warships vigilantly patrolled the Straits. One night last week, when land fighting on the stalemated fronts was comparatively quiet with only a minor Leftist counteroffensive in the South being waged, Commander Castro decided to run the blockade. About midnight, with lights out, the José Luis Diez passed Tangier, the internationally governed protectorate of Morocco. Off Tarifa, southern tip of Spain, the destroyer caught two armed Rightist trawlers. Commander Castro put their crews of 24 men in chains in the destroyer's bow and sank the trawlers. Ten miles east of British-owned Gibraltar...
Disabled, the José Luis Diez crept back to Gibraltar, and was beached in shallow water behind the Mole. That afternoon the British destroyer Vanoc gave Rightist and Leftist dead a sea burial. For the superior Rightist Navy the battle was partial revenge for the sinking a year ago of its battleship España, the torpedoing last winter of its cruiser Baleares...