Word: dover
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Germans failed to occur. Instead of trying to knock out the Royal Air Force before attempting anything else, Germany had another plan: blow out the lifelines. Raiding squadrons of bombers, sometimes 80 and 100 strong, escorted by fighters, had already struck time & again at Devonport, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Brighton, Newhaven, Dover, especially hard at the bustling docks of the Thames Estuary. Shipping in the English Channel-embattled Britain's turbulent moat only 22 miles wide at its narrowest (Dover-Calais)-had been incessantly attacked by German aircraft and motor torpedo boats based just across the water in sight of Britain...
Thirty-one years ago this week, on July 25, 1909, a speck low in the air over the English Channel approached the Dover chalk cliffs from the French shore. Larger & larger it grew until watchers on the British side could clearly distinguish a man steering a gimcrack monoplane. He landed safely, and the British rushed to join the world in congratulating Aeronaut Louis Bleriot upon passing one of aviation's epochal milestones...
...brought to British listeners radio's first eyewitness blow-by-blow account of a full-dress air battle. Nervous, wiry, a pilot himself, Gardner patrolled the English Coast with a recording van for a solid week before he happened upon an air fight off the chalk cliffs of Dover. For nine frantic minutes, Gardner talked into his recording machine, then whirled off to London to persuade the Ministry of Information to issue a bulletin on the raid an hour earlier than usual. Dramatic enough to galvanize even the most stolid Britisher, the Gardner broadcast wound up in fine sporting...
...region of greatest danger was the area opposite the narrow Strait of Dover, which German guns and air power seemingly made impassable for all but the lighter units of the British Navy. With only these light vessels to oppose them, this region obviously became the most tempting for a German landing...
Winston Churchill recently estimated that it would take 200 to 250 vessels to land five divisions, and such large convoys would also invite fleet attacks at sea. But if large units of the British Fleet attempt to operate in the narrow waters near Dover they would be exposed to heavy German air, U-boat and artillery attack, and would probably suffer losses...