Word: flotilla
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...over to First Lord of the Admiralty A. V. Alexander. As the Prime Minister leaned busily over some notes, the First Lord announced that the destroyers bought from the U. S. would be given names of towns which lie in both Britain and the U. S., that the first flotilla would be given the initial C, and that the flotilla leader would be called Churchill. The Prime Minister busily leaned and fumbled, but the bald top of his head blushed...
...that she was in reality sending them to join forces with Britain again. Just as slyly the British pretended to believe the trick, but made sure the squadron would never reach the rebellious colonies in French Equatorial Africa. Off the coast of West Africa British warships intercepted the French flotilla, drove it back to Dakar, in Senegal, which was still subservient to Vichy, and the westernmost tip of Africa...
Through the Strait of Gibraltar one day last week, under the very muzzles of the British guns that guard the Rock, slid a flotilla of six fast warships flying the French flag. They were headed for the Atlantic. Although Marshal Pétain's Vichy Government has severed relations with Britain, and a British fleet in Oran Bay attacked and destroyed part of a French squadron last July, no gun fired on these French warships. They steamed confidently by Britain's scowling fortress, and sped...
...flotilla were three cruisers, Georges Leygues, Montcalm, Gloire, and three big destroyers, Le Fantasque, L'Audacieux, Le Malin. They had been anchored at Toulon until last week, along with other survivors of the Battle of Oran Bay. Under terms of the armistice between Germany and France, they had supposedly been disarmed and laid up for the duration of the war. What, then, were they doing...
First big Nazi air attack began on Aug. 8 near Dover. Before daybreak a flotilla of Nazi motor torpedo boats darted into a Channel convoy of 20 small coastal ships, sank three. The convoy continued westward down the Channel. About 9 a.m., 50 Junkers dive bombers, with Messerschmitt fighters swarming above them, swooped out of the morning sun. Some of the ships were towing barrage balloons which the Germans had to shoot down before they could dive-bomb. Anti-aircraft fire and squadrons of angry British Spitfires and Hurricanes hurtled up from the British coast. The sky spun crazily with...