Word: taranto
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Mare Nostrum is nobody's sea. Italy's ports of Naples, Messina, Taranto and Palermo and Italy's Navy serve the Germans, conveying war stuffs across the Mediterranean to North Africa (see map). German troops and fortifications guard Crete, the strongly defended shores of Greece and Yugoslavia on the Adriatic. The Germans have another strong point at Rhodes, lesser forces in the other Italian Dodecanese and the Greek islands just off Turkey. But the Mediterranean is not yet an Axis sea. The British and the Maltese still hold Malta (see cover); they still have Cyprus, Syria, Palestine...
Proof. The proof switched to the Navy: to Taranto, where British pilots in antique planes proved that the aircraft could sink men-of-war; to the battle against the Bismarck, where they proved that the aerial torpedo could cripple the finest best-protected battleship afloat...
...concerned with bombarding the enemy wherever he dawdled within 30 miles of the Libyan coast, and with breaking his supply lines. Sir Alan's forces torpedoed a cruiser (the R.A.F. got another), a destroyer and two supply ships. Admiral Cunningham has on his escutcheon the fair marks of Taranto, Matapan and last year's Libyan show. He has kept Tobruk alive with a steady stream of supplies. His most famous signal at sea, which he flashed as he steamed toward Taranto: "I intend to behave offensively in the Ionian...
...clock on Sunday morning two British cruisers and two destroyers, steaming in darkness off the sole of Italy's boot, met what they were looking for. That afternoon a Maryland (Glenn Martin) reconnaissance plane had spotted an Italian convoy of eight ships with an escort of destroyers leaving Taranto bound for Libya...
...Fleet Air Arm with Fairey Sword-fishes-rickety biplanes trussed up with as many outside stays as grandma's corset. (These "string bags" nicked the French battleship Strasbourg as she fled from the Battle of Oran, had crippled three heavy units of the Italian Fleet at Taranto, slowed the Vittorio Veneto in the Battle of Matapan, had crippled the Bismarck.) But this operation was being carried out by brand-new, twin-engined monoplane Bristol Beauforts, clean as whistles...