Word: torpedos
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...odds were appalling: 250,000 Italians against perhaps 150,000 Greeks; the fourth biggest navy in the world against one obsolescent cruiser, ten destroyers, 13 torpedo boats, six submarines and a few miscellaneous craft; 500 modern planes and as many more in reserve against perhaps 200 old crates (Junkers, Gloucester Gladiators, Blackburns, even French planes); the tacit support of Germany, with some 70 divisions of 1,125,000 men poised in the Balkans (according to British sources), against overt help from Britain, militarily pinned down at home and in Egypt. Despite this apparently overwhelming disparity, the Greeks chose to fight...
Last week the eternal secret weapon reappeared in the news. At La Linea, next to Gibraltar, "a strange craft looking like the hybrid offspring of a torpedo and a launch" - ten feet long, equipped with a seat on either side slightly abaft the beam, drawn by a propeller in the nose, gasoline-motivated - was found on the beach. Its motor was still running and its crew had disappeared...
...scene last week of one more conflict between the British and Italian Navies and one more conflict in official reports. A big British convoy, carrying troops and supplies from England and Australia to reinforce the Middle East armies, was attacked under cover of night. The Italians said their motor torpedo boats sank six merchant vessels in the convoy, some of them filled with troops, of whom 3,000 drowned. A British cruiser of the Sydney class, chasing the attackers after dawn, was heavily hit by artillery fire from the Eritrean shore...
...destroyer Kimberley. This 1,690-ton vessel, said the Admiralty, pursued the convoy's attackers, which included two Italian destroyers. She chased the 1,058-ton Francesco Nullo to shore, shelling her so she had to be beached. While the Kimberley was polishing off the Nullo with a torpedo, three field guns ashore opened up on her. Splinters from one hit damaged a steam pipe, reduced the speed of the Kimberley. Because her silhouette is not unlike the Sydney's, mistaking the Kimberley for a cruiser might be understandable. But the Italians' gloss-over of their loss...
...came. Through the ship's corridors ran the call "Action Stations." Fire gongs clanged. Out of the darkness darted a flotilla of speedy, 679-ton torpedo boats, charging in close to loose a shoal of their tin fish. Heeling over hard, the Ajax spurted forward out of their path, opened up with her 6-inch guns. Into the hull of one Italian smashed the first salvo, scarcely dispersed at the point-blank range. But the other attackers maneuvered their small guns into play, began pumping 3.9-inch shells back at the Ajax. With an orange-colored flash, an Italian...