Word: bengasi
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Beyond it, the R. A. F. strafed retreating troops, bombed tents, trucks, hangars, grounded planes. One day they ranged all the way to Tripoli to hit at shipping and transport planes that might slip supplies across to Bengasi. At that port the British expected to catch Rodolfo Graziani's men in a final trap, and they did not want it strenghtened by last-minute reinforcement...
...Italians were estimated to have only 50,000 troops left in easters Libya, and about the same number near Tripoli, 600 miles farther west. From Tripoli to Bengasi was too long a haul over the desert either for reinforcement to come up by land or for Marshal Graziani to try to run for it. The main British worry was whether they could wipe Bengasi out before German serial assistance should become really effective. The presence of German planes in Sicily and Libya had effected the whole Mediterranean situation. Late in the week German planes bombed the entire British-held section...
...last week British advance units swept on from Tobruch, 95 miles to the outskirts of Derna. They found the place practically undefended. The farmers and most of the town's population of 21,500 had been evacuated. The main body of the Italian Army had moved on toward Bengasi. It looked as if the place was British for the asking...
With Dérna such a cinch, the British prepared to press for Bengasi, in hope of catching the other half of Graziani's ragged army. Patrols worked along the coast and also cut straight across the hump (see map). With luck, General Sir Archibald Percival Wavell and his merry men might pull off the most surprising total victory in this war of many surprises...
...Benina, near the big base of Bengasi, British fliers swooped low to machine-gun hangar attendants, unloaded their bombs over a fleet of 100 planes drawn up on the field. At Bengasi itself, five Italian ships in the harbor were blasted with incendiaries and explosives. At every Italian air base around the Cyrenaican bulge to Martúba the British kept pounding...