Word: biscay
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...British Overseas Airways station at London knew the weather had roughened over the Bay of Biscay. But it was nothing unusual for the regular flight of the big Douglas liner from Lisbon. Then, suddenly, came the voice of the Dutch pilot over the radio: "I am being followed by strange aircraft. Putting on best speed. . . . We are being attacked. Cannon shells and tracers are going through the fuselage. Wave-hopping and doing my best." Then silence...
...world. The biggest craft are launched into the Baltic and the North Sea. Smaller craft can be floated through river and canal arteries across the face of France, spewed out into the English Channel through the Seine, into the Mediterranean through the Saone-Rhone Rivers, into the Bay of Biscay through the Loire River...
...armada of protecting planes, which neither saw nor was seen by the convoys, ran interference for the ships. The planes flew from Britain over the Bay of Biscay for 8,000 flying hours, pounced on subs that left bases in Occupied France to intercept the convoy. Said the British account: "Our bombers only thought they were out on the biggest U-boat hunt of the war. They had no idea that just west across the Bay our convoy was slipping through to Africa." As the convoy neared Africa, bombers from Gibraltar made an umbrella for the landings. Fifty submarines menaced...
...President Roosevelt, when questioned on sinkings, would not answer. But he told a little parable: One day in the last war he had flown over the Bay of Biscay in a French blimp. He had taken the controls himself for a bit. The next day the blimp thought it saw a submarine on the seafloor near Penmarch Point, where a U-boat had periodically attacked shipping entering the Loire's mouth. The blimp put down a buoy. Airplanes and sub-chasers dropped depth charges. An oil slick showed, but the Allies did not claim a submarine. After...
...gawky, Lincolnesque John Gilbert Winant last week lay over water: by Clipper to Lisbon over the Atlantic, from Lisbon by British ferry-plane, passing a Lufthansa Fokker enroute to Switzerland, to Bristol over the Bay of Biscay. As the plane circled to land at the Bristol airfield, a guard of honor ringed the field. For John Winant was going to London to visit the King as Ambassador to the Court of St. James...