Word: fleetly
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...commander of the first PT squadron, Lieut. Caldwell and his weather-battered men were pioneering the first new Navy fighting craft since planes became a fleet weapon. For their insignia they went to Cineman Walt Disney, got what they wanted from his Hollywood studio- a mosquito astride a torpedo. For their tactics they went abroad, for the new PTs-some 70 ft. of hull enclosing 4,500 h.p. in three engines- are designed for a job new to the U. S. Navy, old stuff to the British, Italians and Germans. The PTs are made for swift dashes into harbors...
Like Joseph Stalin, Ramon Serrano Suner was playing a cagey game. No sooner had the trade agreement with Britain been announced than he set out for Paris to talk to Pierre Laval. While he was there the major remaining units of the French Fleet sailed from Toulon on a mysterious mission. Next day the Fleet was reported maneuvering in the Mediterranean. By steaming around in the Golfe du Lion the French Fleet could keep a good part of the British Mediterranean Fleet disengaged without firing a salvo. Mad at Britain over Oran and De Gaulle, and under pressure from Germany...
...true measure of Britain's determination to knock out Italy was not seen until last week when that taciturn Scot, Admiral Sir Andrew Browne Cunningham, took his Eastern Mediterranean Fleet on a thoroughgoing sweep of Mare Nostrum (the R. N. calls it "Cunningham's Pond"). All around the eastern circuit went Sir Andrew, even loitering for a while off Pantelleria (between Sicily and Africa) to try to lure forth the Italian Fleet. When it did not come, Sir Andrew ordered full steam for the Gulf of Taranto, in the Italian instep between the Calabrian toe and the heel...
...Andrew's main fleet took a stand off Taranto's double harbor (see map). To prick the Italians into an action, he stabbed into the harbors with Fleet Air Arm planes from his carriers Illustrious and Eagle. First through the darkness went some light bombers, to drop flares and incendiaries and light up the scene for the real workmen. These were pilots of Fairey Swordfish torpedo-carrying planes, ancient-looking single-engine contraptions with enough wire between their wings to rig a hen yard. But the Swordfish, like the U. S. Navy's Douglas TBD-1, pack...
...bombers from Greek bases soon followed up the Fleet Air Arm's work with an attack upon the naval dry-docks of Taranto. For it was not in Sir Andrew's mind to let the Italians repair their ships, in dock or by caisson work, as the Russians did after the Japanese opened the war on them with torpedoes in a snowstorm in 1904. The R. A. F. blasted the repair dock, and might be counted on, from its new bases in Crete, to complicate any and all salvage...