Word: fleetly
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What Franklin Roosevelt had done was order the Battle Fleet-the fighting unit of the whole U. S. Fleet-back to its "normal operating areas" in the Pacific. But he had left in the Atlantic (and for the New York World's Fair) much more than the small Atlantic Squadron normally on eastern duty. By the order, four battleships, twelve cruisers, 23 destroyers, two aircraft carriers, six submarines would stay behind. Westward were to go eight battleships, 15 cruisers, 43 destroyers, three aircraft carriers, 20 auxiliaries...
This disposal of U. S. seapower was cause for thought by Admiral William Daniel Leahy and others of the Navy's high command. As Chief of Naval Operations, William Leahy has a profound feeling for the unity of the Fleet, a conviction that its main strength should ever be concentrated and ready for concerted movement to a threatened point...
Pondering motive as well as strategy, naval diplomats reasoned that the order 1) was not a peace gesture designed to back up the President's peace message last week (see p. 13) by moving the Battle Fleet 3,000 miles farther westward from Europe; 2) probably was a threat to Japan, should the time come for it to fall in with European war plans, and 3) certainly was a tangible reminder to Hitler & Mussolini that the U. S. has a potent force to be moved here or there at the President's command...
Navy men and families immediately concerned were more annoyed than worried. Hordes of Navy wives had rushed to Norfolk to be with their men until the Fleet dress-paraded up to the New York World's Fair next week. Now that their menfolk were off to undetermined ports, many must wait until the Navy's next payday for money to pay holiday debts and get home...
...French Fleet had one end of the Mediterranean tied up and the English had the other. Nevertheless, flushed by its recent conquest of Albania, Fascist Italy last week talked, screamed, shrieked empire. One night tens of thousands of ardent black-shirted Fascists marched from their neighborhood clubs to Rome's famed Piazza, di Venezia. Shouting their Fascist slogans, singing their Party's songs, they faced the lighted windows of the massive Palazzo Venezia, where, as they all knew, the powerful Fascist Grand Council was meeting to decide high questions of State...