Word: naval
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Dates: during 1940-1940
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...open spaces around the great naval airfield at Surabaya, Java, are set with bamboo stakes, about waist high, their tops whittled razor-sharp. A visiting journalist recently asked what they were for. The commander of the base explained that they were designed as an unpleasant reception for parachutists, and added: "When Holland first fell and we were very excited we put poison on the tips of all these stakes...
...hail of Italian machine-gun fire from shore, sank three Italian supply vessels. The Italians tried, with torpedo planes, to drive off the iron-clad fortresses which their shore batteries could not hit or harm, but the R. N. stood its water in a historic demonstration of naval fire power supporting a land attack. The R. N. also supplied water, food and munitions to the land forces, which were 130 miles from their railhead at Matruh; and relieved them of inconvenient prisoners...
Construction has a prodigal stepson for which a real feast is spread about once a generation, usually combined with war: shipbuilding. And 1940 was its festal year. For Admiral Stark's two-ocean Navy, shipyards launched a naval vessel every twelve days; few were the Washington glamor girls who had not smashed a bottle on a prow. The Maritime Commission at year's end had 932,000 gross tons of merchant shipping under construction, was launching a vessel a week (last week's: the 17,500-ton Rio Parana, for New York-South America service). The venerable...
This week Italian communiques admitted that the British had crossed the border, and that there was fierce fighting in the Salum-Bardia-Fort Capuzzo triangle. Italians tried to break up British naval bombardment of the area by sending in the submarine Naiade. Destroyers screening bigger vessels closed in on the Naiade and sank her at once. The R. A. F. carried on tirelessly, and the bag of Italian planes grew into the dozens...
Since the U. S. became concerned with defense of the hemisphere, it has tried to promote the building of naval and air bases in Uruguay to protect the River Plate-and with it the whole rich east coast of South America. But Argentina's pride and the bugaboo of Yanqui Imperialism have operated against a U. S.-Uruguay deal...