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The British promptly occupied the deep harbor of Suda Bay, Crete. This operating base and its affiliated airfields, plus the heroic Greek stand, altered the strategy of the Eastern Mediterranean and allowed the British to take relatively permanent initiative for the first time in the war. A battle fleet kept sweeping between and around Corinth and Brindisi. always in hope of coming up with an Italian force and having a good scrap. To match the Italians' potential fire power in this area, this force was brought to two battleships, at least four cruisers, one aircraft carrier, at least a flotilla of destroyers.
Under Sir Andrew Cunningham's second-in-command, acting Vice Admiral Henry Daniel Pridham-Wippell, an expert on big ships, the battle force undertook daring raids into the Strait of Otranto and once far beyond Valona in the Adriatic. It also laid siege to the Italian Dodecanese Islands. Last week the fleet splashed into "bomb alley"—the narrow Sicilian channel dominated by Italian Pantelleria on the one hand and German Stuka forces based on the island of Sicily on the other. But the Axis did not show its double head at all.
Besides constant raids on Italian bases in Albania and on cities on the Italian mainland, the Eastern Fleet's naval planes in November pulled off the most dramatic single episode of the whole battle: Taranto. Catching a strong body of the Italian Fleet asleep at anchor, the British severely damaged three capital ships and two cruisers—giving Britain conclusive naval superiority in the entire Mediterranean, and thereby paving the way for another vital duty in the East:
Bombardment and Supply. Not one of the astounding British successes in Africa could have happened had it not been for the Eastern Fleet. With a force of four battleships, two battle cruisers, two carriers, eight to ten light and heavy cruisers, plenty of destroyers, at least two flotillas of submarines, the Navy calmly undertook a most complicated double problem. One part of the problem was shelling: Each time the British and Australians ashore attacked an Italian fort on the Libyan littoral, the fleet submitted the place to a terrible shellacking from the sea, lazily drifting along the coast and lobbing hundreds of tons of steel into the enemy's back. For this purpose the monitor Terror, mounting 15-inch guns, and certain shallow-draught gunboats were brought all the way from the China station.
As Sidi Barrani. Salum, Bardia. Tobruch and Derna fell, the fleet immediately used the larger ports to supply the advancing Army, and to drain the area of its flood of prisoners. The efficient way the fleet did this job, contrasted with the crumbling of Italian communications, accounted in large measure for the speed of the campaign.
Last week Bengasi fell (see p. 36). With its fall the fleet obtained another shallow, sand-bottom harbor useful for light ships.
Plane v. Ship. The second question mark was one whose answer will decide the fate of Britain's Empire. Landing operations near Tripoli would expose the fleet to the full blast of German air attacks from Sicily, just 300 miles due north. The operation might shed much light on the crucial question: will air power or sea power win the war?