Spanish Jutland

Two small cruisers, four destroyers, about half the battle fleet of Leftist Spain put out from its Cartagena base in southeastern Spain one night last week and, 70 miles offshore, encountered three cruisers, four destroyers, almost the entire battle fleet of Rightist Spain. In a running two-hour battle the Leftist destroyers buried a torpedo in the 10,000-ton Baleares, flagship of the Franco fleet, which burst into flames as the oil tanks caught fire. The Leftists then put back to Cartagena, the Rightists high-tailed out to sea and two British antipiracy ships were left to pick up some 400 survivors from the Baleares' 750-man crew. Same day Leftist warplanes, determined to scuttle Franco's flagship, bombed it seven times. At latest reports it was slowly foundering, a smoldering, blackened hulk.

Leftist officials said this was a Spanish battle of Jutland,* would end Franco's threat to blockade the Loyalist east coast. Jubilantly announced Foreign Minister Jose Giral Pereira at Barcelona: "The engagement is as important as was the taking of Teruel./- It inaugurates a new phase in the war activities of the navy." The enraged Rightists retaliated by sending out war planes which attacked Cartagena five times, raining bombs on the Government naval base. Leftists denied suffering any serious damage.

* The 1916 naval battle off the Danish coast between the fleets of Great Britain and Germany, in which, although the British lost 14 ships, 6,274 men and the Germans eleven ships, 2,545 men, Britain gained mastery of the seas for the remainder of the war. /- On December 21: retaken on February 22 by Franco.

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