In the early hours of June 1944, as Allied forces prepared for the largest amphibious invasion in history at Normandy, a smaller but no less carefully planned operation was underway over the eastern Mediterranean. Seventy-one aircraft took to the skies to strike a German supply convoy bound for Crete. The mission's codename: Operation Olive Oil. It is a small detail in the vast machinery of the Second World War, but it tells a story that reaches back thousands of years — about an island so thoroughly identified with a single agricultural product that even foreign military planners, poring over maps in distant headquarters, reached for it instinctively when they needed a name. The Target By mid-1944, Germany's position in the eastern Mediterranean was deteriorating. The Allies had liberated mainland Greece's islands one by one, and Crete — occupied since the devastating airborne invasion of May 1941 — was increasingly isolated. The German garrison on the island still numbered in the tens of thousands, but supplying them had become a logistical nightmare. Allied air and naval superiority in the region meant that every supply convoy heading south towards Crete ran a gauntlet. The waters between the Greek mainland and Crete, which had been a relatively safe corridor for Axis shipping in 1941 and 1942, were now among the most dangerous stretches of sea in the theatre. The convoy targeted by Operation Olive Oil was one such resupply attempt — a collection of transport vessels and e...
Unfiltered Cold-Pressed Olive Oil from Crete
Natural Koroneiki olive oil from our family grove in Crete
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