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Re: Italian bombing of Tel Aviv
Back at home, I checked the 'Dust clouds in the Middle East' book, and, as I remembered, all bomber sorties are either reco, shipping attacks or attacks on Allied troops in Lebanon and Syria.
On the other hand, Ju 88 of II/LG 1 attacked on 12 june 1941 Allied ships in the afternoon and were intercepted by Tomahawaks of 3 Sqn RAAF, so maybe one did not find ships and attacked a ground target instead.
It is possible that actually only one bomb was dropped, as all casualties were suffered in the same incident, so it might be a recon aircraft carrying some bombs.
As for the interest for Italian to raid Palestine cities, Haifa was at the time the end of an oleaduc bringing oil from Iraq, and an important tanker port. Tel-Aviv had no strategic value, but the day of the main raid (9 September 1940) was also the day when Italian troops "invaded Egypt", this initial thrust stopping some days later at Sidi Barrani. A possibility was that this raid was a diversion and a way for Rhodes-based bombers to support the offensive at little cost.
As for the great range of the raids, the Italian Force launched during the war a lot of long range raids, for example on Gibraltar or Bahrein.
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