Dodecanese campaign lies in the south-eastern Aegean Sea, and had been under Italian control since the Italo-Turkish War in 1911. During Italian rule, the strategically well-placed islands became a focus of Italian colonial ambitions in the Eastern Mediterranean. Rhodes, the largest of the islands, was a major military and aerial base. The island of Leros, with its excellent deep-water port of Lakki (Portolago), was transformed into a heavily fortified aeronautical base, "the Corregidor of the Mediterranean", as Benito Mussolini, the Italian leader, boasted. An early British attempt to contest Italian control of the Dodecanese, codenamed Operation Abstention, was thwarted in February 1941,
The Guns of Navarone (novel) book. in 1997, BBC Radio 2 produced a two-hour adaptation for radio written by Bert Coules and directed by Patrick Rayner. The cast included: "The Guns of Navarone" was also produced as an abridged audiobook with Patrick Allen narrating. The Guns of Navarone (novel) The Guns of Navarone is a 1957 novel about the Second World War by Scottish writer Alistair MacLean that was made into the film "The Guns of Navarone" in 1961. The Greek island of Navarone does not exist and the plot is fictitious; however, the story takes place within the real historical context of the Dodecanese