Operation Sparrow (i)

'Sparrow' (i) was a Franco-British unrealised plan to occupy the Greek island of Crete in the centre of the eastern Mediterranean (June 1940).

The British ceased work on the concept, which was designed to allow the support of Greece and also to provide land suitable for the construction of the air bases from which the Romanian oil fields could be attacked, after France’s armistice with the Germans came into effect on 25 June 1940.