 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, when Italian forces recaptured the island of Kastellorizo from British commandos.