The Zeebrugge Raid

Taihape Daily Times, 27 April 1918, Page 5

The Zeebrugge Raid

THE ADMIRALTY ACCOUNT. DESTRUCTION EFFECTUALLY DONE. - Received 11.45 a.xn. LONDON, April 26. The Admiralty has issued a full narrative of the raid on Zeebrugge and Ostend, full of thrilling episodes and experiences of individual vessels engaged and storming party on the mole. .Naturally the most striking of these are the experiences of the Vindictive and her attendant ferry boats, ins and Daffodil. As the Vindictive lay alongside the mole, rolling’ and bhmpv ing aganist the foundations, she was swept diagonally by machine-gun fire from both ends of the mole and heavy batteries ashore. Landing parties of marines and bluejackets gathered on the main and lower deck, and the commanders of both were killed be-

fore the word to assault was given] The men were magnificent; they rushed across the swaying, splintering gangways to drop over the parapet into the field of fire of the German machine guns, then a further drop sixteen feet on to the mole itself. But nothing stopped their orderly sweeping of the landing. Meanwhile the lower deck had become a shambles. The crew of the howitzer mounted forward . were all killed. A second crew was likewise destroyed, and a third crew took over the gun. The Daffodil, which was engaged in pressing the Vindictive against the mois only lost one killed and eight wounded. Meanwhile the Iris, while attempting to make fast to the mole ahead or the Vindictive, was in trouble, as the grapnels were not large enough to span the parapet, so two officers climbed ashore and sat astride The parapet trying to fasten the grapnels .until each was killed. The Iris’s commander had both legs shot off. A single shell piercing the upper deck, 'exploded in the ward room, used as a hospital, killing—four officers and ) Itwenty-sixi-meh; ■■a’ltogbthfer' l ’ the Iris | lost seventy-seVeh > '^indd ;/i and 103 I hvounded. !: ' : The L storming and demollI'tion parties oh the mole’ 'met no re- | distance apart. from intense., unreniitl, i .ting Tire, . the /Germans paying, on the I approach of the ships, retted to the I shore end of the mole. The demolii tion parties parried-; out-’their work in j-perfect order, destroying building ari ter building. Meanwhile the r blocs-

Chips' were' stealing into the mouth of the Canal. The Thetis' was- the., first of these to come into the t l otn,a.d,Q .qf shells from the shore ’the bulk of the crew had been already taken off. Unfortu'naTCTy'"the propeller. fouled a net of the. defences, which rendered, the ship unmanageable! The shore batteries pounded her and she found herself sinking while fetill ono hundred yards from the mouth of tb< Canal. After signalling invaluable information tho commander blew up the charges and sank her. A motor launch rescued the crew of the Thetis, which lost five killed and five wounded. The Intrepid and Iphigenia were more successful, and steered straight into the Canal, and beached themselves according to instructions, one on the eastern bank and the other on the western bank, where they were blown up, with their sterns stretching well across the Canal, and they are now lying across the Canal. It is probable the work they set out to do was accomplished and the canal effectively blocked. A motor launch brought away the crews and officers described the explosion of the old submarine as the greatest even seen. It left a gap of over a hundred feet. The claims that one launch sank a torpedo-boat alongside the jetty are supported by many observers, including officers of the Vindictive, who saw her mast and funnell across the mole, then noticed them disappear. The North Star, one of the three destroyers which guarded the Vindietive from enemy destroyers, while alongside the mole, lost her way in the smoke screen. She subsequently emerged into the light of a starshell and was sunk. The statement of the German communique that only a few of the crew could be saved by us is, as usual, inaccurate, for the Phoebe, another of these destroyers, came up under heavy fire and rescued nearly all. Throughout the operation the monitors and siege guns of Flanders heavily bombarded - the enemy’s bateries, A change of wind at Ostend served us even, worse than at ZeeThe motor boats had already the approaches and ends of the piers with calcium flares to make the smoke cloud, which effectively hid the fact from the enemy, when the wind changed, revealing everything. The enemy extinguished flhe flares with gunfire. This prevented the block ships finding the entrance,-and as they were soon in a sinking condition they were compelled to sink themselves about four hundred yards east of the piers, motor launches removing the crews "