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Show BRITISH NIL ii i Bra HEROIC MM Thrilling Story of How Gallant Gal-lant Sailors on Vindictive Went to Their Death Told in Report. MOTOR BOATS DASH IN WHEN SIGNALED Tremendous Uproar Follows Fol-lows as Great Batteries Belch Forth Shells, but There Is No Wavering. LONDON, May 14. The admiralty has issued the following graphic story of the Ostend operation: Dunkirk, May 11. The Sirius lies in the surf sortie two thousand . yards east of the entrance to Ostend harbor, which she failed so gallantly to block, and, when in the early hours of yesterday yes-terday morning, the Vindictive groped her way through the smoke .screen and headed for the entrance, it was as though the old lighting ship awoke and looked on. A coastal motor boat had visited her and hung a flare in her stack and rusty rigging and that eye of unsteady un-steady fire, paling in the blaze of star shells, or reddening through the drift of smoke, watched the whole great enterprise from the moment when it hung in doubt to its ultimate triumphant trium-phant success. Surprise the Main Problem. The planning and execution of that success had been intrusted by Vice Admiral Sir Rpbert Kcyes to Commodore Commo-dore Hubert Dynes, who directed the previous attempt to block the harbor with the Slrlus and Brilliant. Upon that occasion a combination of unforeseen unfore-seen and unforeseeable conditions had fought against him. Upon this,' the main problem was to secure the effect of a surprise attack upon an enemy who was clearly expecting ex-pecting him. The Sirius and Brilliant had been baffled by the displacement of the Stroom bank buoy, which marks the channel to the harbor entrance. en-trance. But since then aerial reconnaissance recon-naissance had established that the Germans had removed the buoy altogether alto-gether and that there now were no guiding marks of any kind. They also had cut gaps in the piers as a precaution pre-caution against the landing, and, further, fur-ther, it was known that nine German destroyers were at large upon the coast. Night Promised Well. It was a night that promised well for the enterprise nearly windless and what little breeze stirred came a point or so west of north. The sky was lead blue, faintly star-dotted, with no moon, and a still sea for small craft, motor launches and coastal coas-tal motor boats, whose work was done close in shore. From the destroyer which served the commodore for a flagship, the remainder re-mainder of the forco wer visible only as silhouettes of blackness. From Dunkirk a sudden brief flurry of gunfire announced that German airplanes were on the way to visit Calais, and over the Invisible coast of Flanders the summer lightning of restless artillery' rose and fell monotonously. mo-notonously. Vindictive Sighted. "There's the Vindictive!" the muffled t-eamcn and marines standing stand-ing by the torpedo I ubes and guns turned to gase at the great black ship, been mistily through the screening smoke from (ho destroyers' funnels, plodding silently to her goal and end. She receded into the night astern, as a destroyer raced on to lay a Light buoy that was to be her guide, and those on board saw her no more. She parsed thence Into the hands of the small craft whose mission was to guide her, light her and hide her In i the clouds of a smoke screen. There was no preliminary bombardment bombard-ment of the harbor and batteries, as before the previous attempt. That was to be the first element In the surprise. A timetable had been laid down for every stage of the operation and the staff work beforehand even Included precise orders for laying the smoke barrage, with plans calculated for every direction of Um wind. Monitors anchored in firing positions r number of volunteers from the ships of the Dover patrol. Most of the casualties were incurred while the ship was being abandoned. The men behaved with just that cheery discipline and courage which distinguished them In the Zeebruggc raid. Petty Officer Reed found Lieutenant Lieu-tenant Alleyne In the conning tower still unconscious and carried him aft under a storm of fire from machine guns. Lieutenant Alleyne was badly hit before lie could be got over the side, and fell into the water. Here he managed to catch hold of a boat, and a motor launch under Lieutenant Bourke succeeded ' in rescuing him and two other wounded men. Taken Off Under Fire. The remainder of the crew were taken off by a motor launch under Lieutenant Geoffrey II. Drummond, under a fierce fire. While finally he reached the Warwick, the launch was practically in a sinking condition; her bows were shot to pieces. Lieutenant Drummond himself was severely wounded. His second in command. Lieutenant Gordon Ross, and o.ne hand were killed. A number of other oth-er were wounded. The launch was found too damaged to" tow. Day was breaking, and she and the Warwick were in easy range Of the forts. As soon as her crew and the Vindictive survivors were transferred, a demolition demoli-tion charge was placed In her engine room and she was sunk. All was according to programme. Recall rockets for the small craft were fired from the flagship at 2:30 a. m. Great red rockets whizzed up, to lose themselves in the fog. They could not have been visible half a mile away, but the work was done and one by one the launches and motor boots commenced to appear from the fog and stopped their engines alongside. The destroyers exchanged news with them. There were wounded men to be transferred and dead men to be reported. But no one had seen a single sin-gle enemy craft. Nine German de- ' stroyers which were out, free to fight, had i hosqji the discreeter part. Vice Admiral Present. Vice Admiral Sir Roger Keyes was present at the operation on the destroyer de-stroyer Warwick. Commander Hamilton Ham-ilton Benn, N. V. R., D. S. O., M. P., was in command of the motor Launches, and Lieutenant Francis C. Harrison, R. N., D. S. O.. was In charge of the coastal motor boats. The central smoke screen was intrusted intrust-ed to Sublieutenant Huinphrev V. Low and Sublieutenant Leslie R. Blake. The casualties, as at present reported, stand at two officers and six men hilled; two officers and ten men, nil of the Vindictive, missing and believed be-lieved killed, and four officers and eight men wounded. It Is not claimed by the officers who carried out the operation that Ostend harbor is complelcy blocked. But lis purpose to einbnrrasH the enemy and make the harbor Impractleul le to any but small craft, and for dredging operations op-erations difficult, has been fully accomplished. ac-complished. The position of the Vindictive Vin-dictive is with stem on to the eastern east-ern pier, and not her stern, an shown in certain published illustrations. came aware that what seemed to be merely smoke, was wet and cold; that the rigging was beginning to drip, and that there were no longer any stars. A sea fog had come on. The, destroyers had to turn on their lights and use their sirens to keep in touch with each other. The air attack at-tack was suspended, and the Vindictive, Vin-dictive, with some distance yet to go, found herself in gross darkness. There were motor boats on either side of her escorting her to the entrance. These were supplied with what are called Dover flares, enormous lights capable of illuminating square miles of sea. At once every pistol was lired as a signal to light these, but the fog and smoke together were too dense for even the flares. Rift in the Mist. The Vindictive then put helm over and started to cruise to find the entrance. en-trance. Twice she must have washed across, and at the third turn, upon reaching the position at which she first lost her way. there came a rift in the mist, and she saw the entrance and the piers on either side, and an opening dead ahead. The motor boat U. P. No. 22, commanded com-manded by Acting Lieutenant Guy L. Cockburn, raced on into the opening under heavy and momentarily growing grow-ing fire and planted a flare on the water between the piers. The Vindictive Vin-dictive steamed over it and on. She was in. The guns found her at once. She was hit every few seconds after she entered, her scarred hull broken afresh in a score of places, her - decks and upper works swept by machine guns. The machine gun at the end of the western pier had been put out or action ac-tion by a motor boat's torpedo, but from other machine guns at the inshore in-shore end of the pier, from a position on the front and from machine guns apparently firing over the eastern pier, they converged upon her a hail of lead. All Occupants Killed. After her control was demolished by a shell which killed all the occupants, including Sub-Lieutenant Angus H. Maclachan, who was In command of It, the upper and lower bridges and the chart room, swept by bullets, Commander Godsal ordered the Ameers Am-eers to go with him to the conning tower. Thev observed through the observation slit in the steel wall of the conning tower that the eastern pier was breached some 200 yards from the seaward end, as though at some time a ship had been in collision with It. They saw the front of the town silhouetted sil-houetted again and again in the light of the guns that blazed at them. The night was a patchwork of fire and darkness. Immediately after passing the breach in the pier, Commander God-sal God-sal left the conning tower and went on deck, the better to watch the ship's movements. He chose a position posi-tion and railed in through the slit of the conning tower his order to starboard the helm. The Vindictive responded and laid her battered nose to the eastern pier and prepared to swing her 3220 feet of length across the channel. Conning Tower Struck. It was at that moment that a shell from the shore battery struck the conning tower. Lieutenant Sir John Allevne and Lieutenant V. A. C. Crutchley were still within. Commander Com-mander Godsal was close to the tower tow-er outside. Lieutenant Alleyne was stunned by the shock. Lieutenant Crutchley shouted through the slit to the commander, and. receiving no answer, rang for the port engine full speed astern, to help the swinging ship. By this time she was lying at an angle of about forty degreeB to the pier and seemed to be hard fast, so it was impossible to bring her further around. i After working the engines some minutes to no effect, Lieutenant Crutchley gave the order to clear the engine room and abandon ship, according ac-cording to the programme previously laid down. Engineer Lieutenant Commander William A. Bury, who was the last to leave the engine room, blew the main charges by a switch installed aft. Lieutenant Crutchey blew the auxiliary charges in the forward six-inch six-inch magazine from the conning tower. Vessel Goes Down. Those on board felt the old ship shrug, as the explosive tore the bottom bot-tom platen and bulkheads from her. She sunk about six feet and lay upon the bottom of the channel. Her work was done. It Is to be presumed that Commander Comman-der Godsal was killed by the shell which struck the conning tower. Lieutenant Crutchley, searching the ship before he left her, failed to find his body or that of Sublieutenant Maclachan in that wilderness of splintered wood and shattered steel. In the previous attempt to block the port. Commander Godsal commanded the Brilliant, and, together with all the officers of that ship and of the Sirius iiad volunteered at once for the further operation. Some of the Heroes. Engineer Lieutenant Commander Bury, who was severely wounded, had i been In the Vindictive In the attack on Zeebrugge mole. He had urged upon the vice admiral his claim to remain with her, with four engine-room engine-room artificers, in view of his and their special knowledge of her engines. en-gines. The names of these four are : A. Cavanagh, H. M. & Vindictive, wounded; M. Caroll. royal naval barracks, bar-racks, Chatham, wounded: A. Thomas, Thom-as, H. M. S. Lior, missing: H. Harris, Har-ris, H. M. S. Royal Sovereign. - The coxswain was a first -class petty officer, J. J. Reed, royal naval barracks. Chatham, who ha d been with Commander Godsal in the Brilliant, Bril-liant, and whose urgent r'-qust that he be allowed to remain with him had been granted. The remainder of the crew were seleAed from a larjre BRITISH II Ri I OSTEND HEROIC (Continued from Page One.) far seaward awaited the signal. The great sea batteries ol'the Royal Marine Ma-rine artillery in Flanders, among the largest guns that were ever placed on land mountings, stood by likewise to neutralize the bigger artillery along the coast, and the airmen who were to collaborate with an aerial bombardment bom-bardment of the town waited somewhere some-where in the darkness overhead. Destroyers De-stroyers patrolled to seaward of the small craft. The Vindictive, always at a solemn gait, found the flagship's light buoy and bore up for where a coastal motor mo-tor boat commanded by Lieutenant William R. Slayter was waiting by a calcium flare upon the old position of the Stroom bank buoy. Four minutes before she arrived there, and fifteen minutes only before be-fore she was due at the harbor mouth, the signal for the guns to open was given. Two motor boats under command com-mand of Lieutenant Albert L. Poland dashed in toward the ends of the high wooden piers and torpedoed them. There was a machine gun on the end of the western pier, and that vanished van-ished in a roar and leap of flames. Flame High in Air. Over the town a flame suddenly appeared high in the air and sank slowly earthward the signal that the aeroplanes had seen and understood. Almost colncidentally with their first bombs came the first shells, whooping up from the monitors at sea. The surprise part of the attack was sprung. The surprise, despite the Germans' watchfulness, seems to have been complete. Up until the moment when the torpedoes of the motor boats exploded there had not been a shot from the land only occasional oc-casional routine .star shells. The motor launches were doing their work magnificently. These pocket warships, manned by officers and men of the royal naval volunteer volun-teer reserve, are specialists at smoke production. They built to either hand of the Vindietive's course the likeness of a dense sea mist, driving landward with the wind. Star shells paled and were lost as they sank in it; the beams of searchlights seemed to break off short upon its front. It blinded the observers in the great batteries, which suddenly, upon the warning of the explosions of guns, roared into action. Tremendous Uproar. There was tremendous uproar. The coast about Ostend is ponderously equipped with batterfes. each with a name known and identified as von Tirpilz. von Hindenburg. Deutschland. Cecilia and the rest. They register from six inches to monsters "of 15-inch naval pieces in land turrets, and the royal marine artil.'ery flRhts a war-long war-long duel with them. These now opened fire Into the smoke and over it at the monitors and marines. And the monitors replied. Meanwhile. the airplanes were bombing methodically, and antiaircraft anti-aircraft guns were searching the skies for them. Star shells spouted up and floated down, lighting the smoke banks with spreading green fires, and those strings of luminous green balls, which the airmen call "flaming onions'' soared up, to lose themselves in the clouds. Real Fog Appears. Through all this stridency and blaze of conflict, the old Vindictive, still unhurrying. was walking the lighted waters toward the entrance. It was j then that those on the destroyers be-" I |