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Show FRENCH GIVE AID I IN NAVAL RAID Brilliant Work of Warships in Attack on the Belgian Coast. LONDON. April 23. Sir Eric Oed-des, Oed-des, first lord of tho admiralty, in sup-iplementing sup-iplementing the admiralty report on ; i last night's raid against 7.oohru;;:;- 1 i and Ostend, said, in givine the house , of commons sue h information as had ' como to h:'nd of "this extremely gal-Innt gal-Innt and hazardous raid" "I ask the members to appreciate ' that most of the officers and men from whom we hare got to get tho information informa-tion have been fighting the greater part of the night and thai some of i them are not yel in The raid was undertaken under Command of Vice Admiral Roger Keyes, mmmandine at Dover. French destroyers co-operated with the British i forces. Six obsolete cruisers, nil from ' twenty to thirty years old: took part in the attack. 'They were the Brilliant. Sirius, Iphipenia. Intrepid. Thetis and Vindictive. Vindic-tive. "The first five of these wore filled I with concrete and were (o be sunk in the channel and entrances to the two ; ports if this could possibly be man-. man-. aged "The Vindictive, working with two ferry bonis, carried storming and de- imohtion parties to storm the head of the mole which runs out from Zeo- bnigo. The Vindictive was specially (tted for h.ndlng storming parties and 'was armed specially for the purpose 'with flame throwers, stoke mortars land that sort of thing. 1 11 C 111' I I CIUIIUJQU I'll III' I'M " l I ships and in the storming and de-! de-! molition parties on the Vindictive were bluejackets and marines picked I from a large number of volunteers i from the i: ram I fleet and marine de-I de-I pots. There was great competition I for the undertaking and wc eotild only use R very small proportion of tho.e who volunteered. "There -..ere light covering forces belonging to the Dover conviutnc and Harwich forces tinder Admiral Tyr-whitt, Tyr-whitt, covr;n the operation in the north. A force of monitors, together ' with a large number of very sr.iall mo-j mo-j tor boats, took part in the operation i which w..s particularly intri-.Mte and i had to be worked to a time t ible and I involved ii:!ricate navy navigation on la hostle coast, without lights, and a largely unknown navigable condition developed . ince the war. with th" added ad-ded danger of mine fields I -hould like to mention that the officer who developed Ihe operation was kilh il. The high development of scientific-use scientific-use of fog or smoke "was one of the essentials to success It was moi" fog than smoke, which, combined with certain wind conditions, was essential j to Th success of the operation, so as to protect the operation from batteries i which might have flanked it. "The plan. aftr an intense bombardment bom-bardment of Zeebrugtie by the monitors, moni-tors, the Vindictive, vkh auxiliaries, (was to iun alongside the mole and attack at-tack ;l with gun fire as they approached ap-proached Storming .-nd demolition parlies were to be lnnded Meantime, three block ships, listed by motor boats, wre to make for the entrance ito ! e '.anal, run aground anu be I blown up. Two old and valueless submarines, filled wl h explosives. I were in run against Hie pile work connecting con-necting he masonry .vith the shore, in order to cut off the mole from the shore- "At Ostend the operation was more sim lie, but the difficulties were considerably con-siderably increased by mist, tain anil low visibility and the consequent ab Bence of aerial co-operation. The l. suits thus far are known to bo that two block ships were run ashore and blown up at Ostend ( Is too early lo say definitely whether l hey accomplished their object, but so far as ihe officers could see in ihe darkness, thev were slightly off the course. At ZeebniKge two or three bloc K ships attained their objective, being sunk or blown up at the entrance en-trance of the canal The third ground rd while passing in. "A certain amount of damage, the extent at present unknown, was done b gunfire and torpedo attack on an I enemy destroyer and other craft lyins jat the mole Coastal motor boats re-por re-por having torpedoed an enemy destroyer de-stroyer which was trying to escape seaward. One of the iwo old subma rines gained its objective and de stroyed 'he piling approach to the ' mole. "Storming parties from the Vlndlc-I Vlndlc-I tive and the ferryboats attacked under un-der an extremely heavy fire and fought with the greatest gallantry, maintaining maintain-ing their position alongside the mole for an hour and causing, it is believed, , much damage to the enemy and inflict in-flict inc considerable losses. The objectives ob-jectives for the storming and demo-ilition demo-ilition parties on the mole were the en-emy en-emy forces holding It and the battery fupon it. as well as the destroyer and ' submarine depots and tno large sea-, sea-, plane base upon it . "After re-embarkinc their landing parties, the aforesaid three vessels withdrew. The attack primarily ws J intended to engage the attention of I the garrison on the mole, thereby al lowing the block ships to enter the ; harbor." oo |