Military Power

On the night of 22/23 April 1918 Vice Admiral Keyes finally got his long postponed raid on the important German Naval Base ot Brugges underway. The German base lay at the end of a canal which ran from the North sea harbour at Zeebrugge to the U-Boat pens inland at Brugges. The British plan called for the sinking of three blockships in the canal which was meant to confine the German ships to their base.

Zeebrugge however was heavily defended by over 1000 well trained German soldiers together with many field and coastal guns. Much of the defences was concentrated along the Mole, a stone breakwater which stretched for a mile and a quarter into the harbour. As the British Blockships would have to pass close to the Mole in order to reach the mouth of the canal, the Mole would have to be captured at an early stage in the raid. To this end 700 Royal Marines were embarked on the elderly cruiser Vintictive which was modified to act much like a medieval siege tower with a false deck and ramps from which the Marines could disembark directly onto the Mole.

Another obstacle that would have to be overcome was the possability of the Mole's garrison being reinforced from the shore. Luckily it was noted that the stone Mole was seperated from the shore by an open viaduct. Therfore it was decided to load two elderly submarines, C1 and C3, with explosives and then to drive them directly under the viaduct where they would be exploded.

As the raid went in most of the defenders attention was drawn to the Vindictive, so when Submarine C3 arrived (which due to the highly dangerous nature of its mission was manned by only two officers and four ratings) its crew was alarmed to find that there was no sign of C1 or of the attendant Motor boats which were intended to pick them up after the attack. Undaunted C3 duely pressed home her attack. Motoring under the viaduct, the crew of C3 could clearly hear the sound of laughter from the German gunners above; they thought that the submarine had tried to sail uder the viaduct and become stuck.

Quickly setting the fuses to the explosives C3's crew jumped into a small skiff that they carried and desperately started to row away, only to be machine gunned as they made their excape. With a mighty explosion C3 went up, carrying away the viaduct. The survivors of the C3's crew were finally picked up by a Motor Boat and thus made their way home. Submarine C1 arriving late heard the recall signal and so turned about and returned unused to Dover.

Despite the gallantry of the raid in which the three blockships were sucessfully sunk in the canal, and no less than eleven Victoria Crosses won during the action, the blocking of the canal was shortlived as the Germans had managed to clear a way through to the sea in a matter of days. Had the raid been followed up immediately by a bomber attack on the German ships holed up in Brugges then the raid might have been worth the 250 RN and Marines killed, but as it was the Handley-Page Bombers who might have attacked had been withdrawn by the newly formed Royal Air Force only days before.