The Zeebrugge and the two Ostend Raids

[cahoehler]

British Admiralty Statement on the Zeebrugge and Ostend Raids, 22-23 April 1918

The objectives were the canal of Zeebrugge and the entrance to the harbour of Ostend.

Throughout the operations monitors and the siege guns in Flanders, manned by the Royal Marine Artillery, heavily bombarded the enemy's batteries.

British Admiralty Statement on the Raid Upon Ostend, 11 May 1918

The monitors, anchored in their firing-positions far to seaward, awaited their signal; the great siege batteries of the Royal Marine Artillery in Flanders - among the largest guns that have ever been placed on land-mountings - stood by likewise to neutralize the big German artillery along the coast; and the airmen who were to collaborate with an aerial bombardment of the town waited somewhere in the darkness overhead.

The Dispatches of Sir Roger Keyes mentions the siege guns of the Royal Marine Artillery under the command of Lt-Col Pryce Peacock (see LG 30807 – page 8593 – 19th July 1918 for the actual MID). In LG 31182 – page 2357 – 15th February 1919 Lt-Col Peacock is appointed to be an Additional Member of the Third Class, or Companion, of the -Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George, in recognition of valuable services in command of the Royal Marine Artillery siege gun detachment in Flanders since February, 1918. Then in LG 31876 – page 4716 – 23rd April 1920 Lt-Col Peacock C.M.G. is given unrestricted permission to wear these decorations conferred by His Majesty the King of the Belgians.

1. Order of the Crown of Belgium – in the class of Chevalier.

2. Croix de Guerre.

Thanks to the assiduous efforts of RodB we know that the maximum range of the BL 15-inch howitzer was about 9.9km (and probably not very much more with the later ‘streamline’ shell of 1400 lbs) and so these howitzers would have had to have been very close to the line of the Nieuport Canal to Ostend although Nieuport is itself about 20km south west of Ostend. The frontline was on the Yser river running from Nieuport to Dixmude. A scan of a modern Michelin map with annotations by Pierre Grande Guerre was uploaded to www.flikr.com.

Where were the batteries positioned and what were their targets?

Thanks a lot

[SiegeGunner]

Hi Carl. My avatar is the stamp of the CO of the Royal Naval Siege Guns, 1915-1918, Captain Henry Halahan RN, who handed over command of that unit to his RMA successor in early 1918 and joined the team preparing for the raids on Zeebrugge and Ostende. He was in command of the naval storming parties embarked in HMS Vindictive, but was unfortunately killed by machine-gun fire as Vindictive approached the Mole.

Prior to his departure to join the Zeebrugge operation, there were two siege gun units based on the Belgian Coast, his RN Siege Guns, by then known as the Forward Gun Group, and a number of guns further back, operated by the RMA and known as the RMA Heavy Siege Train (for which, see Blumberg's 'British Sea Soldiers'). All the guns operated by these two units were naval guns on land mountings — a mixture of 6", 7.5" (ex-Swiftsure), 9.2" and 12". Some of the RMA's 15" howitzer batteries were in the coastal sector at various times during the war, but their range was too short to engage distant targets, and to the best of my knowledge they played no part in the artillery effort in support of the Zeebrugge and Ostende raids. The RN gun crews of the RNSG were withdrawn in early 1918 and their guns were taken over by RMA crews — hence the references in Keyes's despatches to RMA siege guns alone.

The role of the British siege guns in support of the Z&O raids was essentially the same as their regular mission from 1915 onwards, namely to engage and suppress/neutralise the numerous German coastal batteries (also naval guns) emplaced in the sector between Ostende and the front line on the Yser. The larger of the German batteries (principal among which was the Batterie Tirpitz) were capable of training inland as well as firing out to sea, and the task of the British guns on shore was to distract them into retaliation and/or disrupt their firing on the British ships carrying out the raid and standing offshore in support. The German coastal batteries further up the coast, above and below Zeebrugge, were similarly engaged by the monitors of the Dover Patrol.

The British siege guns were all emplaced within a strip of land (mainly high sand dunes) about half a mile wide, extending from Nieuport Bains right back to Adinkerke (a 12" naval gun in an emplacement disguised as a barn at St Joseph's Farm). I don't know the exact locations of all the guns operated by the RMA Heavy Siege Train when it operated separately from the RNSG, but I believe they had another 12" naval gun and a couple of 9.2s that would have been capable of reaching the nearer of the German batteries below Ostende. The guns primarily involved in firing in support of the Ostende raid will have been the forward batteries previously manned by the RNSG, Barrington and Eastney batteries, in concrete emplacements just behind the front line at Groenendijk Bad, and Carnac battery, a twin-gunpit battery in concrete emplacements at Oost-Duinkerke Bains. All of these batteries were of 9.2" BL MkX naval guns, and they were probably supported by the 12" BL MkX at Adinkerke.

Depending on the nature and extent of your interest in the British siege guns, you might like to get in touch with me by PM, and I will try to give you more information tailored to your requirements.

Mick

[cahoehler]

Depending on the nature and extent of your interest in the British siege guns . . . .

Mick

Thank you for a very comprehensive reply.

I am following the careers of those RM and RMA who had served with the Heavy Artillery in GSWA and and the South African Heavy Artillery in France and Belgium. These would include Pryce Peacock, John Markham Rose and then of course there is Lieutenant-General William Henry Lainson Tripp CB DSO MC.

The information I have found seems almost cursory and as always this needs to be properly preserved for posterity.

Carl

[chrislock]

Simply amazing site; thank you for enlighting us on this subject!

Chris

[SiegeGunner]

I know very little about the RMA, Carl, but their operations on the Belgian Coast are certainly covered by Blumberg.

[cahoehler]

These images are not relevant but they are interesting.

The original 8 carriages were built at Chatham Dockyard between 19th and 27th July 1915. These were scrapped after the War Office had decided that Scott had been correct and they should have had a maximum elevation of 35 degrees and not 25 degrees. The revised carriages were completed in 10 days.

Carl

[bob lembke]

The entire campaign on the coast, the coastal raids in 1918, Operation Strandfest in 1917, etc., are really fascinating. My own knowledge is both narrow (Flammenwerfer on both sides, in particular, and also shallow, but I would like to add my my thanks for this thread.

Bob Lembke

[cahoehler]

I have just read Bacon's "The Dover Patrol". It is a pity that Keyes and others had seen fit to minimise Bacon's achievements. It might be that the BL 15-inch howitzer was a step too far (and even might have been the source of the myth about the high percentage of dud shells) but this should not be allowed to detract from Bacon's other achievements.

On a lighter note this is an image of a short 9.2-inch gun mounted on a railway wagon in the Cape in 1900. The gun was removed from the fixed defenses at either Cape Town or Simon's Town. Nicknamed "Sir Redvers [buller]" this gun was sent to Belfast in the Eastern Transvaal but did not see action.

Carl