Zeebrugge Raid 1918
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Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Date | 23 April 1918 | Wikidata |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1918 | Wikidata P585 (point in time) |
| Era | World War I era (1914–1918) | derived from year |
| Location | Belgium | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Europe | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | World War I | Wikidata P361 |
| Participants | German Empire, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland | Wikidata P710 |
| Coordinates | 51.3575, 3.1975 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The Zeebrugge Raid (Dutch: Aanval op de haven van Zeebrugge; French: Raid sur Zeebruges) on 23 April 1918, was an attempt by the Royal Navy to block the Belgian port of Bruges-Zeebrugge. The British intended to sink obsolete ships in the canal entrance, to prevent German vessels from leaving port. The port was used by the Imperial German Navy as a base for the Flanders U-boat flotillas and light shipping, which were a threat to Allied control of the English Channel and southern North Sea. Several attempts to close the Flanders ports by bombardment failed and Operation Hush, a 1917 plan to advance up the coast, proved abortive. As ship losses to U-boats increased, finding a way to close the ports became urgent and the Admiralty became more willing to consider a raid.
An attempt to raid Zeebrugge was made on 2 April 1918 but was cancelled at the last moment, after the wind direction changed and made it impossible to lay a smokescreen to cover the ships. Another attempt was made on 23 April, with a concurrent attack on Ostend. Two of three blockships were scuttled in the narrowest part of the Bruges–Ostend Canal and one of two submarines rammed the viaduct linking the shore and the mole, to trap the German garrison.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Zeebrugge Raid (revision 1379157103), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
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