Post Description

voor de liefhebbers van blokkades :)

The Blocking of Zeebrugge - Operation Z-O 1918 (Raid) (2010)
by Stephen Prince

Stephen Prince, who works as a historian for the Royal Navy's staff, provides a summary of the Royal Navy's raids against the German-held Belgian ports of Zeebrugge and Ostend in April-May 1918. Although these raids did not achieve their intended objective of preventing the German Navy from using these ports as forward support bases for their U-Boats and destroyers, the author concludes that they achieved a psychological and moral victory for the Royal Navy by demonstrating fighting spirit. As history, this volume tries to cover a bit too much ground - there were in fact four separate raids - although this volume primarily focuses on the 23 April 1918 raid on Zeebrugge. The author has a good amount of information at his fingertips but it is relatively poorly packaged in a narrative that moves sluggishly until nearly half done and which is delivered in a very bland style. Having read other books on the Zeebrugge Raid, I was surprised by the author's inability to convey the personal drama of this action. It comes across as very flat. The artwork in this volume also seems rather crude, although the maps are quite good. Overall, this volume covers an interesting subject but in an uninteresting way. 

The author begins by discussing the German occupation of the Belgian ports in 1914, a bit about the details of Zeebrugge itself and how German U-Boats and destroyer attacks threatened Britain's lines of communication across the English Channel. He also discusses the German formation of Marinekorp Flandern - one of the first joint commands in history. He then devotes considerable detail to discussing early British efforts, primarily bombardment, to neutralize the ports and includes some very nice diagrams about the bombardment of Zeebrugge in May 1917. The section on the plan has some good information, but it really doesn't outline the plan in sufficient detail (e.g. sub-unit instructions) and I had a hard time figuring out who was in command of each part of the raiding force. Although the author briefly mentions the German defenses, enemy composition and dispositions are still left pretty vague. Furthermore, he moves into the Raid section but continues to discuss planning details for another ten pages, which makes the actual commencement of the raid seem anti-climactic. The actual coverage of the Zeebrugge raid is only about 8 pages of text, then he spends another couple of pages on the raids at Ostend. The 3-D BEV of the raid is very good - perhaps the best aspect of this volume, but overall this book does not compare all that favorably with the large number of other books on this subject. It does not really offer any new information or analysis and the author's conclusion seem a tad jingoistic. This volume is useful for someone who wants a short summary of the raid, but is less than satisfying for specialist readers. 

Product Details Source:
Paperback: 64 pages 
Publisher: Osprey Publishing (May 25, 2010) 
Language: English 
pdf
36 Mb
68 p

Thanks to Liaison-Authorized & Igor_Feo :)