TANKS SINK SHIPS

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume 66, Issue 98, 12 December 1944, Page 5

TANKS SINK SHIPS

"NAVAL," BATTLE IN DUTCH

HARBOUR

CANADIANS' SUCCESSFUL

ACTION

Canadian tanks and mortars sank a small German naval detachment in the little Dutch harbour of Zijpe, although their only visible target was the mast of one ship, wrote Mr H. A. Standish, the Sydney Morning Herald's war correspondent. The German vessels—a corvette and three converted landing craft, each manned by 50 to 60 men, had been sent to Zijpe, on the Dutch island of Duivelan, to guard against an Allied sea-borne invasion. So the German ships stayed there, even when the tank guns and mortars of the Canadians opened up against them from the mainland over the dyke. The tanks were behind the dyke, in a village called Sluis, and the range was .about i3OO yards.

In the harbour were the Germans, naval craft and men. The Canadian company commander knew, because he had climbed a water-tower and seen a mast and -German uniforms. The German sailors .also knew their enemies were near, but their officers would not believe it. They said (we know this from prisoners' statements) that the only strange uniforms that could be seen on the mainland port must be those of German parachutists.

The Germans fired back with all they had. Each craft had two 88 mm. guns and two four-barrelled centimetre guns. When the reply fire came, the mainland force had to reform. The tanks were re-grouped behind the dyke, and they kept up the fire until the Germans' little ships had stopped firing. Next morning, a Canadian captain, with a small party, pushed off from the mainland in a fishing schooner, followed by two boats to pick up survivors if the schooner was sunk. Fire support from the land was directed by radio by the Canadian company commander in the schooner, He -and his men land-

Ed and captured some of the Germans. They found that the tank and mortar fire of the previous night had sunk the three converted landing craft, and that the corvette was on fire.

Lieutenant Bernard Black and two volunteers, Corporal Shaw .and Corporal Mitchell, rowed through blazing oil on the waters of the little harbour and took the pennant from one of the sunken German ships. They said that if they did not bringback a trophy nobody would believe them. Next day another party brought back the log of the cor-vette-type vessel, whose number in the German Navy was AF92. They added to it a final entry, ''Versunken by Lake Superior Regiment."

The found the bridge smashed by a tank shell from one of our 17----pounders, and the commander dead, with his hands in his pockets. Three of his officers were dead besfde him. In, the harbour they counted another three ships sung by tank and mortar fire, and 12 others which had been sunk by R,A,F, bombing two months ago. y"

a man who worked with him, Professor Sutton Pippard, and two assistants, took two years to complete the mathematical analysis, without which Wallis could not carry the invention beyond the drawing-board stage.