DAMAGE IN OSTEND.

Colonist, Volume LVIII, Issue 14483, 15 August 1917, Page 3

DAMAGE IN OSTEND.

EFFECT OF BRITISH BOMBS.

PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE

A series of photographic plates of the bombardment of Ostond which have arrived in London afford-a remarkable example of the development of photographic observation and record by airplanes. They show in undeniable fashion that the British boirioardment of Ostend on June 5 was tho most successful yet accomplished, ensuring that Ostend will bo enppied as a iiseful German base for weeks, if not lyTliere are several series of these Ostend plates in che little photographic record-room of the Admiralty building at Whitehall, says a writer in a London newspaper. The first group was taken before the bombardment, and shows the town in panoramic squares. With a small reading-glass lii is easy to distinguish the essential features of docks factories, and harbour-.works .in their normal condition and to trace railroad tracks, streets, and storeyards. A second group of plates shows Ostend after the bombardment. At first sight the pictures are disappointing. Taken from airplanes a mile or more above the town, the. pictures show no great general devastation. ' There ara no large general changes in ,{he outline I of the town, but careful comparisons. with the pictures taken before the Bombardment reveal some striking chances hero and-there, -which,grow in importance as they are studied under, a magnifying glass. . ° First of dll there is tho harbour. One .is immediately struck by a slight change in the appearance of the great lock gates, on which all the,activity of the harbour depends. • Tho magnifying .class reveals some- of. the reasons'for this change. The ■■ breaking down of | the locks prevents the retention of I water in the basin and the canals which feed it, incapacitating the entire port machinery. Equally effective in crippling the harbour i s a jjt P n the operating machinery, jamming the iccks so that ingress or egress is impossible until elaborate repairs are made. . .:, ;

The plates taken the day before the bombardment show a number of ships at anchor in the harbour or tied up in the inner basin. In the succeeding plates some of the ships have disappeared, and others are apparently halfsubmerged. Tho !on ff ' wharf* looks like a caricature of its former self and two or three buildin.es •i n the dockyards, whose usefulness was indicated by the eariv- pictures, by the presence °* new. ndditions or- alterations, have suffered badly.