The British diverted the attention of German miners from their deepest galleries by making many minor attacks in the upper levels. A gallery of the Kruisstraat mine, begun on 2 January, had been dug for 690 m (750 yd) and was flooded by a camouflet explosion in February 1917, after which a new chamber was dug and charged next to the flooded mine. On 27 August, the Germans set a camouflet, which killed four men and wrecked the gallery for 120 m (400 ft) the mine had been charged and the explosives were left in the chamber. German tunnellers came within metres of several British mine chambers and, well before the Battle of Messines, found La Petite Douve Farm mine. Sappers dug the tunnels into a layer of blue clay 24–37 m (80–120 ft) below the surface, then drifted galleries (horizontal passages) for 5,453 m (5,964 yd) to points beneath the position of the German Gruppe Wijtschate, despite German counter-mining. Spanbroekmolen crater ("Lone Tree Crater" or "Pool of Peace") on one of the highest points of the Messines Ridge, in November 2009.Ĭo-ordinated by the Royal Engineers, the mine galleries were dug by the British 171st, 175th and 250th Tunnelling companies and the 1st Canadian, 3rd Canadian and 1st Australian Tunnelling companies, while the British 183rd, 2nd Canadian and 2nd Australian Tunnelling companies built dugouts (underground shelters) in the Second Army area. To overcome the technical difficulties, two military geologists assisted the miners from March, including Edgeworth David, who planned the system of mines. Sub-surface conditions were especially complex and separate ground water tables made mining difficult. By January, several deep mine shafts, marked as "deep wells" and six tunnels had been started. Harvey, had already begun the preliminaries. The scheme devised by Fowke was formally approved on 6 January 1916, although Fowke and his deputy, Colonel R. Fowke had wanted galleries about 960 m (1,050 yd) long, as far as Grand Bois and Bon Fermier Cabaret on the fringe of Messines but the longest tunnel was a 660 m (720 yd) gallery to Kruisstraat. In September, Fowke proposed to dig under the Ploegsteert–Messines ( Mesen), Kemmel–Wytschaete (Wijtschate) and Vierstraat–Wytschaete roads and to dig two tunnels between the Douve river and the south-east end of Plugstreet (Ploegsteert) Wood, the objectives to be reached in three to six months. Fowke had been inspired by the thinking of Major John Norton-Griffiths, a civil engineer, who had helped form the first tunnelling companies and introduced the quiet clay kicking technique. The concept of a deep mining offensive was devised in September 1915 by the Engineer-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), Brigadier George Fowke, who proposed to drive galleries 18–27 m (60–90 ft) underground. Background British mining, 1915–1916 Įxample of a mine gallery with timber roof supportĪs part of Allied operations in the Ypres Salient, British mining against the German-held salient at Wijtschate (Wytchaete or Whitesheet to the British) near Messines had begun in early 1915, with diggings 4.6–6.1 m (15–20 ft) below the surface. Just over two months later, on 10 August 1917, the Royal Engineers fired the last British deep mine of the war, at Givenchy-en-Gohelle near Arras. The Battle of Messines marked the zenith of mine warfare. The evening before the attack, General Sir Charles Harington, Chief of Staff of the Second Army, remarked to the press, "Gentlemen, I don’t know whether we are going to make history tomorrow, but at any rate we shall change geography". Their joint explosion ranks among the largest non-nuclear explosions of all time. The mines, secretly planted and maintained by British tunnelling units beneath the forward position of the German 4th Army (General Friedrich Bertram Sixt von Armin), killed approximately 10,000 German soldiers and created 19 large craters. The Mines in the Battle of Messines comprised a series of underground explosive charges which were fired during the First World War at the start of the Battle of Messines (7–14 June 1917) by the British Second Army (General Sir Herbert Plumer) near the village of Mesen ( Messines in French, historically also used in English and German) in Belgian West Flanders.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |