On 20 April1917 two groups of destroyers of the Kaiserliche Marine raided the Dover Strait to bombard Allied positions on shore and to engage warships patrolling the Dover Barrage — the field of floating mines that prevented German ships from getting into the English Channel. Six destroyers bombarded Calais and another six bombarded Dover just before midnight.
Two flotilla leaders of the Royal Navy, Broke (Commander Edward Evans) and Swift, were on patrol near Dover and engaged the German ships early on 21 April1917 near the Goodwin Sands. In a confusing action Swift torpedoed G-85. Broke rammed G-42, and the two ships became locked together. For a while there was close-quarters fighting between the crews, before Broke got free and G-42 sank.
Broke was damaged and had to be towed back to port. The other ten German destroyers made it back to port without loss.
The Strait of Dover or DoverStrait (French: Pas de Calais, IPA: [pɑ də kalɛ], "Strait of Calais", Dutch: Nauw van Kales) is the strait at the narrowest part of the English Channel.
The shortest distance across the strait is from the South Foreland, some 6 km (4 mi) north-east of Dover in the county of Kent, England, to Cap Gris Nez, a cape near Calais in the département of Pas-de-Calais, France.
A narrow deeper channel along the middle of the Straits of Dover was the bed of the Rhine in the last Ice Age.
The German losses in the battle were critical in several respects: the last of the German reserves were now gone; the Luftwaffe had been broken; and the German army in the West was being pushed back.
Battle of the Bulge was released in 1965, starring Robert Shaw and Henry Fonda.
The 1994 PBS documentary "Battle of the Bulge", produced by Thomas F. Lennon, wrtten by Lennon and Mark Zwonitzer, was told from the perspective of American soldiers who survived.
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