The Channel Dash - 1942 - They'll Never See This Coming

On the night of February 11th, 1942, 3 heavy units of the Nazi Kriegsmarine and their escorts, creep out of the port of Brest on the French west coast bound for Norway. Secrecy was such a priority that many of the crews involved had been told nothing of their upcoming mission until the last possible moment. They’re brazen route will take them right under the nose of British Coastal Command in what will later be described as the biggest blow to British prestige in over 300 years. 

Germany’s strategy of convoy raiding that they implemented during both world wars has been well documented in the years after WW2. This naval doctrine was famously carried out by Germanys vast fleet of submarines, better known as U-boats. However, the German Kriegsmarine also placed emphasis on surface raiders and by 1941 they had a healthy number of such ships, but none were quite as worrying to the British Admiralty as the sisters, Scharnhorst, and Gneisenau.

Scharnhorst; lead ship of her class pictured 1939

In the Winter of 1941, the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were responsible for the sinking of nearly 120,000 tons of shipping, the highest rate for surface ships in the war thus far. After their successful forays into the North Atlantic engine trouble began to rear its head, and the ships looked to base themselves at an Atlantic port for intermittent rest and refit. The fall of France in 1940 made this possible, and they based themselves in the strategically vital occupied port of Brest which already had substantial dockyard infrastructure present thanks to the French utilizing these yards to construct their vast Ocean Liners of the 1930’s. 

This understandably didn’t sit well with the British, who in response organized Group 19 of RAF Coastal Command to do reconnaissance on the port. This, on top of Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s direct specification that the war effort should focus on threats to UK-bound convoys, meant that the two Scharnhorst class vessels would be subjected to an eye watering 1,161 aircraft strikes in the span of just 2 months, firmly bottling the ships up. 

RAF bombers over Brest, 1941

It was at this point that Adolf Hitler himself stepped in, presumably fed up with having the core of his fleet stuck in a French port unable to leave. So, he ordered that the ships be recalled. But where to? To Hitler the answer was obvious; Norway. To fend off a completely fictional upcoming invasion that he was confident the British would attempt to secure Germany’s vital iron ore supplies used to feed the German war machine. German High Command preferred to accomplish this by using the tried and tested approach of going “the long way round” via the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland a la the Bismarck in 1941. 

Hitler instead argued that the ad hoc force should sail straight up the English Channel… and right under the guns, radar, and planes of the entire British coastal defense force. Hitler argued that the shortest route possible would be best despite the risk since RAF reconnaissance aircraft were watching Brest like hawks, meaning the Germans would have little to no element of surprise. 

Route taken by the Germans in Op Cerberus

Grand Admiral Erich Raeder described this as mission impossible against a ready and waiting defender and balked at the idea of abandoning the Atlantic coast (although he did concede that Brest was not suitable for his units). Hitler’s cunning solution was to tell precisely no one except the relevant commanders of the upcoming sortie, wait for a spell of bad weather to help conceal their movements, and send the ships off to make a run for it. 

Raeder pictured during the war

The task of organsing the finer details of the plan fell to Vice Admiral, Otto Ciliax, he assorted destroyers and torpedo boats to make their way to Brest to act as the formations escort force, took U-boats off offensive operations to act as mobile weather stations and sent out mine sweepers ahead of them to clear the way up the channel. Even the spring tide moving up the channel of all things was considered as this would help give the ships an almost negligible speed boost but could none the less be beneficial. 

With all preparations made, Operation Cerberus was green-lit. At 19:30, following an ineffective RAF bomber raid on the port, the Germans set sail. A British agent based in Brest frantically tried to signal a message of the imminent departure; but the Germans were jamming all outgoing frequencies and the message was not received. The Germans proceeded unabated for the next 12 hours, at which point they met up with their Luftwaffe air cover patrols. 

Even with this significant amount of activity it took until 10:00 for RAF Coastal Command to notice the suspicious activity of aircraft circling just off the French coast, and they deploy a flight of Spitfires to investigate at which point the German flotilla is finally spotted visually and up and down the English coast, alarms are raised. 

By 11:25, over 250 bombers from the RAF were making ready for combat, but there was a problem. Of the 250 aircraft cited for use in the counterattack, 100 of them had already been fitted out with semi-armour piercing bombs which were only effective when dropped from high altitudes and therefore weren’t suitable given the poor visibility of the day. These aircraft would therefore have to be rearmed, which would take precious time the RAF didn’t have. 

Upon reaching the narrowest point of the Channel, Dover battery, consisting of no less than 12 large caliber naval guns were readied. At 12:19, they opened fired through the fog and mist, using their K-band radar to track the enemy however this radar type was not advanced enough to spot the fall of the Dover guns shells, which made accurate adjustment impossible. 

15 inch gun defensive gun under construction, Dover 1942

Finally, at 12:30, the British start getting somewhere with their counter-offensive as 6 Swordfish torpedo bombers from 825 squadron get airborne with an escort and operate in loose conjunction with motor torpedo boats from Ramsgate. 

Despite their tenacity and refusal to break off their attacks, all 6 swordfish were downed with their torpedoes being easily avoided. Likewise, the torpedo boats didn’t fare any better, being forced to launch their weapons at maximum range when they were intercepted by the Germans escorts. 

To the Germans, Operation Cerberus thus far couldn’t have gone any better; however, at 14:31 it becomes apparent that the previous days minesweeping operation hadn’t been as successful as first thought when Scharnhorst became a victim of one such weapon, reducing her speed to 25 knots. This would have been a perfect opportunity for the British to pounce on the wounded ship however, once again they were caught flat-footed. 

For the next hour the air becomes thick with smoke and fire as the British attempt to utilise their large and experienced heavy bomber units to deal with the German flotilla attacking in 2 waves with over 200 aircraft between them, the Germans have so many targets to deal with that their Anti-Aircraft guns glow red from the strain. Despite the saturation of the attack, thanks to poor visual weather conditions, not a single hit was scored. 

Train of German ships headed through the Channel lead by Destroyer escort

Sporadic and disjointed air attacks would beset the flotilla until around 8pm accomplishing little besides giving the Germans some more target practice. However, Gneisenau, not to be outdone by her sister, struck a sea mine of her own that had been dropped by the RAF previously in the day based on their predicted path. 

The biggest win for the British today would come at 22:00, when the Scharnhorst ran into her second mine of the day, leaving her without propulsion and steering for about half an hour before limping away at 12 knots. By 10:00 the next day, all Ciliax’s forces had made it to Germany, officially concluding Operation Cerberus. 

The failure of British forces to stop the German foray dead in its tracks was met with uproar from the masses both at home and abroad. Fresh from the loss HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse to air attack just 2 months prior, the British had retracted fleet capital units in the plans to respond to and German advance up the channel for fear of repeating the same mistakes. 

In their defense, most of the RAF’s failing could be drawn back to a failure of equipment and poor weather leading to disadvantageous engagement odds. However, the fact remains, that British command made a major tactical error in thinking that many small attacks could make up the same net result as fewer large attacks. All this combined lead to the first successful transit of the channel by a hostile fleet in 3 centuries. 

The biggest victory that the Admiralty could take away from the whole ordeal was that thanks to the damage inflicted by mines, as well as torpedoes from submarines in the following weeks, it would be months before any German heavy units arrived at Norway to put up a defense. 

Scharnhorst being repaired in the Kiel naval yard, 1943

All in all, the Germans heralded Operation Cerberus as a tactical victory and the Nazi propaganda machine duly cashed in. In private however, the Kriegsmarine viewed it as a strategic loss as they had practically been forced by Hitler to sacrifice the very real threat they posed to Atlantic shipping in exchange for a defensive assignment that offered them little opportunities and would set the stage for the downfall of the Kriegsmarine’s capital units.