World War II Day by Day

Off Cherbourg Coast, Occupied France • February 12, 1942

At dawn on February 12, 1942, a Kriegs­marine (German Navy) battle fleet rounded the Cher­bourg penin­sula in German-occupied Normandy. Bolting from the port of Brest in neighboring Brit­tany late the pre­vious night, twin sister battle­ships Scharn­horst and Gneise­nau, together with heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and sup­porting ves­sels, were embarked on an auda­cious dash toward the north­east—in broad day­light and under the very noses of their British adver­sary—seeking the safety of Germany’s Elbe Estu­ary roughly 760 nau­ti­cal miles/­1,400 km away. To be suc­cess­ful the enemy flotilla had to transit the English Chan­nel that sepa­rates the Euro­pean con­ti­nent from England and steam through the Straits of Dover, at 20 miles/­32 km wide one of the narrowest, most heavily defended straits in the world (see map below). Sur­prise, stealth, the weather and German naval escorts, mine­sweepers, and con­tin­u­ous local air cover, plus a goodly amount of luck, would all have to conspire in this make-or-break channel dash.

By the end of 1941 German leader Adolf Hitler’s calculus had changed: He had soured on funding a large, expen­sive fleet of high-value capi­tal ships that could not pos­sibly rise to chal­lenge Great Britain’s Royal Navy now and for years to come. Earlier in May the British sank Germany’s mon­ster battle­ship Bis­marck 300 nau­ti­cal miles/­560 km off the west coast of France after a 100‑hour sea battle at a loss of nearly 2,100 Kriegs­marine offi­cers and enlisted men. And for close to a year now Britain’s Royal Air Force was fixated on destroying the afore­mentioned 3 German war­ships holed up in Brest’s harbor—RAF flight crews jokingly called them “The Brest Target Flotilla”—resulting in hun­dreds of German casual­ties as well as con­tin­ual repair and service costs. Hitler believed war­time resources could better be used else­where; for example, against the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front.

The breakout from Brest to North German ports (German, Kanalmarsch) was set for the night of Febru­ary 11, 1942. The bold run part­nered the Kriegs­marine, the ser­vice respon­sible for all things naval (code­named Oper­a­tion Cer­ber­us, a refer­ence to the 3‑headed dog in Greek myth­o­logy that guards the entrance to Hades) with the Luft­waffe’s air cover service (code­named Oper­a­tion Donner­keil, or Thunder­bolt). Break­out began 2 and a quarter hours late, at 10:45 p.m., due to a flight of RAF medium bombers releasing bombs well clear of the port.

The 30-hour passage to safe harbor in Kiel and Wilhelmshaven, Germany, was ably assisted in part by 3 Jagd­geschwader (fighter wings) in dawn-to-dusk cover­age of the high­tailing German flotilla, part of Oper­a­tion Donner­keil. Oper­a­tion Cer­berus swelled to 60 ships by the addi­tion of auxil­iaries and patrol craft; e.g., tor­pedo boats. Twice the break­out flotilla escaped British detec­tion. Poor plan­ning assump­tions (the Germans would never dare a mid­day transit of the English Chan­nel), bureau­cratic stupid­ity (RAF Fighter Com­mand main­taining radio silence over the Chan­nel), exces­sive secrecy, and plain bad luck (strike air­craft grounded by snow in Scot­land and equip­ment fail­ures on land, sea, and in patrolling air­craft) hobbled the over­all British reac­tion (Oper­a­tion Fuller) to the Brest escapees.

British torpedo bombers and torpedo boats failed miser­a­bly to dis­rupt the Kanal­marsch, some returning to base without launching their wea­pons. Shortly after 1 p.m. 9‑inch/­22.86 cm coastal artil­lery bat­te­ries near Dover, where the Chan­nel was narrowest, opened up on the German task force as it steamed by at a brisk 28 knots/­52 km/h. Lacking good visi­bil­ity to adjust fire, all 36 rounds missed their target.

The Channel Dash suffered several setbacks, first when the Scharn­horst struck an air-dropped mag­netic mine in the North Sea off the mouth of the Scheldt water­way and another mine off the Dutch Frisian Islands hours later. Repairs allowed the battle­ship to reach the North German port of Wilhelms­haven. Next it was Gneise­nau’s turn to deto­nate a mine off the Dutch West Frisian Islands. Shortly after sun­rise on Febru­ary 13, 1942, she limped into the North German port of Kiel together with Prinz Eugen and several smaller vessels. Operation Cerberus was a German triumph.

German Channel Dash (Kanalmarsch), Combined Naval and Air Operations Cerberus and Donnerkeil, February 11–13, 1942

Above: French map of the “Channel Dash” by German warships Scharn­horst, Gneis­enau, Prinz Eugen, and their escorts of destroyers and mine­sweepers from Brest in Brit­tany, occu­pied North­ern France (lower left in map), through the English Chan­nel and the Dover Straits (center) to the safety of North­ern Germany (top right) between February 11 and 13, 1942. Hitler and his panel of naval and air force experts, with the not­able excep­tion of Grand Adm. Erich Raeder, were enthu­si­as­tic sup­porters of the Brest break­out. Likening the Brest vessels to a can­cer patient, Hitler opined they were “doomed with­out an oper­a­tion,” what­ever risks to the patient. Besides, the stra­te­gic situ­a­tion, he stated, now required all avail­able warships to thwart, as it turned out, a hypothetical threat to German-occupied Norway.

Left: “Twin Sisters” Scharnhorst (in photo) and Gneisenau were the first capital ships built as part of Nazi Germany’s pre­war rearma­ment pro­gram. Launched in 1936, the battle­ships (called “battle­cruisers” by the British) mea­sured 741 ft, 6 in/­225.9 m at the water­line and dis­placed 38,700 tons when fully loaded. Capa­ble of 31 knots/­57.4 km/h, each ship enjoyed a 6,000‑mile/­9,656‑kilo­meters com­bat range. Scharn­horst and Gneise­nau were armed with a main battery of 9 11‑in/­28‑cm guns housed in 3 turrets. Their second­ary arma­ment included another 12 5.9‑in/­15‑cm pieces, as well as a suite of anti­aircraft weapons and 6 torpedo launchers. Each battle­ship had an authorized complement of 1,669 men.

Right: Scharnhorst and Gneisenau arrived in Brest, Brit­tany for refitting on March 22, 1941, Prinz Eugen on June 1. The trio sank or cap­tured an impres­sive 22 Allied mer­chant ves­sels tran­siting the Atlan­tic between South­ern Green­land and West Africa from late Janu­ary to late March 1941. Their surface raiding mission (Oper­a­tion Berlin) was the most suc­cess­ful one in the 6‑year-long Battle of the Atlantic. From March 30, 1941, British Bomber Com­mand repeatedly attacked the surface raiders in their French dock­yard, torpedoing Gnei­senau on April 6 and sending 4 bombs into the battle­ship 4 days later. Scharn­horst was hit by 5 bombs on July 24, 1941, and repairs were not com­pleted until mid‑January 1942. The Home Fleet block­aded the port of Brest, and British sub­marines were stationed off­shore. In the left half of this photo a smoke screen rolls over the 2 huddled battle­ships in a day­light raid by RAF Handley Page 4‑engine Hali­fax bombers. Near daily raids on the dock­yards prompted the Kriegs­marine to ini­ti­ate the “Channel Dash” to relocate their valuable naval assets to safer northern waters.

Above: Scharn­horst, Gneise­nau, and Prinz Eugen with sur­face escorts during Oper­a­tion Cer­be­rus, part of Germany’s Kanal­marsch. Britain’s ser­vice chiefs appre­ci­ated the pos­si­bil­ity that the Kriegs­marine might attempt to evac­u­ate its Brest Group through the English Chan­nel to Germany and Norway. Their response was code­named Oper­a­tion Fuller. Fuller called for syn­chro­nized attacks by small flotil­las of destroyers and motor tor­pedo boats (MTBs) acting in concert with seve­ral squad­rons of RAF strike air­craft. Royal Navy Fairey Sword­fish tor­pedo planes used against the Bis­marck could also be called upon if neces­sary. It turned out that Oper­a­tion Fuller was an exer­cise in futility, a debacle, a fiasco. Not until the enemy flotilla approached the Strait of Dover was its escape from Brest discovered. Both Scharn­horst and Gneise­nau were damaged by mines, but this was in the North Sea after the flotilla had passed through the heavily defended narrow strait; Prinz Eugen was unscathed. One German patrol craft was sunk, 2 destroyers were damaged, 2 tor­pedo boats only lightly so, 22 air­craft and 23 air­crew were lost along with 13 sea­men. British losses were 1 severely damaged destroyer, several damaged torpedo boats, 42 lost air­craft, and 230–250 killed and wounded service­members.

Successful German Channel Dash, February 11–13, 1942