Dash Cam Germany

[Leysan Torri]

Iwould refrain from editing dashes because the absolutely correct use might be subjective and argumentative anyway, but if other posters agree on the correct use and want to edit all my posts, they may do so.

The Channel Dash (German: Unternehmen Zerberus, Operation Cerberus) was a German naval operation during the Second World War.[a] A Kriegsmarine (German Navy) squadron comprising the two Scharnhorst-class battleships, the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and their escorts was evacuated from Brest in Brittany to German ports. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had arrived in Brest on 22 March 1941 after the success of Operation Berlin in the Atlantic. More raids were planned and the ships were refitted at Brest. The ships were a threat to Allied trans-Atlantic convoys and RAF Bomber Command attacked them from 30 March 1941. Gneisenau was hit on 6 April 1941 and Scharnhorst on 24 July 1941, after dispersal to La Pallice. In late 1941, Adolf Hitler ordered the Oberkommando der Marine (OKM; German Navy High Command) to plan an operation to return the ships to German bases against a British invasion of Norway. The short route up the English Channel was preferred to a detour around the British Isles for surprise and air cover by the Luftwaffe and on 12 January 1942, Hitler gave orders for the operation.[1]

The British exploited decrypts of German radio messages coded with the Enigma machine, air reconnaissance by the RAF Photographic Reconnaissance Unit (PRU) and agents in France to watch the ships and report the damage caused by the bombing. Operation Fuller, a joint Royal Navy-RAF contingency plan, was devised to counter a sortie by the German ships against Atlantic convoys, a return to German ports by circumnavigating the British Isles, or a dash up the English Channel. The Royal Navy had to keep ships at Scapa Flow in Scotland in case of a sortie by the German battleship Tirpitz from Norway. The RAF had sent squadrons from Bomber and Coastal commands overseas and kept torpedo bombers in Scotland ready for Tirpitz, which limited the number of aircraft available against a dash up the Channel, as did the winter weather which reduced visibility and blocked airfields with snow.

On 11 February 1942, the ships left Brest at 10:45 p.m. (German time) and escaped detection for more than twelve hours, approaching the Strait of Dover without discovery. The Luftwaffe provided air cover in Unternehmen Donnerkeil (Operation Thunderbolt) and as the ships neared Dover, the British belatedly responded. Attacks by the RAF, Fleet Air Arm, Navy and bombardments by coastal artillery were costly failures but Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were damaged by mines in the North Sea (Scharnhorst was out of action for a year). By 13 February, the ships had reached German ports; Winston Churchill ordered an inquiry into the dbcle and The Times denounced the British fiasco. The Kriegsmarine judged the operation a tactical success and a strategic failure because the threat to Atlantic convoys had been sacrificed for a hypothetical threat to Norway. On 23 February, Prinz Eugen was torpedoed off Norway and after being repaired, spent the rest of the war in the Baltic. Gneisenau went into dry dock and was bombed on the night of 26/27 February, never to sail again; Scharnhorst was sunk at the Battle of the North Cape on 26 December 1943.

From 10 January to mid-April 1941, Bomber Command aimed 829 long tons (842 t) of bombs at the ships in Brest harbour. Winston Churchill issued the Battle of the Atlantic directive on 9 March, directing the priority of the British war effort temporarily to counter the German campaign against Atlantic convoys.[4] 1 PRU of the RAF discovered Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in port on 28 March and Bomber Command flew about 1,161 sorties against the ships in Brest, through poor weather for the next two months. Gneisenau needed an overhaul of her engine room and entered dry dock on 4 April. When the water was pumped out of the dry dock, an unexploded bomb was found between the stocks under the ship. The ship had to be carefully refloated and removed before the bomb could be defused. Gneisenau was moored in an exposed position in the roadstead, where it was photographed by a 1 PRU Spitfire on 5 April. Bristol Beaufort torpedo bombers attacked at dawn next day; one aircraft found the harbour through the haze and torpedoed Gneisenau on the starboard side, seriously damaging the reserve command centre.[5]

Gneisenau went back into dry dock and on the night of 10/11 April, it was hit four times and suffered two near misses. One of the hits did not explode but the others jammed 'B' turret and distorted the armoured deck near it, made about a third of the crew quarters uninhabitable by fire and blast damage, destroyed the kitchens and bakery and affected some gunnery control systems.[6] Scharnhorst was not damaged but the bomb hits on the docks delayed its refit, which included a substantial overhaul of its machinery; the boiler superheater tubes had a manufacturing defect that had plagued the ship throughout Operation Berlin.[7] Repairs had been expected to take ten weeks but delays, exacerbated by British minelaying in the vicinity, caused them to miss Unternehmen Rheinbung (Operation Rhine Exercise). The sortie by Bismarck and Prinz Eugen into the North Atlantic went ahead and Bismarck was sunk; Prinz Eugen returned to Brest on 1 June. The loss of Bismarck severely limited the freedom of action of the German surface fleet, after Hitler ordered that capital ships must operate with much greater caution.[8]

From 28 March to the end of July, 1,962 long tons (1,993 t) of bombs were dropped in 1,875 sorties, 1,723 by Bomber Command, which also sent 205 minelaying sorties, with another 159 from Coastal Command, laying 275 mines off Brest; the British lost 34 aircraft, three being minelayers. For the next two months, Bomber Command made frequent small attacks, then 56 bombers attacked on the night of 3/4 September, followed by 120 bombers on the night of 13/14 September. Frequent small attacks were resumed and about 1,000 sorties were made from July to December.[11] At the start of the month, the Brest Group was made the Bomber Command priority again and from 11 December, bombing and minelaying took place nightly. When Prinz Eugen was found out of drydock on 16 December, a plan for a big night raid followed up by a day raid was implemented, with a 101-bomber raid on the night of 17/18 December and a daylight raid by 41 heavy bombers on the afternoon of 18 December, escorted by ten fighter squadrons. Gneisenau was slightly damaged and dock gates were smashed, stranding Scharnhorst for a month, for a loss of six bombers. Heavy attacks continued all month and another day raid by Halifaxes was made on 30 December. From 1 August to 31 December, 1,175 long tons (1,194 t) of high explosive and 10 long tons (10 t) of incendiaries were dropped, eleven heavy bombers were shot down and considerable damage was inflicted on the docks and the town but none of the ships were hit again. Gneisenau was damaged on the evening of 6 January and 37 per cent of Bomber Command sorties between 10 December and 20 January 1942 were flown against the ships at Brest.[12][13][14][c]

Ultra was the code name used by British military intelligence for signals intelligence obtained by breaking German radio and teleprinter communications, including signals encrypted by Enigma, a German electro-mechanical rotor cipher machine. The decryption was carried out at the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park and the information was passed on to operational commands.[16] From May 1941, Bletchley could read the Enigma Home Waters setting used by surface ships with few failures or interruptions, which combined with the PRU and reports from agents kept watch on the ships at Brest. By April 1941, the British knew that the three ships had been hit but not the extent of the damage. [17]

From 16 to 23 December, Enigma decrypts showed that the gunners of the ships were on the Baltic, conducting gunnery training. Next day, the Admiralty warned that an attempt to break out was likely.[18] On 25 January 1942, the ships were photographed in the harbour and two short periods in dry dock by two ships were seen. From the end of January to early February, torpedo boats, minesweepers and destroyers joined the big ships; together with news that the battleship Tirpitz in Norway had moved to the south, this led the Admiralty to issue an appreciation on 2 February that the three ships were going to attempt to sail up the channel and sent the signal Executive Fuller, the order to begin the operation to prevent the German Fleet from breaking into the North Atlantic.[19] Next day Enigma and RAF photographic reconnaissance (PR) found that the number of German ship reinforcements from Brest to the Hook of Holland had risen to seven destroyers, ten torpedo-boats, more than 30 minesweepers, 25 E-boats and many smaller craft.[20]

During 1941, Hitler decided that the Brest Group should return to home waters in a "surprise break through the Channel", as part of a plan to thwart a British invasion of Norway. OKM preferred the Denmark Strait passage to Germany and Groadmiral (Grand Admiral) Erich Raeder called a journey along the English Channel impossible.[21] Hitler said that the break-out should be planned with no training period, since British intelligence was bound to find out and have the ships bombed. Hitler ordered that a period of bad weather should be chosen, when the bulk of the RAF would be grounded. Vizeadmiral (vice admiral) Kurt Fricke (Chief of Staff of the Seekriegsleitung SKL, Maritime Warfare Command) opposed Hitler but was allowed only a short time to review the policy. On 12 January 1942, Raeder again opposed the channel route but planned for it, provided that Hitler took the final decision.[22]

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