By midnight the ships sailed past Ushant — only seventy-two minutes behind schedule. They were at the point of no return. The break-out had begun. Yet still none of their crews aboard knew where they were bound.
Just after midnight all the ships' loudspeaker systems called for attention. It was an announcement from Admiral Ciliax saying:
"Warriors of the Brest Forces! The Führer has summoned us to new tasks in other waters. After great success in the Atlantic, the ships of the Brest Group — despite all the enemy's efforts to put them out of action and free himself from this threat to his sea communications — became ready for combat again with the vigorous help of everyone and with the prompt aid of the dock-yard personnel.
"Our next task, to the execution of which we were called upon last night, lies ahead of us. It is: "Sail through the Channel eastwards into the German Bight."
"This task imposes on men, weapons and machines the highest demands. We are all aware of the difficulties of the task.
"The Führer expects from each of us unwavering duty. It is our duty as warriors and seamen to fulfil these expectations.
"What tasks await us after sailing into the German Bight need not concern us at the present time.
"I lead the Squadron conscious that every man at his post will do his duty to the utmost."
Jubilant cheers rang out. For the Admiral's announcement meant that at last every man in the Squadron knew what he was facing. The audacity of the enterprise excited the sailors. At last they were leaving hateful bomb-torn Brest — even if they did have to pass through the narrow Straits of Dover. This news operated like an electric shock to everyone. In a moment all hands were fully awake and whispered discussions of the broadcast could be heard everywhere. Unusual guests — the ship's doctor and the paymaster — appeared on Scharnhorst's bridge to talk about the situation.
What would be the outcome of it all? After the excited cheering and whispering came second thoughts. Men gazed stonily at the dark phosphorescent seas frothing by. When daylight came and they neared the Straits their presence was bound to be detected. Would they succeed in passing through them as Hitler had demanded? Or would they go to the bottom?
The Germans became even more jumpy when just after the announcement they picked up what they thought was an English radar frequency. Were they already detected? Although Gneisenau reported that nothing was on her monitors, Scharnhorst's monitoring was certain it was a British aircraft detection radar. Then Admiral Ciliax realized the bearing was not moving. He thought that the destroyer Richard Beitzen was causing it.
A Morse message requested her to make a check-up. Twenty minutes afterwards the emissions ceased. An electrical installation mounted on a gun was not switched off and this had caused the so-called radar emission.
As they raced through the night, steaming to the north-east still undetected by the British, most of their special navigational aids failed them. The only one of real value was the tidal-stream and current atlas, freshly compiled by the Wilhelmshaven Marine Observatory.
They were using radar-finding for the first time. Radar navigation in 1942 was in its infancy and German systems were markedly less efficient than the British. Yet the more advanced British radar did not score any success either on that vital night.
Range-finding equipment, situated along the French coast to locate the battleships' direction and measure their distance away, was supposed to signal information to the Navy and Luftwaffe staffs about the progress of the break-out.
The range-finding transmitters on the ships were not switched on. That was too dangerous, as they could be monitored by the British. However, the receivers could pick up the shore beacon signals to check their position. But the bearings either came too late — or the information was wrong. Some of them did not transmit. Human error was not the monopoly of the British that day.
Gradually the navigators realized the system had failed. This was partly the result of too much secrecy. Security had ruled out any question of advance exercises by the radar operators, who were mostly untrained and some of whom were French. And no one had been able to tell them that they must exercise the greatest vigilance on that night.
This meant a nightmare for the Squadron navigator Giessler. Without the radio bearings, he had to navigate by dead reckoning while sailing at twenty-seven knots through the channel swept by Commodore Ruge's forces. It was only a mile wide and had been swept to a depth of twelve fathoms. By the calculations of the Wilhelmshaven tide tables, he reckoned this would just about give adequate margin to escaped moored mines.
As they steamed through the narrow swept channel, still the overriding anxiety was — had the British detected them? No radio signals were intercepted from them. All remained quiet as they sailed steadily towards dawn and Dover.
Occasionally dimmed red or green lights were seen and flash signals with darkened blinker tubes could be read, as some mine-sweepers, which had cleared the way, returned to ports on the ragged northern coast of France. Then the shore lights of the Casquets hove in sight and Giessler was able to check their position. The strong tidal current was helping them to make as much progress eastward as possible during darkness, and they were catching up with their schedule.
Although Group West kept sending out coded radio messages for guidance following the hold-up leaving Brest they were based on a two-hours' delay. The ships had already made up over an hour, but radio messages picked up made Ciliax realize that the command posts on land were still reckoning the ships to be behind schedule. At dawn swarms of fighters were due and they must not miss the battleships. So he decided to send a message to give the Luftwaffe an exact "fix."
He ordered a destroyer to sail towards shore and transmit radio signals giving the Battle Squadron's correct position. The location of the destroyer when it sent its coded radio message would baffle British direction-finding apparatus. It was not picked up. The British radio still remained quiet.
One of the German radio monitors listening in on British wavelengths reported shortwave telephone conversations between patrol boats in Portland Bay and the Isle of Wight— nothing to worry about.
At 4 a.m. a disturbing signal came from one of the mine-sweeping flotilla, reporting a new mine barrier twenty miles south-west of Boulogne exactly across their course. There was no chance of dodging it as the areas on both sides of the swept channel were known to be filled with new and old mine-fields which had not been surveyed in recent months.
Commodore Ruge was sitting in an armchair in his Paris headquarters reading a Dorothy Sayers crime novel in English, which he had picked up in a local bookshop, when this information was signalled to him. He ordered that even if it risked his boats, the mine-sweeper commander must sweep a gap through the mine barrier in time for the battleships' arrival there just before dawn. It was the only order Ruge gave during the night.
Apart from the new mine scare nothing out of the ordinary happened from departure until sunrise — all went according to plan. As the night drew towards dawn German radio-intelligence monitors still reported no unusual radio communications from the British. This meant they had slipped through most of the Channel unobserved by the enemy. On board the morale of the crews was high.