At 6:13 a.m. the ships began transmitting course signals by the infra-red lamp which the British could not pick up. At 7:00 a.m. they passed Cherbourg. Daybreak was about forty minutes away.
At 7:11, as they were passing German-occupied Guernsey, they began picking up radio position signals which again proved completely useless: they were as wrong as those from the French coast.
At 7:16 in the darkness before dawn the loudspeakers shouted: "Klarschiffzustand!" — "Clear for action." "Alle Mann auf Gefechtsstationen!" — "All hands to battle stations."
The stars began to fade and the faint grey of dawn appeared. In what the Germans call "musket light" — the first glow of dawn — four German night-fighters were heard coming from a westerly direction astern of the ships. After firing off their recognition signals they took over protecting duties.
Watchful in the dawn twilight, Colonel Ibel, Luftwaffe liaison leader, was on the Admiral's bridge with Ciliax. Colonel Hentschel, controller of the fighters, was in the crow's nest. Colonel Elle was in the Air Communication Centre in constant touch with Ibel and Hentschel.
The shapes of the ships became clearer as the first of Galland's fighter planes roared overhead to begin their vigilant defence, which would not end until nightfall. Then the crews standing at battle-stations could distinguish the dark-painted German night-fighters with yellow belly rings circling overhead beneath the clouds.
A hazy sun rose and the sky began to show a high, thin cover of clouds travelling fast to the north-east. The Germans noted with satisfaction that this was the first indication of an approaching storm.
The question, "Hat der Tommy Kenntnis von unserer Absicht?" — "Does Tommy know what we're up to?" — was on everyone's lips. They had been steaming unmolested up the English Channel for nearly eleven hours. Surely "Tommy" knew they were there? Every man stood to his post tense and expectant waiting for the British dawn attack.
IV
THREE RAF PATROLS
The Germans had sailed so far undetected because the RAF night patrols had all missed them.
Coastal Command, which had the task of watching the Channel for the German ships, kept a dusk-to-dawn watch using relays of Hudsons fitted with rudimentary radar called ASV Mark II. The Channel patrol Hudsons had forward-looking antennae capable of detecting the presence of large ships up to thirty miles away. By the end of 1941, 94 per cent of all night sightings came from this radar. But it was still not more than 50 per cent efficient.
Equipped with this radar, three overlapping dusk-to-dawn air patrols flew every night between Brest and the Straits of Dover. The most vital of these was the westerly one, called "Stopper," which covered the coastline from Brest to Ushant. The second, known as "Line SE," patrolled from Ushant to the north-east comer of Brittany. The third, "Habo," extended from Le Havre to Boulogne.
Their interlinked patrols over the Channel formed one continuous search pattern, which meant in theory that if one plane failed to detect the German ships there was a very good chance another patrol would spot them. To make these patrols effective, intensive crew training was needed and this had not reached as high a standard as it should have.
At 6:27 p.m. on 11 February, a Hudson commanded by Flt.-Lt. C. L. Wilson of 224 Squadron took off from the darkened RAF station at St. Eval, Cornwall, as patrol "Stopper." It was such a black night that Wilson could hardly see his wing-tips. On such a night, visual reconnaissance was impossible, and he had to rely entirely on radar for his patrol over Brest and the tip of the Breton peninsular.
At 7:17 p.m., while flying at 1,000 feet near Ushant, a German JU-88 flew near, almost colliding with Wilson's Hudson. As he dodged away from the German night-fighter, his crew hastily switched off the radar. But when they turned it on again it was dead. The crew, Sergeants George Thomas, G. Cornfield and R. Cooke, tried to make it work but they could not. At 7:40 p.m., as his radar was still out of action, Wilson decided to return to base.
When he landed at St. Eval, technicians tried for forty minutes to repair the radar breakdown. They looked for some obscure fault, but it was eventually found to be a blown fuse. As the ground crews did not find it quickly, Wilson was ordered to take over another Hudson to resume his patrol. This aircraft refused to start. Another fifty minutes passed before they found the cause of this trouble — a damp plug. By the time it was discovered, a third Hudson commanded by Sq.-Ldr. G. Bartlett had taken off to resume "Stopper" patrol.
While they were wrestling with a blown fuse and a damp plug at St. Eval, Brest remained unwatched for three hours. Wilson went off patrol at 7:40 p.m. It was 10:38 p.m. before Bartlett arrived over Brest. The German ships had sailed over an hour before.
At 2 a.m., Bartlett saw an orange light astern which he thought was probably a German night-fighter and dived away from it towards the sea. By this time the German battleships were over 100 miles eastwards along the English Channel.
Twenty-one minutes after "Stopper" took off — at 6:48 p.m. — another Hudson commanded by Flt.-Lt. G. S. Bennett took off on "Line SE" patrol. He arrived over his patrol area between Brest and Le Havre at 7:40 p.m., the same moment as Wilson in "Stopper" decided to return.
Bennett also found his radar equipment had broken down. He remained on patrol for ninety minutes while the crew tried to repair the radar, but it was so dark there was no effective reconnaissance over this period. At 9:13 p.m., Bennett decided it could not be repaired so he broke radio silence to report and the aircraft was ordered to return. When he landed the fault turned out to be an obscure one, which three weeks later was still under investigation.
Bennett's plane was not replaced. This was a vital mistake. It was a quarter of an hour after midnight when the battleships steamed past Ushant into the "Line SE" patrol area. They continued to steam through "Line SE" patrol area for most of the night, and if a relief aircraft has been sent it might have flown right over them. If it had not been for this double failure of radar, one of the Hudsons would almost certainly have spotted the battleships.
The third patrol, Habo, which covered the Le Havre— Boulogne area until dawn, was a responsibility of 223 Squadron based on Thorney Island. Sergeant Smith and Sergeant Watt, who went on patrol between 12:32 a.m. and 5:54 a.m. only reported "White light seen off Barfleur." From 3:55 a.m. to 7:15 a.m., the second "Habo" plane with Flying Officer Alexander and Sergeant Austen was on patrol.
The mist was very heavy over this part of the Channel, and the Station Controller feared it might turn into fog and they would be unable to land. So he ordered Alexander to make only two circuits and return. This brought the patrol to an end an hour earlier than usual.
Once again a gap was left in the British air-guard. Had the patrol been maintained until dawn its radar might have picked up the German battleships steaming off Le Havre. As it was, when the battleships reached the "Habo" line, the aircraft had left an hour before. When Alexander returned, he reported, "Duty performed. Nothing sighted."
The British defence line, which included a submarine and three air patrols stretching from Brest along the Channel to Boulogne, had been pierced repeatedly by the Germans. This was not due to their own skill. It happened because of an awesome mixture of bad weather, bad luck, and inefficiency on the part of RAF Coastal Command.
The German ships, as they steamed towards the Straits of Dover, were approaching weapons which might prove formidable or even decisive — the big coastal guns.
When the British Expeditionary Force departed amid civilian cheers for France, no one envisaged the day would come when heavy guns would fire across the English Channel. Then came 1940—and Dunkirk.