The German squadron was now a most formidable armada. The protecting destroyers Richard Bietzen, Jacobi, Friedrich Ihn, Hermann Schoernann of flotilla 229, and six destroyers of 225 flotilla, sailed ahead of the main force. As the German battle-squadron arrived off Cap Gris Nez, a force of little ships joined them. The Second and Third and Eighth Torpedo Boat flotillas steamed up with five boats each. With them came the Second, Fourth and Sixth E-boat flotillas.
At 12:15 p.m., exactly according to their timetable, they arrived at the narrowest part of the Channel between Dover and Cap Gris Nez, where the British should be waiting to sink them with massive air-sea attacks and coastal gun barrages. Through gaps in the mist, they saw the English coast and began to catch an occasional glimpse of barrage balloons. Then the white cliffs of Dover came into view and they could plainly see the framework of the radar antennae.
The first officer, Cdr. Ernst Dominik, who had been on board the Scharnhorst ever since she was commissioned, waited for reports from every department of the ship. All the crews stood to, manning guns, waiting by boilers and engines. Others stood ready for damage and fire control. Every man of the 1,900 aboard Scharnhorst, the leading battleship, was expecting action.
Admiral Ciliax stood on the bridge gazing into the mist, with the collar of his heavy sheepskin coat turned up and his big Zeiss glasses hanging on their leather slings around his neck. Broad-shouldered Captain Kurt Hoffmann sat on the little emergency seat next to him, also wrapped in a sheepskin coat with a thick scarf wound several times round his neck.
Acting Chief Petty Officer Willi Goode stood at his director column at the side of the bridge with his night optical lenses which were also useful for day look-out. His telephone apparatus was slung around his neck ready for instant communication with all the ships' commanders.
Little was to be heard above the slap of the waves as Scharnhorst bounced through the narrow Straits at top speed. There was the occasional slam of a water-tight door, or the clatter of heavy boots down companionways. The faint regular hum of the electric generators spread through the stillness of the control positions and gun turrets. Everyone was conscious that at any minute the alarm might sound, and the silent ship would be suddenly transformed into a fire-belching monster.
To ease the tension, Admiral Ciliax pulled a packet of cigarettes from his sheepskin coat pocket and gave one to Captain Hoflmann. Tall, blond Chief Quartermaster Jürgens stepped forward to offer them a light. Inhaling deeply, the Admiral thanked him and offered him a cigarette.
Another officer remarked to Giessler, "It's still like a practice cruise." Giessler nodded, as he checked their position on the chart. He indicated with his pencil, "Hier, Herr Kapitän." Hoffmann checked it and showed it to Ciliax adding, "Jawohl! Herr Admiral."
They were nearly past the cliffs of Dover. Quietness still reigned. Why were the British so silent? They had almost come to believe they were to force the Straits unmolested, when there came a flash and a bang from the haze and a single shell fell harmlessly into the grey-green Channel behind them, a mile to port of the last ship, Prinz Eugen.
Although their intelligence reported the British guns were not so formidable, naturally Admiral Ciliax and his captains remained doubtful. They based their fears on their own batteries of 15-inch and 16-inch guns emplaced in the Calais area. So when the first shell splashed into the sea astern of Prinz Eugen, the Germans braced themselves for a ferocious bombardment from the heaviest British coastal guns.
VI
THE CHANNEL GUNS OPEN UP
Just before midday 22-year-old Auxiliary Territorial Service private Nora Smith was sitting in a café in Dover's Market Square eating egg and chips. She was one of the eight ATS girls who for" the past three weeks had been in the process of taking over Dover Castle plotting room operation from the men.
Channel operations were directed from Dover Castle. A rabbit-warren of a place, standing high over the harbour, it was the command post and nerve-centre of the Channel war. It was commanded by Vice-Admiral Bertram Ramsay, who had Bobby Constable-Roberts as his RAF liaison officer and Captain Day as Navy liaison officer. Also under his command was Brigadier Raw, who was in charge of the coastal artillery.
Nora Smith and the other girls slept and ate underground and sometimes a week went past without their seeing daylight. Due on the afternoon shift in Dover Castle starting at 1 p.m., she was enjoying a much-needed morning off when the double-siren went off giving warning of imminent shelling.
At this period of the war shell warnings were almost a daily occurrence in Dover. Six times in succession she had tried to see Gone With the Wind at the local cinema and each time there had been a shell warning. During them everyone was supposed to stay put. As they often lasted a long time Nora Smith's one idea was to get back to report for duty.
As Ciliax's battleships began steaming through the narrowest part of the Channel, Nora Smith left her meal unfinished and started running up the hill towards the Castle. Normally it took nearly half an hour to walk that mile-long steep slope. This time she did it in ten minutes.
She found the morning-shift ATS girls at the plotting table busily marking the position of the German battleships on the grid maps with chinagraph pencils. Although différent plots came in from radar every three minutes the girls working at the large table were not sure what they were plotting. All they knew was that something very big was coming through the Channel. Some of them thought it might be the start of the invasion. Although the morning-shift girls were shortly due for relief they kept on plotting and could not be interrupted. So Nora Smith decided to make herself useful and went off to bring them cups of tea.
The place was in an uproar. The ten-line switchboard was completely jammed and everyone was shouting at once. Six or seven doors were flung open — a thing no one had ever seen before as most of them led to secret rooms. High-ranking officers darted in and out. Others rushed to the windows to look out to sea. All anyone could see was a swirling mist.
Admiral Ramsay kept dashing from his own room to the plotting room where the girls were working. Often hurrying people fell over the Admiral's two bulldogs.
Much of this confusion was caused by the primitive communication arrangements at Dover Castle. The Army plotting room, which directed the coastal guns, was five minutes' walk on the other side of the Castle from the Naval operations room. There was no direct telephone line and everything had to be channelled through signals. If signals were busy, this led to a delay. If a secret message came over the teleprinter in code, messengers had to walk with it as fast as they could through the tunnels to Naval H.Q., which caused further hold-ups.
Also there was very little co-operation between the three services. For instance, although Flt.-Lt. Kidd's RAF radar at Swingate was better equipped than the coastal gunners, it could not transmit any information direct to them. Some of the girls even had maps with the grids wrongly placed. One officer complained of this but no one took any notice of him.
In the middle of this confusion at Dover Castle sat Brigadier Cecil Whitfield Raw, studying the first radar reports. A former accountant who had risen as a Territorial to the highest rank normally available to a non-regular, he was the Commander of 12 Corps Coastal Artillery.
In spite of General Martini's attempt to jam the British radar sets totally, they were now plotting the battleships' course accurately. These were the K-sets which had displaced the M-sets, and their longer wavelengths — since the shorter the wavelength the greater the accuracy.