The South Foreland battery had a K-type radar set which had just been installed. As its "blips" continued to track the battleships, Admiral Ramsay told Raw to "Engage when ready." Raw gave a "Take post" order to South Foreland's four 9.2s — the only guns capable of engaging the battleships. They were all he had. The much-needed 15-inch battery at Wanstone was not yet completed and the 14-inch guns were useless for this type of target. Although they could reach the ships, they were not tied to the control system and with their slow rate of traverse they could not keep up with a speeding battleship. At their rate of fire, there would only be time for each 14-inch gun to fire one round on a predetermined position— and it was a million-to-one chance that they would hit anything.
Nor was Raw too optimistic about the 9.2 guns' contribution to the action. For they had not completed their first firing practices. Also it was the first time they — or any other guns — had ever been fired by radar control. As he waited for the moment to open fire, Rrigadier Raw also thought that the 9.2s firing at their extreme range of 34,000 yards — twenty-two miles — might not have much effect against the heavy armour of the great ships.
On this misty, cold morning the 9.2 Battery was doing practice drills. The plotting officer, Second Lt. Dennis Hagger, a wholesale grocer in civilian life, was in his operations post on the cliffs by the South Foreland lighthouse. For two weeks, he and his fellow gunner officers had been hearing rumours that the German battleships were going to try and force a passage through the Channel. The rumours were so persistent that officers, not wishing to miss their first chance of firing their heavy guns in anger, cancelled their leave. But it had begun to look very like the cry of "Wolf." So when a klaxon sounded giving Brigadier Raw's signal for action stations, Hagger thought it was a false alarm. Telling his gunners to continue their practice drill session, he picked up the telephone and queried the order with his battery commander, Major Guy Huddlestone, who barked, "This is the real thing. Take post!"
It was three minutes after noon. The Scharnhorst and her sister ships were 32,000 yards away from the South Foreland battery when the gunners' fire control post reported, "Ready for action."
At 12:10 p.m. their K-type radar showed the battleships 27,000 yards away coming up towards Cap Gris Nez. The clear "blips" on the battery's radar showed their course and estimated speed as twenty-two knots — eight knots below their real speed. As the battery radar was now clearly following the ships, Brigadier Raw gave the order to fire.
At 12:19 p.m. Huddlestone fired two shells. The flight of these heavy armour-piercing projectiles took fifty-five seconds. When they burst with a splash and a plume of yellowish-black smoke behind the third ship, Prinz Eugen, the battle of Dover had begun.
Everyone aboard the German ships waited tensely for the heavier attacks which they felt must come. Luckily for the Germans, the mist which had cleared for a brief interval, revealing a glimpse of the white cliffs of Dover, now closed again.
The German crews saw flashes from the cliffs and several splashes to port. Then came the crunch of more heavy shells bursting. Although their shots fell unevenly and short of the ships, it meant to the German commanders that there was no doubt at last they had been detected. As they steamed on through the narrowest part of the Channel, they began to swing violently on their course to baffle the British.
Brigadier Raw, looking through captured Italian binoculars, tried unavailingly to watch where their shells were landing. The weather was too thick to see anything from the cliffs but after a minute came the rumbling echo of the shells exploding. Like his Brigadier, Major Huddlestone, the officer commanding the 9.2s, also tried to catch a glimpse of the battleships from his observation post. He too saw nothing but mist. As maximum visibility was less than five miles, Raw realized that the firing would have to be all done by radar. The problem that faced him was that there could be no observation of the "fall of shot" by either sight or radar. For their radar could not indicate where their shells were landing.
Without seeing where they were falling, they could not make any accurate corrections. Were they on target? No one had fired heavy guns by radar before so it was difficult to know.
Martini's jamming, however, was not interfering with the K-sets and the echo of the battleships' course came in loud and clear. The K-sets began to track the German ships as they snaked to and fro. This looked as though the shells were landing near them.
Following the radar tracks, Huddlestone fired two more shots at 12:23 p.m. At 12:28 p.m., after another two shells had been fired and their explosions unobserved, Raw ordered Major Huddlestone to start firing full-battery four-gun salvoes without waiting for fall-of-shot reports.
A minute later came the crash of the first four shells fired together. A second salvo was fired at 12:30 p.m. Out of the mist came the rumble of heavy shells landing, but they were not followed by louder explosions indicating a hit. As it looked as though they were still missing the battleships, Raw ordered, "Add 1,000 yards to the range."
At 12:31 p.m., just as they were about to fire at this new range for the first time, extra "blips" showed faintly on the screen. Radar had managed to pick up the second salvo, landing. These "blips" clearly showed their shells were still falling short of the ships, so Raw shouted down the phone to Huddlestone, "Add 1,000 yards."
When this fourth salvo was fired, one of the new faint radar echoes showed a stronger "blip" which seemed to indicate a shell hitting one of the ships. The gunners looked at each other questioningly. They knew if they had hit a ship in these difficult conditions it was a very lucky shot. Yet even if it had missed it must have landed very near, because clear "blips" on the radar plot showed the German ships drastically altering course. The guns were now on target — but they only had about five minutes left before they were out of range.
Around midday, Corporal Ernest Griggs and his comrades of "D" Company, the Royal Sussex Regiment, who had been on anti-invasion alert for three weeks, marched along the snow-covered cliffs carrying their tommy-guns to the Green Blinds café at St. Margaret's Bay not far from the 14-inch naval guns, "Winnie" and "Pooh."
Just as they sat down and ordered cups of tea, there came a nerve-shaking crash as two 9.2 guns opened fire. Peering through the wide sun-trap windows of the café they saw their shells spinning through the air like balls of fire. When the four guns of the 9.2 battery began firing at once, making the air tremble and deafening the troops with the noise, someone shouted above the din, "The guns are practising again!" Griggs replied, "No, they are not! They are firing full charge." Neither he nor the rest of "D" Company had any idea of what was happening — except they knew it could not be an invasion, because as first-line infantry they would have been alerted.
Then came a different noise as shells whined over the café to land on the farmland behind St. Margaret's Bay. The German cross-Channel batteries had joined in the gun battle, aiming at the South Foreland batteries. Their shooting was as inaccurate as the British coastal guns. Six German shells fell 200–300 yards apart in a straight line near the 9.2s, plopping into soft chalk. Others churned up mud on the snowy ground, but they did not make much of a crater. No one at the South Foreland battery was hurt nor any gun damaged.
At 12:35 p.m., half a dozen more German shells exploded on the farmland near the 9.2s. They were answered a minute later by four shells from South Foreland.
As the battleships were now moving out of the extreme limit of the guns' range of 34,000 yards and radar had not echoed the fall of the last three salvoes. Raw ordered the guns to cease fire.