He and his gunners thought they had been aiming at the leading battleship, Schamhorst, so Raw ordered them to try and pick up the second and third ships in the convoy. Although their radar set succeeded in following the ship they had been firing at to a range of 65,000 yards, they failed to find any new targets within range. This was because shells had been landing near the last ship Prinz Eugen—not the first.
The radar could not locate any further targets so the 9.2s did not fire again. The salvo fired at 12:36 p.m. was their last.
The Germans kept up their bombardment. They fired two more salvoes at 12:50 and 12:52 p.m., which burst harmlessly in the snow-covered fields of Kent. Then they also ceased fire.
At the end of the gun duel Brigadier Raw reported, "This was the first action against German vessels forcing their way through the Straits. The ships, protected by their heavy armour, sailing at thirty knots, were neither sunk nor halted."
Neither Brigadier Raw nor his officers caught a glimpse of the battleships they were firing at. It was the first action in which long-range guns were directed to their target by radar. As a result, they had to make up their own procedure as they went along — and a lot of it was guesswork.
Brigadier Raw said, "The action was the first to be fought by new radar equipment, directed by an untried method of fire control still in the experimental stage. In seventeen minutes thirty-three rounds were fired, three of which were possible near-misses and an RAF pilot reported that one ship had been hit. The only matter for regret was that the 15-inch guns of Wanstone Battery were not ready to fire."
Although the 9.2 battery had failed to halt the German ships, their performance had been satisfactory. If they had had a little more warning, they might have been much more effective.
The rest of the British coastal guns remained silent. The task of 6-inch batteries was to fire on German convoys coming through the Channel or prevent an attack on Dover Harbour. They were "tight" guns, which meant they could not fire without special orders from Admiral Ramsay, in case they interfered with the operations of the RAF and the Navy.
Major Bill Corris, duty officer on a 6-inch gun battery at the top of Lydden Spout, spent a typically frustrating morning. Looking down from the top of the cliffs 400 feet up, all he saw below was a cotton-wool eiderdown of cloud. Although visibility was less than 100 yards, he watched all kinds of planes coming towards the Channel and diving into the clouds. Then came the distant firing of guns and excited talk over the telephone told him and his fellow officers there was "a flap on" and "a convoy coming through the Channel." They stood ready to fire — but no orders came. The ships were too far away for them to waste ammunition.
VII
THE MTBs ATTACK
Had the German battleships obligingly come through at night as the Admiralty predicted, there was a sophisticated plan for co-operation between thirty-two motor torpedo boats and Esmonde's six Swordfish torpedo bombers. There was to be a joint converging attack on both sides of the ships' bows, lit by flares from aircraft.
They had been practising this since the beginning of February. Then two days before the break-out, the Admiralty decided the emergency was nearly over. They ordered Pizey's destroyers to "stand down" on the morning of 12 February. The day before, they removed most of the MTBs leaving only six boats in Dover commanded by Lt.-Cdr. Nigel Pumphrey. His boats were also ordered to "stand down" from fifteen minutes readiness to four hours. The crews welcomed this, because they had been living in their boats for nearly two weeks with no leave and no chance to do maintenance.
Pumphrey's boats, with a captain and eight crew, had power-operated gun turrets, two torpedoes and depth-charges. That morning they left Dover between 7 and 8 a.m. to practise torpedo runs. Instead of a warhead, they fired torpedoes with smoke-emitting heads attached which could be picked up again after their run. If the German ships had arrived earlier the MTBs might have been caught with practice torpedoes. When they came back to Dover later in the morning, the crews immediately began to put in the warheads — known as "action fish." This took roughly twenty minutes to half an hour for each torpedo.
At 11:30 a.m., the crews were resting with the six Dover MTBs tied up in the train ferry dock, where in peacetime the car-carrying cross-Channel steamers docked. Lt.-Cdr. Nigel Pumphrey was in his office making out reports on the morning's practice and waiting for a call from one of his officers, Lt. Paul Gibson, a Frenchman who had escaped from occupied France and taken an English name to serve with the Royal Navy. Gibson was on his way to the naval stores to see about clothing.
While Pumphrey was waiting, the telephone rang. It was Captain Day, the naval Chief of Staff to Admiral Ramsay at Dover Castle, who said briskly, "How soon can you get cracking? The German battle-cruisers are off Boulogne."
Pumphrey slammed down the phone and dashed into the operations room shouting, "Man all the boats — the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau are in the Straits!" Lts. Hilary Gamble and Cornish, whose boats were tied up in dock, thought he was playing a joke. Was this a case of "Wolf again? The German battleships had become such a myth to the Dover MTBs that the idea of setting off after them in broad daylight did not seem possible. When they realized he was serious they all rushed down to the quay. Even then, most of the crews still believed it was. anpther false alarm, although a messenger came running from the operations room shouting, "Get going at once! They're out!" Not all the MTBs were in running order. Pumphrey's own boat, 38, was in dry-dock for a change of petrol tanks. As Gibson was still missing Pumphrey took over his boat 221 and his crew.
Nor were the two smaller fast 43-knot gun-boats ready. Their commanders, Stewart Gould and Roger King — another Frenchman with an assumed English name — were in Dover. Pumphrey told the duty officer to get hold of them at once, If they were to intercept the battleships sailing at near thirty knots there was not a second to be wasted.
As each boat let go the ropes, the crews pulled on their steel helmets and made the "V" sign. Pumphrey's boat was the last to leave the ferry dock, so the others waited for him in the harbour until he could lead the flotilla out.
The five boats left harbour steaming at twenty-four knots— ten knots slower than the German E-boats. Behind Pumphrey's 221 came young RNR Sub-Lt. Mark Arnold Forster in 219. Then came Hilary Gamble in 45, Australian Sub-Lt. Dick Saunders in 44 and Tony Law in 48. As Pumphrey led them through the breakwater, it was 11:55 a.m. — only twenty minutes after he had received the telephone call from Captain Day.
There was a stiff breeze across the narrow harbour entrance, making it difficult to get out. As they set course for Number Two Buoy it was wet and rough with a strong westerly wind. Almost as soon as they left harbour they saw smudges of smoke made by the German E-boat screen.
At 12:10 p.m. a Focke-Wolfe 190 squadron came out of the mist. They had never seen FW 190s before, and at first they thought they were American Curtiss fighters as they had the same radial engines. They identified them from recognition charts before opening fire. The planes were cruising a few feet above the surface with their flaps and wheels down to slow them up, looking for British torpedo bombers. As they were flying too low to dive on the MTBs they left them alone.