The cold was intense. The winter mists of Brest had given place to the sub-arctic conditions of a North German winter as Scharnhorst, twice mined, her crew red-eyed with fatigue after twenty-three hours almost continuously at action stations, came creeping at last past the Jade towards Wilhelmshaven.
When they arrived off Germany's principal naval base the sea was freezing hard and the ice was packing into great cakes. Watching the thick ice and the fast running tide, Scharnhorst's navigator, Helmuth Giessler, realized that now the battle was not only against the British — who might find them again now it was light — but against the weather.
It would not be high water at Wilhelmshaven until noon. Only then would the tugs be able to take her through the difficult sluice gates into harbour. Then the message came from Naval Group North: "Es gibt keine Schlepper" — "There won't be any tugs." Without their assitance Scharnhorst might have to remain outside the harbour, exposed to attacks.
Captain Hoffmann stood on the bridge contemplating sea and sky from which an attack might be expected any minute and took his last great decision. He turned to Giessler and said calmly. "I will take her in — without tugs."
With the ship's telegraphs constantly ringing and a half a turn of a screw here and a half a turn there, Hoffmann began to guide his ship towards the sluice. Directed by his skilled hands, the great battleship began slowly to crunch her way, foot by foot, through the ice floes towards the waiting lock gates. With the screws barely turning and the exhausted men on the bridge holding their breaths, the sharp prow of Scharnhorst entered the sluice gates with only inches to spare. As her sleek, shark-nosed hull crept past the groups of longshoremen standing among the ice-encrusted bollards on the jetfy, they broke into loud cheers.
The seamanship Captain Hoffmann had learned since the day he entered the German Navy forty years before prevailed. When she tied up, he nodded briefly to the officer of the watch, Wilhelm Wolf, who rang through to Chief Engineer Walther Kretschmer, "Finished with engines."
As Giessler began to fold up his charts a signal from Ciliax was tapped out to Admiral Saalwächter in Paris. It said: "It is my duty to inform you that Operation Cerberus has been successfully completed. Lists of damage and casualties follow."
It was over. The Scharnhorst had come home.
One of the first to go ashore was Colonel Max Ibel, the Luftwaffe liaison officer aboard Scharnhorst. "I have had enough," he told Admiral Ciliax. "What is my bill for the ride?"
Later in the morning Ciliax received reports from his destroyer captains as one by one they sailed into the German estuaries. The German losses were seventeen Luftwaffe planes, two torpedo boats, Jaguar and T.13, damaged by bombs, two dead and several German sailors seriously wounded by bomb splinters and machine-gun fire. That was all.
In the afternoon, the Admiral who had sat in the same cabin in Brest nearly forty-eight hours earlier writing his doubts about the operation's success, made this entry in his war diary: "The enemy betrayed his surprise, to the advantage of our formation, by throwing in his air forces precipitously and without plan. For the failure of the enemy air force to reach the target during the afternoon and evening in spite of the extreme determination shown in their first torpedo attack, we have to thank the ship-borne flak and the fine services of our fighter cover."
The attack of Esmonde's Swordfish was described by him as, "The mothball attack of a handful of ancient planes, piloted by men whose bravery surpasses any other action by either side that day.''
At 2:15 p.m. all hands were piped aft to hear an address by Admiral Ciliax. It was not received with much enthusiasm. The sailors felt it did not come well from the Admiral who had just that morning retaken possession of his Admiral's quarters. There was a definite feeling in Schamhorst that Ciliax had left them to drown if necessary. Although that might have been just the ignorance of sailors, there was no doubt that the peppery "Black Czar" had almost totally failed to command the operation. This was mainly due to his jumping aboard the destroyer Z.29 too quickly when his flagship hit the first RAF mine in the afternoon. But an even more puzzling decision was when he did not reboard her but the destroyer Hermann Schoemann, when his own flagship, steaming normally, almost ran him down in the cutter.
Two hours later, the Fleet C-in-C Admiral Schniewind, who made it his business to be at Wilhelmshaven when the Scharnhorst tied up there, also harangued the weary sailors. These speeches by Ciliax and Schniewind were delivered aft on the quarter-deck where 2,000 could be mustered. Both admirals stood under the long barrels of Turret "C" for "Caesar" on the traditional "Palaverkiste" — Speaker's rostrum.
By 4 p.m. the camouflage netting was being unwound and a tired ship's company were making Scharnhorst snug and safe for the night at her Wilhelmshaven anchorage.
Captain Hoffmann was still writing his report in his day cabin, when a visitor rushed in without knocking and flung herself into his arms crying, "Papa, papa!" It was his 17-year-old daughter Elly who had heard the news and come on ahead of her mother, due next day from Bremen. As the orderly brought tea and Captain Hoffmann sat back to listen to the family news, she gave him one item which was especially welcome-his son Heinz, a U-boat officer, was safe and well.
The next day all Germany rejoiced over the feat, but officers and men of all three ships were too tired to share in the exultation.
In England, the first news of the break-out was given in a story in the early editions on Friday, 13 February. The Daily Mail said: "One of the fiercest and most mysterious duels in the Straits of Dover was fought out yesterday between British and German long-range guns and between RAF bombers and fighters and German interceptor aircraft. Wave after wave of our own bombers crossed the Kent coast to attack what is believed to have been a German convoy passing through the Channel.
"Last night Berlin radio revealed that Swordfish torpedo bombers with heavy fighter protection had taken part in the battle, but no clue as to the identity of the target was given. The official German news agency claimed seven Swordfish were shot down in battles off the coast and the formation was turned back."
The next editions carried a stop-press: "The Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen with heavy sea and air support were attacked near the Straits of Dover — official."
At 1:40 a.m. a joint Admiralty and Air Force communiqué gave some details of the action. It said: "The German ships strongly escorted by surface vessels and aircraft were making a break from Brest to Heligoland. Attacks were pressed home with the greatest determination and hits are believed to have been made on all three ships."
XIII
THE WHITEHALL WHITEWASH
The resentful anger that already reigned in Dover Castle was soon to spill over into a major row that shook the nation, causing a crisis of confidence in Churchill's wartime government.
Most of the RAF officers blamed the day's disaster upon the fact that very few pilots really knew what they were looking for. These included those in 42 Beaufort Squadron, who had nearly torpedoed Captain Pizey's flagship Campbell.
Sq. Ldr. Roger Frankland, controller at Coltishall recalls, "They tried to torpedo our own ships because of ridiculous secrecy. I have never heard anyone so rude as the leader of 42 Squadron of Beauforts on the phone to a group captain. He was hopping mad. He said, "I was sent looking for a convoy. Why was I not told about the bloody great battleships?"