Alas, Scharnhorst would not be ready, but Kapitan Erich Fein had high hopes that he would lead his own sortie with Gneisenau. If he could join with Bismarck and her cruiser escort Prince Eugen the Germans could assemble the most formidable task force they had sailed since Jutland.
This threat had not escaped the notice of the Royal Navy either, and the Admiralty had been sailing out a powerful task force to watch Brest, lay mines in the area, and hopefully keep the German ships bottled up. In this effort Force H at Gibraltar played the principle role though, as First Sea Lord Admiral Pound would try to explain to the Prime Minister later that month, their attention was constantly divided by the urgency of operations in the Mediterranean as well.
The heart of Force H, battlecruiser Renown, carrier Ark Royal, and cruiser Sheffield, had only just returned to Gibraltar after another supply run out to Malta, and their tired crews were settling in to their bunks at midnight on April 5th, 1941 knowing they were bound for sea yet again the following day—this time to the Atlantic. A cable had been received from the Admiralty indicating that the big German ships at Brest were being readied for operations. “Consider battlecruisers will probably leave Brest tonight,” it read, as a local agent had been made aware that the Germans planned to move the battlecruiser Gneisenau to a mooring position out in the harbor.
And so the sailors slept fitfully that night, tucked into bunks and hanging in their hammocks, knowing they would put to sea again to stand blockade duty and wait for any sign of the German raiders in the week ahead. But the British spy had only half the story. The real reason that the big German ship was being moved was the discovery of an unexploded bomb near her berth at dock #8, dropped in a recent night raid by the RAF. By the time they discovered this, Force H had already sailed to stand watch, yet no German ships would appear.
The following morning a small trawler chugged into the port, a fisherman in a leaky boat hoping to ride out some worsening weather in a safe harbor. Even as the Germans made ready to carefully move Gneisenau, the trawler headed for the mooring pier, her skipper’s eyes intent on one particular spot, as though no other would do. The Harbor Master paid the small boat no attention, noting it’s arrival in his log and then taking a call from the tug captains ready to move Gneisenau.
The next minute he heard an explosion and was aghast to look and see the trawler had caught fire as it moored when a leaky fuel barrel on its aft deck was ignited by the still burning embers of a seaman’s cigar. The trawler careened into the pier, freshly oiled against the weather, and the fire spread. Within a few minutes a good segment of the mooring area was in flames, and frantic sirens sounded the alarm. Fire crews were soon racing to the scene, marked by thick oily black smoke in the early morning sky.
Word came into Kapitan Otto Fein on the bridge of Gneisenau that his mooring site was compromised, and the ship would have to be berthed deeper in the harbor. He sighed, eager for the sea as he was. Any move, however slight, that took him nearer to the green swells and white capped waves of the ocean gave him heart. Yet this was but a small setback. Another mooring site would be selected, hopefully not in a place that would prove too easy for the RAF should they come in the days ahead. He was waiting for final word from Admiral Lütjens, already chafing and pacing like a big restless cat in a zoo cage. His repairs had been made, and he had a full provision of fuel and ammunition. His ship was now nothing more than a dangerous target as long as it remained stationary in the harbor.
That night the dock crews would again drape her proud masts and turrets with the shaggy black camo netting that would hopefully disguise her from prying eyes, but he remained nervous and restless nonetheless.
As for the trawler, the fire was eventually put out and she was moored near the char-damaged pier. The Harbor Police searched in vain for her captain, with orders to immediately arrest the man for making an unauthorized berthing and upsetting the German plans, but he was nowhere to be found. So instead they marched off the hapless crew to be questioned by the Gestapo, leaving the trawler bobbing listlessly in the evening tide that evening.
The following morning the sound of an incoming plane was heard about 9:00 am. It was sighted at a low altitude, and within seconds the alert sirens were blaring, soon followed by a hail of anti-aircraft fire. Flying Officer Kenneth Campbell was aboard, bravely threading his way through steel laced streaks of tracer rounds from the ack ack cannons in his twin engine Beaufort torpedo bomber. It was one of a flight of three planes that had taken off from a base near Cornwall, yet weather had foiled the final rendezvous over the target, and he found himself alone. He had been sent by the British Coastal Command after receiving new intelligence concerning the planned relocation of the German battlecruiser, and he flew with a long, sleek torpedo strapped to his fuselage, intent on getting to the big ship before she was able to put to sea. Bearing in on the spot where he had been told to look for her, he was soon dismayed to find instead a small, ragged looking fishing trawler!
He strained to look left and right, hoping to spy his target. There was a suspicious dark splotch further down the quay its formless shape lost in the gray morning, but he could dimply see two other ships had been positioned to screen it off from just this sort of attack. The exploding shells and tracer rounds from lighter machine gun fire were perilously close now, and so he cursed his bad luck, pulled the plane into a sharp bank, and turned away.
Yet luck was with him after all, for in turning he narrowly avoided the flak burst that was to have struck his plane a fatal blow that morning. It was as much a stroke of serendipity where his personal fate was concerned, as it was a stroke of bad fortune for the war effort in general. His plane banked away into the mist, making a safe escape from the rain of fire that sought his life, and his rendezvous with death was broken that morning, strangely postponed.
When he was finally clear of the noise and fiery smoke of the harbor he calmed himself, took a deep breath, and had the presence of mind to radio Coastal Command with the bad news.
“Target not present,” he said. “She’s not there.”
Flying Officer Campbell waited until he was well away from the harbor before he banked again into a thick stand of clouds and headed away from the scene. His torpedo was supposed to have struck Gneisenau that morning, doing enough damage to make her a sitting duck for subsequent RAF bombing raids that would put her out of action for another seven months. He was also supposed to have been awarded the Victoria Cross that night, for conspicuous gallantry—posthumously. Now his award would have to wait.
As he banked into a stretch of low lying fog, he had a strange feeling of lightness and buoyancy, uplifting and oddly invigorating. He smiled, thinking it must be the adrenaline still coursing in his veins from the danger of the attack. Yet he could not help but feel that his lease on life had been extended another month, and he was light hearted as he flew back to base, safely hidden in the gray coastal clouds. In spite of the failure of his mission, it was good to be alive.
The brave sortie by Campbell had one other small effect that morning. It convinced the Germans that their ships in Brest were entirely too vulnerable to enemy air attack. With Gneisenau ready for operations, why not make a dash up the coast under bad weather to bring her home to Germany where she could join Admiral Lütjens with the Bismarck? Others argued that her position in Brest was ideal to support Bismarck by simply linking up with her in the Atlantic, and this side of the argument eventually won out. Kapitan Fein was ordered to make every effort to break out of port.