Breakout

and Gneisenau, the Home Fleet, apart from ships patrolling the Denmark Straits, was anchored in Scapa Flow keeping a watchful eye on the German battleship Tirpitz hidden in a fiord near Trondheim.

What had they ready to meet the break-out? Very little. The mine-layer Welshman, steaming at 39 knots, laid 1,000 magnetic and contact mines between Ushant and Boulogne. In the first week in February Bomber Command also laid 98 magnetic mines off the East Friesian Islands.

The Admiralty also made three small defensive gestures. It moved six Swordfish torpedo-carrying planes from their base at Lee-on-Solent to the fighter fields at Manston on the tip of the Kent coast, and alerted six MTBs stationed at Dover and three at Ramsgate. They also ordered six old destroyers to Harwich in readiness to intercept the German battleships.

Yet the behaviour of the Admiralty is not entirely to be dismissed by hindsight as ineffectual and puzzling. It was the blackest period of the war for Britain. In the defence of Singapore — due to fall to the Japanese forty-eight hours after the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau break-through — the two British capital ships, the Repulse and the Prince of Wales, had been sunk by land-based Japanese aircraft. The Prince of Wales, sister ship of King George V, was one of Britain's newest battleships. When she went down with her commander, Admiral Sir Tom Phillips, it was a numbing blow to the Royal Navy. It weighed very heavily with the First Sea Lord Sir Dudley Pound.

That is why he hesitated. His naval power was stretched to the limit from Singapore to Scapa Flow. If he operated his great ships near the occupied coast of Europe they might also be sunk by determined attacks by German aircraft. It was a chilling thought. Like Jellicoe, Royal Naval Chief in the First World War, 'He was the man who could lose the war in an afternoon.' If several of his battleships were sunk or put out of action, needing months of repairs, it could change the whole picture of naval warfare in European waters.

This was why Dudley Pound stated, 'On no account will heavy ships be brought south where they will be exposed to enemy air attack, torpedo-boat attack and risk being damaged by our own and enemy mine-fields.'

His staff queried this point of view asking, 'But surely the light forces available will be totally inadequate to deal with the German battle fleet?' The curt answer was, 'We have scraped together all that is at present available.'

The real reason was that he never really believed that the Germans would be foolhardy enough to try and bring their ships through Dover Straits in daylight. Dudley Pound was an orthodox career admiral of the old school. The Dictionary of National Biography called his personality 'reserved and unbending.' Appointed in 1939, he was at 65 already over retiring age. He was also overworked, tired and ill. Although too old to cope with his job unaided, he did not even have a deputy.[4]

Also, he greatly under-estimated the resolution of the former Austrian corporal, the 'land animal' Adolf Hitler, who had ordered the daring plan.

^{H.M.S Sealion}

Pound made one other move. A third submarine, H.M.S. Sealion, commanded by Lt.-Cdri G. R. 'Joe' Colvin, hastily sailed from Portsmouth for Brest. Sealion was a fast 768-ton S-Class boat built in 1934 with a speed of fourteen knots. Colvin's orders were: 'Your operational area is designed to intercept the main enemy units should they break out into the Atlantic or proceed south-eastwards to another Biscayan port.' As the Admiralty were still undecided about the battleships' possible route, Colvin decided to keep patrolling as near to Brest as he dared.

Why were only his new submarine and two old ones sent to watch for such an important target? The reason was that seventeen British submarines had been lost in the Mediterranean alone since Italy had declared war in June 1940, and others had been sent to the Far East for the war against Japan.

Although Sealion was considered to have a good chance of encountering the battleships either by night or day, Joe Colvin had an extremely difficult task for many reasons. The tides along the Normandy and Britanny coast were running between three and four knots, and large waves breaking over the rocks made it very difficult to keep accurate station.

Colvin had a bigger problem. Sealion had just returned from three months' service with the Bussian Navy, and at the end of this tour of duty most of the crew of reservists had been relieved. He had taken aboard twelve replacements. These included the torpedo-gunner's mate, one of the key men in a submarine. Even his First Lieutenant, E. E Young, a wartime sailor, had only joined with two other new officers just before sailing.

On the morning he sailed from Portsmouth, Colvin had no doubts about his scratch crew's courage, but they needed time to master the intricate system of dials and levers in their modern submarine. His main worry was whether his crew would be able to man the torpedo tubes efficiently, for there could be no fumbling when the moment came. There was also a problem with the torpedoes themselves. He had sailed so hurriedly that he had a mixed cargo of torpedoes consisting of four modern ones and four old, not very efifective, Mark Four type.

With this inexperienced crew aboard, Colvin nosed Sealion towards Iroise Bay, which surrounds Brest. His intention was to sneak among the German battleships while they were exercising, fire his torpedoes and escape submerged out to sea. For three days he cruised at periscope-depth watching and waiting for the battleships, but they remained in harbour.

On 7 February, a signal from Sir Max Horton said the German ships could be observed exercising in the approaches to Brest. For another forty-eight hours Colvin patrolled between 14–20 miles from Brest harbour — and still saw nothing.

On 9 February, he decided the moment for encountering the German ships was near. He fired off his four Mk-Four torpedoes in one salvo at sea and replaced them with the later type ready for immediate action. Then he sailed submerged into the northern part of the bay towards the boom guarding Brest Harbour. Shortly after midday Colvin raised his periscope in a choppy sea with good visibility and sighted Whistle Buoy, marking the end of the swept channel into Brest. As this was where the battleships must come out, he dived near the buoy and lay there until darkness came. At 8 p.m. he surfaced to wait for the Germans to come for night exercise. While he lay in the dark on the surface, another signal from Sir Max Horton reported the German ships still lying at their berths inside the harbour. But Colvin still kept up his vigil.

An hour after receiving the signal a Dornier bomber, with its searchlights switched on, came swooping down to 200 feet. As the beams lit a pathway through the water ahead of Sealion, Colvin and his crew scrambled down the conning-tower hatch-way and the submarine dived. But he had been spotted. An hour later, as he lay underwater near Whistle Buoy, depth-charges made Sealion rock and shudder, but they were not near enough to damage her. When the propellers died away Colvin sailed submerged farther out to sea.

What other preparations did the British make, apart from Colvin's solitary submarine, to prevent the Germans steaming up the Channel? First they gave the possible break-out the code name 'Fuller.' On receipt of this code- word, all available forces would be alerted.

But what forces? Since the First Sea Lord Sir Dudley Pound had decided not to engage with capital ships, his preparations were barely adequate. If they came, he believed the RAF would bomb them to the bottom as the Japanese planes had done to the Repulse and Prince of Wales. It seemed to be overlooked that heavy bomber crews, used to attacking targets at night from a great height, were not trained for accurate bombing of ships steaming at thirty knots and taking evasive action. It was the most formidable bomber force the world had yet seen. But it still could hardly hope to hit fast-moving ships at sea.

The main fighter opposition to the Luftwaffe was Number 11 Group, consisting of Kenley, Hornchurch, Debden, Biggin Hill and Tangmere wings. Their jpb was to protect the bombers against the escorting Luftwaffe umbrella.

The only planes which had much chance of damaging the big ships were torpedo carriers. The British had two types of these — the Fleet Air Arm's Swordfish and the RAF's Beauforts.

The most experienced squadron of Swordfish was 825 which had helped to sink the Bismarck. After the Bismarck operation, 825 Squadron reformed at Lee-on-Solent in