Breakout

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 cafe 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 cafe 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 cafe 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.

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.

^M.T.B.

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