Cerberus company
The Cerberus company (also simply called Canal Breakthrough) was the successful breakthrough of the German warships Scharnhorst , Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen through the English Channel in February 1942 .
From February 11 to 13, 1942, these ships of the Kriegsmarine crossed the English Channel from Brest in France to their German naval bases. They were supported by a large number of smaller ships, such as minesweepers , and airplanes. In fact, practically under the eyes of the British, it was possible to get almost all ships safely through the canal. Vice-Admiral Otto Ciliax was responsible for the company .
background
The Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau left for the company Berlin in the North Atlantic in January 1941 , in order to wage the trade war there with surface warships against British convoys in the battle of the Atlantic . After the completion of this successful venture, the two ships did not return to their German home ports, but were stationed on the occupied French west coast in Brest . With this, the German naval war command hoped to be able to use these modern and fast ships more frequently against the enemy supply of raw materials due to the short approach route. For Great Britain this stationing represented an eminent threat potential, so that the sinking of the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau was declared an important goal. The city was also within range of British RAF bombers, so that both ships were repeatedly bombed and damaged. After the failed enterprise Rhine Exercise , the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen joined the battleships and was stationed there as well. The failed company also revealed the general great vulnerability of the heavy surface units, which, due to the lack of their own aircraft carriers on the high seas, could not be adequately protected against attacks from the air. The numerical and, after the sinking of the Bismarck, also technical superiority of the British armed forces and the lack of air cover made it only a matter of time when the large surface ships would be sunk.
With the attack on the Soviet Union , the strategic situation had changed and Adolf Hitler ordered the three ships - which were exposed to a permanent air threat - to be brought back so that they could attack the Allied convoys heading for Murmansk from Norwegian bases . He also saw his northern flank in danger in the event of a possible British attack on Norway. For the return there were several options: either through the Denmark Strait , through the Iceland Road south east of Iceland or by the channel as shortest path. Information from the French Resistance made it known to the British that a relocation was planned .
The Commander-in-Chief of the Navy (ObdM), Grand Admiral Erich Raeder , had previously contradicted the operation through the Canal, which Hitler had personally ordered, with reference to the impossibility of its implementation , as he still believed in the success of his strategy of tonnage warfare with surface forces in the Atlantic , which had started with the now sunk armored ship Admiral Graf Spee in September 1939, was successfully continued by the heavy cruisers Admiral Scheer and Admiral Hipper and finally ended with the operation Rhine Exercise , in the course of which the fleet flagship Bismarck was lost. Since the French Atlantic ports were in the vicinity of the Royal Air Force, the heavy German ships were repeatedly after their arrival in spring ( Scharnhorst and Gneisenau on March 23, 1941 in Brest) and summer ( Prinz Eugen on June 1, 1941 also in Brest) to targets of British bomber groups and fell out of damage for months. Hitler had recognized that under these circumstances the oceanic supply war could only be continued with great risk (easily vulnerable supply ships had to be put on the march to oil and supply the combat groups at sea, which was increasingly rare and led to the development of Supply submarines , all of which were sunk by 1943); Furthermore, after the loss of the Bismarck on May 27, 1941, he was no longer willing to risk the loss of further heavy surface units, which would damage his prestige . Among other things, he refused to consent to the continuation of the cruiser war with the cruiser Admiral Scheer and also had the battleship Tirpitz relocated to Norway instead of the Atlantic.
course
It was clear to the British that the German heavy surface units could only be used in the Atlantic with the greatest risk, at least since the loss of the Bismarck . They were right in assuming that Hitler and his generals would not take this risk and that the ships were therefore, strictly speaking, completely useless in the Atlantic ports, where sooner or later they would be destroyed by British bombers. The only logical German reaction to this constant British threat was to move the ships back to German Baltic Sea ports that the RAF could not (yet) reach or to Norway. The British therefore expected the ships to be relocated and prepared for it, but did not expect the attempt to break through in the canal, but rather in the north around Scotland. These British considerations led to the British surface forces being concentrated there.
In the run-up to the company, the Kriegsmarine cleared mines from the ships' routes. This happened apparently unsystematically, so that the British did not suspect the real reason beforehand. On the British side, the base in Brest was guarded by the submarine Sealion in order to be informed of a possible departure as early as possible. However, this stopped its observation on February 11 at 21:35, as it no longer expected the fleet to leave on that day. The fleet was able to leave the foggy Brest unnoticed at 10:45 p.m. during an air raid alarm, thus saving valuable time. Together with the three large units, the destroyers Z 29 , Z 4 Richard Beitzen , Z 5 Paul Jacobi , Z 14 Friedrich Ihn , Z 7 Hermann Schoemann and Z 25 also ran out as security . Later at Cap Gris-Nez the torpedo boats sea eagles, falcon, condor, polecat and jaguar join us. From Le Havre, the torpedo boats T 2, T 4, T 5, T 11, T 12 and from Dunkirk T 13, T 15, T 16 and T 17 are added.
The German leadership had been waiting for bad, foggy weather, and so the fleet - unnoticed by the British - was able to set course for the English Channel and sail for 13 hours towards the North Sea. The radar systems of the British reconnaissance aircraft had also been severely disrupted by jammers along the French coast, so that they too could not locate the German fleet. Of the three reconnaissance lines used in the air ( Line Stopper , Line SE and Line Habo ), the German units were also not reported due to the failure of the radar devices. The German fleet was not discovered until February 12, but a breakdown by the British helped them here too. Despite the discovery, the crew of the reconnaissance aircraft did not dare to break the prescribed radio silence and only informed the British staff after they had landed again on their base. Otherwise, the German breakthrough plan (which the British expected, as they were well informed about the operational readiness of the German ships) was based on the intention to pass Dover at noon, while the British Admiralty expected a German breakthrough on a new moon night. As early as February 8, the RAF Coastal Command , which carried out the reconnaissance flights over the French Atlantic coast, reported combat exercises of all three ships in the open sea. However, in his report Air Marshal Joubert suspected the breakthrough on one of the new moon nights around February 15, 1942.
Soaring British bombers and torpedo planes of the Swordfish type tried to attack the German ships, but were only able to locate them in isolated cases due to the foggy weather. Of the 242 British bombers involved, only 39 dropped their bombs at all, and none scored a hit. In addition, the German Luftflotte 3 had called up Fighter Squadrons 2 , 26 and later 1 with 176 fighters, mostly of the Messerschmitt Bf 109F and Focke-Wulf Fw 190A types. These were organized in such a way that 16 fighter planes were constantly operating over the fleet. In the end, only six British torpedo planes got within two nautical miles of the ships, but all fell victim to the German fighters and the flak fire of the attacked unit. The lack of this hunting protection had significantly led to the loss of the Bismarck . Since the ships remained in the area of the land bases of the fighter planes, the hunters were able to effectively protect the ships from attacks from the air this time. Once again, the imperative for combat operations on the high seas to have aircraft carriers, aircraft carriers that Germany did not own, became apparent. The British coastal artillery in Dover also opened fire on the German unit, but could not score because they could not aim at the targets in the fog accurately enough.
On the evening of February 13, the units finally reached German ports and thus ended the Cerberus company. The relocation of the heavy units to German ports was successful, but both battleships were damaged by mines and initially failed. The Gneisenau was never put back into service after further bomb hits in the port of Kiel.
consequences
The German losses amounted to an escort ship and 17 aircraft. In addition, the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau had run into mines . The Scharnhorst was therefore out for eight months. It was repaired in Kiel, relocated to Northern Norway and sunk on December 26, 1943 by British forces in the Barents Sea northeast of the North Cape . The Gneisenau was so badly damaged in an air raid on the night of February 26th to 27th, 1942 while repairs were being carried out in the floating dock of Deutsche Werke Kiel that it was decommissioned on July 1st, 1942. After a permanent relocation to Norway had proven to be no longer feasible, the Prinz Eugen later operated again relatively successfully from the Baltic Sea against Soviet land forces. As the only heavy unit in the Navy, it survived the end of the war in an operational condition.
The British public was furious when they heard of the successful breakthrough, the first successful breakthrough by an enemy fleet through the English Channel in centuries. It was a scandal that German ships could sail 300 miles undetected along the English Channel, after all, Britain's security depended on dominating its own coastal waters. Even if the unique chance of destroying three capital ships of the Kriegsmarine at once was wasted, the British Admiralty was relieved that a great danger to their supply convoys in the Atlantic was averted. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt even congratulated Winston Churchill on the averted threat. Even among the German admirals, opinions were divided about the purpose of the company. Grand Admiral Erich Raeder spoke of a "tactical victory, but a strategic defeat".
See also
- Operation Kita (Imperial Japanese Navy relocation)
source
- Cajus Bekker : Damn Sea. A war diary of the German Navy. Stalling Verlag, Oldenburg 1971, ISBN 3-7979-1342-7 .
- John Deane Potter: Breakthrough. The return of the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna and Hamburg 1970,
- the short version in the Kriegsmarine: Why? In: Der Spiegel . No. 36 , 1970, pp. 60-63 ( Online - Aug. 31, 1970 ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the Naval War 1939–1945, April 1940. Retrieved on March 24, 2020 .