The Channel Dash: Hide & Seek (Part 2)

Summary

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WW2 Pod: We Have Ways of Making You Talk

Episode: The Channel Dash: Hide & Seek (Part 2)

Hosts: Al Murray & James Holland
Date: March 5, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this gripping continuation of their deep dive into the Channel Dash (Operation Cerberus), Al Murray and James Holland dissect one of WWII’s most audacious naval operations: the German surface fleet’s daring race from Brest to Germany via the English Channel in February 1942. With their signature blend of wit, expertise, and exasperation at British missteps, Al and James unravel the sequence of chance, bad luck, and miscommunication that allowed the German fleet to slip almost undetected under the Royal Navy’s nose. The episode is rich with insight on WWII operational chaos, contingency, and the razor-thin margins between calamity and success—or, as in this case, British frustration.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Strategic Context – Germans on the Back Foot

• The operation, officially called Cerberus (Channel Dash), is a response to deteriorating German fortunes in 1942.
• The German navy feels compelled to extricate its major ships (Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Prinz Eugen) from Brest due to mounting pressure and unsuccessful naval strategies.
  • Al: “The Germans are on the back foot here and this is an expression of exactly that, this operation. And you’ve got to bear that in mind at all times, no matter how this story rolls out.” [02:12]

Operation Cerberus: The German Plan

• Germans plan a night departure, exploiting poor but locally clear weather: bad enough to hinder British spotting, good enough for their fighter cover to operate.
• Ciliax, Galland, and other key players aim for secrecy, planning to pass Dover at noon if all goes to plan.

British Anticipation (or Lack Thereof)

• British expectation: The Germans wouldn’t dare an overt Channel dash; if they went, it would be to reach Dover at midnight, not noon.
• Most British patrols (submarines, air patrols) are in the wrong spots, at the wrong times, or ill-equipped, compounding the risk of missing the German fleet.

The Role of Chance: Patrols and Equipment Malfunctions

• Multiple patrol failures, radar breakdowns, and momentary lapses all combine into a perfect storm of missed opportunities.
  • Al sarcastically: "We are not looking at Hudson’s success story here, I’m afraid." [08:49]
• Notable moment: Pilot Officer Wilson’s Hudson patrol loses radar after evading a German Ju 88, never spots the fleet, and no relief patrol is sent until it’s too late.
  • James: "How many things can be stacked against the British on this night of nights?" [12:39]
  • Al: “We’re only just getting started, Jim.” [12:44]

Fog, Friction & the Missed Sightings

• Multiple radar stations pick up ships or interference but fail to communicate findings in a meaningful way.
• An incredible run of misfortune—aircraft unbriefed, breakdowns, patrols rescheduled by weather—lets the German ships slip through a gauntlet almost untouched.
  • James: “How much bad luck and circumstance against you can you have?” [14:34]

Radio Silence and Bureaucratic Procedure

• Patrol pilots, under orders of radio silence, see the fleet, but wait to report until they’ve returned to base—critical delays ensue:
  • Al: “But what if you’re shot down?...Appalling ass covering that.” [29:01]
• Radar plots are seen as atmospherics or “Martini’s cocktail” (German jamming), and key links between RAF and Navy are clogged or non-existent.
• Delayed, misdirected, or overlooked reports keep the British in the dark for hours.
  • James: "So the nighttime stuff, for circumstances, this is starting to look really bad." [24:34]

Finally Spotted—But Too Late

• At last, Spitfire patrols spot the fleet (around 10:40) but must return to base to report. The Germans remain undisturbed for more than 12 hours at sea.
  • James: “Ciliax has been seen, Jim, at long last, it’s on.” [26:49]
• Even then, confusion and disbelief (can these really be German capital ships?) delay the code word “Fuller” and the British response.
  • Al: “The German battle fleet is now going flat out. Precious minutes are being wasted.” [31:11]
• The hosts draw parallels to previous episodes—namely the Bismarck chase—showing how near misses and errors shaped these major operations.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the cruel hand of luck and friction:

  • James: “How much bad luck and circumstance against you can you have?” [14:34]
  • Al: “Well, all of it I would argue.” [14:44]

• On chance and the frustrating role it plays:

  • Al: “...Everything’s hanging on a thread here. On a fuse, on a guy not realizing that it’s interference, on not drawing the conclusion that circling aeroplanes at 20 knots must mean ships. These are like, these are gossamer thin moments.” [34:11]

• On protocol and missed opportunity:

  • James: “But what if you’re shot down? You see the fleet and you’re shot down, you don’t get to report back. Appalling ass covering that.” [29:05]

• On overall British performance:

  • James: “To start off with... it was all just excusable mistakes... But, but, but oh my goodness me, this last bit, that's poor.” [31:33]

• On contrasting outcomes:

  • Al: “There are similar things going wrong in both [Bismarck and Channel Dash]... but they don’t matter in the case the Bismarck. They really matter here.” [32:16]

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:33]– Galland’s memoirs, German predicament, setting up the story
• [03:49]– Swordfish squadron’s expectations and RAF patrols
• [04:23]– Deployment of British submarines and German movement preparations
• [08:47]– The Hudson patrol’s critical equipment failure
• [10:36]– Bomber Command raid delays German departure
• [12:34]– Wilson’s ordeal and the domino of patrol failures
• [14:44]– The role of luck and mounting British frustration
• [15:16]– Germans in the Channel, undetected
• [18:05]– Analysis: No one to “blame” yet, just bad luck
• [19:08]– Dawn, radar confusion, and British reconnaissance
• [22:36]– Beauforts and British torpedo bomber chaos
• [23:18]– Beachy Head radar sees ships, but signals are delayed
• [24:34]– Administrative and organizational failures come to the fore
• [26:49]– Spitfire patrols finally see the German fleet
• [29:05]– Critical loss of time, radio silence, and RAF/Navy disconnect
• [31:17]– The “Fuller” code word finally issued; British response belatedly begins
• [32:16]-[35:24]– Reflections on luck, contingency, and contrasting outcomes with Bismarck and Market Garden

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Tone and Style

• Language: Energetic, wry, and exasperated—reflecting both hosts’ deep knowledge and their dark humour.
• Style: A mix of story-driven narrative, technical asides, and historically-informed tangents, peppered with memorable sarcasm and analogies relevant to WWII buffs.
• Atmosphere: Tense and laden with a sense of lost opportunity, yet still playful and engaging for listeners.

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Conclusion & Teaser for Next Episode

Al and James wrap up with keen reflections on how fortune and administration failures thwarted British efforts in this critical episode, teasing the action-packed confrontations to follow. Al reiterates that despite all the analysis, sometimes success and failure in war really do come down to the finest, most frustratingly random details—a dud radar fuse, a busy telephone line, a misread radar plot, or a bit of fog at just the wrong moment.

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For those eager for resolution, tune in next week for the British response—one of the few times they'll admit they didn’t win everything in WWII.

Transcript

[A]

Thank you for listening to we have ways of making you talk. Sign up to our Patreon to receive bonus content, live streams and our weekly newsletter with money off books and museum visits as well. Plus early access to all live show tickets. That's patreon.com we haveways.

[B]

During that night, not one of us thought about sleep. Once the warships had left port, two questions occupied us. Would the unit succeed in making up the lost time through the air raid? And had the attacking British bombers discovered that the expected German operation was about to begin? Its conclusion would largely depend on the answer to these two questions. And that of course was General De Flieger. Adolf Galland, kind of friend of the show, I suppose, writing in his self serving memoir, the first and the last of which he devotes an entire chapter to the Channel d'. Ache.

[A]

Yes he does.

[B]

And one of the things that struck me is here we are in kind of sort of early, you know, February 1942 and the Germans are really on the back foot. And isn't that remarkable? Cause you know, they're supposed to be the. The guy's kind of winning.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. German war machine, mate. Welcome everyone to we have ways of making you talk with me, Al Marion James Holland, the Second World War podcast for all your Second World War needs and this is part two of our Channel Dash series. We I've called this episode Hide and seek because Cerberus is the German operation.

[B]

I think that's strong.

[A]

Fuller is the British response. And as James points out, the Germans are on the back foot. And in our last episode we touched on, you know, Barbarossa is beginning to unravel at this point in the war. I mean it's unravelled by February of 1942, hasn't it? The Soviets of Soviet has actually managed to repulse the German advance, push them back. It's not panning out the way they thought it would. Just as the naval strategy, if you want to call it that, has not panned out. Hence the need to extricate, and I think that is actually the right word, extricate. The Scharnhorst, the Gneisenau and the Prinz Eugen, three capital ships from a total of, I don't know, for the German navy. The Germans are on the back foot here and this is an expression of exactly that, this operation. And you've got to bear that in mind at all times, no matter how this story rolls out. It's full of the reasons that the Germans lose the Second World War. So in the last episode we talked about preparations and plans on both sides. The decision to get the German surface fleet out of Brest back to the fatherland, now known, now dubbed Operation Cerberus, and Thunderbolt Donerkheil, which is the air element, and the British plans made in anticipation, called Fuller and what the British anticipation was. And the Germans spurred on by Hitler's twin intuition that Norway is the zone of destiny. Wrong. And that the British will be unable to react quick enough. Right, so he's half right. They're going to leave Brest in darkness at night, meaning they'll do the bulk of the passage under cover of darkness. Long nights in February, arriving at the Pas de Calais at noon if things run to schedule. The raf, the Admiralty, fighter coaster and bomber commands, as well as the army manning the guns at Dover, have decided amongst themselves that the Germans will never risk such a move. That if they are going to do it, they're going to. It's going to be the other way around. They'll leave so that they arrive at the Straits Dover at midnight or whatever. Now, this is reflected, for example, in 825 Naval Air Squadron with its six swordfish. They're expecting to attack at night, when it's feasible to do so, and not

[B]

during the day, when it's not feasible to do so.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, the Swordfish can do it at night, they're not expecting it to happen in the day. That's what they're preparing for, that's what they're training for. And they've just moved to RAF Manston in anticipation of exactly this happening of a dash. And the RAF is running regular patrols known as Stopper, Hey Bo and Jim Crow. I'm not responsible for the names. Now. Time has completely run out for the Kriegsmarine. It's also run out for the picket of training subs that the Royal Navy had off Bret. They're now replaced by a single submarine, Sea lion, which is actually on watch outside the French port.

[B]

Very famous submarine, that one.

[A]

This is the interesting thing about this story, is lots of famous names and actors and protagonists and people who turn up later in the war are in this story and crop up and they're involved in this for the learnings, mainly. I think that's the best way of looking at it. They're in it for the learnings, Jim, because there's lots of learnings to come.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And the ideal circumstances for the Germans are poorish weather, but with good local visibility, so they can run a coherent passage. But bad enough weather that keeps the enemy air away and Ensures that they can get as far as they can without being spotted, but that that weather doesn't hold up the fighter cover that Galland has got planned. So in other words, pure Goldilocks. Conditions not too stormy, not too calm, not too rough, not too tranquil, not too cloudy, not too clear. You know, the whole thing just perfect. Just perfect. We come to the day before or the day of actually, because this is when cerberus gets going. 11 February at noon, Vice Admiral Otto Ciliax, man of push and go, calls a conference on his flagship, the Scharnhorst. Present are the three capitains Zurce, Kurt Hoffman of the Scharnhorst, Helmut Brinkmann. I mean, a man living literally on the brink, who you are.

[B]

He was in the whole Hood. And Bismarck. Eight episodes we did on exactly with

[A]

the Prinz Eugen And Otto Fine of the Gneisenau. Wind, tide, weather all favorable. The escorts are ready to roll. The air cover is rehearsed and set. Electronic countermeasures against British radar are underway with regular atmospheric jamming. Atmospheric conditions jamming. And he briefs his captains. They will slip anchor at 1930 hours that evening on exercise. The crews are not being told where they're going. You know, sea trials, lads going out to fire the guns or something. Yep, work together. Six miles away is Sea Lion. She sat outside Brest, periscope up, watching and waiting, logging the daily to and fro from Brest. There is nothing to report in the way of capital ships. If, as expected, the Kriegsmarine is going to get to Dover in the middle of the night during the day, this same time, this is when they should leave. Right. That's what she's doing. Two hours after Ciliaxis conference begins at 1400 hours, Commander Colvin on the Sea lion takes the tide, rides the tide back out to 30 miles outside Brest to surface, charge batteries, et cetera, because they've not gone, that's when they're going to go. If they're going to go, they're going to arrive.

[B]

Got it.

[A]

At the Straits of Dover at midnight as expected. So there's two other subs, H43 and H50, that are 40 miles away to the south on watch as well. But again, nothing to report because of course there isn't, because the Germans aren't going now. 18:27 hours now, where is St Evel, Jim?

[B]

It's in the far end of Cornwall.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It's getting on towards Landserv.

[A]

Right. So sort of in the far knuckle of Cornwall.

[B]

Yeah, it's not right at the very end. There's St Morgan and there's St Ewell. They're pretty close to Cornwall.

[A]

A stopper patrol sets off. Right. And these are routine patrols flown every evening by 224 Squadron with Hudson's and these planes they've got a radar that's, that's good for looking for ships up to 30 miles distance. These people are ideally placed to see the fleet. Now obviously the Germans know about them. They've been doing this since September the previous year. Right. Now we've not had a Hudson on the show before.

[B]

Mentioned en passant as early Coastal Command I think in the Atlantic War series.

[A]

What is it? It's an airliner that's been converted.

[B]

Well, it's a Lockheed, isn't it?

[A]

Yeah, Lockheed Model 14 airliner. Nice plane to fly. Notable successes though with the Hudson, Jim.

[B]

First allied plane flying from British Isles to shoot down an enemy plane over Jutland on the 8th of October 1939. Get in there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Previous victories by the RAF were planes based on the continent or carriers. And there's a ferry battle on the 20th. SKU is on the 26th the same month. Plus on the 23rd of July 1941, a Hudson on convoy Esco off Ireland shot down a Condor.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And check this. 27th of August 1941, U570 surrendered to a Hudson flying from 269 Squadron.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that's a rare example of a plane capturing a naval vessel. So don't underestimate the Hudson people. I mean, you know, it's a very, very nice, attractive aircraft. Just not quite got the range you want. Not quite fast enough.

[A]

No.

[B]

But in all other ways a thing of beauty.

[A]

In all other ways a thing of beauty. But we are not looking at Hudson's success story here, I'm afraid. Pilot Officer Wilson on his stopper patrol has not been briefed to look out for capital ships. Just point that out. This is supposedly Coastal Command with the word Fuller ringing in everyone's ears. He has not been told to look out for capital ship. He's just told to look for whatever's out there. But if anyone is going to spot this flotilla, it's Wilson and his crew because the visibility is awful. So it's all on the radar. So at 1915 hours they get a trace on the radar and suddenly they see it's a patrolling Ju. So Wilson orders the radar in the aircraft be switched off. Right. As he throws the Ju 88 around to shake off the night fighter.

[B]

Yeah, because good for the Hudson is. You don't really want to be taking on a Ju 88.

[A]

No, not much. A Condor, fine. A Submarine even. But not a ju88 because ju88 is a nifty enough airplane by.

[B]

Anyway. Sees off the Ju 88, doesn't he? Yeah, sees it off.

[A]

But he wants the radar off because the light from it illuminates the cockpit of the Hudson. Because it's an airline. It's got lots of. Lots of glass. Right. He doesn't want to be seen. And they lose a Ja. As you say, Jim. So then he orders. Wilson orders the radar to be switched back on and it will not restart. No, nothing I can do. I can't get it to go skip. Check the main fuse.

[B]

Tries to do it again. He tries and tries, doesn't he? It's not like there's like one switch on and off and then give up. He continues. But it's this, it's. That's that.

[A]

Exactly. Yeah. Because of the poor visibility, can't see anything. So he radios St. Evelyn, says we're coming back in. Is that right? And that's quarter of an hour. This episode is in the 15 minutes that leads up to 1930 hours when the battle fleet begins to cast off. Celiax is on his way. Or is he? And we hinted at this.

[B]

Or is he?

[A]

Yeah, we hinted at this at the end of the last episode. Because at 1930, who arrives? Jim?

[B]

Bomber Command.

[A]

Yeah, they're back in town.

[B]

Exactly. Flak starts up, the harbour's smoke generators cover the city and Ciliac's order to halt to the fleet's exit. And he thinks, no, we'll just sit and wait for the raid to pass. Wellingtons are once again plastering the harbour. Which of course is why they need to help get the hell out of Dodge. I mean.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

There you are.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Qed. And the last wave of the raid includes a photo recce plane which sees Ciliac's vessels still more. Oh, it's just everything is going against them, isn't it?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And going. Going in favour of the. Of the Kriegsmarine. This is so frustrating. Yeah. So that. So that RAF photo reconnaissance can confirm that Scharnhorst and Eisenhower Prinz Eugen are still in port and the Admiralty can breathe easy for another evening. If only they'd been here 15 minutes earlier.

[A]

It's just crazy. 2100 hours the raid has passed.

[B]

Or half an hour later or something.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or that, you know, because Wilson would have stayed out on patrol. With his radar on, you know. Anyway.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

The raid passes. Cilliax orders a resumption of the dash. Okay. Okay, we're back on.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Tugs pull the ships clear. They're out past the breakwater within half an hour by 2130 hours. But they're on exercise, Jim. Right. That's what the people in Brest think. Scharnhorst leads Gnies now. Next, Prinz Eugen follows up. Meanwhile, Wilson lands back at Saint Evil and Irks get to work looking for the source of the radar fault. They decide later on that trying to restart a radar system from cold to. The inexperienced crew and the kit are blamed. It's like a collision of crew not quite experienced. The kit's still new. They haven't found out what's everything that's wrong with it. No relief plane is sent up to cover the patrol in Wilson's absence and they're ordered to another plane. There's no alarm. The balloon hasn't gone up because, you know, the ships. Ships are still in harbour.

[B]

But they get to their next one.

[A]

Yeah, they're ordered to another aircraft, but that refuses to start.

[B]

How many things can be stacked against the British on this night of night?

[A]

I mean, we're only just getting starting, Jim.

[B]

I'm afraid it's so unfair.

[A]

We're barely. We're barely going here. Wilson was questioned after the. In the inquiry, the button inquiry that follows the. Follows the Channel dash and his things are all really like, you know, I swear to God, we did everything we possibly could. And they can't get the other plane started. After about an hour and a half, the Irks find the fault with the second aircraft. It's a damp, cloggy plug. The engines are properly started. They get the pressure up. Patrol can resume. And you must think that poor old Wilson at that button inquiry felt the weight of the world on his shoulders. That, you know, he's in the plane that screwed up. Be very hard not to carry that with you and think that was on you. Right. So they leave at 2135 hours. At 10:48pm the stopper patrol is resumed one hour after the enemy have broken out from breast and passed through the stopper area. So the patrol has resumed literally. Once the Germans are through the area, the patrol is there to scan and there's another patrol by squad leader Bartlett. Both of these planes fly close enough to the fleet to spot them but do not see them.

[B]

It's because. Because the world is against the. Is against the British effort this night.

[A]

This is one of these things where things are just the odds are stacked against them. Simultaneously with all of this from 1845 hours and for fans of confusion, there is another Wilson out in another Hudson Sergeant a Wilson who set out on a lone south east patrol flying from the Ushant to the bay of the Seine. So basically across the Bay of Normandy, you know that area, his ASV radar breaks down, his op can't see the coastline so they're called back at 2139 hours. They leave at the moment when had they stayed put with a working radar they might have seen Ciliax's fleet.

[B]

No.

[A]

Jim, how are you feeling right now?

[B]

Oh, sick as a dog. I mean how much bad luck and circumstance against you can you have?

[A]

Well, all of it I would argue. Midnight Celiax is at the Ashant, he's full steam ahead, he's doing 27 knots. Right. Their course is carefully plotted to the tidal currents, known British patrolling, radar jamming, the weather and it's just going brilliantly. They feel like they're on an exercise.

[B]

They made up the lost time for the raid, haven't they? Yeah, so, so they're, they're, they're right bang on the money time wise. Yeah. They turn it into the English channel at 0125 hours. So 125 hours on the 12th of February. Yeah, they're in the Channel.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

They're cheeky bastards.

[A]

Ciliax orders his captains to tell their, their crews that they are on exercise no longer, they are in fact returning to Germany, they're going home, Gott in Himmel, Heimat and so on.

[B]

Right, exactly.

[A]

I mean the fact they're doing it with their tail between their legs, we overlooked that. Right. At 0037 hours, 223 Squadron Hudson flown by Flight Sergeant Smith sets off on the haybow patrol which runs from Le Havre to Cherbourg. If ever an aircraft should spot this fleet, it's Smith's, Right. He has to fly two circuits 12 miles from the coast. What does he see, Jim? Nada, nothing. And he goes home at 03.35 hours. The following patrol comes into place at 0430 hours. Right, so there's a gap. I mean you can't say they're not looking, but there's a gap. This plane goes round twice. This guy comes in at 07:15 hours but fog is coming in at Thorney island, so he's lucky to get in basically because the weather's closing in.

[B]

How can he not see it?

[A]

It just, it just don't.

[B]

Right, Jeepers creepers.

[A]

Right. Well, you know, the. The course is well plotted. 0745 hours. It's dawn, but in thick fog, so it might as well still be night. Right. Because you can't see anything.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The Scharnhorst stands to action stations. They're expecting their fighter cover now that there's a little bit of daylight. And we'll take a break there and we'll see how the morning proceeds. Because if you think that was bad.

[B]

I can't bear it. I can't bear it. I'm already feeling quite disturbed.

[A]

We'll join you after a break. See you in a tick. Welcome back to. We have Ways of making Talk with me. I'm Ari and James Holland. We're talking about the Channel Dash, Operation Cerberus.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

That the German And Thunderbolt, the German naval and air effort to get the German fleet in being from Brest back to the fatherland. First of all, the Germans have decided to take a route that is harebrained. Secondly, they decided to take a route that's harebrained, involving maximum risk by arriving at Dover in daylight. We left Vice Admiral Otto Ciliax not believing his luck. They have not been detected at all at this point. They've made it to the morning, but

[B]

so far it's just been circumstance, hasn't it? Bad luck. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Circumstance of bad luck.

[B]

You can't point any fingers at anyone. It's just one of those things. It's not like they've taken their eye off the ball. It's not like, you know, the gap on Monte Artemisio which hasn't, you know, there's a huge light hole in the German 14th Army's front just south of Rome. It's not like that. It's not because anyone's been careless. It's just circumstance. Bad luck, weather, Engine failure, which can happen to anyone. Yeah, Basically what I'm trying to do is. I'm trying to divert blame here.

[A]

But the thing is, I mean, if they had. If they had spotted it during the night, that means come dawn, it kicks off. Right.

[B]

Everyone's ready.

[A]

Everyone's ready. People are ready on their sorties. They know where they're going. They've also got more time.

[B]

Well, I presume you can send out the Swordfish straight away, can't you?

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

At night.

[A]

Exactly. Or in the fog, using their radar. I mean, suddenly appearing out the radar, dropping torpedoes. Anyway, so, I mean, I want Ciliax's lottery numbers, basically. I can't believe his luck. This man is touched by luck. They're expecting fighters. Jaggleschwader 2, Rechthofen. The patrols are now overhead, so it's the beginning of the Donerchild air screen, and the pilots are weaving and circling in different layers at different heights in a sort of stack above the fleet. And they're expecting the RAF any minute because they don't know.

[B]

Yeah, of course they are.

[A]

They don't know they haven't been spotted.

[B]

So, 0800-HARBO1 patrol finally airborne, and it detects that the breast berths are empty, but the reports aren't processed swiftly. What? Come on. Yeah, okay. It says now starting. We can start pointing fingers.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Spotter C climbs over the Channel but sees only cloud. 8, 24 hours, AM, Beachy Head, RAF. So that's on the south coast, sees circling aircraft. And this is spotted by Aircraftman Gubbins, a beachy head. They keep watching this plot, wondering what on earth's going on.

[A]

They're seeing planes going round and round and round and round and round and round. Yeah, of course, but that's all they're seeing. 825. Wing Commander M. Jarvis, Senior Controller, the Raider Filter Room at Fighter Command Headquarters. He comes on duty.

[B]

He'd be a brisk type, wouldn't he?

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

Don't you think?

[A]

Efficient fellow. Yes. Yeah, man. A few words. It's all coming to him. All these various radar sightings from across the Channel made by the Stringer radar RDF stations along the southeastern coast. And he receives a plot which he identifies as aircraft circling somewhere off Le Havre. He thinks it might be enemy aircraft escorting coastal shipping and informs number 11 group. He also notices reports of interference which he thinks are caused by atmospherics. He's swallowed Martini's cocktail, as it were, hook, line and sinker.

[B]

So Jarvis is only efficient up to a point?

[A]

Exactly. He's seeing the Luftwaffe umbrella, and the interference is General Martini's jamming, which goes unrecognized because it's regular and they've not just flicked all the switches on and made it go blank.

[B]

Yes. So then, with all this information at his fingertips, 8:35am, Vice Admiral Ramsey, great man, hero, friend of the show, signals everyone that the coast is clear, the Germans haven't been spotted, they're not coming today. Everyone can stand down and relax. As you were. Patrols will continue, but there'll be no flap today. Oh, man. I mean, you know, three. Three cruisers and six destroyers are no small force.

[A]

And also a lot of activity at Zeebrugge up the other end, too. People getting ready to Escort. Around the same time, Ciliax is warned by Naval Command west in Paris, who's strictly speaking running the show, that the British have placed a new minefield and needs to watch out for it. And he decides, well, actually, we'll steam on. We might as well. Things are dangerous enough, aren't they? A little bit of Admiral Luchens. There's. Oh, what's the point? Carry on.

[B]

I must accept my fate.

[A]

At 0845, a Jim Crow patrol is sent by Fighter Command. It's two Spitfires flying opposite routes. One spots a load of E boats at Boulogne, the other sees vessels at Zeebrugge. These are part of the building escort, but both turn home to report, but they observe radio silence. That's RAF policy.

[B]

So they're not picked up, Aren't they?

[A]

They're not picked up. They're seen as nothing special. They go unreported. Now, we talked about in the previous episode about the Coastal Command Beauforts that are available to Operation Fuller and not as many as you'd think. And also they're weirdly deployed in Lucas, Thorney island and St Evil. But the Coastal Command have decided to do something about this. So at 0900 hours on the 12th of February, the day of the Channel dash, Coastal Command is reorganising itself and the squadron that's at Leucas leaves Leucas for its transfer to Colchicil. And this transfer has been diverted so they can deal with the Channel Dash. Right, but that means actually they're out of the loop, effectively, organizationally, on this day.

[B]

Because they've chosen this day to move.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. And the redeployment has been held up by weather and by admin. There are no torpedoes at Codshall either. It's a fighter station gym. So they've been redeployed somewhere.

[B]

Where? Can you believe it?

[A]

Now, we met aircraftsman Gubbins at Beachy Head a while ago, didn't we? Nice fellow. 0920, his replacement, Corporal Jones, comes on.

[B]

Don't panic, Jonesy.

[A]

He sees something in the middle of the circle of planes, because these are skilled radar RDF operators.

[B]

And he goes, just before 10 o', clock, Adams remarked that there was something in the middle of the aircraft which looked like shipping. I took a look myself and came to the conclusion There were about six vessels with the aircraft at 1014 and 1016 hours, two more plots were made. Each one had three ships in a range of 44 and 46 miles. I then passed this information through to

[A]

Dover Command, but there's a problem with this.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Beachy Head. Beachy Head's an RAF station. No, And RAF stations only report aircraft plots. Jim. What's not happened is there hasn't been a solid enough shake of the tree.

[B]

Ah, these jobsworths. Honestly, sometimes you just need to think outside the box.

[A]

Well, all the. But also the orders for Fuller haven't said everyone. Which means now we all need to take shipping into account in what we're plotting. Reports of ships have to be passed to the relevant naval command. But because there is this disconnection between the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force, there's no direct line to Dover and the lines are busy and they can't get through. So they ring Portsmouth and ask them to tell Dover delay news doesn't reach Dover until 1040 hours.

[B]

So that's an hour and 20 minutes later.

[A]

Yeah, exactly.

[B]

Meanwhile.

[A]

Yeah, at Stanmore.

[B]

Yeah, At Stanmore, Wing Commander Jarvis reports

[A]

plots of enemy aircraft orbiting in the Channel again. And he decides this got this is interference. Even though the planes seem to be moving along the channel at 20 knots. Right. This circle of planes is moving along the channel at 20 knots.

[B]

Hang on a minute. Isn't 20 knots about the speed of some cruisers?

[A]

I don't know, James.

[B]

I mean, now it's starting. Okay, so. So the nighttime stuff, for circumstances, this is starting to look really.

[A]

What would steam along the channel at 20 knots and might need that kind of air cover? I can't work it out. 0930 hours, the German jamming peaks. And so effectively the raid. The British radar net is kind of blinded mid channel, and again it's put down to atmospheric interference because this is the thing that Martini has been mimicking. They've all decided on by 9. 59 further reports reach the filter room at 1010. Jarvis @uxbridge, having puzzled over the circling planes, orders a recce flight to investigate. So now at 10:20, a second Jim Crow patrol leaves. Scheduled patrol. This is Squadron Leader Ox Spring, I just love his name. And Sergeant Beaumont, who set off in a pair at 10:30. Three Spitfire pilot from RAF Kenley. And these both. And the Oxspring patrol leaves from Kenley as well. A Battle of Britain veteran, Group Captain Victor Beamish, who's keeping his eye in alongside Wing Commander Boyd, has gone out for what he calls a Beamish special. In other words, he's allowed to go out looking for trouble if he wants. And Leigh Mallory, friend of the show Trafford Lee Mallory, has his back on this. So he could. Beamish can do whatever he wants. So it's not that the RAF have experten, but some people kind of behave like them. Right. He's off tooling around, basically looking for a fight over the Channel because he's allowed to. Because he's. Because he's pals with the boss, right? I mean.

[B]

Yes, exactly. So different rules for him.

[A]

So he recalls when inside the French coast, we saw two Messerschmitts steering southwest. We were at sea level, they were at about 1500ft. We chased them at full throttle, but did not gain much on them. They were going very fast. The next thing we saw at about 1040 hours was that we were over the fleet. We were about five miles off the French coast near La touquet. I saw two ships roughly in line astern, surrounded by around 12 destroyers, circled again by an outer ring of E boats. When we arrived over, the ships we saw in the air, around 9 to 12 me 109s, they attacked us immediately. So this is it.

[B]

Ciliax has been seen, Jim, at long last, it's on.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

They've been at sea for more than 12 hours. And clearly this is the moment the world will get back. Positive eyes on everything will kick into gear. Operation Fuller. Go.

[A]

Yeah. Go, go, go, go, go, go.

[B]

But do they do that?

[A]

No, they observe radio silence as it's operational practice until they get back. This is the moment where Ciliac sees these Spitfires and thinks, well, game's up, we're stuffed.

[B]

Yeah, well, it's hard to think any other way, isn't it?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, hard to think anyway, other way. And these are short, short distances across the Channel in Plano, so planes can come and go, appear very, very quickly. At 1040 hours, Oxpring and Beaumont also come down through the cloud and see the fleet. Oxpring sees two lines of E boats, then three miles ahead of him, 25 ships he reckons with at the center, larger ships, I mean, 25 ships is

[B]

not a small imprint in the channel. I mean, it's one thing in the middle of the Atlantic, but Oxspring and

[A]

Beaumont make tracks because the Luftwaffe pounce on them. The Donner Kyle fighter screen gets them, but also radio silence, Jim. They observe radio silence and Oxpring describes it. Go. Jim. You could be Oxpring.

[B]

Our attention was slightly distracted shortly afterwards by our sighting of what we thought were two me 109s. They were below us and very close to the bunch of E boats we'd seen. We had to keep a very close eye watching them because there was Also the possibility of being jumped on out of the clouds above us, which were very low and had 10 temps cover. Enemy fighters could have been hidden in them, for they often used two fighters as a decoy. We were rather wary about this, but Beaumont went down to attack one of the two planes below. It was then that we found they were Spitfires, although we had not been told that there were any Spitfires in the area. Oh, my God. This is really not good, is it? So there's confusion with the further added slice of radio silence.

[A]

Yeah. After the event, the RAF rather defensively says this prohibition in normal circumstances is perfectly sound, since in the Channel the object of the fighters is to get their report back to HQ without the enemy realizing that they have been seen.

[B]

This doesn't really cut it, does it?

[A]

It doesn't cut it. And also, what if you're shot down?

[B]

Use your life, mate.

[A]

But what? But what if you're shot down? You see the fleet and you're shot down, you don't get to report back. Appalling ass covering that.

[B]

Yeah, it's absolute.

[A]

1042 at Beachy Head RDF station. Clear radar confirmation. There's a high speed formation mid channel. The Fairlight station is also reporting the same. Finally, Wing Commander J. Bobby Constable Roberts, who's the air liaison officer at Admiral Ramsey's headquarters at Dover, realizes what these plots must be. He calls 11 group, who say, that's

[B]

all right, Dover, we've been watching them for that one for some time. Stop bothering me, Leave me alone.

[A]

They have. They have, but they haven't been able to act on it because it's ships.

[B]

So 1050, Oxspring and Beaumont return to Kenley and are asked to identify the ships they've seen. They don't recognize it from the pictures they've shown. So there's no positive id. No, no. Don't recognise that. When Fighter Command get the report, they don't think it's the German warships.

[A]

No.

[B]

So what else could it be?

[A]

I don't know, Jim.

[B]

What else could it be?

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

What else could it be?

[A]

Some Royal Navy you've not been told about? I don't know. At 1105, Constable Roberts, who's at Dover, at Ramsey's headquarters, he's alert, the chatter going round now. And he calls MANSTON and gets 825 Squadron, Naval Air Squadron, which is the swordfish, the six swordfish, tells them to bomb up to save time. It's coming. He knows they're expecting to fly by night, but he leaves them to crack on with it. He knows that they've been told it's going to be night. But here we are.

[B]

Right 11:09am Beamish and Boyd land back at Kenley. Senior officers reporting the sighting gives report even more weight than Oxpring and Beaumont. The intelligence officer passes this on to Uxbridge at 1111 hours. Half an hour is lost since the sighting. The battle fleet is now. The German battle fleet is now going flat out. Precious minutes are being wasted. 17 miles have gone of shipping speeding have gone in that time. So following this, finally the code word Fuller is sent out to all commands. The German ships are out.

[A]

Enemy battlecruisers in the Channel. The battle for the narrow seas is about to begin. Jim.

[B]

Not before time, Al.

[A]

I know. Not before time. Not before time. From a. From a dud fuse to damp engines to people simply not looking for things

[B]

properly to start off with. I was feeling okay. I was feeling okay because you know, it was all just sort of excusable mistakes, you know, and reasons and it all seemed perfectly reasonable. But, but, but oh my goodness me, this last bit, that's poor.

[A]

But Jim, one thing I want to before because. Because we'll get to the drama of what follows in our next episode of the. Of the encounter between the Fleet Air Arm, Coastal Command, Bomber Command, Royal Navy, British Army.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe in the next episode. One of the things that I think springs to mind is when we looked at the story of the Bismarck, there's many dramatic twists and turns in the story of the attempt to sink the Bismarck with lots of actually I think similar slips twixt cup and lip as this. Right. Misdirected plots.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The thought that someone's at a reciprocal. What if for instance those swordfish had sunk the Sheffield? What if those torpedoes had worked and the evasive action the Sheffield might have taken had not worked and they. How big a fiasco would that be in the annals of that period of the Second World War? You know when everything's going wrong and you sink one of your own battleships with your own torpedoes. I mean the fact that the torpedoes don't work properly in the attack on the Sheffield ought to be. But because we get the good outcome of the Bismarck being sunk, a lot of the sort of, sort of friction, cock up, misdirection, poorly read sites, patrols that see nothing are like not the part of the story. Because the difference between the story of the Bismarck and this is there's time. There's time in the pursuit of the Bismarck, there's time to fix the errors. There's no time here. There isn't time for blown fuses. There isn't time for code words that are misunderstood. There isn't time for the guy at the filter station to say half an hour later, oh yes, we're well aware of this, despite having not taken it seriously. There isn't time for any of this, you know, cock up and cotton wool in the system to clag it up and delay it. Whereas there was in the Bismarck encounter, which has its, you know, inverted commas, happy ending. So I think, and you said, and you said in our last episode, you know, we haven't talked about airborne soldiers in a very long time. I'm going to draw a comparison here and regular listeners of the podcast will probably think, finally he's going to mention it. The difference between the airborne operation on D Day and Arnhem, right, is that the one on D Day is a victory and the one at Arnhem is a defeat. When you burrow into how bad the intelligence was, the cock ups, people landing in the wrong place, misunderstandings, objectives not quite held to their full completion, you can start to pare and parse it. But the basic, the truth is Tonga D Day Overlord is a success. Market Garden is a failure. Sinking the Bismarck is a success. This, as we'll see, isn't the outcome that the British are after. Right? There are similar things going wrong in both of them, but they don't matter in the case the Bismarck. They really matter here. And I think that's what's so interesting about the subject of the Second World War is contingency is compounded to the point where everything's hanging on a thread here. On a fuse, on a guy not realizing that it's interference, on not drawing the conclusion that Circling aeroplanes at 20 knots must mean ships. These are like, these are gossamer thin moments. And that's what I think makes all of this so compelling, the whole subject. You can have your infographics of tanks produced, but in the end we're talking about a fuse here in a radar set. We're talking about phones not being set up properly. We're talking about people not having thought

[B]

passing bit of cloud or fog bank that's coming just at the wrong moment. Yeah, I agree with that entirely. It's why it's so interesting. And also, we can't have the British winning everything.

[A]

No, we can't. And join us in our next episode for exactly that. The British not winning everything. You can argue that one part of the British effort to deal with the German surface fleet is entirely successful, which we'll get to at some point in our next episode. Thanks very much for listening. If you want. If you want to get to that with no adverts, of course, join our Patreon. And may the luck of Admiral Ciliax follow you for the rest of your lives. Cheerio.

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