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WW2 Pod: We Have Ways of Making You Talk
The Channel Dash: Operation Cerberus vs Operation Fuller (Part 1)
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It's the Paradise Podcast.
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I am your host, Ryan Michelle. Bathe with my husband Sterling.
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What's up?
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Join us here on Hulu and Hulu on Disney, where we'll discuss each episode with the cast and crew of Paradise. I'll be getting all the secrets from Dan Fogelman, James Marsden, Shailene Woodley, Julianne Nicholson and Sterling Kelby Brown. Paradise, the official podcast is now streaming
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and stream paradise on Hulu and Hulu on Disney.
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The situation of the breast group is like a patient with cancer who is doomed unless he submits to an operation. An operation, on the other hand, even though it may have to be drastic, will at least offer some hope that the patient's life may yet be saved. It must therefore be attempted.
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And that was, of course, the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler on January 12, 1942, man himself joining us, addressing a meeting at the Wolf's Lair of Wilhelm Keitel. Of course, his commander in chief of Wehrmacht, Hans Jesonek, who's chief of the Luftwaffe General Staff, Alfred Jodl, one of his lap dogs, Chief of Staff of Military operations Adolf Galland, Genehel der Jagdflieger and Erich Raeder, who's commander in chief of the Navy and Vice Admiral Otto Siliax. The Befelshaber Der Schlacht Schiffer.
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E
That's a great title, isn't it?
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A
That's a great title, isn't it?
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E
If I was going to be a German rank, that's what I'd want to be.
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A
You want to be Befellshaber der Schlachtschiffe. What Hitler is talking about here is of course, that the remnants of the Kriegsmarine surface fleet, the Atlantic raiders who are holed up in Brest. So welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to. We have ways of making you talk with me, Anne Murray and James Holland, and we are going to grasp a nettle in the form of a sort of postscript to our sink the Bismarck story. Because that's what this is really in many ways, the story of the Channel Dash.
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E
It's completing the journey.
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A
Exactly. They're going around trip these German ships and this is the, the last part of that round trip. And it's February 12th, 1942 we're talking about. And it's not a great day for the Royal Navy, it's not a great day for the Royal Air Force, and it's not a great particularly good day for the British army either. But I will argue that notwithstanding, it's a terrible day for the Kriegsmarine and in fact a classic example of how you can have a tactical victory, but if you ain't got no strategy, it
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E
all goes to pot. I mean, looking at the Fuhrer's speech there, I mean, he's got a point, isn't he?
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A
He's absolutely right. And what's interesting as we get into this is that, is that he's right. But he's also, he's right for the wrong reason.
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E
He's also so very wrong.
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A
Exactly. So this, on this occasion, this basically this story has everything.
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E
So we needed a bit of background, don't we? Bit of background to this. I mean, you know, because I know we've been, we've been talking about, with derision about the, about Kriegsmarine's surface fleet.
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A
Yeah.
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E
And the whole principles behind it and the Z Plan and why, which was the pre war plan to have a sizable surface fleet that was going to break out of any blockade that the Royal Navy could impose, go into the Atlantic and maraud for all its worth and sink vast amounts of Allied shipping. The problem of that, of course, was that they don't have any overseas bases. They've got to break through the blockade. They can't compete with the Royal Navy. And so there's quite a lot of flaws of it. But of course one of the major flaws of it is that Hitler declares war in 1932 before the Z Plan is complete because it's a much larger force in envision. Although I would argue that that still doesn't add up to a hill of beans and wouldn't have made the slightest bit of difference.
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A
No, because the extent to which they have to catch up is too. The gap's too big. The gap is simply too big.
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E
Just build U boats.
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A
Well, but what's interesting though, Jim, is, you know, a lot of people point to the gap between the German state of preparedness on their land side at the start of the war and the British and the Allied in reverse. Or air, you know, like you look at the little fuff at start of the war and the Royal Air Force is that that gap's much easier to make up. You can turn fighter planes around quite quickly. What we're talking about here is vessels that take two, three years to build. Oh, and the rest, and the rest. And unless they're online, unless you've, you know, they're very long, deep term commitments. And also I think the other thing that's really interesting about them, I was talking to our producer JR about this the other day because he is, he's Navy mad. In fact, I think we need to offer credit to JR for these recent series that he is, he has very much had a heavy hand on the tiller and it's that or he swung our compass.
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Before you came on this morning, J.R. said to me, he said, but I am really excited about the channel dash.
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Well, there we go. You see, he's got a magnet and he's directed our compass off course. Our instruments have been tampered with. And here we are discussing the Royal Navy.
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E
Yes, yes. Our magnetic compass is swaying all over the place away from true north. We haven't mentioned any airborne treats for about six months.
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I know it's, it's really going south.
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E
What? Thank God we got the Bruneval raid.
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Yeah, we got Bruneval to come, don't worry. But the point is here is these warships, these battleships are disposable items. You build them and they may be lost in battle. You don't build them purely for the prestige. You're going, look at our great big battleships. Look, the Bismarck is the most powerful battleship you built. You build them in the expectation that if you sell them half way around the world they'll be shagged by the process that they're that, you know what I mean? And that the guns have a finite life. You fire them enough times, the barrels are done. You've got to, you've got to refit basically every other year with these things and you may lose them with all hands. And the Germans have just not been thinking like that at all. Whereas the Royal Navy does think like that. The key to the Royal Navy in the end, the sort of, the thing running through it like the stick of
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rock, is sheer aggression and calculated risk.
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And if you've got great big battleships that you're terribly proud of rather than regard them as wasting and wasteable assets, then you're going to go wrong. Because the German politics is so much about conspicuous consumption. You know, you have your big shiny battleships for political reasons. Yeah, but what are the strategic reasons?
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E
Well, they just, they just assume that they're going to have these big shiny battleships. And when you look at the Bismarck being launched, how can you possibly doubt the magnificence of the Kriegsmarine or the invincibility of this battleship? But what you're not doing when you're looking at that, and I can see why you would think this, in this moment, everything is about the Bismarck or the Scharnhorst or the Gneisenau or the Blucher or whatever ship it is that's being launched at that particular time. You're just thinking, whoa, look at the scale of that. That's just, that's going to really kick ass.
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Yeah.
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And you just have this sort of vision of it going out into the Atlantic, wreaking damage. You know, in your mind's eye, you're just seeing one after another of sort of sinking merchant vessels sort of going down with sort of sad trails of black smoke going up into the sky, et cetera, et cetera, and sort of complete naval brilliance. What you're not calculating is the fact that these might be lost, the fact that you've got an economic blockade, the fact that you don't really compete with the navy. And the problem is there are some people within the Kriegsmarine who are thinking like that. Admiral Raeder. And there are others who are not, like Adolf Hitler, who's just thinking, amazing. And then suddenly it all comes crashingly clear what a terrible mistake they've made. And they've now got these assets which they feel honor bound to try and maintain and keep going, but they're lame ducks. They can't do anything. And they're also sucking up a huge amount of resources. I mean, everyone keeps going on about how Much resources are used by the British in keeping these in their harbors or whatever.
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Yeah.
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But don't lose sight of how much resources the Germans are using. Keeping. Also keeping them in harbour.
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Yeah, yeah. Defending them.
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And frankly they can't afford it certainly
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that far from where the German steel is produced for instance in Brest. So I mean but these capital ships they do represent a challenge, an open challenge to the Royal Navy in British prestige. You know the Royal Navy is imperial power expressed through big ships which is also part of. You know the Hood represents imperial power to some extent. And this is, this also explains the mob handed efforts to bring the Bismarck down. You just. They're just going to throw everything at it. And we ended our Bismarck series with the Prinz Eugen. Slips away, thinks you know discretion is the better part of valor. Also she's beginning to fall apart. You know she's some battle damage. And these ships do they start to fall apart? They start to go wrong.
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Particularly if they're not particularly well made in the first place.
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Exactly. And she emerges from the fog days after the Bismarck has been destroyed making for Brest and safe haven or safe.
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Ish.
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Well exactly.
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No, let's not even do that. Let's just say haven.
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Haven. But we should talk about the Prince Eugen just for a moment because she after all his most considered opinion is it's a shell from the Prinz Eugen that sinks the Hood. So we should, we should take, we should take her seriously for a minute. Named after an 18th century Holy Roman emperor called Prince Eugene Eugen of Saxony. He's a general who fought alongside Marlborough at Blenheim. And you just know that Churchill would have known that, wouldn't he? He'd have known exactly who fought alongside Marlborough at Blenheim. And he's a stone cold legend of the Holy Roman Empire wars for the first quarter of the. Of the century. And the Eugen, the ship is an
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Admiral Hipper class of which there are five, aren't there? There's five of these.
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This is really.
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And they're about. They're a sniff under, under 20,000 tons or all in, aren't they?
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That's right. Just under. And there's the Prinz Eugen. There's. Well there's the Hipper obviously the Prinz Eugen, the Seidlitz and the Lutzov.
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E
What? The Seidlitz? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean you know it's the, it's the forgotten cruiser isn't it?
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Yeah. Get it off your chest.
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I always thought it was really funny that the war Twins, the Cricketing War twins. Mark Wall was the sort of lesser one, so he was known as Afghan, the Forgotten War. Seidlitz is very much Afghan of the. Yes, very much of the Hippo class cruisers.
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And they decide. What do they decide to do with the Sidelitz, Jim? Come on.
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They decide to stop building it when it's 95% complete and then convert it into an aircraft carrier halfway through the war. It never goes to sea properly on offensive operations, ever.
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A
I mean, the Lutsov is sold incomplete to the Soviet Union in 1940.
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E
Never finished.
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A
That's right, never finished. She goes on to be the Petropavlovsk, then the Tallinn and then the Dnieper, and finally PKZ112.
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E
What's all the name changes?
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A
I don't know. Well, I think you probably.
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E
Soviet stuff.
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Soviet stuff. And obviously you want to disown the fact you bought it off the Germans, so you're trying to like do a deeper paper trail as possible, I suppose.
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E
But Conrad, I just discovered that originally it was called the Lutzow. What?
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This cannot be sent to the Gulag for discovering that. And then Hippo, Hipper itself is decommissioned in 1944 and uses a troop ship. So that's so much for.
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E
I mean, that's unbelievable, isn't it?
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A
Yeah, it is, yeah. Yeah. What a waste.
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Unbelievable.
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A
But the Eugen, so the Hippoclast, she displaces 19,050 tons fully loaded. She's 3ft short of 700ft with a beam of 71ft and 2 inches. So it's a big boat. Big boat, this. Three turbines made by Blohm and Voss. Three screws flat out. She'll do 32 knots with 42 officers, 113, 40 ratings. The guns are the thing that. What this all comes down to in the end. She's got eight 8 inch guns, 1210 1/2 centimeter guns, 121 1/2 inch guns and eight 1020 millimeter guns.
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E
I mean, that's still a serious amount of firepower, isn't it?
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A
She's tooled up, isn't she? Let's talk and let's just talk about these guns because the gunnery is a big. This what? So this is what it's all about. So it's a rifled tube with an inner and outer jacket and a horizontal sliding breech block. It's an 18 kilo brass case, heavy thing with 30 kilos as charge, as well as a cloth bag with more propellant, depending on how far they're trying to chuck the round. Yeah, and they alter that. The combinations Depending on the range of the target, they could fire about five rounds a minute. But each barrel is effective for 510 full charges before it have to be replaced.
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E
Well, you're going to rattle through those, aren't you?
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Exactly. These are disposable asset and you think of the steel that has to go, the super high quality steel that you're spending on these guns that in the end, you know, if it's five rounds a minute, 510 full charges, you've not got to fire these guns for long or be that many encounters. But we've got to go home and get new guns, right?
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E
Yeah.
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And you're not going to be able to fit those in breast, not with any degree of ease I think is the, is the thing.
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E
It's not many ships are going to be sinking on that, are they? Because you're not going to hit every ship with every shot. So that's a fundamental flaw in the whole plan, isn't it? So, so just say on average you're hitting, let's say with, with. With. With a salvo. Let's say you're, you're hitting 25%.
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Yeah.
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Okay.
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So in other words of your 510 full charges.
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Yeah. You're hitting 25. You know, with full broadside you're hitting 25%.
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A
Yeah.
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E
So that's only.
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A
It's like 150, isn't it?
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150 ships.
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A
Yeah.
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E
That's not going to add up to much, is it?
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A
No, there's your, there's your absence of tonnage required to win the war. Basically. You know, you get in one, in amongst one convoy and sink all of it.
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E
Yeah, okay, but then, then you've got to be there for. You're going to miss the next. Aren't you going to get.
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A
Exactly, exactly. And you, I mean you, you know, from Halifax. What is it? When is it, is it in 1941?
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E
80% of the convoy, 1941 to September 1942. Not a single ship is lost in convoy.
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A
Well, there we are. So that's a nothing happens story. So no one knows about it. Exactly.
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E
But every so often with the Germans, and the Germans in the war, you just think, why has no one thought of this? I mean it's a bit like case blue and the, and the going to the Caucasus and the oil things. Why has no one thought what do we do when we actually get to these fields? I mean it's, it's just amazing, isn't it?
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A
Yeah. Anyway, we talked about plunging fire, didn't we in yeah.
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E
Which. Which prompted just an unbelievable avalanche of plunging far geekness.
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A
It's very interesting. So at a range of 5 km the guns are elevated to 1 degree in 54 minutes. Isn't it that. Isn't that the thing inside a degree?
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Yeah.
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A
And that. That's a six second time of flight. Target five kilometers in six seconds with a descending arc of two degrees and six minutes. And that's going at 744 meters per second. So 2,440ft per second.
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E
These are great stats by the way.
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A
They are. They're cool. The other end of the scale, at 30 kilometers the guns are elevated to 29 degrees. Roughly 69 second flight time. So you'd see that. You'd see the guns fire. I remember there's the bit where Toby goes stop counting or whatever. Shut up. Stop doing that.
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E
Yes.
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A
When they're counting the counting down because they know how fast the guns are going. And these. These rounds descend at 48 degrees.
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E
Basically that's plunging.
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A
Plunging.
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E
That is plunging.
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A
That is definitely plunging. And they're. They're not going as quickly. They're going 363 meters per second. But they're still a 11, 90ft per second. That's. That's some lick. So. So you know you can see why plunging fire is the thing people have got on their minds. Right. And it is plunging fire from the Eigens guns that strikes the hood. We'll leave it there. I think.
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E
Yeah.
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A
But this is why she's so dangerous. But also why she's a wasting asset. You've got to use it. Use it or lose it. Which is what Hitler's saying at the start of the episode. And then the Scharnhorst whose motto is Scharnhorst immer voan, which means always forward.
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E
Always forward.
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A
I love it.
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E
Except it's going absolutely nowhere. Always forward. Into the end wall of a dry dock.
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A
Exactly. Always in dry dock. Immer in dry dock. And they're the same class of battle cruiser. Cruiser. They're also named after Prussian generals and they've got stacks of reputation with them. I'm not. After Scharnhorst sinks. Glorious. In 1940, that appalling disaster. They each have nine 11 inch guns. So take what we told you about the 8 inch guns. Think about that in terms of how dangerous. And they also have torpedo tubes which is interesting. There's. These ships are of a different order to Prince, Oregon. So these are dangerous. And on Operation Berlin from the 22nd of January 22nd of March 1941, their convoy raiding and they sink 22 ships. But when you start looking at what they should be capable of in theory, that's not enough, is it? That's not good enough. No.
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E
It's 150,000 tons, isn't it?
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A
Yeah. And they've got to be out there to be effective. But they're not. So on the 22nd of March they arrive at Brest for refit and rearmament. Both ships need significant work because being out in the Atlantic in battle is hard work. Wear and tear on the structure of the ships, particularly the engines, the boilers, Scharnhorst spoilers are all carked, for instance. So. So Brest is not ideal after all. It's not a German shipyard and everything has to come to it as a railhead.
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E
More stress and strain on the Reichsbahn railway network.
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A
Exactly. And the cost of everything is higher, isn't it? You've also got a French workforce, you've got to chivy and persuade who are
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E
laced with resistant types and spies.
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A
Yeah. And the town is full of resistance. Six days after they've arrived on 28 March, the Royal Air Force photo reconnaissance spot the Sharnhorst berth at the torpedo station, the Gunise down the dry dock nearby. In the dry dock.
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E
Of course it does.
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A
Of course it does.
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E
In the dry dock. Always forward.
- [19:13]
A
Exactly. And she's in the GNY's now is in the dry dock. So this is the state of affairs. So Bomber Command then obviously go back. You know, they look at their maps, they plot their courses, they decide on their payloads, they look at their assets and the 30th to 31st March, then that night Bomber command gets stuck in believing that the Germans are obviously going to beef up their anti aircraft defences. They need to get on with it. So they 109 aircraft fly for Brest 101 drop 132 tons of bombs that night.
- [19:44]
E
And don't forget, this is before the all out strategic air offensive which begins beginning March 1943. So they're still really not very good at this point.
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A
But Brest is much easier to find than somewhere in the middle of the Rhine, the Ruhr. Right, isn't it?
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E
Definitely, yeah.
- [19:59]
A
You follow the coast if you have to, it's easy peasy, it's close. And they're dropping armored piercing munitions designed to strike at the ships. And the Germans realize this pretty quickly. They don't hit the ships, but they kill lots of crew in their billets. And you know, if you're of the view that a ship's useless without its crew. Then job done, right, they report plenty of flak. But the Germans then begin to beef up their their anti aircraft complement. And by August The Germans have 100 heavy flak guns and another 233 flak weapons.
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E
Well, all at Brest.
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A
Yeah, it's a big commitment. Yeah, but it has to be because their big commitment has been committed bigly. You know, a big naval commitment. So four more raids follow me.
- [20:39]
E
It's a straight line on the Greece Arena. A big commitment has been committed bigly.
- [20:42]
A
Committed bigly. And then on April 5th, so the following week Gneisenau has taken out a dry dock a moored near the mole. And on the 6th of April Coastal Command make their move. And this is the the incredible story of Flying Officer Kenneth Campbell picking up his vc. His crew don't obviously
- [21:04]
E
get nothing.
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A
They get nothing.
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E
They don't even get a bm.
- [21:08]
A
No. And he comes, he comes right down, you know, Taranto style. Sea level comes in, goes down in flames as his torpedo strikes. One of the guys now has props. She starts taking on water immediately, of course. And this is the thing we talked about, the Taranto raid. You do this to a capital ship in open seas, she goes to the bottom. You do it in a harbor, in port, in unsafe haven. And helps at hand, you can block the hole, you can pump her bilges out and she may just touch the bottom anyway, so you can rescue her. So they take her to the dry dock in which there was an unexploded bomb.
- [21:52]
E
Holy moly.
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A
Sucks to be the nice now. And he's knocked her out for six months. And very often, very often, this phase of the air war against Kriegsmate is presented as kind of ineffectual that the raf, they spend a lot of planes on it and they lose a lot of crews and everything and they never hit, they don't hit the ships that often or they don't put them completely out of action.
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E
That's a win, isn't it? Six months.
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A
Yeah, six months. I mean you're refracting it through the wrong prism. If you're going, oh well, you know, she'll be fixed in six months time. Well, she's out. She's not surface raiding. If we go back to Operation Berlin, she's not doing that for six months. So your shipping is, your shipping's in the clear. She's then hit in the dry dock on 10 April. Crew are killed, lots of crew are killed. And the magazines are flooded to prevent her going up in flames. Right. Depends on blowing up. Right.
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E
It's not great, is it?
- [22:44]
A
It's not great. So Gneisenau's going nowhere. Shar and her horses exposed to the same danger. Prince Eugen on 1 June, suddenly appears at Brest, having gone away from the. The effort to sink the Bismarck. Hello. Did you miss me? Yeah.
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E
Guten Dog, the Guten Tag.
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A
But she's also in a. She's also in. In quite the state, but she'd been
- [23:03]
E
run ragged by all everything that's been going on.
- [23:05]
A
These three big ships, you know, are parked up in Brest. And it's with great, great risk as well. It comes with great risk. And yes, the British are spending lots of resources on it, but what they're all not having to do is spend resources on. Chase them around the Atlantic. They know where they are. It's literally, we know where you live. I've been reading about this, and because of the outcome of the Channel dash, lots of the, Lots of the stuff written about this is very sort of down on the. On the effort here to, to contain and control the Kriegsmarine. But it's basically that it's the best part of a year that Sean Horse Gai is now going nowhere, and the Eugen, the best part of six months. Right.
- [23:42]
E
Well, yes, and also, you know, the Germans are turning huge resources onto this with all their flak and troops that have to be there and all the supply lines to replenish this stuff. They're all living on their nerves because they know any minute another bomber is going to come over and bomb them, which it is. So they're being bombed all the time and they can't really afford it. The. The British, I mean, they've got Bomber Command. That's what it's for. They've got Coastal Command. That's what it's for.
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A
Yeah.
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E
You know, it's doing what it's designed to do to a large extent, whereas the Cruise Marine is not doing what it's designed to do at all. So who's the loser?
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A
It is.
- [24:19]
E
I mean, everyone goes on and on and on about how, you know, these ships tie up enormous amount of British resources, but they're going to be there anyway. The Home Fleet is going to be there anyway.
- [24:29]
A
Yeah, yeah. That's his job too. Yeah. I mean, basically, the Allied approach, the British approach is absolute belt and braces and it's working. It's obviously, obviously coming that the Germans have got to change. They've got to change their strategy or as you might call it, admit Defeat. Right. PRINZ Eugen on the 1st of July, struck by an armor piercing bomb that causes three months of damage as well as killing 40 of her crew. You know, the one lucky shell that destroys Hood. They keep being hit by these lucky bombs. Scharnhorst leaves later in the month for sea trials on the 23rd, is immediately spotted by the RAF, who send a bomber force straight away to keep the Admiralty from losing its shit. They're worried that she's going to go straight out to the Atlantic, so they send a raid to La Palice where she's moored up nearby. The raid scores a direct hit. Scharnhorst has to return to dry dock immediately.
- [25:18]
E
Yeah, that went well, that trip, didn't it?
- [25:20]
A
Exactly so. And this tempo of operations just carries on all as 25 raids that go in in total.
- [25:26]
E
That's amazing, isn't it?
- [25:27]
A
It is amazing. 7th to 8th December 1941, the RAF use oboe for the first time.
- [25:33]
E
Amazing.
- [25:33]
A
Isn't that interesting? Because oboe is always seen as part of the strategic bomber offensive technological breakthrough picture, but actually they're using it for this because this is the priority, because you win the war at sea, you could ease back into your straps and do the strategic bombing war. Right. So they, you know, they're bringing their absolute pinnacle tech to this job. And obviously this is the phase of the war where Bomber Command butt report, oh, they can't find a thing. They're ineffective. They can't find these German towns. Well, they can find Brest and they can find these ships and they're hitting them. And if, as you said in our previous episodes, Jim, the naval war is the key component for the Allies to win the war. The Royal Air Force Bomber Command are being incredibly effective at this phase of the war. Right. Can't argue with it. The Royal Air Force Bomber Command and Coastal Command effectively snuff out the Kriegsmarine, Kriegsmarine's Atlantic surface fleet. They go, no, you're not being allowed to come out to play. We're going to hold you here. And it means that actually the Home Fleet can be held in Scapa Flow in the event that the Tirpitz might sit sail from Norway because they're looking in the other direction as well.
- [26:39]
E
Yeah, yeah.
- [26:40]
A
They end up the Germans send their ships, crews back to Germany because it's not safe, and they bring in, they bring in new sailors to use them, to use the ships as training ships.
- [26:49]
E
I mean, it's just hopeless, isn't it?
- [26:51]
A
Yeah. So there's a decision needed this is
- [26:52]
E
where the Fuhrer comes in.
- [26:54]
A
This is where the Fuhrer comes Also, Jim. 7th or 8th, December 1941, what's going on for the Germans in Barbarossa?
- [27:00]
E
Yeah, it's not going very well. It's up the counterattack from Moscow.
- [27:04]
A
There we are. Right. So if we're talking big war, if it's what the Allies can achieve, what can the Germans achieve? Well, it's starting, it's starting to unravel, isn't it? In Barbarossa they've got to rethink, right? So Hitler, the grand strategist, of course, he's smarting from the destruction of the Bismarck. Anyway, he starts to interfere. And his signature concern of Hitler throughout the war and you know, it's a thing that the Allies come to sort of make great play of is Norway of course, the zone of destiny as he calls it, which is a, you know, the sort of thing you need to say. Yes dear to, isn't it?
- [27:35]
E
Norway is the zone of destiny. Yes, yes, Adolph, yes dear.
- [27:42]
A
And he has this permanent fear that the British will intervene there and that using his ships on the Arctic convoys might be less risky. That indicates someone who's thinking about the war against the Soviet Soviets, the Arctic convoys, doesn't it? The war of Soviets isn't going so well. So maybe the thing to do is interdict the shipping that's helping the Soviets. Right. And that, that kind of makes sense. He says on 17 September, he decrees that the ships should return to Norway. He says on the 17th the Atlantic
- [28:05]
F
can be left as a U boats. Your battleships, all your major units must be stationed along the Norwegian coast. There they can be of some use in guarding Norway against invasion. Anyway, they will be safer from air attack there than in Brest where three of them seem to be caught in a nice mess.
- [28:21]
A
What's going to happen to those if
- [28:23]
F
the British go about things properly? They will attack Norway at several points by means of an all out attack with their fleet and landing troops. They will try to displace us there. Take Narvik if possible and thus exert pressure on Sweden and Finland. This might be of decisive importance for the outcomes of the war.
- [28:39]
E
I mean it might be, but it probably won't be.
- [28:42]
A
I mean the first half's right, he's half right. There's always a, often a glimmer, isn't there? You know, the three ships are caught in a nice mess. Admiral Raider is appalled by this, like, oh for fuck's sake, could you just imagine gritted teeth attacking the Arctic convoys if you're looking at the grand plan is a better use of the surface fleet. But it's also impossible. Hitler's right about one thing, whether he knows it or not is the game has changed and it's air power that is the key to naval dominance. And we'll see that as the war rolls out when they close the air gap in the Atlantic and finally again snuff out the rest of the Kriegmarines efforts. It's been proved at Taranto, it's been proved over Malta by the Luftwaffe's own dominance over Malta. Start of 41, the RAF over Brest. Pearl harbor has happened. You've seen the Prince of Wales and the Repulse go down. So it's clear that air power is shifting the usefulness of the big ship. So time is running out for capital ships in general and in the specific. So the Kriegsmarine has to get out of Brest one way or another. And I think what we'll do is we'll take a break and then we'll talk about the two routes and what the options are for the Germans. Welcome back to we have Ways of Making youg Talk With Me, Omari and James Holland, where we are talking about. Well, we're laying some background to the Channel dash.
- [30:02]
E
Yes, we are. We're not being kind towards the Kriegsmarine or indeed Adolf Hitler, although we have conceded that he's 50% right on moving the MA out of these ships out of Brest and La Palice, etc. I mean, yeah, but, but, but the whole thing is just so, it's just how misguided the kind of the, the pre war plan was. And, and it's just being revealed in all its sort of horrors now, isn't it?
- [30:25]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, because after all, Hitler's gambling isn't a strategy. His political gambling as the, the dice tumble during the, the second half of the 30s isn't a strategy. It's a rolling mess of a bloke grabbing his options. And so when you come to, when you come to it, when you. The moment when you need a strategy, it turns out there isn't one.
- [30:50]
E
Yes, yes. So they. Anyway, they've got. So if they are going to escape out of, out of Brittany, they've got two routes, one which is to go up to the Denmark Straits and the Faroe Gap. So you'd go out into the Atlantic, around the west coast of the British Isles and Ireland, or you can just go straight up the Channel. Yeah, but do you dare to so the idea is you'd slip your moorings, head for Cherbourg, hug the coast, avoid minefields, then zip through the Straits of Dover which are only kind of 20 odd miles and carry on.
- [31:22]
A
I mean flat out 32 knots. 30 knots.
- [31:25]
E
It's a plan without floor anyway. So on 12th of January Adolf Hitler orders the Brest Fleet to come home. The order is issued and that's basically what you were kind of outlined in the beginning, isn't it? And Weiser amiral Otto Ciliax in his role as. He's going to command the Kriegsmarine's all out effort to get the ship sign. So Celiax, that's what a name. That's just brilliant, isn't it?
- [31:57]
A
Yeah it is.
- [31:58]
E
Had joined the Imperial Navy before the first World War and was an up and atom type. So he's a gung ho kind of aggressive. Absolutely, yeah.
- [32:07]
A
He's an Elsonian, you know, German. He's fully paid up. He's also been twiddling his thumbs for months with this, with this Schlagshiffer fleet.
- [32:16]
E
All I have to do is face a few bombs and torpedo attacks. I want to get out there and see the action.
- [32:22]
A
Exactly.
- [32:22]
E
Feel the heat of my own guns.
- [32:24]
A
Spoiler alert. Sulieux is about to, is about to have a really, really good purple patch where things work out for him. It's called Operation Cerberus which is of course the multi headed dog guarding the underworld. Yes, it's all super secret. So there's, there's, aside from the choice of route which is an argument Raider has lost because Raider wants to go north, Raider wants to go Denmark Straits. But obviously the issue there is you run into the Home Fleet, right. You probably give them plenty of time to get ready. So the problems the Germans have to address aside from the Royal Navy and its reactions are air cover, mines and radar. So from the point of view of air at the conference as we mentioned right at the start is Adolph Galland, friend of the show, kinda representing the Luftwaffe fighter efficent France. Your assessment of Adolph Galland, Jim?
- [33:10]
E
He's a my way of the highway type.
- [33:12]
A
Exactly. Gallen's interesting, isn't he? Because he's not on the OST front, is he? And so he's one of those people who's managed to sort of squeak his reputation away having not been there.
- [33:22]
E
Right, well he certainly shot down more planes if he'd been on the Eastern front.
- [33:25]
A
Yeah, he would have done, yeah, exactly. And his memoir, first and Last, it's full of grumbling about how he didn't have enough aircraft and all this sort of thing. And this is going to be a total balls up and if it went wrong it was nothing to do with me. He gets cracking with preparing his fighters anyway. He has three fighter groups with 30 night fighters. So 280 aircraft in total, which isn't
- [33:45]
E
so very much, is it?
- [33:46]
A
No, it's not so much. But these people know what they're doing, right. And the Luftwaffe leadership. So Yeshanek says to Galland, look, if this goes wrong, we're going to get the blame right? They're going to pin it on us, the others. But Galland and his pilots and crews are really, really, really experienced in fighting the RAF after a year of pointless rhubarbs. And so they, they know how to, they know how to deal with, with Fighter Command, I think it's, I think that' say and they've FW 190s so they've, they've, there's technological edge as well
- [34:15]
E
as well as 109 Fs.
- [34:17]
A
They are well set. And also one of the things that characterizes this is they have a clear objective. The Luftwaffe on this occasion, they have a clear objective. They've thought about it, they've planned for it and they're ready to, to enact that objective. And I think that is something really worth bearing in mind with all of this. Yeah, so. So his night fighter element are going to patrol during the first stage of the breakout and then hand over to the day fighters. Galland has a headquarters at Le Touquet, halfway up the Channel. And the idea is that you have overlapping patrols that will be monitored from his main command post and his sub command stations at Caen and Schiphol. So they're sort of dotted along the route. And the idea is that no point will there be no air cover.
- [34:59]
E
But they don't have sophisticated ground control at this point still.
- [35:02]
A
No they don't. But what they do is they put a fighter commander on the Scharnhorst. So there's Oberst Max E. Belt whose title is Jagdfliegerfuhrer Schiff. Love that. Second best, second best title. Who has a direct radio telephone link to the fighters offering cover. He's saying, you know over there, the Prinz Eugen or whatever Galland names this effort, Unter Neiman Donner Keil Operation Thunderbolt. And they rehearse, right, here's the thing, the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, when they're making up as they go along, that's this Basically the, the, the. The grit of thing, grit of sand that turns into the RAF's oyster in terms of how it goes, how the Battle of Britain goes. Wrong for them here they are rehearsed. It's a clear mission, it's a clear objective and they know who they're dealing with, the other end. So they run eight training missions with 450 sorties flown. And the idea is that until you're relieved, you're still hanging around over the fleet. Right. So there's never a gap.
- [36:00]
E
So then there's mines to consider. And this is Commodore Friedrich ruger, who by 1944 is Contra admiral Ruger and is Rommel's headquarters. Yeah, for D day.
- [36:11]
A
He has a good Cerberus. He's got to clear mines. He tells only two officers of what's going on. He divides the route up into discrete areas. Discrete areas he sweeps at night. The crews don't know what's going on. They don't know very often. They think they're out training and they're just doing stuff to keep their eye in. And they don't realise there's anything coming. It's treated as routine.
- [36:34]
E
Got it.
- [36:35]
A
Then there's the radar, because after or rdf, course, some of these stations are still rdf. We have General der Luftnach Richentrupper Wolfgang Martini.
- [36:45]
E
So Martini used to be in Luftwaffe intelligence.
- [36:48]
A
He comes up with an elegant scheme. Martini. They've already set up jamming stations along the. To jam British coastal radar are. But Martini reasons, if we turn them all on when the thing starts, the British are going to know what's happening. You know, if we flick on all the jamming that morning or that afternoon, stands to reason they're going to go. So what he does is he brings in phased jamming and the stations will broadcast on the same frequencies as the British radar, intermittently mimicking interference. And basically what they do is they gradually ramp this up, up these long periods of faked interference that the British just don't clock as jamming. They think it's atmospheric interference. They think, you know, there's something wrong with the set this morning. And after all, we are talking about the early days of the early days of radar, RDF of spoofing and all this sort of stuff, you know, we haven't got to window and all that sort of ECM stuff yet. And this is what. This is what Martini opts for and it's incredibly effective and we'll see that this works. Then there's also the Flyth Flotilla, Jim do you want to take us through the Flyth Flotilla?
- [37:58]
E
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is dispatched to Brest to escort the Prinz Eugen, the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau. And this is commanded by Capitan Zerzee Eric Bay. His flag is flying on the Z29, which is presumably a destroyer. In addition to Z29, he's also got the Richard Beitzen, the Paul Jacobi, the Friedrich Ein and the Hermann Sherman and the Z25.
- [38:25]
A
Which ship are you on, Jim? I want a Herman Sherman, mate. Yeah, I want a Herman Sherman.
- [38:30]
E
Anyway, these are all. These are all for the Kriegsmarine, anyway. They're fairly up to date destroyers. So the Bruno Heinemann was another one that was supposed to be part of Bay's 5th Destroyer Flotilla, but it sunk into your mind on the 25th of January, which obviously rather underlines the importance of Gruger's mine clearing efforts. Yeah, these waters are dangerous in the. In the narrow channels.
- [38:53]
A
Well, no, it's Bomber Command planting mines the whole time. The gardening effort.
- [38:58]
E
Yeah, in the estuary. MOUTHS and.
- [39:00]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you've got three. Three flotillas of E boats. Yep. Fifth Torpedo Boat Flotilla will also join to skirmish and see away British warships. And these are ships coming from Zeebrugge and for basically wherever they are, which will. Which will sprout up along the route as it comes.
- [39:16]
E
Yeah, and they can do over 40 knots. They're super fast.
- [39:19]
A
Yeah, super fast. Can intervene really, really quickly. But it's the Straits of Dover that loom largest in the German imagination, as they might. There's guns at Dover, of course, that will be met by counter battery fire from the other side of the Pas Calais. So Germans are ready to rock. The plans are underway, they're rehearsing. Admiral Martini is gradually turning up the static. What is the Admiralty and the raf, various RAF commands. What are they going to do in response? More importantly, what are they expecting the Germans to do? Because this is what this boils down to.
- [39:49]
E
So Operation Fuller.
- [39:51]
A
Yeah. Oh, dear. Now, the Admiralty's concern about the Brest ships has best been expressed in the RAF's campaign to harass and damage the ships there.
- [40:01]
E
Yeah, of course.
- [40:01]
A
Right. But they are thinking at some point the Germans are going to, you know, change their minds.
- [40:06]
E
Go for it, make a break.
- [40:08]
A
Yeah. Because they got to. The view is at the Admiralty and via. Via Ultra and from Resistance in Brest that the ships are preparing for sea come January. Although a plan for Fuller is much older than that, which we'll get to In a minute. So that there's Captain Norman Denning, who's head of the Admiralty Operational Intelligence Unit. He makes his assessment, which is, Jim, I think you could. I'll be Hitler. You'd be Captain Norman Denning.
- [40:34]
E
I'll be Captain Norman Denning.
- [40:35]
A
Yeah.
- [40:36]
E
The shortcut of the German ships is via the English Channel. It's 240 miles from Brest to Cherbourg and another 120 miles from Cherbourg to the Dover Straits. While ships could make the passage from Brest to Cherbourg or from Cherbourg to Dover Straits in the same dark period, they could not make the complete passage from Brest to Dover in one dark period. At first sight, this passage up the Channel seems hazardous for the Germans. It is probable, however, that as their heavy ships are not fully efficient, they would prefer such a passage, relying for their security on the destroyers and aircraft, which are efficient and knowing full well that we have no heavy ships to oppose them in the Channel. Taking all factors into consideration, it appears that the Germans can pass east up the Channel with much less risk than they will incur if they attempt an ocean passage. Well, he's absolutely spot on, isn't he?
- [41:31]
A
He's spot on, but the thing he's got wrong, Admiralty thinking is if the Germans are going to go for the Straits of Dover, they'll get there at night. What they're going to do is leave Brest in daylight because you can't do it. You can't do the journey.
- [41:45]
E
Gotta have some daylight. Yeah.
- [41:47]
A
So basically the assumption is they will be going through the Straits of Dover at nighttime, not in broad daylight. Too difficult. Of course, he wouldn't do that. Only a fool. Only a fool would place themselves under the guns at Dover.
- [42:02]
E
Only a naval numbskull.
- [42:04]
A
Only a naval numbskull. And the thing is, a contingency plan in the event of a Channel dash had actually been drawn up in April 1941, called, as we said, fuller. And the idea is, in the event of the German fleet in being. The German fleet in being is the best way of putting it. Sailing. This simple single code word would be called through to all the stations required to attack. Voila. Assets required, would swing into action. Sounds good, doesn't it? Right, so. And in charge, stone cold friend of the show, Vice Admiral Bertram Ramsey of Dover Command.
- [42:32]
E
What's not to like?
- [42:33]
A
And the idea is for an immediate response the minute the ships are spotted. Relentless, continued coordinated attacks. Standing air patrols. Coastal radar, with its range of 80 nautical miles, would spot them in short order, whatever the weather. There's a picket of submarines, all this sort of stuff. 32 motor torpedo boats from the flotillas out of Dover and Ramsgate with motor gunboat escort, would put in torpedo attacks, then an attack from the air, then the guns at Dover. Bosh. Bomber Command would then attack anything damaged or straggling.
- [43:01]
E
That sounds straightforward.
- [43:03]
A
How hard exactly? Once clear of. Once clear of Dover, the Harwich Nor Command destroyers, six of them, would steam hard to make torpedo attacks while Bomber Command laid mines, does its gardening. Fighter Command will offer cover for all of this.
- [43:17]
F
I mean, come on.
- [43:18]
E
Well, this all sounds absolutely perfect. What? I mean, how could it possibly fail?
- [43:21]
A
I've just no idea, Jim. But the key decision behind all of this, and this is the thing, this is the thing that the Germans have gambled on, one of the things the Germans have gambled on and that the Admiralty, that shows in the end, this very, very interesting thing at the heart of the Admiralty, they are not going to commit capital ships from the Home Fleet. The expectation at the Admiralty is that the forces available from Coastal Command, Fleet Air Arm, destroyers, guns at the straits are enough. This despite the fact if the ships are spotted leaving Brest, when they leave Brest, the Home Fleet will be able to get to Dover if it steams at full speed from Scapa Flow and meet them there for an epic match. But they're not going to do that. The Admiralty's decided the threat of the Tirpitz, the Appalachians decided the threat of the Tirpitz to the east in Norway is more of a priority. They are not going to commit capital ships.
- [44:08]
E
Got it.
- [44:08]
A
And they're really worried about bombing air, about the air risk to their capital ships.
- [44:14]
E
And they haven't thought of invasion stripes and all this stuff at this point.
- [44:17]
A
No, no, no, no.
- [44:18]
E
Which you could paint on the deck or whatever.
- [44:20]
A
Exactly. They're desperately worried about that. I think in that Admiralty thinking is, well, you know what? These ships are returning from one terrible place for them to be harboured to another. You know, we've got them contained, we'll get them when they break out. And they're actually an easier problem to solve if all the German capital ships are back, back in Norway or Germany. They're just. They're all in the one place. It's an easier problem.
- [44:44]
E
And we've got enough. We've got enough air assets close enough to be able to kind of see this one off. And anyway, isn't it all about air power anyway?
- [44:51]
A
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Now, Bomber Command, we've talked before, often the podcast, how difficult it is to attack a ship you know that's moving about from a considerable height, you know like looking down on a pencil and trying to. Trying to. To throw raisins at a pencil from the top of a block of flats sort of thing. And they don't have a dive bombing capability. They don't have a torpedo bombing capability. What they can do is mine laying and put mine mouths of estuaries and stuff. So the torpedo bombers are going to have to take the strain. And this is a mixture of Royal Air Force Coastal Command Beauforts and Swordfish from the Fleet Air Arm. Swordfish have high rates of success at Taranto and against the Bismarck but they've been flying in circumstances where the Fleet Air Arm has air superiority largely by virtue of the fact that Germans don't have any naval air capability. Or at night when Swordfish are effective at night like at Taranto let's say the German fleet is going through the Straits of Dover at midnight. Swordfish are effective but let's say they're
- [45:46]
E
going through the Dover Straits in daytime.
- [45:48]
A
Let's cross that bridge when we come to it I mean we think of how many, how many Swordfish are shot down attacking the Bismarck. Right. Which is bristling with flak.
- [45:55]
E
Yeah.
- [45:56]
A
None. None Exactly. And there are three squadrons of Beauforts now We've not. Not. We've never really talked about the Beaufort on the podcast. It's the plane that isn't quite a Beaufighter.
- [46:04]
E
It's the Blenheim to the Beaufighter. It's the one in the middle and
- [46:06]
A
it exemplifies a lot of British technology at this stage of the war. It's not ready yet. It's not ready. It's not quite ready. They haven't quite perfected it but it's a Beaufort that Kenneth Campbell wins his VC in that we talked about earlier with Sergeants R Williams and W Malice are also killed. His co pilot got a DFM sergeant pilot J.P. scott who's a Canadian but the Germans are preparing fighter cover. How is a Beaufort going to do against me 109s? There's a clue in an encounter 21 June 1940 when 9 Beaufort's of 42 Squadron attacked the Scharnhorst off the Norwegian coast without torpedoes because there were none available and five of those nine Beauforts are shot down. So that's how well Beauforts do against me 109s.
- [46:47]
E
Yikes.
- [46:48]
A
Yeah. So you've Beauforts from number 42, number 86 and 217 Squadron RAF that have been made available. They're Shorter torpedoes, though. Got to remember the phase of the war. 57 other Beauforts have been sent east, of course, because the war in Japan, Japan's unfolding. Two other squadrons are converting to Hampton, so they're in the middle of conversion process. They're not available. Another squadron, 22, they're going to North Africa and then they're, they're recalled. So when there should be more of these torpedo bombers, there aren't. Fuller plan drawn up in April of 1941 is now fraying because of changing circumstances.
- [47:20]
E
And also they're spread to the four wings, aren't they?
- [47:22]
A
Yeah, it's incredible this. Yeah.
- [47:24]
E
So one at Lucas in Scotland.
- [47:26]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [47:27]
E
One at Forney island in Portsmouth, another at Saint Everl in Cornwall. So you can imagine the fun they're all gonna have coordinating them, getting them into Channel, you know, don't panic.
- [47:37]
A
String bags available from 825 Squadron, who we will be looking at in a couple of episodes time. There are Lockheed Hudson's from 224 Squadron, great. 233 Squadron, Rafael, who are committed to reconnaissance operations to spot these ships. And they will feature Hudson's from 407 Squadron, RCAF Demon Squadron flying out of Thorney island in West Sussex. So my friend Dom Sharp's dad flying with them as a navigator. They're also available on high alert. RAF Bomber Command contribute number five group RAF with 242 of its 300 aircraft available for service on paper. And we'll see that not quite that many.
- [48:12]
E
And then Fighter Command, they've got huge numbers of squadrons available.
- [48:16]
A
What have they committed, Jim?
- [48:17]
E
Well, they've got number one squadron, number 19, 91, 41, 118, 129, 137, 2344-014036-07316, 411, 452, 485, 128, 64, 65, 72 and 11 squadrons. I mean, come on. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 18, 19, 20 times 16.
- [48:44]
A
Galland has what, 280 planes committed?
- [48:47]
E
He's got three, they've got three hundred and twenty.
- [48:49]
A
But opinion in the Royal Air Force, particularly at Coastal Command, is the Germans are going to go up the Channel. Air Marshal Philip Jubert De la Fert, Commander in Chief of RAF Coastal Command. He's absolutely convinced of this. Across the raf, the further consensus is that the ability is right and if the Germans do come, they're going to get to the Straits at nightfall because that's the sensible thing to do.
- [49:09]
E
Right?
- [49:10]
A
Right. And unlike the Germans, who've rehearsed intensively and extensively, the assumption is throughout that everyone will know what Fuller means when the code word is uttered. And that is a tragically mistaken assumption. Word has not been spread. This has not been rehearsed. No, the crews do not know what's going on and the battle they're meant to be prepared for, furthermore, isn't the one the Germans have chosen to fight because Ciliax has decided to leave at night, which means he will be steaming through the Straits of Dover in broad daylight. Even though it's February and the days are short and the weather will doubtless be foul, they've elected to do what the British are not expecting.
- [49:55]
E
Wow.
- [49:55]
A
So the scene is set.
- [49:56]
E
Germans are gambling.
- [49:58]
A
Yeah, exactly. Hitler's hunches that the British incapable of responding quickly or getting their act together. And they're going to go counterintuitive. They're going to go through the straits of Dover, 20 mile wide Strait of Dover in broad daylight. I mean it's so. It's the night of 11th February 1941.
- [50:15]
E
Tension building Al German fleet's ready to go.
- [50:17]
A
Suddenly overhead, the drone of Bomber Command. Yes, Bomber Command are back. With the Scharnhorst, the Gies now and the Prinz Eugen be able to get away undetected and make it home. Or will this be a gamble that the Kriegsmarine or come to regret?
- [50:31]
E
I'm worried about that. The insufficient briefing of full of O.
- [50:37]
A
If you want to find out if James is right to worry, our next episode is of course available to members on our Patreon where you have all sorts of membership exclusives, live casts, ticket offers and audiobooks too. And much, much more. The Channel Dash precedes in our next episode Channel Dash two Hide and seek. We will see you very, very soon. Cheerio.
- [50:57]
E
Cheerio.
- [51:08]
C
Stitch Fix Shopping is hard. Let's talk about it.
- [51:12]
E
I don't have time to shop, so
- [51:13]
A
I buy all my clothes, where I buy my seafood. I just want someone to tell me what shirt goes with what pants.
- [51:18]
B
I just want jeans that fit.
- [51:20]
C
Stitch Fix makes shopping easy. Just show your size, style and budget and your stylist sends personalized link looks right to your door. No subscription required, plus free shipping and returns.
- [51:30]
D
Man, that was easy. I look good.
- [51:32]
C
Stitch Fix online personal styling for everyone. Take your style quiz today at stitchfix. Com.