page_title: Channel Dash
section_title: Noon
hierarchical_section_title: Channel Dash / Battle / 12 February / Noon
caption_attribution_description: English: The strong pull of tidal currents sweeps water from the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean through the narrow Strait of Dover. Resembling water-marked taffeta, the fast-moving water is streaked white, pale blue, turquoise, and royal blue in this image, taken by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite on March 14, 2001. The water is colored by the characteristic white chalk that forms the soil of this region. The white, chalky soil reflects light, giving the water its pale color near shore. Aside from the color of the water, the chalk is evident along the shoreline, where tall, white cliffs rise on both the English and French side of the channel. On the British side, these geological formations are the famous White Cliffs of Dover. Source: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/Images/Dover_AST_2001073_lrg.jpg
context_page_description: The Channel Dash or Unternehmen Zerberus was a German naval operation during the Second World War. A Kriegsmarine squadron comprising the two Scharnhorst-class battleships, the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and their escorts ran a British blockade from Brest in Brittany to German ports. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had arrived in Brest on 22 March 1941 after the success of Operation Berlin in the Atlantic. More raids were planned and the ships were refitted at Brest. The ships were threat to Allied trans-Atlantic convoys and RAF Bomber Command attacked them from 30 March 1941. Gneisenau was hit on 6 April 1941 and Scharnhorst on 24 July 1941, after dispersal to La Pallice. In late 1941, Adolf Hitler ordered the Oberkommando der Marine to plan an operation to return the ships to German bases against a British invasion of Norway. The short route up the English Channel was preferred to a detour around the British Isles for surprise and air cover by the Luftwaffe and on 12 January 1942, Hitler gave orders for the operation.
context_section_description: At Dover in 1940, there were four 6-inch guns with a range of 12,000 yd (11,000 m), two 9.2-inch guns with a range of 18,000 yd (16,000 m), two modern 6-inch batteries with 25,000 yd (23,000 m) range and four more 9.2-inch guns on new mountings with a range of 31,600 yd (28,900 m) and then 36,300 yd (33,200 m) with supercharging. (After the fall of France, Axis ships could avoid the Dover mine barrage by sailing close to the French coast.) A supercharged naval 14-inch gun could fire shells 48,000 yd (44,000 m) but was difficult to use against moving targets. The South Foreland Battery of the Dover guns, with their new K-type radar set, tracked the ships of the Brest Group coming up the Channel towards Cap Gris Nez.
  At 12:19 p.m., the Dover guns fired their first salvo but with visibility down to 5 nmi (5.8 mi; 9.3 km), there could be no observation of the fall-of-shot. The gunners hoped that the radar would detect the shell splashes and allow corrections to be made, although this method had never been tried before. "Blips" on the K-set clearly showed the ships zig-zagging but not where the shells were landing. Full battery salvo firing began and the four 9.2-inch guns fired 33 rounds at the German ships, which were moving out of range at 30 kn (35 mph; 56 km/h) and all missed. German sources state that the fleet had already passed Dover when the coastal artillery opened fire and that the shells landed well astern of the major German units. The coastal guns ceased fire when light naval forces and torpedo-bombers began to attack and by 1:21 p.m. the German ships passed beyond the effective range of the British radar.
caption: Satellite photograph of the Strait of Dover (NASA Terra Satellite image, March 2001)
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