Operation Cerberus

Channel Dash (Unternehmen Zerberus/Operation Cerberus)
Part of the Atlantic Campaign of World War II
Diagram of the course taken by Operation Cerberus (in French)
Date 11–13 February 1942 Location English Channel Coordinates: 50°58′45″N 1°44′09″E / 50.97917°N 1.73583°E / 50.97917; 1.73583 Result German victory
Belligerents
Nazi Germany	United Kingdom
Commanders and leaders
Otto Ciliax	Bertram Ramsay
Strength
2 battleships 1 heavy cruiser 6 destroyers 14 torpedo boats 26 E-boats 32 bombers 252 fighters	6 destroyers 3 destroyer escorts 32 motor torpedo boats c. 450 aircraft
Casualties and losses
2 battleships damaged 1 destroyer damaged 1 destroyer lightly damaged 2 torpedo boats lightly damaged 22 aircraft destroyed 13 sailors dead 2 sailors wounded 23 aircrew killed	1 destroyer severely damaged 42 aircraft destroyed 40 dead and missing 21 wounded

The Channel Dash or Unternehmen Zerberus (Operation Cerberus) was a German naval operation during World War II. A Kriegsmarine (German navy) squadron consisting of both Scharnhorst-class battleships and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen along with escorts, ran a British blockade from Brest in Brittany, where they had been a latent threat to British trans-Atlantic convoys. At Brest and La Pallice, the ships had been attacked by Royal Air Force (RAF) Bomber Command and by RAF Coastal Command torpedo-bombers from March 1941, which inflicted periodic damage to the ships, reducing their seaworthiness. In late 1941, Adolf Hitler ordered Oberkommando der Marine (OKM Navy high-command), to plan an operation to return the ships to German bases, to counter a possible British invasion of Norway. The short route up the English Channel was preferred to a detour around the British Isles, to benefit from surprise and from air cover by the Luftwaffe.

The British exploited decrypts of German radio messages coded with the Enigma machine, air reconnaissance by the RAF Photographic Reconnaissance Unit (PRU) and agents in France run by the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) to keep watch on the ships and report the damage caused by British bombers. Operation Fuller, a joint Royal Navy-RAF contingency plan, was devised to counter a sortie by the German ships against Atlantic convoys, a return to German ports by circumnavigating the British Isles or a dash up the English Channel. The concentration of British ships in southern waters was inhibited by a need to keep ships at Scapa Flow in Scotland, in case of a sortie by the German battleship Tirpitz from Norway. The RAF had been required to detach squadrons from Bomber and Coastal commands for overseas service and also kept torpedo-bombers in Scotland ready for Tirpitz, which constrained their ability to assemble large numbers of aircraft against a dash up the Channel, as did the winter weather which reduced visibility and unpredictably blocked airfields with snow.

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