Editing Channel Dash (section)

==Aftermath==

===Analysis===

Ciliax sent a signal to Admiral Saalwächter in Paris on 13 February,

{{blockquote|It is my duty to inform you that ''Operation Cerberus'' has been successfully completed. Lists of damage and casualties follow.|Ciliax (13 February 1942){{sfn|Potter|1970|p=188}}}}

OKM called ''Cerberus'' a tactical victory and a strategic defeat. In 2012, Ken Ford wrote that the German ships had exchanged one prison for another and that Bomber Command raids from {{nowrap|25 to 27 February,}} terminally damaged ''Gneisenau''.{{sfn|Ford|2012|pp=75–77}} Operation Fuller had failed, a British destroyer had been severely damaged and {{nowrap|42 aircraft}} had been lost in {{nowrap|398 RAF}} fighter, {{nowrap|242 bomber}} and {{nowrap|35 Coastal}} Command sorties.{{sfn|Kemp|1957|p=201}}

British public opinion was appalled and British prestige suffered at home and abroad. A leading article in ''The Times'' read,

{{blockquote|Vice Admiral Ciliax has succeeded where the [[Alonso de Guzmán El Bueno, 7th Duke of Medina Sidonia|Duke of Medina Sidonia]] failed. Nothing more mortifying to the pride of our sea-power has happened since the seventeenth century. [...] It spelled the end of the Royal Navy legend that in wartime no enemy battle fleet could pass through what we proudly call the English Channel.|''The Times'' (14 February 1942){{sfn|Martienssen|1949|p=123}}}}

In 1955, Hans Dieter Berenbrok, a former {{lang|de|Kriegsmarine}} officer, writing under the pseudonym Cajus Bekker, judged the operation a necessity and a success. He quoted Raeder "…we are all convinced we cannot leave the ships in Brest any longer". Raeder wrote that the operation was necessary because of a lack of training opportunities for the crews, lack of battle experience and the general situation made raiding operations in the "old pattern out of the question". According to Bekker, Hitler and Raeder shared the conviction that if the ships remained in Brest that they would eventually be disabled by British air raids.{{sfn|Bekker|1955|pp=48–49}}

[[Stephen Roskill]], the British naval official historian, wrote in 1956 that the German verdict was accurate. Hitler had exchanged the threat to British Atlantic convoys for a defensive deployment near Norway against a threat that never materialised. Roskill wrote that the British had misjudged the time of day when the German ships would sail but this mistake was less influential than the circumstantial failures of Coastal Command reconnaissance to detect the ships which had been at sea for {{nowrap|12 hours,}} four of them after dawn had broken, before the alarm was raised. Churchill ordered a Board of Enquiry (under Sir [[Alfred Townsend Bucknill|Alfred Bucknill]]), which criticised Coastal Command for failing to ensure that a dawn reconnaissance was flown to compensate for the problems of the night patrols off Brest and from Ushant to the Isle de Bréhat. The inquiry also held that there should have been more suspicion of the German radar jamming on the morning of 12 February and that involving Bomber Command in an operation for which it was untrained was a mistake.{{sfn|Roskill|1962|pp=159–160}}

The board found that the delay in detecting the German ships led to the British attacks being made piecemeal, against formidable German defensive arrangements and that the few aircraft and ships that found the group were "cut to pieces".{{sfn|Roskill|1962|p=160}} In 2012, Ken Ford wrote that the inquiry was, perforce, a whitewash, blaming instrument failures rather than incompetence but the report was still kept secret until 1946.{{sfn|Ford|2012|p=75}} In 1991, [[John Buckley (historian)|John Buckley]] wrote that the ASV Hudsons had been forbidden to use flares off Brest, because of the presence of ''Sealion'' and that one of the technical faults to an ASV could have been repaired, had the operator carried out a fuse check properly. Joubert was criticised for complacency, in not sending replacement sorties, despite his earlier warning that the Brest Group was about to sail, because of the assumption in Operation Fuller since 6 April 1941, that a day sailing was certain,

{{blockquote|...a classic example of befuddled tactical thinking, poor co-operation and almost non-existent co-ordination.|Robertson{{sfn|Buckley|1991|p=359}}}}

The Dash exposed many failings in RAF planning, that only three torpedo-bomber squadrons with {{nowrap|31 Beauforts}} were in Britain, that training had been limited by the lack of torpedoes and the example of Japanese tactics had been ignored. The effectiveness of Bomber Command against moving ships was shown to be negligible and the failure to ensure unity of command before Operation Fuller began, led to piecemeal attacks using unsuitable tactics.{{sfn|Buckley|1991|pp=356–365}}

[[Reginald Victor Jones|R. V. Jones]], Assistant Director of Intelligence (Science) at the [[Air Ministry]] during the war, wrote in his memoir, that for several days, army radar stations on the south coast had been jammed. Lieutenant-Colonel Wallace, a member of the army Radar Interception Unit, had reported this through the chain of command. On 11 February, Wallace had called for Jones to assist him in bringing attention to the German radar jamming. A gradual increase in the jamming had misled most operators to its intensity.{{sfn|Jones|1998|pp=233–235}} Martini had unobtrusively made the British radar cover "almost useless". Jones quoted [[Francis Bacon]],

{{blockquote|<poem>''Of Delayes''
Nay, it were better, to meet some Dangers halfe way, though they come nothing neare, than to keepe too long a watch, upon their Approaches: For if a Man watch too long, it is odds that he will fall asleepe.{{sfn|Jones|1998|p=235}}</poem>}}

and included an anecdote of the chain of command breaking down under the shock of the Brest Group sailing so far up the Channel undiscovered. [[Air marshal]]s were said to have sat on each other's desks, thinking of pilots they could telephone to find the ships; even after the Brest Group had been found, contact was lost several times. In 1955, Jones met Captain Giessler, the Navigating Officer on ''Scharnhorst'', who said that the worst time in the operation was the thirty minutes that ''Scharnhorst'' was stationary, after hitting a mine just beyond Dover; in the low cloud none of the British aircraft found them.{{sfn|Jones|1998|p=235}}{{efn|In 2013, Goodchild wrote that although Operation Fuller was a scientific and technological failure, Jones exaggerated for effect in his memoir. Too much had been expected of radar and German countermeasures had been underestimated, given earlier attempts to jam British radar in 1940 and British research into [[Chaff (countermeasure)|Window]].{{sfn|Goodchild|2013|pp=295–308}}}} In the Official History of the Royal Canadian Air Force (1994) Brereton Greenhous et al. wrote that the Canadian [[401 Tactical Fighter Squadron|401 Squadron]] had been sent "to intervene in a battle between German E-boats and British MTBs"; 404 Squadron was ordered

{{blockquote|...to maintain air superiority between 1430 and 1500 hrs whilst the main attack by Coastal and Bomber aircraft was taking place.{{sfn|Greenhous|Harris|Johnston|Rawling|1994|p=215}}}}

and 411 Squadron had been ordered on an "E-boat search". "The 'Channel block' had failed ignominiously".{{sfn|Greenhous|Harris|Johnston|Rawling|1994|p=215}}

In the German semi-official history ''Germany in the Second World War'' (2001), Werner Rahn wrote that the operation was a tactical success but that this could not disguise the fact of a strategic withdrawal. Brest was a location from which the {{lang|de|Kriegsmarine}} had anticipated much success, especially after the Japanese entry into the war had diverted Allied resources to the Pacific, creating new opportunities for offensive action in the Atlantic. Rahn also noted that some members of the German Naval War Staff took the view that German war potential had reached its limit and that

{{blockquote|Brest was strategic-operational wishful thinking which was not fulfilled, and could not be fulfilled in future owing to enemy air superiority.{{sfn|Rahn|2001|p=435}}}}

In 2018, Craig Symonds wrote of the futility of keeping heavy units in Brest,

{{blockquote|Those three ships had sat uselessly in Brest since the previous May, when Raeder’s grand scheme of concentrating a large surface force in the Atlantic had sunk along with the Bismarck. Since then, they had been bombed regularly and had made no contribution to the war beyond keeping the attention of the Royal Navy and the RAF.{{sfn|Symonds|2018|p=259}}}}

''Scharnhorst'' later joined ''Tirpitz'' in Norwegian waters as a threat to Allied [[Arctic convoys of World War II]] supplying the USSR.{{sfn|Taylor|1966|pp=13-16}}

===Casualties===

British aircraft losses to the {{lang|de|Luftwaffe}} were two [[Bristol Blenheim|Blenheims]], four Whirlwinds, four [[Vickers Wellington|Wellingtons]], six Hurricanes, nine [[Handley Page Hampden|Hampdens]] and ten Spitfires. {{lang|de|Kriegsmarine}} gunners shot down all six Swordfish and a Hampden bomber.{{sfn|FC|2013|pp=44–51}} ''Worcester'' lost {{nowrap|23 men}} killed, four died of wounds and {{nowrap|45 wounded}} of the complement of {{nowrap|130; the}} ship was out of action for {{nowrap|14 weeks.}}{{sfn|DNC|1952|p=189}} In 2014, Steve Brew recorded 230–250 killed and wounded.{{sfn|Brew|2014|p=587}} The {{lang|de|Kriegsmarine}} torpedo boats ''Jaguar'' and {{nowrap|''T. 13'' were}} damaged by bombing, two sailors were killed and several men were badly wounded by bomb splinters and small-arms fire; the {{lang|de|Luftwaffe}} lost 17 aircraft and eleven pilots.{{sfn|Potter|1970|pp=184, 189}}{{sfn|FC|2013|pp=44–51}} In 1996, Donald Caldwell gave 23 aircrew killed, four being fighter pilots from {{lang|de|[[Jagdgeschwader 26]]}} and that 22 {{lang|de|Luftwaffe}} aircraft were shot down, of which seven were fighters.{{sfn|Caldwell|1996|p=218}}

===Subsequent operations===

{{see also|St Nazaire Raid}}

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''Gneisenau'' entered a [[Dry dock#Floating|floating dry dock]] at Kiel and was hit twice by RAF bombers, on the night of {{nowrap|26/27 February.}}{{sfn|Roskill|2004|p=161}} One bomb hit the battleship on her forecastle and penetrated the armoured deck.{{sfn|Williamson|2003|p=18}} The explosion ignited a fire in the foremost magazine, which detonated, throwing the forward turret off its mount.{{sfn|Breyer|1990|p=34}} The damage prompted the German Naval Staff to rebuild ''Gneisenau'' to mount the six {{cvt|38|cm|in}} guns originally planned, rather than repair the ship and the damaged bow section was removed to attach a longer one.{{sfn|Garzke|Dulin|1985|pp=150–151}} By early 1943, the ship had been sufficiently repaired to begin the conversion but after the failure of German surface forces at the [[Battle of the Barents Sea]] in December 1942, Hitler ordered the work to stop.{{sfn|Garzke|Dulin|1985|p=153}} On 23 February, ''Prinz Eugen'' was torpedoed by a British submarine off Norway and put out of action until October; then spent the rest of the war in the Baltic. On 28 March, the British raided St Nazaire in [[Operation Chariot]] and destroyed the ''Normandie'' dock, the only one in France capable of accommodating the largest German warships. ''Scharnhorst'' participated in [[Operation Zitronella]] against [[Spitzbergen]] on 8 September 1943 and was sunk at the Battle of the North Cape on 26 December.{{sfn|Roskill|1960|pp=80–89}}