208 pp. Includes black-and-white photographs. "For eleven months during World War II, Intelligence had warned the British Admiralty that three German cruisers--the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Prinz Eugen--lying at Brest would attempt an escape to home waters through the English Channel--very possibly in broad daylight. The Air Ministry and Admiralty, who believed it highly unlikely that the Germans would attempt such a daring maneuver without the protection of darkness, arranged a loose and uncoordinated defense based on the assumption that, when the escape attempt was made, it would probably take place at night. Meanwhile, the Germans were secretly completing their own plans. And on the morning of February 12, 1942, escorted by an armada of destroyers, "E" boats and minesweepers, and under a protective "umbrella" of aircraft from Luftwaffe bases in France, the heavy German warships began to steam up the Channel toward the Straits of Dover, taking the British completely by surprise."
