Fiasco Author:John Deane Potter The Break-out of the German Battleships. On a moonless night in February 1942, the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen slipped stealthily out of Brest harbor. Under Hitler's orders, they were embarking on a daring attempt to dash through the English Channel to safety in home Waters. The next day, the... more » German warships struck a humiliating blow at British air and sea power. They impudently steamed through the narrow Straits of Dover in broad daylight, defying all the forlornly heroic efforts to stop them. They succeeded where the Spanish Armada had failed, and the British people were stummed and infuriated. Churchill's terse comment on the debacle was a growled "Why?" John Deane Potter has found the answers to Churchill's angry question. Through many first-hand accounts by survivors of the action, both British and German, he reveals the full story of the dramatic breakout, and the desperate running battle that followed. On the British side, it was a disastrous tragedy mingled with farce, of brave men's lives thrown away by shocking incompetence at the top. On the German side, one of well-laid plans brilliantly executed. But for the Germans too, it ended in a fiasco. Jacket desigh by Tim Gaydos.« less