RAF Coastal Command under attack

25th January 1941: RAF attacks on Kriegsmarine battle cruisers in French ports provoke more Luftwaffe attacks on airfields in England

Tracer from German anti-aircraft gun fire (flak) vividly depicted in a vertical aerial photograph taken over the Port Militaire, Brest, France, during a night raid, possibly that of 4/5 January 1941

Low-level oblique photographic-reconnaissance aerial of the German heavy cruiser ADMIRAL HIPPER in dry dock at Brest, France. Obtained on a ‘dicing’ sortie by a Supermarine Spitfire PR Mark IG of No. 1 Photographic Reconnaissance Unit Detachment flying from St Eval, Cornwall

Vertical aerial taken over the docks at Brest, France, during a daylight raid on shipping and installations by Lockheed Venturas of No. 21 Squadron RAF. Bomb bursts straddle the machine workshops in the naval arsenal as another stick of 500-lb GP bombs falls toward the target area.

On Christmas Day 1940, the German battlecruiser the Admiral Hipper had attempted to ambush a British convoy in the Atlantic. The threat from German capital ships was becoming almost as menacing as that from U-boats. Later in the year, the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau would also mount operations in the North Atlantic, whilst Royal Naval Intelligence was acutely aware that Nazi Germany’s two great battleships, the Bismarck and the Tirpitz, would soon become operational.