Channel Dash.

This is coolbert:

British defeat during that war year of 1942 of course not strictly confined to those events as transpiring at Singapore, Tobruk, Dieppe.

Think also the Channel Dash.

German major warships, two battle cruisers and one heavy cruiser with accompanying vessels  in transit of the English Channel able to run a  British gauntlet and do so quite successfully, against all efforts of the English to stop the German warships.

 "The Channel Dash, codenamed Operation Cerberus by the Germans, was a major naval engagement during World War II in which a German Kriegsmarine squadron consisting of both Scharnhorst-class battleships, and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen along with escorts, ran a British blockade and successfully sailed from Brest in Brittany to their home bases in Germany via the English Channel."

. . . .

"The Channel Dash remains the only occasion since the Anglo-Dutch Wars that enemy warships have successfully traversed the English Channel."

THEY DON'T CALL IT THE ENGLISH CHANNEL FOR NOTHING!

The Royal Navy [RN] with big time egg on their face, and especially in the aftermath of the sinking of the Repulse and Prince of Wales by the Japanese at Singapore, even that most hallowed of British  military institutions seen as inept and ineffectual. Bertram Ramsay of course the English commander of the hour subsequently in charge of all  naval forces during the Normandy landings [D-Day].

So much at once. NO wonder Churchill despaired.

coolbert.