Java Sea: Wicked Sisters

In February 1942, the German Navy prepared a top-secret mission, known as Operation Cerberus, to move the battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau (known to British sailors as the “Wicked Sisters”) and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen from Brest in western France to Norway. Without special training operations or any other moves that might alert the British, they would suddenly dart up the narrow English Channel. The daring “Channel Dash” caught the British by surprise, and all three ships made it to German though Gneisenau suffered damage that would never be fully repaired.…