Dawn Assessment Along Scheldt Estuary Picket Lines
Cold daylight revealed the surface of the Wielingen Channel.
German small battle units had converged on the outer shoals in waves exceeding sixty individual attack craft. Allied radar operators faced a swarm density four times larger than the defending screen. Picket crews along the shallow banks had spent five hours firing blind into the fog. Engines screamed across the surface at thirty knots. The sheer volume of high speed signatures crossing the radar scopes overwhelmed the plotters. Every defensive post from Westkapelle to Cadzand reported targets closing simultaneously from multiple sectors.
The water was covered in debris.
Royal Navy Fairmile B motor launches and armed trawlers surveyed floating wreckage across Antwerp shipping channels at daybreak. Working outward from the Flushing anchorage, Fairmile B units of the Coastal Forces operated at low revolutions. They had to keep splintered wood from