The sinking of the Scharnhorst in December 1943 left the Tirpitz as the only German battleship in commission. Yet this solitary vessel served as a fleet-in-being, for the prospect that she might slip out of her Norwegian lair to attack Russia-bound convoys or break into the Atlantic compelled the Royal Navy to hold forces in readiness to meet these threats—never fewer than two modem battleships and a fleet carrier, with escorts. That the only Allied vessels the Tirpitz ever took under fire were midget submarines did not lessen the danger.
On three occasions, the ship had weighed anchor with evil intent. The first of these forays occurred in March 1942, less than two months after her move to Norway, and involved her in a situation similar to the one that ended in the sinking of her sister ship, the Bismarck. Setting out from Trondheim to strike at eastbound convoy PQ-12, the Tirpitz came close to being intercepted by a powerful British covering force, including the fleet carrier Victorious, which had been alerted to her sortie by Ultra intelligence. Fortunately for the Germans, who were unaware of the enemy’s proximity, an erroneous report that the convoy had turned back caused them to abandon their search before the trap could be sprung. The Victorious launched 12 aircraft, hoping that they could cripple the Tirpitz just as the Ark Royal’s had crippled the Bismarck; but this time no British torpedoes found their mark. On her next outing, in company with the pocket battleship Scheer and heavy cruiser Hipper in July 1942, the Tirpitz made an abortive lunge at another eastbound convoy, PQ-17. On this occasion, Admiral Erich Raeder recalled the battle group not quite 24 hours after it had sailed, fearful that it might come within reach of the Victorious, again present in a distant covering force. The Tirpitz’s third deployment, in September 1943, was little more than a practice shoot in which she and the Scharnhorst shelled the Allied weather station at Spitsbergen.
Despite the fact she never sighted it, however, the Tirpitz was responsible for the destruction of PQ-17. News that the German battle group was at large prompted Britain’s First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, to order the convoy’s close covering force to “withdraw westward at high speed” and, “owing to the threat from surface ships,” the convoy itself to scatter. Anticipating a major surface action, the covering force commander also withdrew the destroyers of the convoy’s close escort. German aircraft and submarines then slaughtered the hapless merchantmen. Of the 32 vessels in the convoy upon receipt of the scatter order, 20 were sunk.
Although clearly Pound had acted with undue precipitation, as long as the Tirpitz lay poised to sally forth at a moment of her choosing, the threat that she might, directly or indirectly, bring about a repetition of the disaster that had overtaken PQ-17 remained constant. Understandably, the British regarded her as a target of utmost importance. In a memorandum to the Chiefs of Staff Committee days after the Tirpitz’s arrival in Norwegian waters, Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared that her neutralization would alter “the entire naval situation throughout the world.” The result was probably the most numerous and varied succession of attacks ever aimed exclusively at the destruction of a single ship.
They began even before the Tirpitz’s commissioning, with two unsuccessful raids by Royal Air Force (RAF) Bomber Command on the Wilhelmshaven Navy Yard in autumn 1940. Following her move to Trondheim, Bomber Command mounted four strikes between 29 January and 29 April 1942, losing 13 aircraft without scoring a hit. During the first two raids, weather was so poor only one bomber even glimpsed the Tirpitz. Both the other attacks located her, but their bombing was frustrated by the efficiency of the Germans’ defensive preparations. Until the end of her Norwegian career, the Tirpitz anchored on the steep side of a narrow fjord, shrouded by camouflage netting, protected by torpedo nets, armed with an increasingly powerful antiaircraft battery, and, given ten minutes’ warning, obscured by smoke released from generators ashore. What would eventually prove to be her Achilles’ heel was the absence of air cover. The Luftwaffe had bases in Norway, but relations between the services were such that it contributed nothing to the battleship’s defense.
The next projectiles directed at the Tirpitz were two torpedoes launched by the Soviet submarine K. 21 during the German battle group’s sortie against Convoy PQ-17; neither scored a hit. Meanwhile, the Royal Navy had concluded that, if aerial bombing could not sink the Tirpitz, an underwater attack might succeed. The weapons of its choice, modeled after the “pigs” with which the Italians had disabled two British battleships in Alexandria harbor, were human torpedoes named chariots. Guided into position by two combat swimmers in wet suits, each chariot carried a detachable, 600-pound charge with a delayed-action fuse to give its crew time to exit the area. Operation Title, undertaken in October 1942, called for two chariots to be towed into the fjord harboring the Tirpitz by the “Shetland Bus”—fishing trawlers used to smuggle agents into and out of Norway. The plan worked perfectly until choppy seas parted the tow lines within ten miles of the Tirpitz- Most of the men involved escaped into Sweden.
In March 1943 the Tirpitz moved to join the Scharnhorst and the 4th Destroyer Flotilla in the far north, taking up residence in Kaafjord, a branch of Altenfjord—beyond reach of bombers flying from the United Kingdom. She was not beyond reach of midget submarines, however, and in September, British conventional submarines towed six of them across the North Sea to attack her. Three of these “X-craft”—51-foot diesel boats armed with detachable, time-fused “side cargoes”— reached Kaafjord, and at least two penetrated the Tirpitz’s torpedo net to release their charges. The force of the ensuing explosions lifted two of the battleship’s 2,000-ton main turrets off their tracks. All three X-craft were lost and their surviving crewmen (6 of 12) made prisoner, but they had put the Tirpitz out of action for months.
Seriously as she had been hurt, by mid-March 1944 the Tirpitz was ready for sea, a Soviet bombing raid in February having failed to impede her repair. The Admiralty then decided to mount a major air attack, Operation Tungsten, for which it assembled a force including two fleet carriers, four escort carriers, and two battleships. Sweeping in from the sea on 3 April, the Fleet Air Arm’s Barracudas achieved surprise and scored 16 direct hits or near misses at the cost of two aircraft. While the Tirpitz’s armored deck had not been pierced, above it she was a shambles. Doggedly, the Germans set about repairing the damage. Four follow-up strikes misfired or miscarried, and at the end of July the Tirpitz conducted exercises at sea.
Late in August the Royal Navy launched another series of strikes, Operation Goodwood I-IV, from as many as three fleet carriers. By this time, the Germans could produce a smoke screen with seven minutes’ notice, and only Good- wood III achieved success, scoring two hits on the Tirpitz. One 1,600-pound bomb smashed through her armored deck but did not explode. Eleven aircraft were lost.
Conceding that the Tirpitz appeared able to absorb any damage the Fleet Air Arm could inflict, the Admiralty appealed to the RAF to put an end to her for once and all with its heavy bombers. Arrangements were made for two squadrons to fly from a Russian airfield, and on 15 September, 27 Lancasters lifted off on Operation Paravane. Most carried a single “Tallboy,” an aerodynamically correct 12,000-pound bomb. One of these monsters struck the Tirpitz, blowing a 32- by 48-foot hole in her bow, flooding her forward compartments—and ending her career as a fighting ship, for eight days later Admiral Karl Donitz decided that it was no longer feasible to keep her seaworthy. Henceforth, she would be employed as a floating battery at Tromso. Proceeding there in October, the Tirpitz anchored beside Haakoy Island, and the Germans began filling in the bottom beneath her, so that if she were “sunk” her guns could still be served.
Donitz’s decision constituted the Tirpitz’s death knell. Tromso was within range of bombers based in Scotland, and the squadrons that had executed Operation Paravane attacked the Tirpitz again on 19 October. Cloud cover ruined their aim that day, but on 12 November they hit her with two and possibly three Tallboys. Near misses dished out the fill the Germans had placed around the ship, and by the raid’s end she was heeling 70° to port. Minutes later, an internal explosion blew Turret Caesar overboard, spoiling her stability, and the Tirpitz capsized. Of her 1,630 crewmen, 950 perished. For practical purposes, the German surface navy had ceased to exist.
For further reading: David Brown, Tirpitz: The Floating Fortress (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1977); Gervis Frere-Cook, The Attacks on the Tirpitz (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1973); Ludovic Kennedy, The Death of the Tirpitz (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979).