Schlachtschiff G - Tirpitz
Tirpitz, a 44,755-ton Bismarck class battleship, was built at Wilhelmshaven, Germany. Commissioned in February 1941, she operated in the Baltic during her first several months of service, conducting trials and training, as well as combat missions in connection with the invasion of the Soviet Union. This single battleship, when employed as a fleet in being, effectively tied up valuable British and American assets, caused major modifications in the allied war plan, and won psychological victories against allied commanders. That battleship was the Tirpitz. Winston Churchill described the problem, "The whole strategy of the war turns at this period to this ship, which is holding four times the number of British capital ships paralyzed, to say nothing of the two new American battleships retained in the Atlantic."
In January 1942, Tirpitz steamed to Norwegian waters, where she remained for the remainder of her career. Initially based at Trondheim, and later in fjords further north, she was a constant threat to supply lines between the Western Allies and the Soviets. Shuttling back and forth between three Norwegian fjords - Trondheim, Bogen, and Alten - the German battleship Tirpitz avoided the Admiralty greyhounds assigned to hunt her down in the misty, storm-swept seas, thus immobilizing a large part of the British Navy at a time when it was badly needed to escort convoys across the sub-infestedAtlantic.
Though Tirpitz never actually came into contact with Allied shipping, and only fired her guns at enemy targets during a September 1943 raid on shore facilities at Spitzbergen, her great power caused the US and British navies to divert scarce resources to counter her and generated intense efforts to put her out of action.
The Tirpitz was employed to make raids on allied convoys heading for Russia through a narrow strip of sea between the coast of Norway and the ice. The Royal Navy was forced to guard all these convoys with their battleships because the armor on their cruisers and destroyers could not stand up tothe gun power of the Tirpitz. Upon any indication that the Tirpitz was underway, two British battleships would put to sea.
The St. Nazaire raid on On March 27, 1942 dealt a severe blow to the German surface raiding capability by trapping the German battleship Tirpitz in its Norwegian berth. As the plan's rationale went, if the Tirpitz, whose every movement was closely monitored by the Allies was to embark on surface raiding missions in the North Atlantic, British naval assets stood prepared to slip in and seal off its Norwegian base near Tromso. The only port in the hands of the Germans capable of berthing a warship of this size for sustainment purposes, was St. Nazaire. (St. Nazaire was the pre-war homeport of the French liner Normandy). The resulting destruction of the port facilities at St. Nazaire had strategic implications. On March 30, 1942 the day following the raid, the mighty German battleship lay virtually immobile in her Norwegian hideout. The ability of the Germans to maintain any capital ship in the Atlantic was destroyed, and with it came an end to surface raids on the convoy routes. Others suggest that the German Navy no longer required those dock facilities, nor did the raid diminish the threat of the battleship Tirpitz during the period.
The most striking example of the psychological effect of the Tirpitz against the allies was the disaster which befell an allied convoy of thirty five merchant ships code named P17. In June 1942, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound (First Sea Lord of the Admiralty),fearing an attack by the German battleship Tirpitz, ordered the Royal Navy cruisers and destroyers escorting the Murmansk bound Convoy PQ17 to abandon the convoy while it was off the North Cape of Norway. The convoy was further ordered to scatter. Each ship was to make its own way toMurmansk.Admiral Pound ordered the convoy to disperse despite Commander N.E.Denning's (the Admiralty's Operational Intelligence Centre (OIC) German surface ship section chief) assessment that the Tirpitz had not sailed fromher Norwegian port. Denning's assessment was based on ULTRA(communications intelligence) intercepts, and in fact, the Tirpitz remainedin port. Nevertheless, the convoy dispersed on Pound's orders and became vulnerable to German air and submarine attacks. Twenty-three of the thirty-four merchant ships in the convoy were sunk in one of the worse disasters to befall any Allied convoy during World War II.
Frustrated by the inactivity of his navy's major surface ships, in mid-1943, Hitler asked if they couldn't be used to do something about the Allied presence on Spitzbergen. The result was "Operation Zitronella," an amphibious raid on that island. Supported by the battleship Tirpitz, the battlecruiser Scharnhorst, and nine destroyers, the plan called for landing an entire infantry battalion. They approached the main settlement at dawn on 7 September, quickly suppressed the Free Norwegian battery of 3-inch guns there, and began to land troops at the main pier. The entire operation was completed in four hours. On the debit side, German fire coordination was poor, with the battleship at one point shelling their own infantry, and much of the Norwegian garrison managed to escape in the confusion. The Germans did manage to capture the garrison commander, though, along with most of his files. All the facilities, including the weather stations, were destroyed.
Still the Germans had to withdraw against almost immediately. For Adm. Donitz, head of the German navy, knew, even if Hitler did not, the island could not be held in the face of overall Allied maritime supremacy. The task force returned to occupied Norway on 8 September, and the Allies were back on Spitzbergen, with a new weather station and garrison, one month after that. Operation Zitronella remains significant in that it marked the only time the Battleship Tirpitz fired her main batteries in a surface engagement. It was also the German navy's last major fleet operation outside the Baltic Sea area.
Initially employed as an effective fleet in being, the Tirpitz never filled its potential in the war effort. Hitler continuously vetoed plans for Tirpitz deployments because of therisk posed by allied aircraft. If the German Naval High Commandhad been allowed to pursue more aggressive attacks on allied convoys, the British may have reconsidered the wisdom of resupplying the Eastern front at such great risk. The groundwar in Europe would have been prolonged, and the Russians may have sued for a separate peace. In late September 1943, a British midget submarine raid planted explosives near Tirpitz, causing serious shock damage when they exploded. From that day on, the doom of the Tirpitz was sealed. Whenever it seemed that hard-working German naval personnel had healed the wounds of the stricken ship, the Royal Navt Fleet Air Arm, operating from aircraft carriers, would attack anew and open fresh wounds.
In February 1944, while she was under repair, the German battleship was the target of a raid by Soviet bombers that produced one near-miss. In early April 1944, as her repairs were completing, Tirpitz was attacked by British carrier-based planes, receiving several hits and serious damage and casualties. Further repairs lasted until June, and she was again attacked by British planes in July and August, though the resulting damage was not serious. In mid-September, she was hit in the bow by very heavy bombs dropped by Royal Air Force heavy bombers. Moved to Tromso in October, she was the target of further raids. Finally, on 12 November 1944, Tirpitz was hit and near-missed by several very heavy 12,000-pound blockbusters, causing massive damage. She listed heavily, suffered an ammunition explosion and rolled over. Her wreck was largely scrapped in place after the war.
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