In my previous article about the North Atlantic Convoys I mentioned the German battleship Tirpitz. This ship was over 250 metres long and weighed over 50,000 tons with a hull made of 30cm thick steel. Tirpitz also had not one but eight of the biggest naval guns ever built – 38cm. With a crew of over 2,600 men and a speed of 30 knots it was bigger and faster than any of the opposing Allied ships, a formidable weapon which instilled fear in all those who faced her. Yet this behemoth which could have played such a significant role in the war at sea was rarely out of coastal waters and contributed little to the German war effort.

One would have thought that Germany’s biggest warship should be deployed in the Atlantic but instead it was sent to a remote area in Northern Norway for one simple reason – the Arctic convoys which set out from Britain to supply the beleaguered Soviet Union. With the Tirpitz in northern waters Hitler hoped that he would be able to attack the convoys whilst at the same time preventing any Allied attack against Nazi-occupied Norway.

When the Tirpitz originally arrived in Norway in January1942 she was anchored in Trondheimsfjord from where she made an attack on the mining communities of Spitsbergen, the only major attack that the ship ever carried out. Then, in March 1943, her mooring was moved to Kåfjorden; with an approach to the fjord which was easy to defend and a greater distance by air from Britain the Tirpitz was well protected and able to continue to menace the convoys.

Winston Churchill saw the Tirpitz as a direct threat to the success of the supply convoys to Russia and was determined to sink her. Kåfjorden was out of reach for the British bombers so the Allies decided to try an underwater attack using X-craft – 51ft long submarines with a diameter of just 5ft and with a four-man crew. The plan was for each submarine to drop two 1.5 ton charges of Amatex high explosive beneath the Tirpitz. This was not going to be an easy attack as anti-torpedo nets protected the ship but it was hoped that the midgit submarines would be able to get around these. Moonlit nights between the 20^th and 25^th September provided ideal conditions for an attack so six normal sized submarines towed the smaller X-craft close to the target where the operational crews then took over ready for the attack – two submarines targeting a small battleship called the Scharnhorst,  one targeting a heavy cruiser called the Lutzow, and the final three making for the Tirpitz, although two of the attacking X-craft were lost en-route.

Although the raiders were able to plant explosives which tore an 18 meter long gash in the hull of the Tirpitz they were unable to sink the ship which was fully repaired by April 1944. Over the next seven months the Allies carried out six bombing aids on the Tirpitz which although unable to sink the ship did enough damage for her to be kept in port undergoing constant repairs. The Germans eventually moved the ship to Håkøybotn near Tromsø in October 1944 in the hope of getting better protection, but things went badly wrong for them on 12^th November that year when thirty-two Lancaster bombers attacked with Tallboy bombs weighing five-tons each and capable of piercing the thick armour of the Tirpitz. Following three direct hits the pride of the German fleet sank in only eleven minutes with the loss of between 1,000 and 1,200 men.

The Tirpitz was arguably the finest battleship of the Second World War yet she made very little contribution to the conflict. It is true that her presence in the Norwegian fjords was a constant threat to the Arctic Convoys but she did very little actual damage there. The Germans were not able to utilize the Tirpitz as much as they had hoped in Norwegian waters as there was a constant shortage of fuel. Neither was the ship deployed into the Atlantic where she could have created havoc amongst the convoys bringing food and supplies from America to the hungry and beleaguered United Kingdom. It is possible that the Tirpitz tied up men and resources which could have been used to better advantage elsewhere, indeed it could be argued that when all actions are taken into consideration the huge battleship which saw so little action was more of a hindrance than a help to the German war effort; it seems likely that the journalist Ludovic Kennedy was right when he wrote that the Tirpitz had “lived an invalid’s life and died a cripple’s death”.