The British had no desire to repeat the nerve-wracking experience of hunting the Bismarck, the Tirpitz’s sister ship, so the goal was to sink her before she could even be commissioned. The first dedicated attempt to bomb the Tirptiz occurred on July 9, 1940 but the planes missed the target because of poor visibility. Another eight attempts were made, usually with little or no success, during the rest of 1940, and seven more bombing attacks were launched in early 1941, despite intense cold and generally horrible flying conditions, until the Tirpitz left for sea trials in the Baltic.

The fate of the Bismarck discouraged Admiral Raeder, the head of the German navy, from letting the Tirpitz into the Atlantic, instead he sent her to Norway to solidify German control of the country and to threaten Artic convoys bound for Russia. The Tirpitz reached the protection of Foetten Fjord, which had steep cliffs on three sides, on January 16, 1941, where she was so well camouflaged that she was practically invisible from the air.

Since the RAF had failed to sink or knock the Tirpitz out of action while it was still in its home port, the First Sea Lord decided to keep three King George V class battleships in home waters to counter any sudden sorties. Given the amount of naval resources tied down to counter a single ship, Churchill stated bluntly that he was willing to accept losses of even 100 planes and 500 men to destroy the Beast, his nickname for the Tirpitz, which would not have been welcome news to the pilots of Bomber Command. Bombing the Tirpitz was a difficult challenge since weather conditions were generally poor over Norway, and those few planes that penetrated the cloud cover were unable to get past the heavy flak to gain a clear target approach.

Accompanied by three destroyers, the Tirpitz finally emerged from its lair on March 6 to look for a Murmansk-bound convoy. At the same time, a powerful British fleet, including the carrier Victorious, had gone to sea just in case the Tirpitz showed iself. After a couple of days of fruitless searching on both sides, the Tirpitz returned to Norway with the British fleet in hot pursuit. Torpedo bombers from the Victorious found the Tirpitz but were unable to hit the ship.

Once the Tirpitz was back in its fjord, the baton passed back to Bomber Command. One key problem was that the bombs carried by the planes were too weak, submarine nets around the ship eliminated dropping torpedoes and the ship was surrounded by pipes that could produce a smoke screen in twenty minutes. Furthermore, aside from heavy anti-aircraft fire, there were almost 100 German fighters and planes based in the nearby area. These resources were not just for the Tirpitz, the Admiral von Scheer and the Prinz Eugen were also located in nearby fjords. Nevertheless, a powerful raid by 25 to 30 bombers was launched on the evening of March 30, 1942 but it failed and six planes were lost. A much more complex raid took place on April 27 that involved planes from five bomber squadrons attacking in waves with diversionary attacks against nearby airfields. The planes that reached the Tirpitz encountered intense flak and the smoke screen made accuracy almost impossible, so among the 41 planes that actually reached Norway, five bombers did not return. Despite the large number of bombs and mines that were dropped, the Tirpitz did not receive serious damage so the pilots were given the unwelcome news that the operation would be repeated the next night. No planes were lost this time, but once again, the Tirpitz did not receive heavy damage.   

The continued existence of the Tirpitz meant that convoys could only sail if they were escorted by battleships, of which there were too few, therefore Churchill was receiving a great deal of pressure to restart convoys as ports filled up with ships waiting for escorts. While this may seem to have been a waste of valuable resources, the experience of Arctic Convoy PQ17 highlighted the need to eliminate the Tirpitz. The convoy was escorted by seventeen destroyers and four cruisers, and a small fleet made up of two battleships, the carrier Victorious and fourteen destroyers was nearby. However, the First Sea Lord had already decided to order the convoy to scatter if it seemed likely that the Tirpitz would attack it, even though the head of the Home Fleet, Admiral Tovey stated that it would be ‘sheer, bloody murder’. When the British Admiralty learned on July 4 that the Tirpitz, and the heavy cruisers Admiral Scheer and Admiral Hipper, escorted by destroyers, had left Norway two days earlier, they basically panicked and ordered the convoy’s escort to withdraw and the convoy to scatter, even though the Admiralty did not have any firm idea of the Tirpitz’s actual location. This proved to be completely unnecessary since Raeder had called off the attack on July 4 when he learned that the Victorious was near the convoy, so the Tirpitz had returned to a Norwegian fjord by July 6. Meanwhile, German U-boats and planes tore the convoy to shreds, so only 11 of the 36 ships made it to the Soviet Union.

As a result, the next convoy, PQ18, was postponed as Churchill admitted that he was unwilling to risk the Home Fleet in waters where they were in range of German shore-based aircraft. Faced with much of Russia under German control, Stalin bluntly called the British cowards. PQ18 eventually sailed, escorted by 75 warships, but even without the involvement of the Tirpitz, only 27 out of 39 merchantmen survived the trip.

The British navy had not given up on its goal of eliminating the Tirpitz and tried a change in tactics. Hoping to equal the success of the Italian frogmen who had ridden two-man ‘chariots’ into Alexandria's harbor and badly disabled two British battleships, a fishing vessel towed similar chariots into Trondheim fjord on October 31 but a sudden squall snapped the tow lines five miles from the target, abruptly ending the mission.

It is interesting to note that the British assigned a greater value to the Tirpitz than the Germans did. Hitler basically wanted the Tirpitz to counter any invasion of Norway and the other heavy ships to remain in the north to threaten convoys, but he refused to give the ships fuel for extended operations, understandably since the Tirpitz’s hesitant sortie in March had used up an entire month’s supply of oil from Romania. By January 11, Hitler was pressing Raeder to disarm the ships, use their guns to strengthen coastal defenses and convert the ships to aircraft carriers. Raeder tried to explain that even when the ships were in port, they forced the enemy to devote ships to block their potential threat, but Hitler had never appreciated the navy, so Raeder resigned on January 30, 1943 and he was replaced by Admiral Karl Donitz.

Oddly enough, following Raeder’s resignation, Hitler backtracked and assigned the battlecruiser Scharnhorst to Norway to join the Tirpitz and the pocket battleship Lutzow. When this news reached Churchill, it produced a torrent of letters to the First Sea Lord, Bomber Command, the Chief of Combined Operations, and anyone else remotely connected to the hunt for the Beast, pushing for plans to eliminate the Tirpitz. Fortunately for everyone involved, the aeronautical engineer Barnes Wallis had been conducting a great deal of research into bombs, both very, very powerful bombs and bouncing bombs. The RAF was especially interested in his bouncing bombs, mainly to destroy German dams, but also to sink the Tirpitz.

However, by September 1943, after eighteen months of tests and trials, the process had still not been perfected, and the Admiralty had to consider other means. Fortunately, the navy had spent the last year building midget submarines and training crews with the sole objective of destroying German ships in their Norwegian lairs. The midget submarines, called X-craft, were towed across the North Sea by regular submarines, and on September 22, two of the six X-craft successfully penetrated the perimeter to place time-delayed charges under the battleship. Unfortunately, while the damage was serious, it was not critical.  

Aware that the Tirpitz would likely be ready for action by late March, an attack by 41 dive bombers from six carriers with fighter escorts was planned for April 3, 1944, when German submarines and reconnaissance planes would be preoccupied with convoy JW58. The planes actually caught the Tirpitz maneuvering, so it was unable to regain the safety of her berth in time. In the end, 122 were killed, 316 wounded and the ship was heavily damaged. Bad weather prevented a second attack the next day. It was later learned from deciphered Enigma reports that repairs would take several months, but the British could not give up because the Tirpitz was ready for sea trials by early July. Beginning on July 17 and continuing in late August, planes from three carriers made a series of attacks on the Tirpitz but German radar gave enough warning that the smoke screen had always been prepared by the time the planes arrived. The goal had been to wear down the Tirpitz’s defenses but the smoke screen ensured that it only suffered minor damage. 

At that point, Bomber Command was given responsibility for sinking the Tirpitz during the remaining three months of sunlight. Following the recent success of the Dambusters' Raid on the Ruhr Valley, the air marshal in charge of dealing with the Tirpitz asked Barnes Wallis to consider the problem. He then designed a 12,000lb bomb that became known as Tallboy and a prototype was ready by September 12, 1943. Tallboy was 21 feet long and had a diameter of 38 inches at its widest, so it was designed to be accurate within ten yards. Given 617 Squadron’s success at precision bombing, it was the first squadron to be given the Tallboy bombs, followed by 9 Squadron.

The two squadrons were intended to bomb the Tirpitz and then continue to a Soviet airfield. However, last-minute weather problems led to a change in plans, the planes left Scotland on September 11 for the Soviet airfield, where they were supposed to refit and then bomb the Tirpitz. The planes arrived safely, although quite a few had to make emergency landings near the airfield, so only 24 of the Lancasters were operational. The planes that had crashed were raided for parts and refueling proceeded slowly but by the morning of September 14, twenty-one bombers with Tallboys and six with Johnnie Walker mines were ready. Bad weather over Norway meant that the attack was postponed until the following morning so the rest of the day was spent playing football against the Russians and drinking lots of vodka. The attack proceeded smoothly and no planes were lost to the minor flak, while the single hit on the Tirpitz shredded a hundred feet of her bow. Unknown to the British, the damage ended her operational status, but they continued to perceive her as a threat to the Arctic convoys.

The Tirpitz, along with a strong escort of destroyers, left its fjord on October 15, 1944, but the British were not sure if the departure was due to damage or a tactical decision to move away from advancing Soviet forces. The navy’s capital ships were needed in the Pacific to protect British influence as former British colonies were being liberated, so the task of finishing off the Tirpitz rested with Bomber Command. 37 bombers from 617 and 9 Squadrons attacked the ship on October 28 but heavy cloud cover ensured that the Tirpitz did not suffer serious damage. Since the only thing that prevented more frequent bombing raids was the bad weather, the crew of the Tirpitz must have hated the sun. By November, the Tirpitz was no longer able to steam under its own power and the engineering crew had been transferred off the ship. Winter darkness would arrive at the end of November, so the pressure was on, and another mission was launched on November 12, although by this point the pilots can be excused for a lack of optimism. However, this time the Tirpitz’s luck finally ran out, she took two direct hits by 12,000lb bombs and capsized with 971 dead.

The chase for the Beast had lasted five years. Bomber Command had launched 26 attacks between 1940 and 1944, while the Fleet Air Arm had carried out one attack in 1942 and six in 1944. A total of 23 planes were lost during these 33 missions. The Tirpitz did not sink a single British ship but her simple existence tied down a large number of British warships that were urgently needed in other operations, as well as brought about a temporary suspension of convoys.

Related Movies:

Submarine X-1 (1968)
Directed by William Graham, starring James Caan and David Sumner
Midget submarines try to destroy Germany's most powerful warship during WWII. (please click here to read the review)

Further Reading:

Tirpitz: Hunting the Beast-John Sweetman, Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 2000.

It is an extremely comprehensive examination of the British efforts to sink the Tirptiz and each major bombing raid is explained in great detail. The book provides a straightforward discussion of the events and the rationale behind each decision but there is basically no examination of any of the personalities involved. It is intended for experts in the field, not really meant for general readers.

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