On 3 April 1944 aircraft from British carriers attacked the German battleship Tirpitz at her anchorage in Kaafjord, in the far north of Norway. Two waves of Fairey Barracuda dive bombers, escorted by fighters that strafed the ship's guns, caught her just as she was preparing to sail for trials after months of repairs. The bombs did not sink Tirpitz or pierce her main armor, but they wrecked much of her upper works and killed or wounded hundreds of her crew, putting her out of action for a time.
A battleship that tied down a fleet
Tirpitz, sister ship of the Bismarck, spent most of the war in Norwegian fjords. Even at anchor she was a threat to the Allied convoys carrying supplies to the Soviet Union, and the Royal Navy had to keep capital ships in northern waters to watch her. In September 1943 British midget submarines had damaged her, and the Germans repaired her where she lay.1
By the spring of 1944 the British knew from decrypted German signals, reconnaissance flights and Norwegian agents that she was almost ready for sea again. The Fleet Air Arm prepared a carrier strike. Its aircrews rehearsed at Loch Eriboll in the far north of Scotland, where, John Sweetman writes, a buoyed area stood in for Tirpitz at anchor, complete with smoke defenses and dummy anti-aircraft batteries.2
Surprise at dawn
The fleet sailed at the end of March alongside the Murmansk convoy JW 58, so that the Germans would take the carriers for part of its escort. When decrypts suggested that Tirpitz would sail on the morning of 3 April, the attack was brought forward by 24 hours. The plan called for two strikes, each of 21 Fairey Barracuda dive bombers from the fleet carriers Victorious and Furious and 40 fighters, Corsairs, Hellcats and Wildcats, from Victorious and the escort carriers.3
The first wave flew in low over the sea to stay under German radar, climbed over the mountains and appeared over the fjord at about 5:30 a.m.. Surprise was complete. HistoricWings relates that the warning reached the battleship only minutes before, as tugs were moving her from her berth, with many of her guns unmanned and her escorting destroyers already gone. The fighters raked her guns and the shore batteries, and the Barracudas dived and bombed within about a minute.4
The second wave and the damage
A second wave of 19 Barracudas reached the fjord about an hour later. This time the gunners were ready, but the German smokescreen had not yet risen high enough to hide the ship, and the attack went in again. The hits were counted differently even at the time. According to Sweetman, the Admiralty claimed eight certain and five probable hits, while the Germans acknowledged twelve hits and four near misses. Royal Museums Greenwich speaks of twelve direct hits and a near miss in the first strike alone.5
No bomb pierced the armored deck, so the guns, magazines and engines were not seriously damaged. The superstructure was badly wrecked, however, and Royal Museums Greenwich counts 438 casualties aboard, 122 of them fatal, many of them gunners hit by the strafing fighters. British losses were light. Sweetman gives three Barracudas and one fighter lost, and HistoricWings counts nine airmen killed, two crews to anti-aircraft fire and one in a crash just after takeoff.6
What it achieved
The British commanders decided against a further strike and took the fleet home, reasoning that the Germans would now be ready for them. In Britain the raid was hailed as crippling the ship, but Sweetman calls that wishful thinking: Tirpitz had been damaged, not disabled, and HistoricWings puts the repairs at one or two months. Further carrier raids that summer failed, largely because the Germans now covered the ship with smoke before the bombers arrived, and in the end she was sunk by RAF Lancasters in November 1944.7
Tungsten did not destroy Tirpitz, but it showed how well rehearsed carrier aircraft could catch a battleship in a defended anchorage. It belongs among the great naval actions of an age in which the aircraft replaced the big gun.
Also on this day
- 1948: Jeju uprising. The Jeju uprising began when leftist insurgents on Jeju Island attacked police posts in protest against separate elections in US-occupied southern Korea.
