80 years ago, today.
I flew over Håkøya, where Tirpitz met her demise, earlier today and thought about all the young men who perished…
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What’s amazing to me is how one single BB garnered so much attention especially when you considered it was cooped up in harbor for most of the war.
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Yeah, the Brits had to keep her at anchor or the Murmansk convoys would be toast.
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I think the absolute worst thing the Tirpitz could have done, especially by 1944, was to sortie from the safety of those fjords. As soon as it attacked any of the convoys, if it was even lucky enough to make contact with a convoy before being spotted, the British Navy would have sent him and likely any support vessels to the bottom.
Wheels
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Sure, since the damage caused by Op. Source a year earlier rendered Tirpitz useless as anything other than a floating artillery barge, they had to hide her. But the Admiralty didn’t know the extent of the damage.
So, while Tirpitz never did battle (apart from shelling ground positions at Svalbard), she forced the allies to dedicate a lot of effort towards keeping her at bay.
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Sounds like an operational success then, albeit the ship was lost at last. I wonder if the British could have just ignored her presence? And reacted in case she set sails to intercept some convoys.
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