Tirpitz (ship, 1941)
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The Tirpitz was a battleship of the German Navy used in World War II . She belonged to the Bismarck class and was named after the German Naval State Secretary and Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz . Slightly heavier than her sister ship Bismarck due to minor design improvements , the Tirpitz is the largest battleship ever built in Europe.
The Tirpitz undertook only a few active operations. She was stationed in Norway according to the so-called presence fleet concept for most of her service time . Just by their presence they threatened and disturbed the northern sea convoys with aid deliveries from the Western Allies to Murmansk . If necessary, it should help repel an Allied invasion of this area. However, she never got into active combat against enemy ships; the only use of their main weapons took place in Operation Sicily in September 1943 against a Norwegian radio and weather station.
At her berth, the Tirpitz was attacked several times by commando companies and from the air. On September 15, 1944, she was so badly damaged that she was no longer usable for sea operations and was anchored as a floating coastal battery southwest of the island of Tromsøya . There the Tirpitz was finally capsized on November 12, 1944 by an air raid by the Royal Air Force . The wreck was partly recycled by the Germans, butchered by the British after the end of the war in 1945 and scrapped by a Norwegian salvage company on site from 1947 until the 1950s.
history
Construction and commissioning
On November 2, 1936, the keel of battleship G, the later Tirpitz , was laid at the Wilhelmshaven naval shipyard . A few months earlier, work on her sister ship Bismarck had started at Blohm & Voss in Hamburg . Both ships were built according to the same design, which was based on opposition from the French, but not the British navy . The French battleship Dunkerque was instrumental in the specifications of the two ships.
On April 1, 1939, the Tirpitz was christened and launched by Ilse von Hassell, the daughter of the namesake, in the presence of Adolf Hitler . After the beginning of the Second World War in September 1939, further construction was accelerated, but the Tirpitz was not put into service until February 25, 1941, mainly because of the frequent British air raids on the shipyard in 1940.
Differences to Bismarck
There were minor structural differences between the Tirpitz and the Bismarck . The most noticeable of these was the superstructure between the two rear towers of the middle artillery, which was pulled forward to the edge of the upper deck at Tirpitz . Therefore , unlike on the Bismarck , the main cranes on the Tirpitz could not be set up on the upper deck, but on the deck above. Behind this ledge, additional torpedo quadruplets were installed in the autumn of 1941 , an armament that was not available on the Bismarck . In contrast to the Bismarck , the Tirpitz received covers on the aft rangefinder of the artillery and u. a. a distinctive 2 cm Flak Vierling 38 on the elevated 38 cm turret "Bruno" , which is also not present on the sister ship . The additional weight increased the displacement of the Tirpitz and thus its draft , so that it was 1,200 tn.l. heavier than her sister ship. This made the Tirpitz the largest German warship ever completed ( Bismarck 41,700 tons left, Tirpitz 42,900 tons left). In contrast to the Bismarck , the Tirpitz received a set of marching turbines that optimized fuel consumption at partial load ( cruising ).
After the construction work on the sister ship Bismarck began , changes were made which were incorporated into the construction of the Tirpitz , which was started later . These improvements mainly affected the bunker cells in the ship's hull, which were divided differently. This enabled the Tirpitz to carry more fuel than the Bismarck . In the case of the Bismarck , these changes could no longer be taken into account because construction was already too far advanced.
Operations in World War II
After completion of its warm-up and combat exercises, which took a lot of time, the Tirpitz , which was commissioned on February 25, 1941, was considered ready for action in the summer of 1941. In the meantime, the request of the commander Karl Topp to allow his ship to participate in the Rhine exercise operation with the sister ship Bismarck from May 18 , had not been successful. The Bismarck was sunk in this company.
The Tirpitz's first war mission came on 23–26. September 1941, when she served Vice Admiral Otto Ciliax as the flagship of the so-called " Baltic Fleet ", which was supposed to prevent the Baltic Red Banner Fleet from breaking out of the Baltic Sea into Great Britain at the Barbarossa company . When this breakthrough attempt did not take place, the Tirpitz was actually supposed to intervene in the battle of the Atlantic . However, it was moved to Norway on Hitler's orders in January 1942 to prevent an expected British invasion that would have jeopardized German ore supplies from Sweden via Narvik .
In March 1942 it was used for the first time against British northern sea convoys , which were transporting supplies from Great Britain via the northern route ( Northern Sea ) to the beleaguered Soviet Union . However, they missed the convoys PQ 12 and QP 8 , and the appearance of heavy British units forced the company to be abandoned ( company Sportpalast ). On the march back on March 9, 1942 between 10.15 a.m. and 10.24 a.m., the Tirpitz and the destroyer escort Friedrich Ihn were attacked by about 25 onboard torpedo planes of the Swordfish type , which dropped their torpedoes at short distances of 400 to 1200 m. With ammunition consumption of 33 × 15 cm, 345 × 10.5 cm, 897 × 3.7 cm and 3,372 × 2 cm, three kills were safely observed and several other machines were damaged. The Friedrich Ihn was able to achieve a kill. On July 2, 1942, the Tirpitz , supported by eight smaller ships, ran out again for an attack, namely on the Allied convoy PQ-17 . However, British reconnaissance planes spotted them early, whereupon the convoy broke up to avoid the threat; the securing warships withdrew to the west. The German ships were now called back by the Navy High Command for safety, and the Tirpitz returned to her berth in the Fættenfjord near Trondheim without a combat mission . The background to the recall was, on the one hand, to avoid risk, but above all the allied cargo ships as single drivers were now easy prey for German aircraft and submarines : 22 of 36 freighters with over 140,000 GRT and the particularly valuable war material for the Red Army embarked on them were lost. This company with the code name “ Rösselsprung ” is the classic example of the “ fleet-in-being ” role of the Tirpitz : Their mere presence forced the British to protect their shipping traffic in this sea area with heavy units, and their occasional departure - without Enemy contact - influenced the actions of the enemy. As a result of this operation , the Tirpitz was indirectly more successful than its better-known sister ship Bismarck in terms of fulfilling its primary mission, damaging the Allied supply lines .
The only other larger Tirpitz company to be mentioned is the company “Sicily” in September 1943. Together with the battleship Scharnhorst and nine destroyers , as part of the combat group of the Kriegsmarine , she fired at the Barentsburg weather station on Spitsbergen , where the British had set up several fuel and supply depots. Although the company was only moderately successful, it was nevertheless exploited by German propaganda as a signal of the German navy's “unbroken combat readiness”.
After the loss of the Scharnhorst in the naval battle off the North Cape in December 1943, the Tirpitz was no longer operational. During her entire period of service, she never had enemy contact with enemy surface units.
British operations against the Tirpitz
During the construction period in Wilhelmshaven, British planes tried to take out the German battleship. Until 1942/43, however, there were no notable successes. The reasons for this were the excellent armor of the Tirpitz and the German air defense, which was still strong up to this time .
The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared it the most important task of the Royal Navy to sink the Tirpitz in 1942 . Since air strikes were unsuccessful, the British resorted to unconventional methods. At the end of 1942, for example, the Germans recovered a seemingly harmless, sunken fishing trawler at the entrance to the Trondheimfjord , the entrance to the Tirpitz berth in the Fættenfjord . During the investigation it turned out that he had towed two torpedoes on outer lines. After these were lost due to storms, the crew, a British-Norwegian command, sank the cutter ( Operation Title ).
In September 1943, was Tirpitz of three British midget submarines of the X class at her new berth in Kåfjord attacked ( operation source ). X-5 sank as it approached the Tirpitz , although the circumstances that led to it have not been clarified. However, the crews of X-6 and X-7 managed to position two two-tonne timed mines under the battleship. Although the crews of the two successful micro-submarines were taken prisoner, the time left until the sea mines were ignited was too short to build up the steam pressure required to leave the berth on the Tirpitz . The Tirpitz could only be maneuvered a little sideways within her berth by hauling in the lines with the fore and aft capstan . The following detonation not only damaged the hull and the internal structure, but also displaced the engines on their foundations, so that the Tirpitz was no longer operational by March 1944. To restore the battleship's full fighting power, more than 400 shipyard workers from German shipyards (primarily from Kiel) and several work ships were ordered to Norway, where they carried out the repair work under high pressure.
When the landing in Normandy was imminent in 1944 , Churchill again called for the Tirpitz to be destroyed . She shouldn't get a chance to attack the invading fleet. For this purpose, five aircraft carriers were sent off the Norwegian coast during a first attack ( Operation Tungsten ) . The first air raid started on the morning of April 3, 1944 (15 bombs hit, 135 dead). Until August 1944, large formations of British carrier aircraft attacked repeatedly, but without causing serious damage. However, the crew losses amounted to more than 400 dead and wounded.
Because attacks with conventional bombs were not suitable for destroying the Tirpitz , the use of special bombs was prepared: These " Tallboys " - official designation DP12000 lb (deep penetration, 12,000 pounds ) - with a weight of 5.4 tons , of which 2.4 t highly explosive explosives were developed, among other things, to destroy up to five meters thick concrete ceilings in German submarine bunkers .
Since the berth of the ship in the Kåfjord was beyond the reach of British bomber bases, the 9th and 617th Squadron ("Dam Busters") of the RAF flew Lancaster bombers on September 15, 1944 from Yagodnik near Arkhangelsk in the Soviet Union from an attack that dropped 24 tallboys ( Operation Paravane ). In view of the massive anti-aircraft fire and the very strong smoke generated by the smoke systems installed nearby, it was not possible to sink the ship. The only hit that penetrated the forecastle 10.5 meters behind the bow in front of the chain stopper and detonated outboard directly on the ship under water at a depth of approx. 11 m damaged the ship so much that it was no longer seaworthy. The released high-explosive energy (2,358 kg torpex ) of this explosion corresponded to about ten simultaneous torpedo hits at the same point.
Thereupon the Tirpitz moved after a makeshift repair - with its own power, but a maximum of 10 knots of speed - on 15-16. October 1944, five kilometers from Tromsø, between the islands of Håkøya and Store Grindøya , to act as a floating battery of guns to repel the Allied invasion feared by Hitler. On October 13, 1944, as part of the Petsamo-Kirkenes operation, the Soviets captured Liinahamari in Finland , and Petsamo on October 15 . This may also have played a role in bringing the ship to safety.
At Tromsø, however , the Tirpitz could be reached from British bases. The British continued the actions to sink the ship with uninterrupted intensity, also because they were not fully aware of the damage already done to the ship - which already excluded the Tirpitz as an active threat. On October 29, 1944, the RAF launched an attack with 32 Lancaster bombers ( Operation Obviate ) from RAF Station Lossiemouth (Scotland) , with the only close hit destroying the port outer shaft (more precisely the outer stuffing box ) and tearing open the stern, see above that it was flooded over a length of 35 m on the port side.
The end of the Tirpitz
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On November 12, 1944, 32 Lancaster bombers - again from Lossiemouth - attacked the Tirpitz under ideal conditions during Operation Catechism : clear visibility, no smoke machines in the vicinity of the berth, and the fighters of the German Air Force did not take off. Two of the 29 dropped "Tallboy" bombs hit the ship on port side at the height of the catapult and from turret C ("Caesar") and penetrated the armored deck. Several close hits severely damaged the ship's hull . A short time later, there was an explosion on board, in which Tower C was lifted from its bedding and fell 12 meters away onto the deck. Thereupon the crew, who had not put on life jackets because of the proximity to land, was given the order “All hands on board”. The Tirpitz capsized until the superstructure lay aground in the shallow water. 1204 men of the crew were killed, 890 were rescued, of which 84 were cut out of the hull with great effort.
Information from the Norwegian resistance fighter Torstein Raaby , who regularly transmitted information to the British by radio , contributed significantly to the damage and sinking of the Tirpitz . Raaby has received several awards for this.
Re-use and memorials
Important parts of the wreck were removed during the German occupation in Norway until May 1945. Then Britain took over the wreck. The English dismantled everything that appeared to be of military value to them and then handed the wreck over to Norway. In 1947 the Norwegian Einar Høvding bought the Tirpitz for a demolition company he had just founded, Høvding Skipsopphuggeri . With 40 workers, including 15 Hamburg underwater specialists, the recovery of usable material began. The wreck was demolished on site until the 1950s.
Parts of the body armor were later from the Solingen knife manufacturer Boker to Damask - pocket knives processed.
There is a Tirpitz Museum near the old anchorage in Kåfjord by the Altafjord . On the island of Håkøya, a monument made of a hull plate of the Tirpitz and a huge bomb crater commemorate the dead of the last German battleship.
The first power station Honningsvåg on the island of Magerøy, now a museum, was called Tirpitz : One of the Tirpitz's recovered auxiliary diesel engines was used here.
In Auto and Technik Museum Sinsheim , a cover plate, a light flak and part can a middle tube artillery of the battleship to the public. The city of Oslo bought some of the Tirpitz's armor plates ( Tirpitz-plater ). These parts probably come from the inner armor at the bulkheads to the torpedo room of the Tirpitz . These panels are still used in Oslo as cover panels in sewer and road construction.
The naval war flag of the Tirpitz is today as exhibit 00662 in the collection of the military history training center of the naval school Mürwik .
In 2014 the remains of the wreck of the Tirpitz were placed under monument protection by the Norwegian riksantikvar .
Technical specifications
The 251 m long battleship with three propellers could reach a top speed of 30.8 knots. The cruising speed (cruising speed) was 19 knots in order to keep fuel consumption within limits.
drive
The drive of the Tirpitz consisted of three steam turbine sets . They were supplied by 12 Wagner high pressure superheated steam boilers , which stood in pairs in six boiler rooms. The individual turbine sets were grouped around the respective gearboxes.
Accessories
Dinghies
The Tirpitz had numerous dinghies . This comprised three admiral or commander boats ("chief boats"), a motor launch , two motor pinasses , four traffic boats (short: V-boats), two rescue cutters for man-over-board maneuvers, two dinghies and two dinghies .
The pinasses and traffic boats as well as the barge were mainly used to transport people between the ship and a landing stage when berthed in the roadstead .
Aircraft
The Tirpitz had four Arado Ar 196 seaplanes for enemy reconnaissance and air surveillance on board. You belonged to the 1st squadron of the flight group 196; the pilots and technicians came from the Air Force .
The Ar 196 had wings that could be attached to the side and light armament. Two machines ready to go were in the two standby hangars on the side of the chimney, while the other two could be serviced in the workshop hangar under the aft structure. The planes were started with the catapults connected in opposite directions (double catapult), which were located in the middle of the ship and could be extended from 32 m over the side wall to 48 m. They had to land on the water; they were then lifted on board by one of the two 12-tonne cranes on both sides of the Tirpitz .
Commanders
- Sea captain Karl Topp - February 1941 to February 1943
- Sea captain Hans Karl Meyer - February 25, 1943 to April 30, 1944
- Sea captain Wolf Junge - May 1 to November 3, 1944
- Sea captain Robert Weber - November 4, 1944 to sinking
Movies
1955 turned director Ralph Thomas with X-boat attack ( Above Us the Waves ) a dokumentaristisch-realistic film about the various British commando raid that the destruction of the Tirpitz were aimed. The star-studded film ( John Mills , John Gregson , Donald Sinden , James Robertson Justice , Michael Medwin ) is based in large part on fact.
music
The song Tirpitz on the album Of Truth and Sacrifice by the Thuringian metalcore band Heaven Shall Burn illuminates the gigantomy of the Nazi era , according to Yan Vogel from laut.de.
Radio plays
In 1953, the NWDR ( Cologne ) produced and broadcast a radio play that tells of the unsuccessful attempt to find suitable rescue measures quickly in order to be able to rescue the more than 1000 people trapped in the sunken ship. The author of the radio play You still knock was Emil Gurdan . Speakers under the direction of Eduard Hermann included Hermann Stein (narrator), Kurt Lieck (Vice Admiral), Hans Lietzau (Oberstabsingenieur Frank), Hermann Schomberg (Corvette Captain Bruger), Richard Münch (Kapitänleutnant dR Röden), Heinz von Cleve (Kapitänleutnant), Horst Frank (Lieutenant Wilm), Alois Garg (Lieutenant Lutz), Klaus Nägelen (Oberfähnrich Karl Bruger) and Alf Marholm (Lieutenant). (Playing time: 75 minutes)
literature
- Jochen Brennecke: Battleship Tirpitz. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, 2001, ISBN 3-7822-0827-7 .
- David Brown: The Tirpitz. A floating fortress and its fate. Bernard & Graefe Verlag, 1998, ISBN 3-7637-5987-5 .
- Gervis Frere-Cook: The Tirpitz has to be under water. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1977, ISBN 3-87943-496-4 .
- Erich Gröner , Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945 . tape 1 : Armored ships, ships of the line, battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, gunboats. . Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-7637-4800-8 , p. 58-59 .
- John Sweetman: Hunt for the Tirpitz. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, 2001, ISBN 3-7822-0814-5 .
- Adalbert Brünner, Siegfried Breyer: Battleship “Tirpitz” in action. A naval officer reports. Podzun-Pallas Verlag, 1993, ISBN 3-7909-0474-0 .
- Mike J. Whitley: Battleships of World War II. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-613-02289-3 .
- Gerhard Koop, Klaus-Peter Schmolke: The battleships of the Bismarck class. Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Koblenz 1990, ISBN 3-7637-5890-9 .
- Léonce Peillard : Coulez le Tirpitz. Robert Laffont, 2002, ISBN 2-221-03438-4 .
- Léonce Peillard: Sink the Tirpitz. 1965, ISBN 3-704-2201-83 .
- David Woodward: The Tirpitz and the Battle for the North Atlantic. Berkley 1953, OCLC 2182990 .
Web links
- Tirpitz Museum Alta zur Tirpitz (norw / engl / de)
- More information about Tirpitz
- For more information about Tirpitz (Engl.)
- For more information about Tirpitz (Engl.)
- Some pictures from the construction phase of the ship ( Memento from August 28, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
- Universal Studios Wochenschau - The sinking of the Tirpitz in aerial photographs, download at archive.org.
- War letters from Tirpitz on einestages.spiegel.de
- Downfall of the Tirpitz on spiegel-online
- The aerial view: the battleship Tirpitz at anchorage in Kåfjord, Norway.
- With the battleship “Tirpitz” in Norway - letters and diaries
Footnotes
- ↑ Hildebrand, Hans H .; Röhr, Albert; Steinmetz, Hans-Otto (1993). The German Warships (Volume 7). P. 239 Ratingen, Germany: Mundus Verlag. ISBN 978-3-8364-9743-5
- ↑ M.Dv. No. 601 Operations and Tactics Issue 13, Operations by naval forces in the Arctic Ocean in 1942 - The Tirpitz advance with the 5th Z.Fl. to Bear Island 6.-9. March 1942-
- ^ Tirpitz - The History - Operation "Source". Retrieved November 28, 2011 .
- ^ Co-op / Schmolke: The battleships of the Bismarck class . 1990, p. 16
- ^ Co-op / Schmolke: The battleships of the Bismarck class . 1990, p. 59
- ^ Co-op / Schmolke: The battleships of the Bismarck class . 1990, p. 60
- ^ Siegfried Breyer, Gerhard Koop: From the Emden to the Tirpitz. The battleships, ships of the line, ironclad ships, cruisers and aircraft carriers of the German Navy 1920–1945 . 3rd, revised edition. tape 1 . Bernard & Graefe, Bonn 1995, ISBN 3-7637-5910-7 , pp. 119 (special edition in one volume).
- ^ Page of the manufacturer ( Memento from December 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ www.tirpitz-museum.no
- ↑ Nordkappmuseet generator of the German battleship "Tirpitz"
- ↑ Her ligger «Tirpitz» 70 år etter (This is where the Tirpitz is 70 years later)
- ↑ Internet Archive: Press release from Riksantikvaren about the midlertidige fredningen av Blücher og Tirpitz, December 19, 2014
- ↑ X-boats attack. Internet Movie Database , accessed May 22, 2015 .
- ↑ Yan Vogel: Freedom, Equality, Responsibility! In: laut.de. March 20, 2020, accessed May 1, 2020 .
- ↑ hoerspiele.dra.de .
Coordinates: 69 ° 38 ′ 50 ″ N , 18 ° 48 ′ 30 ″ E