The Hunt for Tirpitz, 42-44 - Animated

[Music] the second of the two modern and deadly Bismarck class battleships the Tirpitz emerges from the Kiel Canal in January 1942 and heads north to her new birth in the fartin field in Norway the war in the Eastern Front has been raging for seven months and Britain is sending supply convoys to the Soviet Union because of the harsh arctic conditions the convoys have to sell dangerously close to German occupied Norway if given unchallenged access to these waters Tirpitz could make light work of the lightly escorted convoys cutting the supply of vital war materiel for the Soviet Union that is fighting a brutal war of attrition in the east Churchill orders the bombing of Tirpitz in Norway to commence immediately the first attempt is made by Bomber Command in late January 7 Stirling's and 9 honey faxes loaded with 2000 pound and 500-pound bombs make the 600-mile trip from RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland some have to turn back with fuel concerns and of those that continued no hits are scored in March Vice Admiral Otto celiacs who has successfully executed the channel - of battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau the month before takes command of Tirpitz and her battle group he's alerted - to convoys in the Norwegian Sea and Tirpitz leaves the field with three destroyers he knows that the Royal Navy's home fleet will be nearby to cover the convoys and should be avoided at all cost little does he know the codebreakers at Bletchley Park have alerted the British Admiral Tovey that Tirpitz is moving to attack the convoys one of the Destroyers finds and sinks the strangling Russian freighter is Laura from convoy QP 8 returning empty from the Soviet Union to Britain celiacs realizes that finding QP 8 means that he's missed the more valuable fully laden convoy PQ 12 on routes to Murmansk calls off the sortie and turns back towards Norway citing British ferry albacore carrier aircraft shadowing him celiacs knows the British fleet must be nearby and changed his course to evade it doesn't work and 12 further Alba cause locate and attack the battleship with torpedoes from her port and starboard beam almost simultaneously all torpedoes myths Tirpitz escapes the Bergen field before returning to fast in fjord three days later in March and April bomber command would make three further attempts to hit Tirpitz in the fields using Calif axes and the new Lancaster heavy bomber dropping four thousand-pound bombs known as cookies while infrastructure and the cruiser admiral scheer take hits Tirpitz remains undamaged 12% of the aircrew involved in the air attacks are killed while the earlier albacore torpedo attack on turpis was a failure it was a close call for the cruise marine the fewer orders that no further sorties should be attempted if British carriers are operating in the Norwegian Sea this doesn't mean that she isn't a continuing problem for the Allied war effort the naval doctrine known as Fleet and being is a strategy whereby a fleet or ship avoids decisive engagement with a superior enemy fleet in the open sea but remained safely in port near to the area of strategic importance the threat that Tirpitz might sortie into the Norwegian Sea to attack convoys tides down the powerful Royal Navy assets to the region to make sure that she doesn't these are assets that are desperately needed in the battles of the Atlantic Mediterranean and in the Far East to counter the powerful Japanese Navy no further major raids are conducted in 1942 and in early 1943 Tirpitz moves up to the co field in the far north of Norway out of range for the heaviest hitting Lancaster and with the lighter but longer range American b-17s engaged in the bomber offensive against Germany she is for the time being spared from heavy air attack 19:43 would end in disaster for the crease Marine however in September two British submarines managed to infiltrate the Cofield and lay mines underneath Tirpitz the resulting explosions caused major flooding and jam have forward turrets Tirpitz is put out of action for the winter while repairs are carried out in December the battleship Scharnhorst sorties from the same field to attack Arctic Convoys JW v 5a and is sunk at the Battle of North Cape the next major attack comes from the Fleet Air Arm in April 1944 Operation tungsten 4/7 made up of six carriers two cruisers including HMS Belfast and six destroyers position themselves 124 miles northwest of Tirpitz they've been joined by a further battleship cruiser and six destroyers at 4:16 a.m. an enormous Air Wing of 169 aircraft begins to launch from the carriers in two waves forty fairy barracuda dive bombers will attack Tirpitz with 1,600 pound armor-piercing and 500 pound general purpose bombs 40 wildcat and 20 Hellcat fighters provide close protection to the bombers on the route in while 21 Corsair fighters provide higher altitude overwatch a further 18 C fire and eight wildcat fighters and 12 swordfish anti-submarine aircraft are launched to protect the fleet the crew have carefully studied models of the field turpis is predicted position and flak positions approaching the field the bombers rearrange into a single line of stoned flying over the final ridge into the field the first wave discovers Tirpitz exactly where predicted and begin their dive bombing runs defensive flak opens up on them and the Hellcats and Wildcats dive to low level to shoot up the enemy flak positions the whole first wave attack last one minute Tirpitz has sustained many armor-piercing and general-purpose bomb hits and her deck is burning when the second wave arrives again the fighters dive down to strafe anti-aircraft battery and the barracudas deliver another fearsome attack from above over the two waves the attacking crews claim 14 bomb hits on the ship causing multiple strong fires and flooding 122 German crewmen are killed the Royal Navy triumphantly declared that Tirpitz is now an unusable ship but they're wrong while the accuracy of the bombing was impressive the damage the Tirpitz is largely superficial the armor-piercing bombs have not penetrated her armored Citadel photo recon flights confirmed that Tirpitz is still operational between April and August 1944 the Royal Navy makes several attempts at barracuda attacks again operations planet braun Tigerclaw and mascot are either canceled or failed due to weather or a smokescreen obscure target on arrival in July after repairs Tirpitz is able to slip moorings for a short sale within the fields fearing that she'll be ready to attack the next convoys in August the British Admiralty decide to launch a sustained operation against her conducting bombing operations until the job is done this sustained attack will be operation Goodwood the home fleet dispatched three fleet carriers to escort carriers a battleship and 29 screen ships to rendezvous near Cofield on the 22nd of August Goodwood mission one is attempted but aborted for dense cloud over the target a smaller nuisance attack Goodwood 2 is executed later in the evening with just six Hellcats and eight five lines with no bomb hits meanwhile the escort carrier nabob is attacked by a u-boat while refueling away from the main force and has to limp back to scarper flow on the 24th of August Goodwood 3 finally proceeds with good weather similar to the earlier tungsten mission 33 dive-bombing barracudas launched each with the 1600 pound armor-piercing bomb most of the 24 Corsairs provide close escort with five also carrying bombs 10 hal cats will help attack the ship and also attack the ground-based anti-aircraft batteries in the fields 10 fireflies provide top cover and 8c fires move to shoot up the nearby Banach airfield this time the force is spotted on radar as it approaches the Norwegian coast and the AAA batteries and smokescreen generators mobilize by the time the formation arrives Tirpitz is surrounded by smoke and a strongbox barrage of flak the Corsairs dive and strafe the flak positions the Hellcats are the first step on the ship scoring a single hit the five bomb armed Corsairs are next three of the five are shot down and a fourth later ditches in the sea they score no hits this time the Barracuda crews can't see through the dense smoke and aim at the tracer fire flashing up early all bombs missed because of the blind aiming accepts one 1600 pound bomb which penetrates through five decks on Tirpitz is portside it fails to explode the fleet air on attempt a nearly identical good word for six days later again smoke shrouds Tirpitz and no hits escort ultra signal intercepts reveal that the massive effort by the Royal Navy has resulted in negligible damage it becomes clear that sinking Tirpitz will require a bigger bomb RAF Bomber Command stand up to the task 6 1 7 squadron the dam Busters and 9 squadron Avro Lancaster's fly from their bases in Lincoln chair to Lossiemouth from there they transit across Norway in Sweden - yah Gopnik airfield in the Soviet Union they carry with them a new bomb the tallboy weighing 12,000 pounds and encased in hardened steel the tallboy breaks the sound barrier at terminal velocity and penetrates 16 feet of concrete the detonation produces a small earthquake hence the nickname the earthquake bomb the 12,000 pound bomb in comparison with the 1600 pound bomb dropped by the Barracudas is thought to be the weapon to take out Tirpitz on the 15th of september 1944 27 Lancaster's armed with 20 tall boys and some smaller mine bombs launched their attack with a mosquito and a further Lancaster that will film the raid the mission is called Operation paravane they fly low over Finland to avoid the German radar station at cakiness over Lapland they split into two forces force a and with tallboys force be with mine bombs unfortunately they're still spotted and arrived to find Tirpitz shrouded by smoke force a drop their tall boys into the smoke at where they think the battleship is a single bomb hits her penetrating the armored deck and the hull below the massive detonation blows a huge hole in her side one Norwegian local describes the hole as large enough to sail a small boat into the shock of the explosion has damaged the ship's engines and turbines German signal intercepts by Bletchley Park reveal the severity of the damage caused Tirpitz is declared unseaworthy and slowly moved south west near tromsø there she will remain as a gun battery to deter an Allies invasion of Norway her flak and smokescreen equipment is being dismantled and transported south to her new birth but all won't become fully operational for several weeks with modifications to the Lancaster's fuel tanks and engines and with the removal of its top turret Tirpitz is now just within range of lancaster attack from scotland and so from bases in northern scotland operation obviate takes place on the 29th of october 1944 39 Lancaster's armed with tall boys arrive above Tirpitz group Captain Willie Tate commander of six one seven squadron circles the area and directs the attack this time cloud obscures the target the flak is heavier than anticipated because unknown local flak batteries have been rapidly deployed a total of 32 tall boys are aimed at the mighty ship but no hits are scored the aircraft withdraw back to Scotland on the 12th of November operation Catechism brings 29 Lancaster's of six one seven and nine squadron over a relatively cloudless sky above the enemy ship with another aircraft filming the attack six one seven attack first Tate scores a direct hit which produces a large mushroom cloud the plan is nearly identical to the earlier operation obviate it takes just 8 minutes for all aircraft to drop their bombs Tirpitz takes two direct hits although one does not explode several further tallboys explode nearby and the concussion shocks damaged the hull causing massive flooding the Lancaster's return to base Tirpitz floods uncontrollably unknown to her captain large craters have been blown into the seabed under the ship the seabed is much deeper than he realizes so he does not abandon ship believing that the ship's hull will settle on the floor just a few metres below her keel the mighty Tirpitz suddenly rolls over trapping 1,000 crewmen inside of these only 84 men survive the remains of her hull lie there to this day she serves as a reminder that the days of battleship supremacy and war on the seas ended in the Second World War and that land and carrier-based air power are the dominant force in modern naval warfare Norway is liberated in 1945 [Music]

Channel: The Operations Room

Views: 656,659

Rating: 4.9333453 out of 5

Keywords: battleship, ww2, royal navy, Kriegsmarine, history, time lapse, second world war, war, raf, bomber command, avro lancaster, lancaster bomber, 617 squadron, tirpitz

Id: xtMwHyNS5lE

Length: 14min 22sec (862 seconds)

Published: Fri May 08 2020