Target Tirpitz: X-Craft, Agents and Dambusters - The Epic Quest to Destroy Hitler’s Mightiest Warship

By then, a new convoy, PQ.12, was already at sea. It had set sail on 1 March, with seventeen vessels from Iceland, bound for Murmansk. At the same time, Convoy QP.8, made up of fifteen ships which had made the journey earlier, set off from Murmansk for home. The lurking presence of the Trondheim squadron meant that, for the first time, the movement in both directions would be covered by the main body of the Home Fleet. PQ.12 would have a close escort comprising a cruiser, Kenya, two destroyers, Oribi and Offa, and several Norwegian whaling vessels converted to hunt submarines. A larger force consisting of the battleship Duke of York, the battle cruiser Renown and six destroyers, commanded by Vice Admiral Alban Curteis, had put to sea from Iceland on 3 March to cover from a distance. Tovey, on board King George V, followed two days later from Scapa Flow, together with the cruiser Berwick and six destroyers. To provide air cover and to attack any German shipping, the 29,500-ton carrier HMS Victorious sailed with them. She was fast, modern and could accommodate thirty-six aircraft. It was a lavish use of the Home Fleet’s stretched resources. Altogether, the thirty-two merchantmen in the outward and inward convoys would be protected by forty-two escorts.

Around noon on 5 March 1942 one of the Luftwaffe long-range Focke-Wulf Condors that scoured the northern sea routes for enemy convoys saw ships sailing eastwards near Jan Mayen Island, a barren lump of rock in the middle of the Norwegian Sea about 350 nautical miles north-east of Iceland. The news was passed on to the headquarters of Naval Group North, at Kiel. Its commander, Generaladmiral Rolf Carls, eagerly signalled the naval staff in Berlin for permission to attack.

Räder, with Hitler’s blessing, gave permission. Here, at last, was a chance for Tirpitz to do something to justify its existence. The Kriegsmarine’s big ships soaked up enormous amounts of materiel and manpower that were much needed elsewhere yet had made little difference so far to the war at sea. It was becoming clear from the battle in the Atlantic that submarines and aeroplanes were far more effective than surface vessels at the business of ravaging allied seaborne commerce. By now U-boats had destroyed more than five and a half million tons of Allied merchant shipping. Enemy aircraft had accounted for nearly two million tons. Warship raiders, however, had managed only to sink seventy-three ships totalling a paltry 363,146 tons. Submarines and aircraft had also proved a deadlier enemy to the Royal Navy’s big ships than their opposite numbers in the Kriegsmarine’s surface fleet. Of the eight battleships, battle cruisers and aircraft carriers lost to enemy action in the war to date, only two had been sunk by gunfire.

Räder, though, was cautious. The prize of destroying the convoy was not worth the risk of the loss of his battleship. Vizeadmiral Ciliax, in command of the operation, was told that he was to avoid confronting enemy forces unless it was absolutely necessary to complete the destruction of PQ.12. Even then, he was to engage only if he was confident that he was facing an equal or inferior force.

There was plenty of time for an interception and nothing to be gained by an early appearance that would give the enemy time to react. It was not until the following morning that Tirpitz slipped her moorings at Faettenfjord and set off westwards into Trondheimsfjord. Darting ahead were the slim shapes of the destroyers Hermann Schoemann, Friedrich Ihn and Z-25. Snapping in the wind, high on the mast, flew the flag of Otto Ciliax, flushed with success from the Channel Dash and as anxious as Tovey for another triumph.

That afternoon Tirpitz passed the Agdenes fortress and steered round the Brekstad headland and out into the open sea. Norwegian agents onshore seem either to have missed her passing or their reports did not reach London in time, for the first sighting was made by one of the British submarines, now on regular picket duty off the entrance to Trondheimsfjord. Lieutenant Dick Raikes was patrolling in Seawolf, trying to stay hidden on a ‘horribly flat sea’ from the German aircraft that appeared frequently overhead, when, just before 6 p.m., the submarine’s hydrophones picked up the ominous churning of big propellers. He stayed on the surface long enough to glimpse the foretop and funnel of a large warship which he immediately took to be Tirpitz. He dived and set off towards her but ‘never got within ten miles of her’. It was, as he reflected later, as well that he did not for the destroyers and the escorting aircraft circling the squadron would have made short work of Seawolf.

He broke off the chase to report the news to London. Nerves everywhere, in the Admiralty, in Downing Street and on all the ships at sea, were already strained in expectation. The Condor’s signal had been picked up and decoded. Just after midnight, Raikes’ confirmation that Tirpitz had been unable to resist the temptation presented by PQ.12 was in Tovey’s hands aboard King George V and he paused to consider his options.

Tirpitz was at sea but what about her companions? Prinz Eugen was still out of the picture, thanks to the damage done by a torpedo from HMS Trident on the journey to Trondheimsfjord, but where was the Admiral Scheer? The answer was that she was still at anchor, immobilised by the caution of Räder who was worried that she was too slow to take part in the operation. Tovey continued to worry about a big ship breakout into the Atlantic. There was a danger that one enemy ship might engage the convoy, diverting the attention away from the other while it raced for the North Atlantic. He considered dividing his force to cover both possibilities but an intervention from the Admiralty stopped this line of thought. They were sharply aware of the threat posed by the Luftwaffe squadrons now based in the area. The navy’s losses from air attack in Norway, Dunkirk and Crete had taught them a painful lesson. Tovey was told to keep his fleet concentrated under the protective air umbrella provided by the Fulmar fighters aboard Victorious.

Fleet Air Squadrons 817 and 832 made up the striking force that would be thrown at German shipping. They were equipped with Fairey Albacore torpedo planes, the replacement for the Swordfish. The RAF’s interwar control of naval aviation had meant that the navy had inherited a service that was dismally lacking in aircraft and weapons capable of taking on ships. For the first years of the war the men of the Fleet Air Arm were stuck with inadequate and ill-equipped aeroplanes which they flew with extraordinary élan and determination despite being profoundly aware of their shortcomings.

Sub-Lieutenant Charles Friend had just arrived on 832 Squadron, his latest posting in an incident-packed war that included having taken part in the air attacks on Bismarck. He was a reservist, a ‘hostilities only’ volunteer. Like many young men of the time he was fascinated by flying and in 1939 had given up his job as a lab assistant at the Paint Research Station in Teddington, Middlesex, to join the Fleet Air Arm. Friend was a grammar school boy, intelligent and lively. He brought a healthy dose of civilian scepticism with him into the enclosed world of the professional navy. On the whole, though, he found his new life congenial. ‘I had been made aware of the military virtues of obedience and loyalty in my family and school life as most of us had at the time,’ he wrote later. ‘The loss of complete independence in service life at all levels was compensated for by an abiding sense of belonging to an organization with a purpose.’

In the early spring of 1942 he was just twenty-one but had already seen enough action to furnish several military careers. As well as the Bismarck operation, he had watched the sinking of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir, hunted submarines in the Atlantic and been aboard the carrier Ark Royal when she was sunk by a U-boat in the Mediterranean in November 1941.

Friend was an observer and most of his flying had been done in Swordfishes. He found the Albacore ‘like a first class version of the Swordfish. It was an improvement on the dear old Stringbag because it had a more powerful engine and it was more aerodynamically efficient.’ Unlike the ‘Stringbag’ it had an enclosed and heated cockpit which represented an enormous improvement to the lives of the crew, particularly in the savage conditions of the Arctic. It also had an automatic life raft ejection system which triggered in the event of the aircraft ditching. One innovation was particularly welcome. The installation of a ‘P Tube’ meant they could relieve themselves in comfort. In the Swordfish, the crew had to make do by filling the empty containers of aluminium dust markers or flame floats, used to determine wind direction and tide speed, before flinging them overboard. It was important to choose the right side, ‘because over the wrong one, the slipstream opened them and showered the contents back into the cockpit’.

The Albacore already bore an air of obsolescence. It was a biplane and its fixed undercarriage hung below, dragging through the air and slowing it down. Even with the extra horsepower offered by its new 1,065-horsepower Bristol Taurus II fourteen-cylinder radial engine it could still only manage a top speed of 150 knots (172mph) in straight and level flight. Its usual speed was a mere 90 knots (103mph), which made the observer’s job of navigating easier but severely limited its searching capabilities especially when the wind was against it. Some pilots felt the controls were heavier than those of the Swordfish and it was harder to take evasive action after dropping a torpedo.

There were other antiquated touches. The pilot’s seat was just ahead of the upper mainplane and a long fuel tank separated him from the observer. Communication was via a Gosport speaking tube – a simple length of flexible pipe. Pilots often forgot to connect them. According to Friend, to gain the attention of the man at the controls of a Swordfish ‘one simply reached over and banged his head’. In Albacores, though, ‘we all carried a long garden cane to reach forward past the tank to tap him on the shoulder.’ Detailed messages were written down and passed forward in an empty Very signal cartridge stuck on the end of the stick.

Contact between aircraft and back to the ship was by radio and conducted in Morse code and was only used to report a sighting of the enemy or in extreme emergency. The Aldis lamp was still a useful tool to signal from air to deck or to other aircraft. When flying in formation they ‘resorted to making Morse with a swung forearm – “zogging” it was called’. As protection the Albacore had one fixed forward firing .303 machine gun in the starboard wing operated by the pilot. The rear cockpit was fitted with twin Vickers K guns operated by a third member of the crew, which delivered more firepower than the Swordfish’s single Lewis gun.

Compared with the Luftwaffe’s sleek Condors and Heinkels, compared with the Japanese Mitsubishi torpedo and bomber aircraft, the ‘Applecore’ was slow and feebly armed. Thus equipped, the Fleet Air Arm could hope to achieve little. Given the quality of its aircraft, it had performed remarkably well. So far, the FAA actions had sunk three Italian battleships and six destroyers, as well as a German light cruiser, largely thanks to the skill and boldness of the crews. These qualities were about to be tested again as the British fleet and the Tirpitz squadron headed towards what all involved believed would be an epic encounter.

By the evening of 6 March, Tirpitz was steaming north-eastwards up the Norwegian coast at a steady twenty-three knots through heavy seas before turning due north at midnight. At ten the next morning an attempt was made to send two of the battleship’s four Arado seaplanes off to try and locate the convoy. The Arado 196 was a robust, fast and well-armed monoplane designed for reconnaissance. It carried a pilot and an observer who also operated the guns. It was equipped with two floats and got airborne by being fired off the deck by a thirty-four-yard-long catapult that could be extended telescopically over the side. Its main shortcoming was that on returning it had to land on the water as near as it could to the ship’s side, to be lifted back aboard by a crane. In anything other than calm conditions, this was a difficult and dangerous manoeuvre.

Arados had folding wings and were usually housed below decks. The Tirpitz aircraft, though, were parked on deck. It was appallingly cold and snow gusted over the heaving, iron-grey seas. When the crews inspected their aeroplanes they found the wings were coated in ice. Flying was impossible. There would be no aerial reconnaissance that day. Ciliax did the next best thing and detached the three destroyers to head off north-north-west, while he took Tirpitz on a north-westerly heading, judging that one or other force would sail across the route the convoy would take.

Tovey had been moving steadily in the opposite direction, with the intention of putting a defensive shield of warships between the expected German line of approach and the convoy. Like Ciliax, he was operating blind. The weather brought no advantages to either side. The Albacores aboard Victorious had iced up, just like the Tirpitz’s Arados. There was no way of tracking the enemy from the air, and no other technological aids to decision-making to fill the information gap. Radar only stretched to the horizon. The great boon of Ultra had its limitations. The Kriegsmarine used an Enigma encrypting machine which had a different key system to that used by the army and air force. The code breakers at Bletchley Park found naval intercepts more difficult to decipher. It was sometimes twelve hours between a message being picked up and the decrypted content arriving at the Admiralty’s Operational Intelligence Centre (OIC), and so far there was nothing to reveal Ciliax’s intentions.

As the forenoon of 7 March wore on, both admirals were sifting their options in a manner that would have been familiar to a fighting captain of Nelson’s era. Into their calculations went the state of the sea and the weather, the speed and capabilities of the enemy force and, not least, their own assessment of the character and propensities of their opponent. Tovey’s intention was not only to protect PQ.12 but to lure Tirpitz and her companions into a battle which he hoped would end in her destruction. Ciliax was content with doing the maximum damage to the convoy.

It was likened later to a gigantic game of blind man’s buff, as both commanders groped through the great wastes of empty water, swept by frequent squalls and blizzards. Through the middle hours of the day both forces held their headings, waiting for a development that would propel them on a more promising course. While they did so, the returning Convoy QP.8, travelling westwards, and the outgoing ships of PQ.12, crossed through each other’s lines in a snowstorm.

Though they did not know it, the hunters and the hunted were close to brushing each other. Z-25, the destroyer Ciliax had sent off earlier in the day to find PQ.12, had passed only ten miles from the home-bound QP.8 but in the snow and gloom had failed to see its smoke. As the afternoon wore on visibility improved and the weather quietened. Another destroyer, the Friedrich Ihn, saw a smudge of smoke on the horizon and hurried off to investigate. The smoke was trailing from the funnel of the slow-moving Russian cargo ship Izhora, a straggler from QP.8. She was pathetically easy meat. At about 4.30 p.m. a torpedo from the destroyer hit her square on the port side. A photograph taken from the decks of the attacker shows a fierce fire burning amidships and black and grey smoke swirling above and behind. In the next one the bow has already disappeared beneath the surface of the sea which is now flat calm. Tirpitz hurried to join the destroyers as the Izhora went down, but the job was done and there was no need for her to fire her guns. Before the stricken merchantman disappeared, her radio operator managed to get off a distress signal which was picked up by the Home Fleet.

Tovey now had a rough idea of the enemy’s position. It was supplemented by wireless bearings of an unidentified ship, which might have been the Tirpitz, which led him to take the main body of the fleet off eastwards towards Bear Island in pursuit. In case this proved to be a false scent, and the battleship had turned for home, he detached six destroyers to hunt along a line stretching from the last position of the Izhora to Trondheim. Tovey kept up his search to the east until midnight, then turned south so that he could stay in touch with his destroyers and place Victorious in a position where her aircraft could set off on an aerial reconnaissance in the morning.

The end of the Izhora

Ciliax was still intent on attacking PQ.12. By the evening of 7 March, his destroyers were running low on oil. There was no accompanying tanker to allow them to refuel at sea. Ciliax ordered Friedrich Ihn back to Narvik to replenish and rejoin him as soon as possible. The other two destroyers tried twice to refuel from Tirpitz’s bunkers but it was impossible to hook up the hoses in the heavy swell. They were sent back to Tromsø to fill up.

The following morning, 8 March, he carried on the hunt with Tirpitz alone. He ordered Topp to turn due north towards Bear Island, calculating this would put him ahead of the advancing convoy. Once there, they turned again, heading south-west on a zigzag course which Ciliax believed would bring him onto a collision course with his prey. He was sure his instinct was right and the crew were called to action stations. But as the tension mounted and Topp and his men steeled themselves for their first battle, the convoy was steaming safely eighty miles to the north.

PQ.12 had been warned of the ambush. An Enigma intercept had reached the OIC which gave notice of Ciliax’s move towards Bear Island and the news was passed on in enough time for the convoy to steer away from danger, moving north along the edge of the Arctic pack ice.

It was yet another example of the blessings of Ultra. Had the intercept not been made, the merchantmen might well have sailed into Tirpitz’s guns while Tovey’s fleet was still two hundred miles away. By now Tovey had concluded that Tirpitz had eluded him and was on her way back to port. He intended to take the fleet back westwards to Iceland to replenish his destroyers. The new intelligence reached him in the late afternoon and at 5.30 p.m. he turned his ships round and headed north-east again in the direction of Bear Island.

Ciliax had spent a frustrating time steaming along his chosen line of interception. At 8 p.m. he finally decided to give up the hunt and return south to Norway. He signalled his intentions back to Kiel. The message was duly intercepted and passed to the Bletchley Park decrypters who worked frantically to crack it in time for it to be put to maximum use. By the early hours of 9 March, the information that the German fleet was on its way reached Tovey. At 2.40 a.m. he ordered the fleet around and steered south-east as fast as his ships were able in an attempt to cut off Ciliax and his force before they reached safety.

It was too late to catch them and bring them to battle. The aircraft aboard Victorious provided a strike force that could land a significant blow, however. By skill or luck, some of the Albacores’ torpedoes might find their target, slowing Tirpitz enough for the Home Fleet to catch her, presenting Tovey with the chance to crown his earlier triumph against Bismarck.

As the minutes passed the prospects of success seemed to grow. An Ultra signal reached Tovey from London giving further, invaluable details. An intercepted message from Naval Group North in Kiel gave the position, off the Lofoten Islands, where Tirpitz was to rendezvous with its replenished destroyers at 7 a.m. At 3.16 a.m. the information was passed to Captain Henry Bovell, the commander of Victorious, with the order ‘report proposals’.

Charles Friend was in the Operations Room when the new information arrived. ‘[It] said in effect that Tirpitz would be in a stated position just off Vestfjord which leads up to Narvik,’ he wrote. He remembered that it also gave the battleship’s speed and course. The precision prompted him to think ‘that to have such prior knowledge Admiral Tovey must have had a spy on board Tirpitz’.

It was only some time after the war was over that those who had fought in it finally learned of the existence of Ultra.

It was still too dark to fly but Bovell assured Tovey that operations would begin at first light. He signalled back: ‘Propose fly off searching force of six aircraft at 0630 … fly off striking force of 12 as soon as ranged about 0730.’ The Albacore crews were woken at 5.30 a.m. Seventy minutes later, three aircraft each from 817 and 832 Squadrons left the carrier to comb the waters to the south-east. By now Tirpitz had been reunited with one of its destroyers, the Friedrich Ihn, returned from refuelling at Narvik, and was west of the Lofotens, steaming hard for home. Over the horizon, only 115 miles to the west-north-west, sailed the Home Fleet.

The Albacores climbed through patchy cloud and gusting snow into a lightening sky. At 8.03 a.m. Sub-Lieutenant Tommy Miller piloting the lead Albacore spotted Tirpitz ploughing through the leaden seas. The trim hull of the Friedrich Ihn, tiny in comparison, skimmed along beside it, a mile or so to the west.

He radioed back the news. The twelve Albacores of the strike force were waiting for the signal to go. Before they flew off Tovey left them in no doubt of the hopes that they carried with them. ‘A wonderful chance which may achieve most valuable results,’ he signalled. ‘God be with you.’

For a few minutes after Miller’s aircraft had made contact, the battleship sailed blindly on. The mood on board Tirpitz was subdued. After years of preparations and months of anticipation the ship’s first foray had been desperately disappointing. For all the expenditure of energy and adrenalin, for all the massive consumption of scarce fuel oil, the expedition had resulted only in the sinking of a single merchant ship. At the moment the Albacores arrived, Ciliax was having breakfast in his quarters and Topp was resting in the lookout room. The ship was in the temporary charge of the navigating officer, Korvettenkapitän Gerhard Bidlingmaier, who was writing up his log when he heard a shout of ‘aircraft astern!’ and ran to the bridge.

He ordered the ship to full speed and the Arados into the air. All over Tirpitz, alarm bells clanged and men ran to their action stations. Ciliax abandoned his breakfast and Topp his rest and they rushed to the bridge. It was clear that a torpedo attack was imminent. Ciliax took the decision to stay on the same heading until the Arados were airborne then change course and run for the shelter of Vestfjord which lay behind the Lofotens and led into the haven of Narvik.

Only one Arado managed to take off. It turned towards the pursuers, dodging in and out of the drifting cloud cover, apparently directed towards the shadowers by Tirpitz’s radar. One of the Albacore’s gunners opened fire but without serious effect. The Arado was more successful. One Albacore was hit and the observer, Sub-Lieutenant A. G. Dunworth, wounded in the thighs. Despite the attentions of the Arado, the shadowers stuck with the battleship, and at 8.30 a.m. radioed back her change of course towards the narrow entrance of the Moskenes Strait which opened into Vestfjord.

The strike force, formed up into four sub-flights of three aircraft, was now heading straight for Tirpitz. It was led by Lieutenant Commander Bill Lucas of 832 Squadron. Lucas was the most senior pilot in the force. He was not, though, the most experienced. He had arrived on the squadron only a few weeks before to replace Lieutenant Commander Peter Plugge who had disappeared with his crew in atrocious weather off the Norwegian coast on a futile search for the Prinz Eugen as it sailed for Trondheim. According to Charles Friend, Lucas was an ‘unknown quantity’. In contrast, his subordinate in the operation, Lieutenant Commander Peter Sugden of 817 Squadron, had been flying operationally for two years and had won the DFC.

At 8.40 a.m. Lucas sighted the target in the distance, creaming strongly through the corrugated seas, and the Albacores fell in behind. It seemed to Friend that it was taking an eternity to reach it. They were ‘flying upwind against a thirty-five knot wind and ninety knots air speed, to a target which was steaming directly downwind at twenty-five knots. Our closing speed was therefore thirty knots – about the speed at which one carelessly drives in a built up area.’

On spotting the target Lucas had taken them up to 3,500 feet, hoping the scattered cloud would mask their approach. Friend found that, as they climbed, ice began to form on the wings. ‘The huge ship seemed to be there for hours as we crawled towards her,’ he recalled, ‘although it was only ten minutes from sighting to attack.’

The subflight led by Lucas was approaching Tirpitz on the port side. The other three were to starboard. The recommended drill for a squadron-strength, twelve-aircraft torpedo attack on a ship was for the force to overhaul the target then turn back onto it. Two subflights were to attack on the port quarter and two on the starboard, dropping their torpedoes in a fan-shaped pattern from a height of fifty to a hundred feet across her bows. This would cover a ninety-degree arc, making it difficult for a big ship to take evasive action and greatly increasing the chances of a hit. The method had its dangers. The quarter attack exposed the aircraft to the ship’s guns which were presented with an ideal opportunity as the pilots approached, flying straight and level, low and slow, to drop their torpedoes at an optimum range of between 800 and 1,000 yards.

Lucas, however, decided against the textbook approach. They were only catching up at a rate of a mile every two minutes and the danger of icing up was increasing. He gave the order for each sub-flight to attack in its own time, choosing its own trajectory. The concentration of force mustered by a coordinated attack was now lost. If a torpedo did hit Tirpitz it would be more by luck than design.

Lucas led his sub-flight in first. As he got closer there was a break in the cloud which he thought would expose their position. He decided on an immediate attack from the side rather than a head-on approach. At 9.18 a.m. the three Albacores dropped almost to sea level and released their torpedoes. According to Friend the others watched the attack with ‘astonishment … the subflight was led down immediately on Tirpitz’s port beam leaving the other three [subflights] badly placed should she turn to port which she forthwith did’.

Lucas claimed, no doubt sincerely, that he had released his torpedoes from 1,000 yards, the outer limit if there was to be any chance of success. Friend’s account says it was closer to a mile.

From the bridge, Topp could see the torpedoes hit the water and head towards his ship at forty knots. Without hesitation he shouted to the helmsman to wrench the ship hard to port. His instruction was countermanded immediately by Ciliax, standing alongside him, who ordered the helmsman to steer to starboard. There was a moment of silence. The Topp spoke quietly but firmly. ‘I am in command of this ship, sir, not you,’ he told his chief, and repeated his order. The helmsman obeyed. A photograph, crisscrossed by the rigging of the wings of the Albacore from which it was taken, shows the ship turning with a tightness that seems extraordinary given its size, making a near semi-circle in the water.

The torpedoes from Lucas’s flight cruised harmlessly astern, with the nearest one passing 150 yards away. The second 817 subflight now crossed over to the port side and launched another broadside attack.

All the Tirpitz’s many guns were blazing in unison, supported by those of the Friedrich Ihn, but the pilots stuck to their course, releasing their torpedoes at 1,000 yards. Once again, they missed. The two remaining 817 Squadron flights under Sugden had anticipated the first evasive action and cut the corner of the turn to port to place themselves ahead. But Tirpitz now changed course again and swung sharply to starboard, taking her back on an easterly tack. Instead of a frontal attack they were forced to come at her from behind.

The 817 Squadron crews were heading into a blizzard of shells and bullets. Film taken from deck level shows two low-flying Albacores desperately clawing for height as gunfire whips up ramparts of spray in the sea right behind them. A close-quarters attack was suicidal. ‘With shots from her coming all around us I dropped my torpedo at almost extreme range,’ admitted an 817 pilot, Lieutenant Commander John Stenning, later.