After the attack on the Ruhr Dams, the second most famous achievement of 617 Squadron was the probably sinking of the German Battleship Tirpitz. By the time 617 was tasked with her destruction, she had withstood more than 30 other attacks by conventional bombers, dive-bombers, torpedo planes, and mini-submarines. But 617 Squadron also found the Tirpitz a tough nut to crack. It took them three tries.
The Tirpitz was the terror of the Royal Navy because she was the largest battleship ever launched by a European power. She possessed tremendous firepower in eight 15-inch, twelve 6-inch, 16 4-inch and 28 smaller calibre guns. Despite being heavily armored, she had a top speed of 30 knots -- faster than any British battleship. Clearly, if she got in among the convoys, she would wreck havoc, and the Royal Navy were determined to prevent that. From 1942 onwards, the Tirpitz was based in Norway, threatening the convoys that kept the Soviet Union supplied with the munitions and equipment necessary to keep fighting on the Eastern Front. In
September 1944 after a series of ineffectual attacks on the battleship by other units, the responsibility for destroying the Tirpitz was turned
over to 617.
At the time, the Tirpitz was in skulking Kaa Fjord, an arm of Alta Fjord at the upper tip of Norway and far above the Arctic circle. That was beyond the range of Lancasters operating from the UK, necessitating a more complex approach. The planners at Bomber Command decided to send the attacking Lancasters first to Scotland to fuel up for the long voyage and then across to a Red Air Force base near Archangel, several hundred miles northeast of the target. There the Lancasters were to land and refuel, the crews were to rest, and then carry out the attack on the Tirpitz from landward. After the attack, they needed to return to the Russian base to refuel and rest prior to the twelve-hour flight back to the UK. It was hoped this tactic would completely surprise the Germans. However, to fly the distance, the Lancasters had to be stripped of all "extras." These included the mid-upper turret. They were also fitted with additional fuel tanks. Two Liberators were dispatched along with the Lancasters carrying ground crews, spares and the station medical officer -- just in case.
Altogether, 37 Lancasters of both 617 and 9 Squadrons took off on 11 September 1944 bound for the Soviet Union. After refuelling at Lossiemouth, they set off across the North Sea flying at 400 feet to avoid German radar detection. By dawn they were flying over a vast, empty wasteland of forest and swamps -- and almost completely out of fuel. Flying at tree-top level through rain and mist, the Lancasters sought the airfield that was supposed to receive them, but the radio signals the Soviets had promised them could not be detected. The maps they had to work from were almost empty of landmarks. As a result half the aircraft didn't find the airfield and instead landed with 67,000 lbs of aircraft and a 12,000 lb bomb on a grass field usually used by biplane training aircraft. Half of these ended up inside buildings or simply sunk in the mud upto their bellies. Many had to be written off entirely as unservicable.
On 15 September, after cannibalizing two of the Lancasters to make the others serviceable, twenty-seven aircraft took off for the attack on the Tirpitz. Despite what they'd been told, visibility was not great, and the protective smokescreen was already belching out black smoke. Despite deteriorating visibility by the minute a total of 17 Lancasters dropped their bombs and four landed hits on the target. It is believed that it was the bomb of Wing Commander Tait that penetrated right through the armor on deck to continue out of the hull and explode under the battleship. Whoever dropped it, this was the bomb that caused the most damage.
Yet due to the smokescreen and the clouds, that damage was not visible either to the crews of 617 or 9 Squadrons or later reconnaissance aircraft. British intelligence wrongly concluded that the German
Battleship was still serviceable. Only after the war did the
British learn that 617's first raid had in fact rendered the great
battleship incapable of conducting operations. Meanwhile, on the misconception that
the Tirpitz might yet sally forth to wreck havoc on the convoys bound for Russia, 617 was again ordered to "sink the Tirpitz."
Meanwhile, under cover of low cloud, the Germans towed the Tirpitz down
to Altenfjord, where the Germans moored it as a floating gun-battery to
deter allied landings. Discovered there by British reconnaissance
aircraft shortly after Oct 15, the move seemed to support the thesis
that the ship was still seaworthy, i.e. that it had not been seriously
damaged in the earlier raid. The move, however, put the German
battleship within range of Lancasters operating from the tip of
Scotland --provided they had new, more powerful engines and again
stripped away all "excess" weight.
Excess
weight in these circumstances were deemed to be both the mid-upper
turret and the armor plate behind the pilot's seat. In addition, the
tail turret was removed to enable auxiliary fuel tanks to be inserted
and then put back in place on top of them. Each crew was then required
to conduct a variety of airworthiness tests with the modified aircraft
to which they were assigned, noting which engine settings produced the
lowest fuel consumption.
29
October was the date set for the next attack, and again 617 was
supported by 9 Squadron. They took off from Lossiemouth in the dark of
night and pouring rain late on 28 October. First they flew at just 600
feet over the water to avoid radar detection from the Germans in
Norway. At a given point, they turned due east to "sneak through" a
reputed gap in the radar and dash across the narrow neck of Norway into
neutral Swedish airspace. Once into Swedish airspace they turned north and flew at low altitude so the mountains west of them served as a radar shield.
After flying independently, as the RAF routinely did, the aircraft of
617 and 9 Squadron assembled over a prominent landmark in northern
Sweden. From here, with Wing Commander Tait leading, they set course for
a pass back over the Norwegian mountains. After passing back into enemy
airspace, they continued gaining altitude to reach 18,000 feet, the
height at which the Tallboys worked best, and set course for the Tirpitz.
However,
the predicted good visibility was deteriorating rapidly. Although from
forty miles away the battleship had been clearly visible, low cloud was
rapidly creeping in and soon all but obscured the target. Meanwhile, the
Tirpitz had opened up with all her 36 guns, including the
15-inch guns designed to sink other battleships. There were also 98
shore-based anti-aircraft guns shooting at them. The air was soon
smudged with smoke as well as cloud.
Feeling that they hadn't come all this way just to return again, pilot after pilot made repeated runs over the Tirpitz.
Wing Commander Tait made three runs before releasing his bomb; Flying
Officer Carey made six. One aircraft had a "hang-up" a bomb that lodged
in the bomb bay and Tait flew alongside it four times to divide the flak
until it finally came loose. Meanwhile, one bomb had hit the deck and
sent smoke up through the clouds and other bombs landed close enough to
rock the battleship. Three aircraft never found enough break in the
clouds to release their bomb and returned with them instead.
Again, they had failed to sink the Tirpitz. Although by this stage in the war it was seriously questionable
whether the Tirpitz posed an acute danger to the arctic convoys, Churchill appeared obsessed with destroying this ship. He wanted it "belly up." So 617 and 9 Squadrons were again tasked with making an attack. However, there were two new problems.
First, it was already November and winter was
closing over land and sea above the arctic circle. From November 28
until January 14 the sun did not lift itself over the horizon at all. In
the remaining days until the sun went down for the last time in 1944,
the days were both very short and the light of day severely inhibited by
the low angle of the sun -- even if the weather was (unexpectedly)
clear. This meant there was only a small window of opportunity for a
strike before the turn of the year.
Second, the Luftwaffe had belatedly moved two fighter
squadrons to Bardufoss, an airfield just ten minutes flying time away from the battleship's anchorage.
Given the fact that the Lancasters of the two squadrons were being asked
to fly without either fighter escort or a mid-upper turret, the threat
from two squadrons of Me109 was huge. Furthermore, although unbeknownst
to the British at the time, the Luftwaffe's squadrons included some of
their top scoring aces.
On
the night of November 11, 1944, aircraft from 617 and 9 squadrons
staged at Lossiemouth and Milltown respectively, where they refueled and the crews
were supposed to rest. During the stop, snow two feet thick fell, and several aircraft got stuck in it, so only nineteen managed
to take off. These climbed to 1,000 feet and flew over the North
Sea for several hundred miles before turning for the Norwegian coast at
the presumed gap in the German radar.
As
the sun lifted itself over the horizon, the sky was cloudless and
visibility exceptionally good. Climbing to bombing altitude of 15,000
feet, the crews had a view of the Tirpitz from 30 miles away. Of course, by then the Lancasters were clearly visible on German radar, too. The Tirpitz was
warned of their approach and the crew went to action stations.
Because
of the good visibility, there was no need for multiple bomb runs. With
Tait leading, the aircraft went straight in, one after another. The
first wave of nine aircraft (617 Squadron) all dropped their bombs
within a minute and a half. The first bomb went through the foredeck,
another hit the funnel and continued through the deck, while a third
struck amidships and exploded near the boiler room. The resulting
underwater explosion blew an enormous hole in the battleship's side and
she started to capsize. Meanwhile, shock waves from near misses were
buckling the armor plating and whipping up walls of water that washed
over the already morally wounded battleship.
The
second wave of bombers (9 Squadron) had poorer visibility as smoke
from the damaged ship started to fill the air. They also faced less
opposition because the ship's guns were going out of action as she
listed more and more to port. At 8:52 am, with 617's photo aircraft
circling overhead, the Beast at last went "belly up" as the British PM
had wanted.
One mystery remained. Why had the Luftwaffe's fighter squadrons failed to come to
the aid of the pride of the Kriegsmarine? They had had plenty of
warning because the attackers had been picked up by German radar when
they were still forty minutes from the target. Twenty minutes from the
target, the Tirpitz's own radar had picked up the incoming raid and a
request for air cover had been sent directly to the Luftwaffe base. The
Me 109's eventually arrived, but not until three minutes after the
Tirpitz had been sunk and the Lancasters were scuttling for home a low
level.
One
pilot claimed that geography at Bardufoss enabled aircraft to take-off
in one direction only but they first had to taxi from their dispersal at
the other end of the field to the start position. He claimed further
that they were held back while a transport plane landed, and only then
were they allowed to take off. Another source says the Luftwaffe hadn't
been told the Tirpitz's exact location and had to go looking for
it. Other sources have suggested that the operations were intentionally
sabotaged by one or more Luftwaffe personnel who were war-weary and wanted the war to end sooner rather than later.
We will probably never know what happened, but the Luftwaffe
court martialled the Luftwaffe commander at the base and sentenced him to
three years of hard labor.
My novels
about the RAF in WWII are intended as tributes to the men in the air and
on the ground that made a victory against fascism in Europe possible. 617s raids against the Tirpitz feature in "Moral Fibre."
Riding the icy, moonlit sky,
they took the war to Hitler.
Their chances of survival were less than fifty percent.
Their average age was 21.
This is the story of just one bomber pilot, his crew and the woman he loved.
It is intended as a tribute to them all.
Buy now on amazon
or Barnes and Noble.
Disfiguring
injuries, class prejudice and PTSD are the focus of three
heart-wrenching tales set in WWII by award-winning novelist Helena P.
Schrader. Find out more at: https://crossseaspress.com/grounded-eagles
#1 International Best Seller in Aviation History
"Where Eagles Never Flew"
was the the winner of a Hemingway Award for 20th Century Wartime
Fiction and a Maincrest Media Award for Military Fiction. Find out more
at: https://crossseaspress.com/where-eagles-never-flew
For more information about all my aviation books visit: https://www.helenapschrader.com/aviation.html
So many tragic and unnecessary loses.
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